Making Crafting Useful for Acquiring Endgame Gear

[BAgate]

1) Don't use ANB events as a standard. They are special events and so give a greater return. So simply saying that you can get a Lbox in 15 hours in an event isn't a point of comparison you should be using.

2) How much effort should one have to put in to hit 'end game'? The standard refrain from people on this board is that they should just farm TL 90, but that is completely unreasonable for the vast majority of players. And that is a good thing. To reach that level should take a lot of work. The devs have already slashed the amount of exp to gain CLs, introduced LBoxes, Celestials, a plethora of random set items, and jewelry boxes. How much more help do new players need?

3) I wouldn't mind seeing the cost to craft going down a little just to make it more useful. I'd rather people improve by crafting more items rather than easily buffing existing ones.

[lama75]

You could accomplish this same thing, more or less, by making the C.Orb bump a stat by a variable but diminishing amount, but not less than a certain fixed minimum value (minimum = what the current C.orbs do), and the stat cannot exceed its respective max (also like it is currently).

While true, this changes the stated purpose of the c. orb from an endgame OCD-perfectionist tool to a general purpose tool. Having a 2nd orb that's a fraction of the cost and designed specifically for fixing stat rolls would be a cleaner solution that also maintains the original c. orb purpose.

To my way of thinking, the only other solution would be to adjust crafting so that rolls don't need to be fixed.

[Cultusfit]

This doesn't really help the one of the fundamental problems in the endgame. You can only get better gear. Besides lboxes and epecially cboxes come with close to perfect stats anyway. High trial levels drop gears with narrowed stat range and a high ML means you can easily craft gear with 1-2 perfect stats and the other two pretty high as bases. And ultimately you want everything celestial, which makes anything you do to maximize stats on legendary gear pointless anyway. And refinement orbs wouldn't work on celestials (88-90 range means they'd always roll 88, possibly even reducing stats).
And on top of that a few stat points aren't really worth it. I'd probably gain less than 1% damage, if all stats on my gear were perfect.

Although that gave me an idea: Introducing something akin to Vaal Orbs from Path of Exile. Those modify an item unpredictably and corrupt it(item can't be changed any more): Stats can be added or changed(to get stats, that'd otherwise be impossible to obtain in that slot), a bunch of other effects, no change or poof.
Possible effects for Eternium would be:
Adding a random enchantment, add a socket(2 enchants, enchant on for example helmet or 2(or 3) sockets would be possible that way), maximize all stats on that item, no change and - of course - poof.

Would make grinding legendaries worthwile again to get the right effect or replace a lost item.

When I got my first vaal orb I saw how expensive they were and thought it was basically always a benefit.
used it on some good item I had and got amazing results. Like stupid perfect.
Later had unique item already good and thought well this will make it EVEN BETTER

[Ahgnus]

When I first heard of craftable "Celestial Orb", I hoped that it would let me revert my c-box, so I can re-roll it.

Wouldn't it be cool to have a craftable item that let you reset your c-boxes? I think this will definitely help in celestial elitest dillema. It's a fair perk for both beginner and veteran groups. Of couse, to collect all the resouces required to craft such a magnificent item , you would have to endure some ridiculously grindy hours in farming and crafting.

[Arionthe]

1) Don't use ANB events as a standard. They are special events and so give a greater return. So simply saying that you can get a Lbox in 15 hours in an event isn't a point of comparison you should be using.

2) How much effort should one have to put in to hit 'end game'? The standard refrain from people on this board is that they should just farm TL 90, but that is completely unreasonable for the vast majority of players. And that is a good thing. To reach that level should take a lot of work. The devs have already slashed the amount of exp to gain CLs, introduced LBoxes, Celestials, a plethora of random set items, and jewelry boxes. How much more help do new players need?

3) I wouldn't mind seeing the cost to craft going down a little just to make it more useful. I'd rather people improve by crafting more items rather than easily buffing existing ones.

1) I wanted to start from somewhere tangible to get the proper cost of a Lbox quality item. At least ANB costs are game related (time/effort/gem). If we start looking at Lbox purchase options, then ptw really come to fore. If you feel ANB is special thus the cost is artificially low, then scale it in some fashion. Perhaps for you, 30hrs is the right amount. Whatever it is, at least we can relate it to something the game has already set the price for (time/effort)

2) suggestion is about making the crafting system more useful for the new player that's on their way to farming TL90. Right now the time efficient method is simply ignore the crafting system during the journey to TL90. Why waste such a system.

3) You will need to lower the crafting cost by a pretty significant margin in order to do so. Like it takes me 90-120 secs to run TL90 once. Every 2-3 runs I should have a usable drop (I'm not talking endgame quality but decent enough for someone to use while farming TL90). So 270-360 secs. Since you can choose the item slot with crafting, let's quadruple the time cost. Now you are at 18-24mins. So basically the crafting cost of of a usable legendary set item should be whatever I can farm per 20mins. Err nowhere close is the current situation because the craft outcome is very unlikely to be good enough. Trouble said if you craft 7-10 times in a row, you can get a usable piece. So the individual craft cost should be whatever I can farm up in 2mins....Now you see why crafting is so neglected. The ROI simply does not compute.

