So i have been reading the forums lately and noticed a lot of people are reffering to Crew Skills as credit sinks. Is this true? That most gear you make is easily replaced by better quest/dungeon rewards?

This is worrying me greatly as now I have no idea if I should focus on some crafting skills in hopes that they will be buffed/upgraded in the future or just left as is.

Thoughts/opinions/advice?

So i have been reading the forums lately and noticed a lot of people are reffering to Crew Skills as credit sinks. Is this true? That most gear you make is easily replaced by better quest/dungeon rewards?

That's a very subjective question. To be hoenst, it depends on whether you want to level quickly or level slowly while you take over a part of the game's gear economy.

Case in point, another thread asking about Biochem viability has 30th force users complaining that their 150 Synthweaving score wasn't helping them. They were getting better gear from junk quest rewards, so why bother with Synthweaving? Umm... At that Synthweaving score, you're getting access to level 21 gear. Of course that's inferior to your 30th quest rewards. I refrained from bringing up that my 17th SI has the same Synthweaving score as their 30th characters.

Gear viability is all relative. If you're talking about gear for your current level, using Blue / Purple crafted gear will always be superior to quest drops and commodation token purchases. Having said that, it takes a significant amount of time and credits to boost your skills. It takes effort to get them around your own current level.

If you want to just quest to your heart's content, then crafting will be worthless to a large extent since you won't be maintaing it to an appropriate skill level. Yet if your goal is to let yourself level slowly while being the most effective that you can possibly for your level, then crafting is a great route to go.

Ive also read some interesting things about end game crafting. At lvl 50, 400/400 crafting skills cannot compete with flashpoint drops and certain quest rewards?

Is this true?

Ive also read some interesting things about end game crafting. At lvl 50, 400/400 crafting skills cannot compete with flashpoint drops and certain quest rewards?

 

Is this true?

Raid drops will always be better than crafting drops. The whole point of gearing people out in a "starter set" of all Purple grade gear for raiding is meant to be a means to an end. It is not an end goal.

Having said that, each crafting profession does get some unique perks. Go to a crafting skill vendor and chance the recipe filtering from Training to All Available. Look at the Purple 50th items which are BoP (Bind on Pickup). Those are the main perk of having a 400 skill crafter.

Ahh ok. Because the one thing I'm scared of is I'm spending so many credits into making all this gear and leveling the proffesion to be able to do so whereas all I could've done was do some quests and get better gear for cheap and in a considerably smaller time frame. In short I'm worried I'm sinking my credits into something useless.

But thanks for clearing things up for me

Wouldn't be a shocker since that is how it is in most mmo's anyway, especially WoW. The only professions that "matter" in WoW in end game is enchanting and gemming. The armor, weapons, rings etc are junk in comparison to what you get in raids. I think they somewhat equal a heroic 5-man dungeon in loot, if even that.

The problem in swtor is that just to skill up your profession you need to inject a lot of money and time, and there is no way to bypass this. Sending your companions away to gather resources takes time and money. Reverse engineer what you craft in hope to get an improved schematic is an expensive gamble.

Of course now fewer people will buy your gear from the AH because of the slicing nerf. There is a lot of competition on the AH already, in the end you're probably selling the item for less than what it cost you to make, at best!

Then again in WoW a profession didn't necessarily cost anything but time. You could collect everything yourself at no cost. You can't do that in swtor since you rely on your companions to gather certain material and that cost money.

I dislike this WoW vs swtor but how can you not when the games are so much alike in the design. It's so easy to compare them because of it.

Raid drops will always be better than crafting drops. The whole point of gearing people out in a "starter set" of all Purple grade gear for raiding is meant to be a means to an end. It is not an end goal.

 

Having said that, each crafting profession does get some unique perks. Go to a crafting skill vendor and chance the recipe filtering from Training to All Available. Look at the Purple 50th items which are BoP (Bind on Pickup). Those are the main perk of having a 400 skill crafter.

the problem is getting up to 50, crafters cant compete with the modable social gear, the mods from com vendors, or some gear drops. the whole system is fubar and has been since beta. as a cybertech, the effort required to get my mods up to snuff with comm vendors is absurd. the only thing viable i have found to this point is the ear pieces and droid parts.

the problem is getting up to 50, crafters cant compete with the modable social gear, the mods from com vendors, or some gear drops.

On one level, you are absolutely correct. I won't even try denying it. My Synthweaver has noticed this in my market selling. Having said that, Purple grade gear will still be superior as you level up. The same goes for crafting critical gear since those items can use Augment pieces.

I did try Cybertech in the early start Crohadan and I did reach your conclussion as well. This is why I started on a new server when the game went live. Since I went Synthweaving on that character, I've been much happier.

The question really comes down to if you feel that questing or crafting should be the end point of the game system. More clearly, should you quest to get cash to make the best items (crafting supreme) or should you craft to get gear that allows you to complete quests for the best gear (drops surpreme.)

