A Waste of 15 AAs?

[Ngreth Thergn]

In one skill the other day after I finished some stuff for the expansion and looked at everything... I noticed a a difficulty WELL over 400... mastery will definitely come in handy there....

But yes, generally the mastery is NOT useful DURING your skill-up path, and then it is only useful later for ultra high difficulties.

OR it will allow you to try something well above your head during your skill-up path and have a better chance.

And additionally, even if we let it work that last 5%... it is not that much of a change... you go from from 95% success to 97.5% success. and over a few combines... you will not notice this... over the very very long run... sure... but over the normal small amount of even 100 combines, with random being the way random is, you are not likely to notice it on one run.

At this time we are still not inclined to change the cap beyond 95%. That may change at some point, but is not likely to happen.

To be utterly frank, I do NOT like these AA's at all. And if I had a choice they would not be in the game. And even with all the statements about how useless it is from players, when I make polls on it, a large majority of the responders want them to stay, so they are staying.

[adrift]

Would it be possible to change the mastery AA descriptions on the AA Tab? Something about the AA being usefull only for high difficultly items?

Then I would have skipped this AA.

[KyrosKrane]

Ngreth, the questions about removing mastery are somewhat misleading. Given the choice between keeping mastery or removing it, with no other compensating changes, I think everyone would vote to keep mastery. However, if mastery were to be removed or changed as part of a revamp, wherein difficulties would be adjusted across the board to balance success rates while still rewarding those with high skill, that might be more palatable.

Having said that, I'm not sure masteries should be removed, even as part of a revamp. I would tone them down do something like 5%, 10%, and 15%, with suitably adjusted costs. This allows those with high play times but less inclination to farm for tradeskills the opportunity to still do high-difficulty combines. Effectively, the masteries would become a substitute for the last 20 or so points in a skill, with a very few items that could benefit from both max skill and mastery -- without making it impossible for the person lacking one or the other to succeed.

[Bobaten]

Well, technically it is useful when skilling up in the 15-170 range (when trivials just above your current skill are not yet at the success cap). It was even useful on Solstice robe combines until 220ish skill, just that you are beyond that now. And if the trivial trend for the DoN cultural armor extends to the level 80 version, I expect the chest to have a trivial around 470. So don't think of it as a waste, just think of it as early preparations for November.

[Wyvernwill]

*shrugs* I would be glad to see them gone, but I'd like my AA refunded so I can finish maxing out stats and have enough left over to buy a few glyphs :P

Salvage is the only AA that I enjoy and would want to keep.

[Nolrog]

I knew about sucess caps on DoN armor, but I didn't realize there was a 95% max cap on everything else

Technically speaking, there isn't a 95% cap on "everything else". For every 40 points your skill is over the trivial level of the item, the success cap goes up by 1% until you're 200 points over the trivial, and then it's no fail (unless a lag hiccup or something occurs.)

[adrift]

My GM Tailor with trophy (336 eff skill) fails making tunare silks (135 trivial) .. seems about 1% failure rate.

Is it based on unmodded skill level?

[Posatrocible]

My GM Tailor with trophy (336 eff skill) fails making tunare silks (135 trivial) .. seems about 1% failure rate.

Is it based on unmodded skill level?

Yup, you are exactly right! I wondered about this a year back when I was failing Major Philter of Translocations (triv131) with a modified alchemy skill of 345.

I would love to see modified skill count toward the success cap.. but there were numerous reasons presented to me as to why this wasn't gonna happen (none of which I can recall atm).

[Ngreth Thergn]

*shrugs* I would be glad to see them gone, but I'd like my AA refunded so I can finish maxing out stats and have enough left over to buy a few glyphs :P

Salvage is the only AA that I enjoy and would want to keep.

well yeah. if they were gone, the AA's would of course be refunded.

Salvage and Tannan Mastery I like So they stay, though I am not sure I am willing to extend salvage much more than it is... MAYBE a bit more, but not much. (Well they all stay as it is... but you get my meaning)

[Wyvernwill]

well yeah. if they were gone, the AA's would of course be refunded.

Salvage and Tannan Mastery I like So they stay, though I am not sure I am willing to extend salvage much more than it is... MAYBE a bit more, but not much. (Well they all stay as it is... but you get my meaning)

Sorry, it was a bad joke... I knew they'd be refunded, the joke is the refund would be more or less meaningless to me (as if I were refunded by the next patch, it would max out the last of my AA easily) lol. I will say though, that I can not be completely bitter towards all of the Mastery AAs... Arcane Tongues made working on Research a lot easier.

[Prexis]

Salvage 3 seems to fire often enough, but it might be nice for additional AA to increase the chance of salvaging a higher number of items, just to reduce the randomness of the number of items salvaged.