I've been thinking about the recent reitemization of the game, and specifically how it impacts tradeskills and vice versa. I think we're at an all time low for how useful our tradeskilled items are when ironically they have never been more powerful.
Part of what use to make tradeskilled items attractive was having some choice. A little wiggle room sort to speak. While that exists in a few items (cloaks and hex dolls come to mind) it has mostly been lost with all the recent changes. I'd like this to reverse directions.
It is my belief that tradeskill made items should have an equal amount of all 5 stats on them. Considering that 3 of those stats are going to be fluff, I don't see why tradeskill items should be charged "points" for them. Maybe after reforging comes out I'll understand how broken that woud be BUT as things sit right now...you gain no benifit so why does it count against the items total points? Not that I have a real clue what item points are, but I know they exist in the developer's world.
Tradeskill items should allow you to specialize a little in variety. Offer a set of equipment with regeneration (power/mana). Offer a set of equipment with crit chance. Offer a set of equipment with multi-attack. Offer a set of equipment with +skills. Offer a set of equipment with DPS mods. Offer a set of equipment with casting speed. Offer a set of equipment with attack speed. Offer sets with extra stamina.
Can't offer enough of each ability due to ballance concerns? No problem: limit the bonuses to a certain number of slots. For instance lets just say crit bonus is a problem for itemization because its too powerful to offer more than 20% at level 50. So split that 20 percent between chest, legs, and wrist slots. 5% each. Just try splitting really powerful abilites between armor and jewelery so none of the craftsmen have a whole lot to complain about.
If you follow this advice you won't have anymore complaints from classes that have optional specs that crafted gear doesn't support. This won't suddenly raise the popularity of tradeskills, but it will let people play with the options and feel better about their own characters because they can make real decisions again.
Oh, and get rid of class restrictions on crafted gear outside of armor type, and things like ranged weapon restrictions. Seeing that pop up on crafted weapons has just made things misserable for no good reason.
Also, what is with giving so much crit bonus and crit mittigation? When your offering NO crit chance, does every peice of gear need to give you crit bonus? Are mobs below t9 starting to crit? Yeah yeah, crit mittigation does improve your defenses against non-critting mobs but we've gotten along without it for 6 years, is having a certain itemization total so important you have to assign near useless abilities on low level gear? Or are you trying to make us all feel better by giving us a little bonus that cost no points because it has no real value at those levels? Whatever the reason, it isn't a good one. Get rid of crit mittigation on gear below 70. Having tiny amounts of crit mittigation and crit bonus before 70 makes absolutely no sense to the people that have been playing for the last few years, probably for good reason.
If your going to keep handing out crit bonus, how about handing out a little crit chance too? Its silly that you can get more crit bonus than you can get crit chance from gear at almost any level. Try exploring other kinds of bonuses that could be applied to gear?
In closing, crafted gear shoud appeal to as large a segment of the leveling players as possible. Making the stats broader means players can choose gear rather than be forced down certain paths. More choices usually leads to playering being more creative, involved, and generally happier as a result. Oh, and the actual crafters might be happier or not. Depends on how much tollerance they have for customers asking them questions.