Crafted gear seems to be nerfed in Season 4. Now instead of 3 ilvls below maxed mythic track gear. It will be 6 ilvls below, so same as maxed HC gear.
What is the point of crafted gear at this point then? I can easily farm gear from M+ with HC track and upgrade it to the same ilvl far cheaper both in crests, and especially gold.
So with this change, only rings for gem sockets and items like Lariat and a rare item for embellishment are useful I guess
TLDR
I donât understand where and what most crafted gear is good for if this change goes live.
It might be good to reflect more externally with this question: âI donât understand where and what most crafted gear is good for if this change goes live.â
For yourself, who has the time and energy / desire / static group run content to farm items, this change will make crafted gear less desirable or potentially worth less your time.
But there are a ton of players who are not progressing heroic / mythic raids that quickly, cannot get into higher M+ keys etc.
Crafting gear will 100% still have a functional and worthwhile beneft to a significant portion of the playerbase.
If youâre running high end mythic raids and +30 keys, yeah, crafting gear may be 1 less thing needing your time potentially.
But even then, if a certain item slot is not dropping etc, crafting gear will still serve as a great temporary solution until the RNG gods bless you.
As well as the benefits of certain stat priorities, embellishment etc may still be worth the itemlevel difference potentially.
In the end, not all system needs to work for you, if you have better and more efficent ways to get gear, thatâs great, but the system will still work really well for the community / game at large.
Crafted items are good for open world players who donât want to do instanced group content. Not sure why there is ilevel difference but it isnât that large and doesnât really bother me.
But thatâs the baseline item. So true, this change wonât impact you.
The casual player base wonât be hit by this in any way.
Aye, for the casual players. But crafting was also sold as being a part of the end game gearing pillars⊠This destroys that. If you are a player, that runs 17+ keys now. Youâre not gonna use crafted gear outside very particular items for gem sockets or powerful embellishments.
Even without this change. Assuming youâre using a 2h.
7/15 gear slots are 100% NOT crafted gear already. (Tier, Wpn and Trinkets)
All this change does, is make us pray even more for our weekly disappointment, to not be so disappointing.
I havenât used crafted gear at all this expansion because it is more confusing than my IRL job.
There is a 0% chance Iâm reading a bunch of complete babble on Wowhead when I can just do a +18 and get a guaranteed Mythic track piece.
Or go to work and get IRL money.
Edit: Itâs probably because the ability to buy specific items is coming back. Maybe they thought it would be too OP having good crafted gear and bought gear.
Iâm not sure how you think 522ilevel is not part of end-game gearing, for progressing and pushing, a crafted 522item is going still have significant advantages, the only downside now is that it will more likely be replaced by a Myth track item that may eventually drop.
But for initially pushing in the season, for end-game content such as Heroic / Mythic raids and higher M+, crafted gear still has a valuable place in contributing to having control over getting specific upgrades.
I do indeed think that the ability to control what item you can get at a certain itemlevel, can indeed have a lower itemlevel to make up for that.
Likewise it will also allow you to gear your team by allowing you to pass on items to them on the short term, making the team stronger and allowing you to push more content.
But this change, is not make or break in anyway shape or form.
Like i said, the system doesnât have to work for you, to still have value.
TBH the ilevel being 6 below isnât that bad, many people will still have at least one crafted piece as they have other strengths. Remember the neck from the 1st season?
Free sockets on rings, embellishments are still worth for two slots at least, being able to choose the stats early on to fix certain slots that arenât dropping.
Crafted gear is supposed to be a supplementary part of the gearing process, not overtake it. Especially when we have 3x the raidâs worth of items to pick from.
I donât understand their approach through the seasons, weâve gone from crafted gear being desirable to we probably just want to get our embellished items and leave it at that.
Again, youâre only thinking of yourself and your singular situation.
if and i really question if (looking at your current logs), you have the time to push a lot of M+ content, the math does indicate you will be more likely sooner rather later to replace crafted items potentially.
BUT: letâs say you run 10 M+ dungeons, you may be lucky enough to get 4-5 items, i wonder also how many of those are duplicate slots.
