Is there a reason the crafting point costs went up so much / being completely unbalanced?
To make the popular ring shirts that everyone seems to have as superior exalted now costs 120 crafting points (if I understand the rules right) which is frankly insane. Even with all possible buffs the time goes way down, but that only serves to make you spend all your points quicker. Even one of those silly heroic alchemist golems at most costs 300 cp, where a full suit of superior exalted armor costs 280 and vastly many more bars of material.
Rank II: Balance Armor
Skill (Continuous), Crafting, Creation
This ability allows a smith to increase the AP Rating of a piece or suit of armor to one and a half times the normal AP Rating, at a cost of 5 CP per piece being balanced; the process requires one minute to complete. The increased AP Rating can be utilized once, regardless of whether the AP bestowed reaches the extended maximum or not. After the armor is depleted back down to within its normal AP Rating, the armor will have to be balanced again in order to exceed its normal AP Rating. A piece or suit of armor can only be balanced once per event. This ability cannot be used on an armament that has been bound.
I can't tell by the way it's worded "piece" could mean each armor card or location, but if balancing armor takes the same cost to craft it as it does to balance it that also becomes hugely expensive / inefficient to do.
Weapons now cost way much more crafting points to make (by as much as 500%) and to hone. Especially with the limit of +5 damage from buffs of any kind, despite the buff lasting a period (or event in the case of superior), with so many other available ways to easily get to +5 (especially using a two-hander) the benefits of a period long buff I don't feel are worth its cost.
It seems like these changes limit lower level smiths to doing much less work overall, and higher level smiths from doing artisan work without investing a dozen or so levels into crafting points at least. I can only imagine this will translate into less availability for smithing to be done to for most players, and/or costs for items going higher than characters can afford. Is there some benefit to the game I am not seeing?
