Discussion on Crafting Buffs.

[Nasca]

It's come to my attention that several members of the FC wish to have different buffs from the usual for crafting (Myself included.), this has sparked a bit of debate if the buff is even worth using or if will even make a difference for high tier crafting.

So, I've done a bit number crunching to help clarify how an extra +10 Control can make a a difference. The following information was obtained by crafting level 60 items using 729 Control, and going up to 10 stacks of Inner Quiet then repeating the same steps by consuming a HQ Raw Oyster to gain +10 Control from food buffs.

Control 729 - Control 739

Step 1: 294 - Step 1: 298

Step 2: 351 - Step 2: 355

Step 3: 409 - Step 3: 414

Step 4: 468 - Step 4: 475

Step 5: 529 - Step 5: 537

Step 6: 592 - Step 6: 600

Step 7: 655 - Step 7: 665

Step 8: 720 - Step 8: 731

Step 9: 787 - Step 9: 800

Now, the big difference comes once you use Great Strides --> Innovation --> Byregot's Blessing.

That 10 control results in an extra 630 towards your quality progress !! Add this to the 70 extra progress just from your normal progression of building Inner Quiet stacks up and the results are outstanding. Compounding numbers for the win !

If anyone frequents the mumble chat, often you will hear crafters vent their frustration over finishing a craft with 96% chance to HQ and
then discovering the game awards them with a normal quality item. This happens to me a LOT, even while using HQ foods like baked onion soup.

As crafters, we invest a lot of time and gil in order to maximize our efforts. Every little bit helps.
Just check the Market board, for one Control V materia the average cost is upwards of 5,000,000 gil. That's 5 million for JUST seven more control.

Oyster Confits and Seafood Stews are extremely expensive and often we need to use these food items in order to craft items for members of the Free Company for little to no compensation and even THEN we are not guaranteed to 100% an item when we are doing 2 and 3 star crafts. I can cite 2 examples were a crafter was helping a member with their crafting gear and ended with 94% and the result was a Normal quality item. This is millions of gils lost in material costs.

I hope this post will help clear any misunderstanding on the usefulness of this buff and help build support towards using it more often.

[Fenix]

At the earlier levels it won't be noticed as much, but for stuff 50+ it does begin to make that difference. That extra 10 can be the difference.

[Sesena]

I have best in slot gear and is also melded out but I can still benefit from the 10 control buff.

my stats on my weaver currently are:

Craftmanship:854
Control: 834
CP: 420

1st example: I crafted a 1 star 60 craft with normal quality matts no food and could only get to 15% progress towards high quality and when I go that 15 percent I had 10 stacks of inner quiet. I then did the craft again with high quality matts and got it to 85% with only 9 stacks of inner quiet. so if I started out with that extra 10 control that would garentte a 100%.

2nd example: I crafted something for Damage Control a while back a weighted adamantine sledgehammer and I got only a 94% high quality due to RNG and it still didn't HQ if I had that 10 control it would have HQ'd. Not to mention that these matts costs millions. Also I used food when I made this craft

When you start with the 10 control buff that extra progression towards hq you reach a certain point that when you hit hasty touch it will start to double

Us end game crafters craft for members of the FC all the time without asking to anything in return. We have invested millions upon millions of Gil into getting the best in slot crafting gear and melding out our gear and don't forget that when we meld out our gear it can take like 20 material just to successfully meld one piece of material into the piece of gear. The FC get tons of material all the time from the airships and its never given to the end game Omni crafters of the fc who craft for the fc or offered a discount on said materia. You can say the crafters can us a oyster confi that cost like 300k but I would hate to ask an fc member to pay for something like that when they are already giving us millions of material. Not to mention that this food can only be crafted by a specialist culinarian so even an master crafter cannot necessarily craft it either.

[Dresdel]

Im not a crafter myself but I know a lot of our members rely on our crafters for melds and making gear for all roles and levels. The crafters usually don't ask for much if anything at all for using their time for the rest of us. What benefits the crafters benefits all of us, so changing up a buff to allow them an easier time making hq gear would definitely be useful for the whole FC.