How many M+ dungeons do you need to run to make sure you have maxed out the item you otherwise would of crafted? youâll probably be in late week 3 or week 4 atleast.
If you factor in gearing your static / raid team, needing to raid on a schedule etc etc.
Even looking at your raid and M+ logs, crafted items will still have a ton of value for you short and mid-term.
To give you that boost in itemlevel / power / selective stats or relating variables.
Personally, i think your hangup on the item-level difference and not looking at all the factors.
But my overall reply, for the game and community, crafted items are still very valuable and have purpose, looking at your logs, even for you, theyâll have almost the same value and benefit they do now, unless you have terrible RNG and time that +7 and instantly replace the crafted item you made 30minutes earlier potentially (depending on stats, sims, etc etc etc).
Remember going into S3 they had crafted as -6 on PTR but changed it to its current -3 on release. No doubt this will be the same or at least it should be.
And you still dont seem to grasp that it will ALWAYS be more efficient to upgrade the drops rather than the crafted⊠to upgrade 1 crafted item you need to time 5 17+⊠for those crests you can upgrade 1,5 items of the avg 2 drops you get from those runs⊠add in potential caps on crests in early season you will never want to invest those crests in crafted items unless the embellishment is nuts.
The avg joe most likely wont time all those runs first try⊠so theyâre gonna take a few more, which gives even more items to upgrade. So on average, no⊠youâre not gonna craft the itemsâŠ
(Yes, i know key levels are different in S4, but doesnt change anything)
Unless you intentionally want to make it harder for yourself, you are not gonna craft itemsâŠ
Maybe if you reach the extreme point where you have spare crests and boots just wont drop for example.
Nice idea in theory, but we are most likely gonna have a weekly cap on crests⊠so it would be just throwing crests away, which you especially donât want to do early in the season.
And later in the season where you start having the spare crests you might have gotten a few bad vaults, so not even the gem sockets are worth it anymore.
I think youâre dissolving your own argument here, as youâre now mixing up two entirely different prespectives.
Open world + casual players will get benefits from crafted items
Poeple who mix M+ / Raiding will still benefit from crafted items
Pvpers will still benefit from crafted items
You can make the argument for yourself, that how you play (11x runs of each instance + boosted through late heroic raid - on this character) crafted items wonât be as valuable to you, which is fine, we can agree / disagree on that.
BUT seeing as your original post is more open-ended, my reply is still the same. Crafted items will still have a ton of value, not to everyone potentially and maybe not for as long.
Only the people who do no instanced content like M+ or Raids. For those people, a current 464 ilvl (i think thatâs the base ilvl this season) is not worthless.
No they wonât⊠They get drops of the same quality that can be upgraded to the same power cheaper in crests and gold.
I will admit, i have no idea how pvp gearing is these days, but i assume itâs the same, easy access to HC track gear that cheaper to upgrade than a crafted ilvl of same power.
If blizzard only want the base item to be useful, then why do we even have the whole upgrade thing, because i repeat. There is NO scenario that is not extremely ludicrous that you ever want to upgrade a crafted item, it is simply not worth it (Outside the required embellishments as mentioned in original post, and even those might not be worth it anymore) As we saw in season 1, most people only ran Lariat, which has been nerfed.
You can keep saying⊠âAha, for casual Andy that does no instanced content, itâs still semi usefulâ But for everyone else? Not really noâŠ
And how is that gonna be in TWW then? Where you can get HC track rewards from casual content?
Is crafting just gonna become pointless again outside Alchemy and Enchanting and some Jewelcrafting?
To me, that seems to be the goal.
The âproblemâ is itâs gonna make crafting kinda useless at endgame. As there is no reason to ever craft max ilvl items. Since you can upgrade M+ items to the same power cheaper.
And in a world where crests or most likely capped at the start of the season, youâre only gimping yourself by actually crafting an item.
I do, but why have a convoluted crafting system. To give people who only do open world content a 464ish ilvl item, when it could just come from a world quest every week?
No matter what, no matter how much someone hates m+ or raids, in terms of upgrading the item above base ilvl itâs never gonna be worth it outside embellishments and sockets, and itâs the last thing you do so, maybe not even then.
