It seems the only reason left to keep it is for crystals which are completely aesthetic. I wanted purple crystals for my sabers, but not bad enough to keep a worthless skill while I roam around looking for the mythical schematic. It seems that the new augment kits have really killed what little usefulness there was for artifice. Has anyone seen or read anything that would indicate that artifice might actually be a decent skill in the future?

Artifice is pointless. The only good thing is the relics you get the rakata ones but they are not as good as the campaign ones and they are through day coms. I bought 3 with coms and still haven't learned the pattern. Now with 1.3 the campaign ones are worthless to try and get the pattern now that you can craft augment kits. So here we are Artificers with nothing to do but make crappy solid color crystals. The only good ones we can make are the magenta ones and the pattern is really hard to find and we have to jump through countless hoops just to get the crystal to craft the magenta if we are even lucky enough to find the pattern. I don't want to drop Artifice hoping they will update it be raiding since launch I have seen 2 patterns drop in ops raids. And both were pure crap not even worth making yet alone learning. Biochem is the way to go and I wish i got that from the start. If i didn't invest in buying the magenta patterns before 1.2 hit I would have dropped it by now.

IIRC one of the devs stated some time ago that they have plans to do major/sweeping upgrades to crewskills in general, but they are going to be releasing the upgrades in steps that aren't neccessarily balanced, so at various points during the upgrade process certain crewskills are, in fact, going to be noticeably better than others.

 

So basically, there will be FOTM's, but at least you've been warned upfront that they WILL, in fact, be FOTM's... and are going to be relatively reduced as the upgrade process gets to all the other skills.

 

('Course, it's always possible plans change, and/or we *are* at the end of the upgrade process, and those designing the upgrades are really REALLY clueless.)

It seems the only reason left to keep it is for crystals which are completely aesthetic. I wanted purple crystals for my sabers, but not bad enough to keep a worthless skill while I roam around looking for the mythical schematic. It seems that the new augment kits have really killed what little usefulness there was for artifice. Has anyone seen or read anything that would indicate that artifice might actually be a decent skill in the future?

 

It's in just as good of shape as Armormech. The augment craze will die down. All of the artiface that I know continue to make good money selling sabers, relics, offhands, and crystals and have been doing well since release unlike Armormechs who have been gimped until 1.3. Though it does seem like Armstech is in worse shape.

 

One thing that I'm a bit worried about is the effect of the improved FP loot on all crafting skills. It seems like the 124 and 126 rating purples that we can currently make are going to have no demand at all.

 

What would you drop Artiface for anyhow? Believe me, the grass is always greener...