Player Crafted Gear vs. Raid Gear (an experiment)...

[CompassRose]

One of the debates that has gone on for quite some time in the Crew Skills thread has been one of crafted gear quality vs. raid gear quality. Most of us already realize that the best raid gear available is FAR superior to the best player crafted gear available. However there are many levels/grades of raid gear, starting with Tionese and progressing to Columi, Rakata, and finally the new 1.2 Campaign gear.

 

So where exactly does player crafted gear stop being relevant, and raid gear becomes the 'must-have' going forward? I'm hoping not only to answer that question, but start to debate the questions that are sure to follow:

 

Does level 50, player-crafted gear have usefulness in this game? If so, to what degree?

How much should player crafted gear sell for compared to other, similar gear already available in the game through other means?

What should Bioware do to make crafters more relevant in the end-game?

 

So let's get started....

 

Now that the duplicate schematic research has been eliminated, and the reverse engineering chance has been upgraded significantly (according to the devs); I thought it was time to get back to the crafting table and start comparing numbers.

 

For this experiment, I'm going to reverse engineer level 49/50 gear. The schematics for these gear pieces are available either through the crafting trainer or as a mission skill drop (such as underworld trading). In total, we're going to be reverse engineering 4 pieces of gear.

 

2 Will be standard, green recipies from the crafting trainer (Carbon Fiber Gloves / Headgear).

1 Will be a prototype level recipe available from the same trainer (Beskar'gam Gloves).

1 Will be a prototype level recipe available as a random, mission skill drop (Primeval Paragon's Headgear).

 

We're looking to see which category is superior. Is a standard (green) recipe in the end just as good as a prototype recipe when both are fully reverse engineered? What about a schematic drop from a mission skill?

 

For comparison, let's look at the base stats. These recipes are all tanking gear, so we're going to be reverse engineering them along the same patch, hoping to add more defense, and either absorption or shield chance to the gear:

 

Carbon Fiber Gloves

+45 STR +72 END +27 SHD +20 DEF

 

Beskar'gam Gloves

+54 STR +85 END +33 SHD +25 DEF

 

Carbon Fiber Headgear

+45 STR +72 END +27 SHD +20 DEF

 

Primeval Paragon's Headgear

+52 STR +82 END +32 SHD +24 DEF

 

After going 1 for 30 with reverse engineering success, the next 4 out of 7 hit and I get the 'Redoubt' prefix for both the Carbon Fiber equipment pieces:

 

Redoubt Carbon Fiber Gloves

+45 STR +72 END +27 SHD +55 DEF

 

Redoubt Carbon Fiber Headgear

+45 STR +72 END +27 SHD +63 DEF

 

Now comes the first of several expensive stages. Reverse engineering gear that has rare metals as part of the recipe.

[CompassRose]

Reserved for future updates...

[CompassRose]

Reserved for future updates (part 2)...

[thorizdin]

I don't believe that anyone thinks/thought that player crafted blues/greens would have value in comparison to raid gear. Where player crafted gear does have value is for crit crafted orange since with the augment slot you can get higher numbers than raid gear.

[Kelderek]

The real value of crafted gear is when you can start getting recipes from reverse engineering your raid drops. It is possible for a player to use a complete set of gear that is crafted and is equal to raid drops or better. To get to that point crafters have to obtain some of that raid gear on their own and RE it to learn the recipes, but once they do all the same items and mods can be made by players.

 

The one significant exception to this is that players cannot craft an armoring with a set bonus.

 

Armorings -- A cybertech should be able to RE the armorings that drop off Warlord Kephess hard mode. The armorings from BH gear should be reverse engineer-able. AFAIK the armorings from campaign armor cannot be REd.

Mods -- ripped from BH or Campaign gear and REd by cybertechs

Enhancements -- ripped from BH or Campaign gear and REd by artificers

 

All BH/Campaign offhand items can be REd and then crafted with an augment slot by the appropriate crew skills.

 

BH Implants and Earpieces can be REd by Biochems and Cybertechs respectively.

 

Campaign relics can be bought with daily commendations or dropped from HM Denova and can be REd by artificers to get an augment slot.

 

Armormech and Synthweaver can make all manner of orange augmented gear now. In 1.3 it is promised that we will have new schematics from underworld trading missions that allow the crafting of orange belts and bracers.

 

You put all of this stuff together and allow a bit of time for people to learn these recipes, and everything you would possibly want for gear to try to match or out-do raid quality equipment will be possible to get from crafters. It seems like a good system to me.

[CompassRose]

I don't believe that anyone thinks/thought that player crafted blues/greens would have value in comparison to raid gear. Where player crafted gear does have value is for crit crafted orange since with the augment slot you can get higher numbers than raid gear.

 

We're looking to see which category is superior. Is a standard (green) recipe in the end just as good as a prototype recipe when both are fully reverse engineered?

 

When all gear is fully reverse engineered, I'll start comparing the finished products to all categories of raid gear to see where the drop off happens.

 

My final analysis isn't complete yet, but thank you for your feedback.

Edited May 7, 2012 by CompassRose

[Anavarra]

So, there's a longer explanation for this, but I'll stick with the short one.

Tier 2 Reverse Engineered End game items are always better than Tionese gear.

Tier 2 Reverse Engineered and Augmented End game items are usually on par with Columi gear, and may be preferable to Columi/Rakata in certain situations where the itemization favors it.

