Mastery vs. Salvage

[GnekroeGnomicon]

The other thread on the Salvage AA's has digressed, so forgive me for starting a new thread.

Obviously (removing the "random" argument from the other thread) Salvage would benefit a person leveling up a trade skill to 300 as saved materials means more attempts at skillups.

Do Mastery AA's get accounted for in the check for a skillup? I have looked over the new formula's and basically what I am curious is if the Mastery AA's influence the "success check" or is it a separate success roll and thereby separate from your "skill up check"?

If both are beneficial to skillups, which one is more effective? I assume you would want both for max effectiveness though if you had to chose one or the other would Mastery be the better choice?

And on that note, with the innate bonus to skillups for some recipes coming soon will Salvage become more effective (ie. the more attempts you can make to get that ~10% skillup chance)? Would it be better to not have a Mastery AA so that you could get more salvaged parts and get more attempts at that skillup chance?

Thanks for you patience.

[Ngreth Thergn]

well.

In MANY cases, you have a better chance of getting a skillup if you succede at the combine. (this is not true for high stats and dificulty 2 tradeskills or maxed stats and dificulty 3 tradeskills, always true for dificulty 4 tradeskills...)

Therefore, the more you can effect your chances of a success, the better your chance at getting a skillup.

Therefore, in most cases, the Mastery AA will help you get skillups.

The Savage just helps you have more materials to work with to try and get skillups... and overall will not affect you as much as just succeding more often. It does help though

Where mastery does not help is in the rare case where you WANT to fail, in order to get back an expensive component to try again (this is true for solstice robes)

[Elyssanda]

Also, to think about. Salvage works for ALL tradesklls.. not just one. For mastery, you'd have to get it in each individual one to have them all work.

[GnekroeGnomicon]

The Savage just helps you have more materials to work with to try and get skillups... and overall will not affect you as much as just succeding more often. It does help though

Would the nature of having an innate skillup chance on the order of 10% (just assume 10 for the argument's sake) - then would you still prefer to have Mastery? Would you rather fail and have a chance at getting materials to make another attempt at that 10% skillup chance?

Maybe I am confusing my question, would it be better to succeed more and do overall less combines - or would it be better to succeed less and do overall more combines when you are doing recipes with the extra skillup chance?

What is the rate of return of materials for Salvage by the way?

[Prelgor]

Depending on your situation, Mastery/Salvage may not even help very much. I've been following the logic that "more success = more skillups", so I've tried to stick to recipes fairly close in trivial to my skill. My expected success rate tends to hover around 95% for my smithing and tailoring combines, these days. In my situation, I'm not even sure that Mastery would do anything for me (success capped at 95%?). Salvage could still help, but I fail so rarely, I question the value. I'm currently at 209 smithing and 182 tailoring (working on LDON plate/EVB and studded acrylia, at the moment).

My main is level 60, and I solo a lot, so I'm not raking in the really high end ingredients. If I had access to a steady stream of, say, magnetized armor components or some other high-skill combine, the numbers might look a little different.

As I understand it, Salvage comes in three tiers. They cost 3, 6 and 9 AA and give a 10%, 25% or 50% chance to recover one ingredient. I understand that the ingredient salvaged is random - it might be the rare metal, or it might be the flask of water! Mastery gives a comparable 10%, 25% or 50% reduction in fail rate for the same cost (3/6/9). I believe that the success rate still caps at 95%, even with Mastery.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

After seeing Tanker's post I am very very glad that I haven't spent any AA on masteries yet. They appear to have very minimal value or even no value at all if you are making things that are close to your trivial level.

[Phantron]

Salvage can get back more than 1 item, and it sure doesn't feel like it's 50% at level 3, but then I don't fail often enough to get a good sample.

Mastery is useful for making stuff and minimally useful for skilling up since you can just make stuff that you're not likely to fail in the first place, not to mention many skills it's easy to get same skill up % on fail or succeed. Salvage is useful for everything, though it shouldn't be something you count on to bail you out of a GM BP combine.

[Aeght]

After seeing Tanker's post I am very very glad that I haven't spent any AA on masteries yet. They appear to have very minimal value or even no value at all if you are making things that are close to your trivial level.

Agreed. Salvage on the other hand has a chance of saving a rare component should you fail. Salvage is much more useful that the masteries, in my opinion, and it is not clear that the masteries are useful at all particularly since there is talk of minimum failure rates > 5% on many high end combines).

Aeght

[Qaladar Bragollach]

Aeght replied while I was typing this... so anyway.

Here are some numbers to chew on for example... I assume that the current implementation of the calculator on this site is correct. Further assume that the max success rate on DoN gm combines and augment cutting is 70%.

Baking, Brewing, Fletching, and Pottery have no recipes trivial above 335.
You can achieve max (95) success rate on a 335 recipe at a skill of 281 with a geerlok/trophy. Mastery AA would then only be useful below this point.

Jewelry Making has no recipes over 335 except augment cutting which we will assume a hard cap of 70% success rate. Again, for non-augment recipes, 281 + geerlok is sufficient. No mastery aa will be helpful beyond that point. You can achieve 70% success on a 351 combine at 269 with geerlok. If the success rate is higher then you can sneak that number up some but you're still getting 0 benefit from tradeskill mastery if your raw skill is 281 or better.

Smithing has no recipes above 335 except DoN GM items... some of those hit 386. Assuming again 70% success rate on those, you can achieve that with 294 raw skill. Beyond that, tradeskill mastery will be worthless.

Tailoring is in the same boat... tradeskill mastery will be worthless beyond 294.

Now we're assuming that 70% is the number... it could be a little higher than that. If it were 80% then we could gain a very small (3%) benefit from the first rank of mastery only when at 300... and only on smithing and tailoring. I very much doubt its higher than 75% though.