If they think it will have a positive impact, I think we should change it or at least temporarily change the buffs to test how much of an improvement the buff is.

Also this is slightly off topic but it was kinda mentioned already in this thread. If the airship ventures are bringing back materia that the crafters can use for their own gear, we should at least offer it to them at a discount before putting it on the mb or whatever is done with it. They do invest a ton of time and gil into helping the rest of us after all, and I'm sure some of them helped making the airships too.

[Fatalis]

If this goes through, it night be worthwhile to change the buff on Sunday from crafting exp to the control buff, as the bonus to control will help people get higher quality meaning they'll get more exp per craft and it'll be beneficial for both leveling and maxed out crafters.

[Ellifein]

The +10 control is a massive boost overall. It adds to your base stat, increases the benefit from food buffs, steady hand, byregots, Innovation, etc applied while crafting. This buff may seem like a negligible increase that is not a important, however it would mean a general overall 10% increase to quality while crafting. I am a fully geared Culinarian. With my current gear I am able to craft 3* food.

It is extremely difficult to max out the quality of an item being crafted to guarantee 100% success to high quality without HQ mats. Certain high quality materials are very expensive, for example: (These are current MB prices, which will be drastically higher post patch day)

Wattle Bark: 12,000
Dawnborne Aethersand: 13,000.
Sun Mica: 24,000

The are just a few of the items. Pose patch day these and other high soft after materials will price at 80k or higher as some of you have experienced with the items for relic. There is also new crafted gear which means higher difficulty in crafting new items, more time and money to get new bis crafting gear to hit the necessary requirements to craft those sought after items. To go outside the guild the average commission cost is 10% the going rate on the market board.
It takes time and effort to craft these items, we do so with a lot of time and gil invested and little more than a thank you from the person asking for what they want. I myself and other crafters would appreciate just a little bit more love.

[specs5]

The 10 control may seem negligible on its own but when combined with the fact that all our crafting is affected by multiplicative modifiers (inner quiet, innovation) it becomes a massive boost to finishing off a HQ product even with normal mats. At lower levels the buff doesn't seem that important due to not being able to HQ items regularly while leveling, but 50+ this buff becomes astronomically better by being the difference between a 90% chance to 100% in the quality bar. This is going to be even more important with the release of 3.3 where a new crafter/gather tier is gonna be released which will likely once again raise the minimum requirements to make specialists items. Since materia V for crafting is still amazingly expensive due to its rarity, having this extra bonus periodically will greatly ease the strain on us crafters who make HQ gear for our fellow FC members in the stress of making sure expensive and rare mats aren't wasted due to a 1% chance of failure.

[Erim]

I am not yet an endgame crafter, but I am leveling various crafting classes with an eye to (likely) taking WVR and likely GSM to 60/spec. With that in mind, the ability to HQ items, even while leveling, is probably more important than +10% crafting exp for me. Why? Because with WVR and GSM I make about 2/3 of my own gear. 10 Control would be a massive boost to my ability to quickly HQ my gear, leading to more HQ items for leve turn-ins later, and thus faster leveling.

--Erim

[Selphie89]

Having more use of the control buff would be great for any level crafter who is starting out and for more advanced crafting especially when it comes to helping others within the free company to do turn ins and job quests. Choosing reasonable days to use the buff is all I think should be adjusted, aside from raid buff usage when flights need it.

[Okaria]

Thanks to all of you for your constructive thoughts on this. The Officers are continuing to monitor the discussion. Keep those thoughts coming.

One thing I should clarify while I'm here — the context in which I believe we'd be considering these buffs would be in the format of "for X hours on days Y, Z, etc." where X is probably 2 hours or so. The balance the Officers always try to strike with buffs is what benefits the largest demographic of the FC, and I don't feel these would be beneficial replacements for anything on our all-day schedule.

Basically, we'd be approaching these crafting buffs from a mindset not unlike our raid buffs: this helps a number of people we care a lot about and who do a lot of good for the guild, so we're having everyone else put their buffs on hold to respect that. In the case of crafting that is especially true, as we know you guys help a lot with getting people geared out.

P.S. I've cleaned up the thread a bit; let's try to keep things focused/civil.