Why are the best crafted items are so weak?

The thing that really makes me envious when it comes to crafters that do operations is that you get a second for a critical success if you craft the individual mods. That makes it viable to sit on the fleet, call out and craft on demand for the market price of the resources. You don't earn anything from the item itself, but if it's a crit, you have a second to to work with for nuts.

Ah, so he did. Now I'm confused...

That's not wrong, but I believe there is a bit of false labeling involved here. When it comes to the rating 220 items of the same basic type (in my example a Relic of Devastating Vengeance) the should be either

a) about the same quality, but with a worse stat distribution than the OPS reward, the same way that a piece of MK-2 gear from a flashpoints (208 for tactical, 216 for hard mode) is better than MK-4 gear from the vendors. In the example of the rating 220 Relic of Devastating Vengeance the item from ops reward has: Ops Reward: 177 Endurance, 73 Power, 42 Critical Rating. So the crafted rating 220 version might have 207 Endurance and 85 power, but non crit rating. The sum of the attribute points would be the same, 292, but the ops reward still has a greater impact on your DPS or healing per second. Another variant would be giving boost to an off stat. Say the crafted version gives 177 Endurance, 73 power, 42 defense rating. This isn't really a tank item, so someone using it will be not usually striving for defense rating, but it's not entirely useless either.

It's perfectly alright that the best PVE gear in game, rating 224, is only rewarded for operation quest rewards. What I am suggesting here is merely a version of the second best gear with a less beneficial stat distribution, but the same overall quality.

b) Remove the false label and call it "rating 218" and the 216 version changes to 214 (because it is worse than the rating 216 ops reward as well).

I am really curious about is how the stats of a main hand weapon relate to the stats from ops reward. As I noted earlier, a crafted 220 weapon is actually better than the off hand version of the 220 off hand item, except that it is non-mod. It has to be used as is.

Could anyone post the stats of a rating 220 ops reward main hand weapon, without colour crystal or augment, please?

Why would I need better gear for Eternal Championship its not like my oponents get enrages and are not affected by stun and other affecting skills. Its all about strategy.

If you arent doing OPs, there is no reason to have 224s. nothing else in the game requires anything near that level of gear. there is also the HUGE shortcut of being able to transfer left over/extra pieces between characters with legacy gear.

Also, being able to craft the best gear in the game would devalue the time and effort people have to put in to get it, you dont deserve the best gear for no work, especially when you have no need for it

I think it works out perfect, by just my opinion. How it is set up, is better quality based on effort put into game...

Low End gear- Vendor

Mid-range gear- Crafted
Common drops

Good gear- Crystal

Expert gear- Heroic, Ops drops

(there is bright and glowing higher tier crystal gear now, I would assume those would be better then elite drops)

I don't know if this will make you feel better, but I make more credits per unit of game time by crafting and selling 208 item modifications and relics than I do on the 220 versions.

The reason is that the 208 stuff is more affordable to players, so it sells frequently, and I can put them on the GTN instead of standing around fleet chat hawking them, etc. It also helps that I have enough alts that I can gather all of my own materials.

I've unlocked a handful of 220 items, and while I can sell them if I really put the effort into it, it's just not worth it (to me) in terms of time spent vs return.

YMMV.

you dont need 224 gear for any op currently in the game. do you do the nim ops for the challenge or the loot?

Bottom line is a solo player will never notice the difference between crafted 216 and crafted 220 doing the chapters/whatever story(thus level and stat capped) content. Heck even in 224 ops gear the maximum what you notice is that you have some new buffs appearing and disappearing.

Tertiary stats don't get nerfed with level sync. Some PVPers have even taken note and replaced all their power and endurance with crit etc for fighting on synced worlds (like Ilum during the Gree event etc).