To be entirely fair, sorcerer and magi skulls are placeable decorations.
They have a use… A beautiful splash of ambiance.
As for Black Ice weapons…
They can be illusions over more relevant weapons.
This one would consider most higher end weapon kits to be that way, as they do not work on Legendaries, and why waste the permanent durability of your EDC weapons?
However, the exquisite silken legendary armour is quite obsolete. It’s defence and weight are all about even with craftable light armour from a higher end thrall, but it has no stat bonus and cannot be repaired.
It’s only potential use is if someone finds it early game before they can craft epic armours.
On Siptah, and to a lesser extent the Exiled Lands, there are a couple of craftable weapons that you aren’t making for their raw stats, but rather their status impact.
Gouging, Sunder, Venom, ect…
So, if the goal is to get, say a great sword that sunders with every swipe, having the extra stats for. The bladesmith is utile. More so if mass producing for purge defense.
Again, this is a corner case, but a use can be tortured out of it.
Of course there are some exceptions, maybe i should have been a bit more precise. I think @Kikigirl mentioned khari bows somewhere, some lemurian weapons are also not too bad.
When i was on official PvP i mostly used crafted weapons because they are easier to replace, unlike the rng related legendaries.
But about 90% of the crafted weapons are useless in comparison.
Before AoS that was a bit different, back then dragon bone weapons, star metal weapons and legendary weapons had almost similar stats.
It was pretty much more like durability vs damage vs unique effects. But all of them had their benefits.
Dragon bone weapons had the highest damage, but also lowest durability. On the other hand dragon bone wasn’t difficult to obtain.
Star metal weapons had slightly lower damage numbers but much more durability.
And legendary weapons had unique effects and the best durability.
All of them had their purpose and we had the chance to pick what suits us and our play style best.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine that legendary weapons are the best now. But most other weapons are useless in most cases.
Another example of FC‘s nonsensical rebalancing in my opinion.
(Especially when it comes to dragon bone weapons, they require star metal knowledge but are worse in every way?! )
A bladesmith is not even remotely as important as a shieldwright is for example. Nice to have but nothing one would desire.
I get your argument but i would still stand by the point that bladesmiths are pretty much useless.
Dragonbone sunders with each strike.
Whether that is useful or not is a personal question.
Unlike Black Ice…
Which is purely decorative.
It’s stats being abysmal (often worse than hardened steel made by even a mediocre smith), only being craftable in a specific annoying (but beautiful) location, and the Frostbite ability (unlike sunder) is complete useless out side of duels and even then it is of dubious utility at best…
But then again, saying something sucks less than something else is really damnation by faint praise.
This one does agree that the current balancing is a bit skewed.
On a personal level, this one would like legendaries to have stats equal to the highest tier craftable, crafted by a named smith (what type of smith that is can be fluid so that there is more variety) but have a nifty feature. Such as weightless, glowing, unusual stat use (strength bow/katana or agility Greatsword/Battle Axe), or something else otherwise unavailable in general.
Legendaries pre-AoS often had stats lower than those of a star metal weapon crafted by a tier 3 smith, it was embarrassing. Legendary wastes of inventory space. So we must be careful lest we see an over correction back to the why bother days.
Bread is part of the Stygian Rations. Although it’s a pain to make, I’ve been using the rations because they have zero benefit other than hunger and thirst relief. I generally run with a salted meat buff, and Lasting Feasts will overwrite it. Rations do not.
)