Most MMO's I am familar with place the greater emphasis on questing. Crafted gear is generally good enough to allow you to under take the quests for the best gear but is itself inferior to the quest goods. Generally speaking if craft skills can create the best gear you will quickly see most high level characters having all the best gear. As once a crafter can make those items, they can make a lot of them. MMO's have difficulty balancing there economies due to a need to inject scarcity to make item aquisiton interesting.

Either way though, at the bottom of it, both questing and crafting are time and credit sinks. After all thats all these games really are. A way to pass your time being entertained. You need to have something to spend your credits on which seems meaningful but really at high levels in most games credits/cash/gold, etc becomes pretty meaningless.

the gear should be like this imo, as it has been in every mmo i have played

1) raid gear

2) PvP gear/crafted gear (depending on your playstyle)

3) quest rewards/drops

On one level, you are absolutely correct. I won't even try denying it. My Synthweaver has noticed this in my market selling. Having said that, Purple grade gear will still be superior as you level up. The same goes for crafting critical gear since those items can use Augment pieces.

 

I did try Cybertech in the early start Crohadan and I did reach your conclussion as well. This is why I started on a new server when the game went live. Since I went Synthweaving on that character, I've been much happier.

if the purple gear isnt modable or doesnt have mode slots in it, why buy it when quiet simply uou can group from 1-17ish, get to social 2 or 3, and have a full set of modable gear.

if the purple gear isnt modable or doesnt have mode slots in it, why buy it when quiet simply uou can group from 1-17ish, get to social 2 or 3, and have a full set of modable gear.

1) Blue and Purple gear get nice chunks of special abililties for free in addition to the standard abilities of the Green versions. That's their main benefit in exchange for slowly outleveling the armor value of the piece until you hit the next crafted tier for that item slot.

2) Blue gear is equal to an Orange piece with full Blue mods. Purple gear is equal to an Orange piece with full Purple mods. It's much easier to make a single piece of Purple gear than it is to get x3 Purple mods.

3) Gearing yourself in Orange gear means that you'll x3 as many Blue / Purple mod pieces that you normally would for standard armor. I'd personally take (3) standard pieces of Purple armor (with the chance of Augment slots) over (9) Purple mod items.

1) Blue and Purple gear get nice chunks of special abililties for free in addition to the standard abilities of the Green versions. That's their main benefit in exchange for slowly outleveling the armor value of the piece until you hit the next crafted tier for that item slot.

i am lost on this one. you need to explain a bit more because none of the green or blus stuff my synthweaver alt can make is worth a darn.

2) Blue gear is equal to an Orange piece with full Blue mods. Purple gear is equal to an Orange piece with full Purple mods. It's much easier to make a single piece of Purple gear than it is to get x3 Purple mods.

to an extent yes, but when you re'e the same pattern 10 times or more with no new recipe drop, whats the point? the fact is that crafting in every shape/form is a waste of cash at the moment. get low level purples? why when in a day or two i have out leveled them, as have most players.

3) Gearing yourself in Orange gear means that you'll x3 as many Blue / Purple mod pieces that you normally would for standard armor. I'd personally take (3) standard pieces of Purple armor (with the chance of Augment slots) over (9) Purple mod items.

run a planet in a full group, the commendations drop much more frequently so it isnt nearly as difficult to get mods, armor epieces, and enchacments from the comm vendors. after cor i had like 60 comms because my guild and i steam rolled the planet. did the same thing on non-instanced areas on tat, had close to 50 comms before it was said and done. if it was difficult to get the mods to throw in the gear i would agree, but it is insanely easy.

edit:

add in that mods are removable...and the crafting system/gear system seems to be a comedy of errors. its like BW thinks that to be in the mmo market you need to have a crafting system, so to appease the crafters like myself, they threw in a garbage system that penalizes the crafters and rewards those who dont. its one thing to have crafting difficult. i like the idea of it being difficult to get new recipes and such. however its another to reward the material farmers who picked up three gathering skills.

There are also other factors besides economics. Some people just /like/ crafting. They get satisfaction from creating their own gear. Other people couldn't care less.

So even if there was never any profitability in it, some people will craft for RP purposes.

The trouble here I think, is that they /removed/ the RP / Social stuff from the trade skills and put them on Social Vendors

So that really only leaves competitive stats as the main point of crafting, and I am not sure that is present enough.

I don't know, I like the crafting system in this game thus far. I can still go quest and have fun while crafting, never been like that in any other game I played. I had to sit at some table and spam the same 3 buttons.

I'm currently in armormech and I use a companion that uses heavy armor (I myself wear medium). I use modable gear for my head, chest, legs, and sniper. I use my crafted gear for bracers/belt/boots/gloves.

