Tradeskill Mastery

[Drawde]

From what I've read, the tradeskill masteries are causing problems with the upper level combines. They make it too easy to succeed at the higher skill levels, which makes it harder for the devs to make better tradeskilled items. What do people think is a good way to fix this?

[Qaladar Bragollach]

Higher trivials.

[Zatz-Combine]

Its not broke! For once in your life stop trying fix things that aren't broke !

[Drualla]

When you say trade masteries, do you mean from AA's? When I use the calulator for a 300 skill in jewelcraft, the success rate is 95% no matter which number of tradeskill AA I punch.

Is it worth it to get tradeskill mastery after you reach 300? Just wondering if there is an advantage.

[Roanne]

Mastery wont raise your chance of success beyond the max (95%), but for recipes with a higher fail rate (like tier 13 cultural) they will help. I guarantee the trivial on tier 13 cultural leg and chest slots was determined by first deciding what fail rate the devs "envisioned" then working backward by assuming 300 skill + 15% trophy + mastery 3 to ensure desired fail rate under the players' most beneficial circumstance.

When you're talking about combines to recipes you already have max success rate without mastery AAs, they wont matter, but they make all the difference on the "difficult" stuff.

[Drualla]

Thanks Roanne! Now I know, it makes sense to get the AA's.

[Drawde]

yes, the AAs lower your failure rate. And it's at the point where you always have around a 40%-50% chance of success, regardless of how high the difficulty is, with mastery 3. Which means even a triv of 600 doesn't make a difference. Ngreth has already stated he doesn't like the mastery AAs because of that. I was just wondering how to fix that.

EDIT: You can't go below 95% failure rate. THEN the mastery AA adjust that. If I understand how they work, mastery 3 halves that. Which would make it 47% chance of FAILING. Even an item with a triv of 1000 would still only have that 95% chance of failing. They tried making items have a set limit on your success chance, but too many people complained about it making the AA they'd bought worthless, since they'd never affect it.

[mizoto]

According to the calculator,

Tailoring 300, 15% Mod, and 490 intelligence, Tailoring Master 3 AA

Anything above 649 skill has a 5% chance of success -- negating the effects of the AA completely.

Miz

[Ngreth Thergn]

Something I saw may negate that. But I have to look at the code myself. Tanker said that the "fail" is capped BEFORE the AA is calculated... then capped again. but I think players have seen evidence that it is not. I have not looked at the code myself to confirm.

if it is pre capped, the calculator on this site is incorrect.

[Ngreth Thergn]

And yes I really do hate this AA. I have over and over considered refunding it and either greatly adjusting it down, or removing it. Note the considered in there. I certainly have not made any final decisions because...

**IF** I was to remove this, there would be an adjustment to MANY trivials to get them back down to a more reasonable range. It will be a huge amount of work for me, not even including the fact that it would like be rather unpopular.

In my opinion that AA greatly hurts tradeskills, but i understands that players benefiting from it might not agree. To me it makes SKILL matter little and just lets people throw experience at combines. And makes me do ridiculously high trivials to try and make things "difficult"

[Twistagain]

yes, the AAs lower your failure rate. And it's at the point where you always have around a 40%-50% chance of success, regardless of how high the difficulty is, with mastery 3. Which means even a triv of 600 doesn't make a difference. Ngreth has already stated he doesn't like the mastery AAs because of that. I was just wondering how to fix that.

EDIT: You can't go below 95% failure rate. THEN the mastery AA adjust that. If I understand how they work, mastery 3 halves that. Which would make it 47% chance of FAILING. Even an item with a triv of 1000 would still only have that 95% chance of failing. They tried making items have a set limit on your success chance, but too many people complained about it making the AA they'd bought worthless, since they'd never affect it.

Just a nitpick: if you are at 300 skill with a 15% mod (highest available) + Mastery 3, and there was a recipe with trivial 600, then you would normally have a 153.5% failure rate (which would be capped at 95% failure rate.) Mastery would reduce this to 76.75%.

Similarly, a 1000 trivial item would be at 453.5% failure rate (capped at 95%) halved to 226.75% (also capped at 95%.)

The point is that mastery is taken into effect BEFORE the capping. This is why a person with 0 skill doesn't have a 50% chance to succeed just because they have Mastery 3.

[Twistagain]

Something I saw may negate that. But I have to look at the code myself. Tanker said that the "fail" is capped BEFORE the AA is calculated... then capped again. but I think players have seen evidence that it is not. I have not looked at the code myself to confirm.

if it is pre capped, the calculator on this site is incorrect.

If it is capped before the AA is calculated, then it must be capped well beyond 100% (basically unverifiable by players.) Otherwise, we could just buy Mastery 3 and have a 50% success on Elegant Armors (which is not the case.)

[Sharrien]

If decreasing the chance to fail by a percentage makes things so hard, then maybe the AAs should add to your apparent skill (like some items add to your casting skill). This bonus would have to stack with the % mod from trophies. Or maybe the AA could raise the max cap. Or add a tradeskill task similar to trophies before each level can be purchased. Or a require a skill level to purchase so that zero skill toons can't attempt high triv items with any chance of success.

Whatever way it turns out, I think it is legitimate that I can use xp that I earned to augment my tradeskills. I have 108 AA on two characters so that they can perform at a high level of mastery in thier chosen paths. I would be very disappointed if those AA were ever refunded.

[KyrosKrane]

If masteries were to be replaced, I could think of a few different ways that new versions could be implemented.

1) Raise the cap on the chosen tradeskill by some number of points. You would still have to skill up normally to the new cap.

2) Grant a flat +X skill points, so that, for example, if your skill is 0, it acts as if it were 50. If your skill were 300 (the current cap), it would act like 350.

3) Keep them percent based, but make them much lower. Instead of 10%, 25%, and 50%, maybe make them 2%, 4%, and 6%.

In all cases, as Ngreth noted, all trivials over 250 or so would have to be revisited to make sure they're still where the devs want them to be. Trivials like 527 (the highest I could find in our database) would clearly have to be changed to something more reasonable.

[Drawde]

If I was wrong about exactly how it works, sorry. But I at least had the part about it causing problems correct.