You'll be able to find some very nice gear in some of the late-game dungeons, end-game raids, or PvP boxes but crafted gear is still very good. It's also incredibly easy to do. If you've planned out what you want your character to do, I'd start crafting at least those things. For example, I wanted to play a medium armor bow user when I started so I started learning traits and leveling the clothing and woodworking skills so I could make myself gear.

Absolutely. Self-sufficiency is important. And it can prove to be a relaxing break from questing. A nice sense of achievement when you craft yourself a new shiny set of armor in which to go kill stuff.

It doesn't seem to have been a critical component of my Templar Healers build so far but it's been essential to the survival of my Sorcerer. I haven't really advanced a NB or DK far enough to say whether mixing crafted sets is worthwhile for either. IMO when you're only playing L1-L50 characters then you can't keep usefully levelled dropped set items long enough to be better than crafted items which can always be built to level. You stay at level a lot longer in VR so you might actually have time to get decent use out of dropped set items.

If you only plan on creating a single character then you can make use of specialisation to what your character uses and then respeccing once you got what you need. To me this means 6 trait research on your gear research with infused and impenetrable for the VR levels.

Woolenthreads wrote: »

I haven't really advanced a NB or DK far enough to say whether mixing crafted sets is worthwhile for either.

Hundings Rage/Ashen Grip for the DK Stamina and Hundings Rage/Night Mother for the NB. Try it, you will like it.

I prefer crafting my own armor sets and weapons pieces so that I can apply the traits and combinations I want that will best suit the given situation and my play style. As a Nightblade for PvE as an example I wear 5 pieces of Hunding Rage and 2 pieces of Ashen Grip. My weapons are 2 daggers Ashen Grip and a bow Ashen Grip. That complete set gives buffs in Health, Stamina, Weapon Critical, and Weapon Damage. For Traits the major pieces are all Infused to buff Health, Stamina or Magicka enchants with the rest Divines to buff the Shadow Mundus Stone that give Critical Weapon Damage. For weapons they are all complemented with the Precise Trait to enhance weapons and spell crit values and a combo of Fire and Poison Enchants on the daggers and Crushing on the Bow for armor penetration. Its hard to almost impossible to find that type of combination with dropped items. Therefore mastering Blacks Smithing, Clothing, Woodworking and enchanting is very important.

Been trying Orgnum on my DK to see how long she can stay alive. For my Templar I'm trying Twighlight with Sanctuary for healing dungeons. A good thing about maxing crafting is you can test all the sets on alts and pick a good combo.

SpAEkus wrote: »

Craft a level 4 set that has Training for the skills you want and Exploration to speed the first few low levels.

Use multiples of the traits too. They stack.