I unlock the blue armor and keep breaking it down until I either get an augment slot on the blue or a purple piece. These seem to be better than those slots quest rewards or even the modable gear.

I'm also not going to replace modded gear for my companion, but she is my tank so I need to keep her well geared to take those hits for me. I pretty much make sure she has all blue pieces for every slot.

If I'm going for purple for a slot I want upgraded, I'll break down any piece without an augment and sell any with an augment slot for a couple thousand creds.

Works for me, I don't really find it useless at all. It might be useless at 50, but it will certainly have served it's purpose while leveling. Also most of these games add unique items to the crafting skills some time after release, so I bet it will still be nice to have down the line.

i am lost on this one. you need to explain a bit more because none of the green or blus stuff my synthweaver alt can make is worth a darn.

Agreed. Green is junk. However let's take a lvl 15 crafted chest for example. A standard Light chest might give +X Willpower, +Y Endurance. Not too impressive. However RE'ing this chest can proc a Blue recipe with better stats. For every Green armor piece, there are x3 different Blue result patterns. (If you wanted to take the time, you could potentially learn all x3 Blue patterns.) Each of these Blue pieces have upgraded armor value, a bit of a +Willpower / +Endurance upgrade, and a + <Special Ability>. The x3 different specialities for Blue pieces are +Power, +Critical Chance, and +Defense. Then if you RE the Blue pieces, you can potentially get one of x3 Purple pieces which corresponds with the base Blue piece.

All together, each Green armor piece can eventually result in x9 different Purple item versions once you know all of the recipes. Though I would never expect that level of dedication beyond learning the armor pieces that people will need for raiding.

15th Chest armor Example: Base item of Green quality has no special abilities. Then you proc the Blue version which give you +10 Crit Chance. Based on tearing apart this Crit based Chest armor, you proc a Purple piece pattern which has +10 Crit (based on your Blue recipe) and +10 Accuracy (based on one of your potential Purple results). Then when you make this Purple grade Chest piece, your crafting crits and you gain a free Augment slot on the armor. Based on the Market availability, you should be able to add another +4 or +5 pts of stats or special abilites (at that Augment gear level) to your new Chest armor.

There's a sticked thread at the top of this forum which has a mini flow chart of how the RE process works for gaining special abilities.

I think the thing to keep in mind with crafting is that it is typically all about the end game level products. Very rarely (at least in any games I've played) is crafting profitable while leveling up. The exception is typically the consumables market and that's if you gather all the mats your self (i.e. NOT paying your companions to go off and gather for you).

But to answer your question, are crew skills a credit sink?

Yes, but the caveat is that everything in the game is a credit sink. It's designed that way. In game transportation is a HUGE credit sink in many MMO's, vanity gear, etc... even if all you did was run FP/Ops, you're going to have to buy things from other people in the game. It's just a question of where you want to spend your credits.

RE'ing this chest can proc a Blue recipe with better stats. For every Green armor piece, there are x3 different Blue result patterns. (If you wanted to take the time, you could potentially learn all x3 Blue patterns.) Each of these Blue pieces have upgraded armor value, a bit of a +Willpower / +Endurance upgrade, and a + <Special Ability>. The x3 different specialities for Blue pieces are +Power, +Critical Chance, and +Defense. Then if you RE the Blue pieces, you can potentially get one of x3 Purple pieces which corresponds with the base Blue piece.

 

All together, each Green armor piece can eventually result in x9 different Purple item versions once you know all of the recipes. Though I would never expect that level of dedication beyond learning the armor pieces that people will need for raiding.

It's actually 5x purple per blue for a total of 15 purple variations for each green. Check the stickied RE guide for some wonderfully detailed info on how it all shakes out.

I think the thing to keep in mind with crafting is that it is typically all about the end game level products. Very rarely (at least in any games I've played) is crafting profitable while leveling up. The exception is typically the consumables market and that's if you gather all the mats your self (i.e. NOT paying your companions to go off and gather for you).

 

But to answer your question, are crew skills a credit sink?

 

Yes, but the caveat is that everything in the game is a credit sink. It's designed that way. In game transportation is a HUGE credit sink in many MMO's, vanity gear, etc... even if all you did was run FP/Ops, you're going to have to buy things from other people in the game. It's just a question of where you want to spend your credits.

but here's the problem, instead of the credits being distributed from players to players, ites being distributed from players to game. 40k t1 speeder, 12.5k at a minimum per ability above 25ish, repair bills, crafting recipies, respec fees.

Ive also read some interesting things about end game crafting. At lvl 50, 400/400 crafting skills cannot compete with flashpoint drops and certain quest rewards?

 

Is this true?

From my understanding you will need crafters to craft schematics that drop from bosses. So while the schematics and mats may be dropped, it will still require a crafter at 400 to make the item. This is where the crafter starts making money by charging their fee for making the top or BIS item mods.