[BAgate]

You're still thinking of this wrong. Being even able to complete trial 90, not farm but complete, puts you in the top 1%. So scaling things to make asset acquisition equivalent is kind of strange.

What we need (balance patch style, not just tweaks) is to decrease the disparity between sets/non-sets. And then to scale down costs so that players can afford to craft items appropriate to their stage in the game. Right now there is basically no point to ever craft a non-set item (unless you are just crafting a rare farming piece for speed leveling) and the price for crafting a set item is exorbitant. So I would rather see sets nerfed so they are only as much better then legendary items as legendary are from epic (so normal legendaries are actually part of the progression you go through for more than a week), then reduce costs so people can actually craft stuff when they need it. But make it tiered so you can spend more to narrow the stat range (that way you can get items cheaper but with a chance of bad stats or pay far more to get only good stats). Then leave orbs as is for the perfectionists out there.

If you simply make cheap orbs that solve stat deficiencies you shift from crafting/rng to simply getting something with the right stats (not hard with reforging) and then farming for orbs. I'm not a fan of that dynamic.

[Arionthe]

You're still thinking of this wrong. Being even able to complete trial 90, not farm but complete, puts you in the top 1%. So scaling things to make asset acquisition equivalent is kind of strange.

...

Those are actually very fair points. In an ideal world, I actually agree with you in terms how the crafting system should be utilized (as a progressive tool that helps across the entire curve of a player's journey from newbie to master). However your idea would involve a total re-thinking of the item/loot system in order to revamp the gear quality curve. When I have time one day, I might just dive in and give a blank canvas "this is what I would like to see for loot".

My idea is more of a band-aid, but addresses an immediate problem (ROI for crafting being too low thus ignored by the playerbase outside of enchantments). Perhaps it is a transitional step, but I feel it gives some benefits to people that want to play it another way (farming for that stat fixing cheap orb instead of TL farming and rng).

So we agree to disagree on the transitional step. But share a common eventual goal.

[NoSuchReality]

So I'm what I call beginning end-game. Maybe Mid-game, sitting on TL84 with Garm, CL actually 616 now, I have a full set of Stalker gear on my TL pusher BH but it's fairly junky, a set of acceptable DPS rings and necklace low 200s power boost, CR, CD, etc.. . A combo farmed and crafted mostly epic set of +gold gear for my gold, gem and junk salvage farming BH.

Maybe I should be higher in the Trial Levels (that might be a fair critique), but I need stat buffs and that needs equipment buffs. Elite mobs on TL84, just don't wanna die, I kill them off and get to Garm, but time-out or get killed out trying to push the Orange circle. Maybe I can take him, but it will be close.

That's background. As for Crafting, I'm mastery level 35. I just leveled it up to 35. It takes roughly 3000 clicks to level it on level, making some 1350ish level 5 uncommons that have about an 80-85% salvage rate on essences. It gains basically 9XP per lessor essence investment before salvage. Upgrading to Rare or higher level items drops the XP/invested essence down to 7XP/LE Crafting a low level rare takes Essences, worth 10 lessor essence and 6 of them is the minimum investment for a level 20 item. It provides 103 XP for the 60 equivalent lesser essences or 1.72 XP/invested lessor essence.. Likewise, increasing the level of equipment, to say a level 70 item, requires 30 lesser and yields 80 XP, or 2.67/LE salvaging though is in line with game recovered gear salvaging, around 15% on the Uncommon LEs invested, recovered. Likewise, Epic level 70 requires 21X the essence investment and yield only 4X the XP. salvage then on par with recovered gear salvaging.

JIMHO, this seems really backwards perhaps it's just an exploit of low level functionality to make it playable by the under level 70 crowd, I dunno. However it seems that crafting XP should be nerfed for crafting more than 10 levels below your level, much like gear turns grey when it drops

Here's the crux, what's the point until the very end game? Running Morganheim will take close 200 runs at 30ish level craft mastery to garner enough to make a single legendary Set item. I, and most other non-end game level people need to upgrade all nine pieces of equipment. Plus make my gold/gem runner, and then an XP grinder.

Since I can farm TL80 and TL81, granted they take me 6X as long as Morganheim, it will drop me 3 legendaries. Maybe 10% are set pieces. I can drop lower and farm faster and seeming get a higher rate Epic level set drops. to equip my crew of Champions.

The added bonus is that grinding the TL level on repeat reaps XP, XP gets CLs and CLs give the stat boosts that makes all my champions a bit tougher.

I want to like crafting. I want it to be useful. Right now, it just seems irrelevant. Maybe in another 400 or 500 CLs it will be. Maybe it's more useful low level TLs when you need to tweak epic gear sets to go with your few legendaries Right now, I'd like to craft a decent Hailstorm for my pusher BH, but I honestly think I'll find one in Trials before I get the stuff I need to make it, or the 2nd or 3rd one to get good stats.