In all cases, Crafted items will have significantly less primary Stats (Aim, Willpower, Cunning, Strength, Endurance), and significantly higher secondary stats (Accuracy, Alacrity, Shield, Surge, Defense, Power, Critical).

 

You can look up the items you're curious about on Ask Mr. Robot's item database. I can assure you that their RE tables are actually accurate (I worked out all the End Game RE stat values a couple months ago).

 

Veracity Beskar'Gam Gloves

Veracity Carbon Fiber Gloves

Veracity Primeval Paragon's Headgear

 

You can see that, obviously, the Beskar'Gam Gloves are better than the Carbon Fiber Gloves. This is because, if the final item rating is the same, Prototype base items always yield better T2 RE items than Premium base items.

 

How do they compare to other gear? Well:

Tionese War Leader's Gloves

Tionese War Leader's Headgear

 

It's obviously no contest against Tionese. The Tionese gear has slightly more Strength and Endurance (and in the case of the helm, a few points more armor), but crafted gear has signficantly more Defense and Shield.

 

How about Columi?

Columi War Leader's Gloves

Columi War Leader's Headgear

 

It's a tougher call. The crafted gear still has significantly more Shield and Defense, but now you're losing a lot more in terms of Strength, Endurance, and Armor. An augment slot on the crafted gear can help offset this loss, however, adding +18 to any defensive stat and +12 power.

 

My personal advice? In all things moderation. A proper mix of Crafted gear and Set gear will give you the best results, allowing you to balance your health pool with your need for mitigation stats. Here's a couple of ideas:

- Earpieces, and Implants are great places to go crafted. Because they have no armor, it's a pure stat/stat comparison, which puts the Reverse Engineered piece on par with Columi. Consider for example, Columi War Leader's Package vs. the Veracity Nano-Optic Reaction Implant. The gain in Shield and Defense going with the crafted piece is huge.

- Bracers and belts are great things to have crafted. The augment slot is proportionally more powerful due to the lower item budget on those items, and you lose less armor using lower rating crafted pieces. Bracers, in particular, since you can get something like Veracity Beskar'Gam Armguards which hold up quite well against Columi War Leader's Armguards, even without the augment slot.

- Don't discount crafted items because their item rating appears low. Particularly Rating 124 items. Because of the way RE adds stats, these items can still be quite powerful. As a Powertech tank, I wore a Veracity TT-17A Elite Vanguard Helmet [Augmented], clearing 8-man Hard Mode ops regularly, until I finally replaced by stripping the mods from a Rakata Helm into an augmented Orange helmet.

Edited May 7, 2012 by Anavarra
Correction

[Pardoz]

The real value of crafted gear is when you can start getting recipes from reverse engineering your raid drops.

 

Actually I'd argue that the real value of crafted gear is that unlike the dropped sets (some of) it isn't eye-searingly, stomach-churningly ugly.

 

That pulling the mods from operations gear and putting them into critically-crafted oranges then adding more stats through augments gives better stat values is just lagniappe.

[Sithhelmet]

I've already done this, months ago.

 

Here are the two I got when I sobered up and realized how much I was spending doing this on things no one will buy:

 

First the Willpower one:

 

Shade Bracers (blue 49): 49 End, 74 Willpower, 7 power

Critical Shade Bracers (purple 1 49): 49 End, 74 Willpower, 7 power, 25 critical.

Fervor Shade Bracers (purple 2 49): 49 End, 74 Willpower, 28 Accuracy, 7 Power, 25 Critical.

Compare Columi Stalker's Bracers: 69 end, 80 willpower, 34 critical.

Compare Rakata Force Master's Bracers: 71 end, 103 Willpower, 11 power.

 

Now let's look at the willpower augment: 12 end, 18 willpower.

 

Now the Aim one:

 

Dreadnaught Vambraces (blue 49): 74 aim, 49 end, 7 power.

Critical Dreadnaught Vambraces (purple 1 49): 74 aim, 49 end, 7 power, 25 crit

Fervor Dreadnaught Vambraces (purple 2 49): 74 aim, 49 end, 28 accuracy, 7 power, 25 crit

Compare Columi Combat Medic's Bracers: 80 aim, 69 end, 34 crit.

Compare Rakata Combat Medic's Bracers: 85 aim, 74 end, 37 power.

 

Aim augment is 12 end, 18 aim.

 

So the blue (augmented) is 92 of a main stat, 61 endurance, 7 power. These use no artifact materials and require no research, only a crit craft.

 

The tier 1 purples require (relatively cheap) reverse engineering of the blues and take 4 of the artifact materials ( star silk or Mandalorian Iron) to make and vie very well with Rakata if they crit.

 

The tier 2 purples require costly reverse engineering of the previous tier (I spent 1/2 million credits on one of them- the first sale of a crit one paid that off though) and require 8 artifact materials to make.

 

Before the augment change (from 28 to 18 and endurance) the crit ones blew Rakata out of the wata. Now it's meh.)

[netskink]

I have all six crafting skills at 400 on six toons. I routinely work on getting purple 49/50 gear. I can make slightly better gear using 48/49 purples with mods/armoring/enhancements than the lvl 50 gear with blue mods/armoring/enhancements that are lvl 50 daily heroic rewards/drops.

 

It seems to me that crafting is a fine way to prep your toons for pve hardmode flashpoints. S