My conclusions? For Baking, Brewing, Fletching, Pottery, and Jewelry Making if you can get your raw skill over 281 then don't waste your AA on a tradeskill mastery. It won't make a lick of difference.

For smithing and tailoring, it MIGHT make a very small difference if you buy the first rank.

Of course, this is for people who already have high skill. Obviously the masteries can help you while skilling up possibly if you are making recipes well beyond your current skill. They can also make up for a lack of skill allowing you to get high chance of success when your skill is much lower than the trivial.

However, spending AA is an irreversible decision and I dislike comitting permanently to a skill that will eventually be, or is already useless. I'm glad I haven't splurged on any mastery AA's and I will not buy any in the future unless there appears a significant number of recipes with very high trivials and with no hard coded success rate cap.

Here's another number thrown out... if you have 300 skill + geerlok and you are attempting a recipe with no hard coded skill cap, it would have to be trivial at 363 for you to gain any benefit at all from mastery aa. It would have to be trivial at 376 for mastery 2 to gain any benefits over mastery 1. It would have to be trivial at 396 for mastery 3 to gain any benefits over mastery 2. Finally, it would have to be trivial at a whopping 429 to gain full benefits from mastery 3.

Frankly I'm of the strong opinion that
Salvage >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Mastery

[Boleslav]

You should be able to find skillup paths that give you combines close to trivial. So Salvage is the way to go for skilling up. Extra combines eventually equals extra skillups.

Qalador is tossing out 70% as a SOE imposed cap on the success rate for a lot of high level combines. Has there been enough data to support this conclusion? I know that a minimum failure rate can be set per recipe, but I have not seen discussions about what recipes have been capped and what the cap is.

To me, skill masteries are to give you a better chance to succeed on a high trivial combine that you really care about making. With my current smithing of 267 I can make DoN GM armor at a decent success rate. Without BS3, I would not attempt this armor. So for me, the points are very worthwhile, even though I know they won't help me skill up.

Boleslav Forgehammer

[Qaladar Bragollach]

70% is a rough estimate based on empirical data. It could be higher or lower than that. It won't change the numbers a whole lot though. If its lower, it would make mastery even LESS useful. If its higher, it will make smithing/tailoring slightly more useful.

In any case, I do not dispute that the mastery aa's can help you at the skill range you are in. That is short term thinking though and I've been playing this game for over 5 years so I tend more to long term planning.

I personally do not like to irreversibly commit to an act with short term gains but ultimately no long term benefits. I am patient enough to wait it out.

Barring the inclusion of more recipes with very high trivials and no hard capped success rates, in the long run mastery aa's are not very helpful. Possibly utterly useless depending on the data.

[Elyssanda]

As I understand it, Salvage comes in three tiers. They cost 3, 6 and 9 AA and give a 10%, 25% or 50% chance to recover one ingredient. I understand that the ingredient salvaged is random - it might be the rare metal, or it might be the flask of water!

I have Level 1 salvage, Got it as I was hitting 250+ in my thrid tradeskill, Fletching. I don't fail often, but almost every time I do fail, I get at least 1 item back.. and there have been *2* occasions with level 1 salvage I did get 2 of the 4 items back (doing shadow tipped acrylia arrows--4 Item combine)
I'd say 50% of the salvages have been the wonderful flask of water, but when it does kick in and save my acrylia arrow shafts I am eternally grateful I bought that salvage. Acrylia to me is such a PITbooooooty to farm, whereas condensed shadows are a breeze.

[YurienStonebow]

i was thought the shadows were harder to farm.....maybe my class/lvl isn't at a good enough lvl yet /shrug

[Ngreth Thergn]

What many of the posts since mine have said is true.

If you take a "path" and keep trivials near your skill, then the Mastery is not that important, and Salvage is nicer.

I am used to people just grinding "sickles" when they are WAY off the trivial. At that point mastery helps more.

So it depends what method you use for skillups (A Path IS better)

[Elyssanda]

i was thought the shadows were harder to farm.....maybe my class/lvl isn't at a good enough lvl yet /shrug

hmm...While I know being a bard makes it easier for me.. the mobs for condensed shadows are only in their mid-30's.. I've farmed them mainly on my bard yes, but I have 4 toons above their 30's and when in their 30's I do most of my leveling in shadeweaver's thicket I do kill in the caves and gain XP & faarm at the same time.
now, my bard is 67 almost 68.. how I farm (and any AE Class would be better at this than I am.. my AE's suck)...On the map in game, I run into the cave that is furthest to the left, run around gather everyone from the right side of the room (don't bother with the name he rarely has anything and is alot harder to kill than the others) Stand in the corner near the forge, with my drum in hand, and AE dot them to death while beating on them with my off hand sword (epic 1.0). this is usualy a 10-15 mob pull.once they are dead, I move up to the next cave, Completely pull it (no names) and repeat.
Sometimes I'll move on to the third cave up and take it out to. then back to the first one, as repops are happening. Normally I can clear a cycle twice before it changes back to the other aliens that don't drop the shadows( Gor Taku).. wipe them all out twice, and it's back to Shak Dratha's.
I can usually get a couple stacks an hour.. along with a stack or so of shadeling silks.

With Virtue or CONV at the start, I almost never have to worry about my health (7k+HP). Now, if PP is an issue, you can pick up all the junk that drops and sell it. Me, when I'm farming I want to not waste time running to the merchants to sell, So I only pick up shadeling silks and the condensed shadows, and whatever coinage happens of course. What I do is either use the lovely */hidecorpse looted* command which makes bodies disappear once I have what I need from them, even if I leave stuff, Or, if I happen to see someone begging for PP, I tell them they are welcome to follow me, grab everything I don't need (and I let them loot first so they get the coinage too) and I get the stuff I want..