In the December update, Expertise will govern the highest drops you can get per slot, much like HWM did. But starting in early 2022, it will also govern the effectiveness of your gear. This means if your War Hammer Expertise is 520, and you equip a 550 Gear Score War Hammer, the weapon’s effective Gear Score will be reduced to 520. While we understand to some players this may result in a temporary reduction in power, we believe in the long run this will result in more rewarding progression loop that can’t be bypassed by buying gear off the trading post.
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This is a complete slap in the face for people who have spend most of thier time since the start of this game reaching 200 in thier crafting professions in order to craft thier own gear (FOR THEMSELVES!) - getting full crafting gear and trophies, paying off multiple houses all the time.
Not to mention you just made the exp grind harder to reach these professions (and some people have put the effort in post-November), so why would anyone do this now when they are capped by expertise anyway as a crafter? Before this expertise change crafting for yourself was a viable way to bypass the HWM grind and opted into by many players.
This game has such a great crafting system, which is now going to be invalidated by the Expertise cap.
Also many people have been at 200 and continued crafting items, and did not join the HWM grind. I understand that going forward this will generate Aptitude containers, however some of us have thrown 100s of 1000s of resources into this already and will now be punished by expertise. Where as someone who has just been grinding HWM from beginning will not have thier prior time wasted, and can fully utilize the items created by people who have been devoted to 200 crafting. Are you going to be paying people out for there prior wasted exp above 200, that did not go into Aptitude?
Possible fix:
Crafting an item should increase Expertise to that amount. Example: if you can craft a 600 GS item, then your Expertise should be 600 in that item. This still stops people from buying thier way up, but allows crafters to use thier own items at full effectiveness.
TLDR: As a crafter I should be able to use the items I craft for myself at full effectiveness, and not have them be reduced to an arbritary expertise number that has nothing to do with the way I chose to play the game and was not said upfront when I started down this road.
I really like the idea of setting the act of crafting an item on the same step as opening a chest. That would be an additional incentive for crafting.
I already have the problem that my HWM is lower than the gear I can craft for myself since I enjoy gathering and crafting more than grinding mobs and chests.
The Gypsum we can get when we finally reach and surpass 200 doesn’t help until you reach 200 crafting skill at all. Atm I have all my crafting skills at 150+. With clothing, trophies, food and region buffs I can craft 545+ equipment. Even in Myrkgard only 51x gear drops for me atm. (HWM isn’t that highfor me appearently).
So please, AGS, put the act of craftingon one step with that act of killing or opening a chest.
Go read section about scaling all existing equipment to expertise/ aka hwm. So if you have 600 GS but avoided crappy content like grinding chests it will be only 500 GS, but it doesn’t matter because everyone in PvP will be upscaled to strongest person.
They won’t be usable anymore, players will be downscaled to 500 GS untill they spend 800 hours on doing repeatably same chests for half year. But then probably AGS will decide again it was a joke and will change rules that will make ammount of flints in equipment deciding how large GS you have.
Crafted items simply should not be part of hwm/expertise, pure and simple. Equipping shouldn’t raise your expertise, and your expertise shouldn’t lower the ‘effective’ gs.
Expertise and crafting should stay two distinct system, as they allow players who enjoy different play styles to have access to high gs items.
Why limit high gs items to just one playstyle? Boggles the mind.