Guild Wars 2

This is a simple relative demand problem.
There is just not enough demand for Leather, making it leased desirable basic commodity.
Cloth is by far and away the most in demand basic commodity and that can be traced directly to Insignias.
the simple solution, add crafting patterns that let you use leather instead of cloth for equivalent insignias at least through tier 5.

So rawhide for jute, thin leather for wool, coarse leather for cotton, rugged leather for linen & thick leather for silk (i.e. use 1 Thick Leather Square + 3 Potent Blood & 3 Fine Thread to make the Berserker’s Silk Insignia [fine])

These patterns could be another set of simple karma patterns at the crafting trainers.
To make this fair you would have to add leather refining to Armorsmithing.

This would create more demand for the leather for a couple of months till the market stabilized. The price of cloth would come down a bit & the price of leather would rise until they became roughly equivalent.

I would NOT do this for tier 6 or 7 because it would completely destroy the long term goal effects of ascended crafting.

Uh… I was for this idea until you said it shouldn’t apply to tier 6 and 7.

Because if it doesn’t, what’s the point, really?

It’s the copious amounts of cloth you need to make damask, and that fact that you need a lot of damask to make ascended, which causes the problem. So, being able to substitute Elonian leather for damask in ascended insignias would normalize the costs of both leather and cloth across the board.

And it wouldn’t destroy the long term goals because Elonian leather is just as timegated as damask is, it’s just that for a t7 material, the leather is kinda worthless since it’s only good for medium armor (and bowstrings, yeah but that’s not much more of a difference). While you need damask for all armor, and metal for both armor and most weapons. giving Elonian leather an additional use is necessary for increasing the value of leather, period. (Since t7 is made from t2-t6)

So, if that use were as an alternate mat for acended insigias, you’d likely have t7 cloth, metal and leather all floating around similar prices, which will make things much more fair to light armor classes.

If you thing about it it would indirectly reduce the price of damask.
By effectively reducing the number of items the lower ties of cloth are used for it would leave more cloth available to buy in the market. More supply = lower price. It probably end up being a 2-3 gold price reduction in Damask.

The bigger problems it solves is the Elonian Leather market and tailoring’s leveling cost.
The increased demand in lower leathers should add about 1 gold to the the price of Elonian leather making it cheaper to make instead of buy. getting it inline with the Deldrimor Steel market would be the goal here.

This would also get leveling tailoring back in line with the other armor professions for newer players.

Think of this as the federal reserve making an interest rate adjustment. A small incremental change instead of a major overhaul. (The numbers I used above are a total guess but reasonable targets)

Honestly I would be all for using my leather for cloth idea across the board but I don’t think ANet would go for it.
The reason I excluded tier 7 is not only gold cost but the time gate. Essentially when you are selling a tier 7 crafting mats you are selling your time gate. If you can use Leather & Cloth for the same ascended item you cut the amount of time & gold needed to craft ascended items. The players would LOVE it but it would remove its long term goal effect that ANet wanted when they created it.

The tier 6 I was unsure of because of the Tier 6 Inscription use in tier 7 inscriptions.

Tier 6 or even Tier 7 changes could be added if the market balancing wasn’t strong enough.

Why do you think it needs a solution? It’s probably working as ANet intends.

Silk scraps need to go back to normal refinement numbers and inscriptions of all tiers should be craftable with the profession’s primary material, not cloth for all profession.

As it stands, light armor is incomparably more expensive than any other type of armor. If that’s “working as intended” then the intentions are wrong. The days when silk was in overabundance are long since past.

I think the correct and most fair approach would be to try and balance the supply and demand for all materials.

Grimmtooth.4163:

The bigger problems it solves is the Elonian Leather market and tailoring’s leveling cost.
The increased demand in lower leathers should add about 1 gold to the the price of Elonian leather making it cheaper to make instead of buy. getting it inline with the Deldrimor Steel market would be the goal here.

This would also get leveling tailoring back in line with the other armor professions for newer players.

I dont know how you come to the conclusion that tailoring needs adjustment, as armorsmith is the most expensive one from 0-500, with 73g compared to 68/69g for leatherworker/tailor.
Tailoring might be the most expensive from 0-400 but the cheapest from 400-500.

Total values taken from gw2crafts.net

Wanze.8410:

I dont know how you come to the conclusion that tailoring needs adjustment, as armorsmith is the most expensive one from 0-500, with 73g compared to 68/69g for leatherworker/tailor.
Tailoring might be the most expensive from 0-400 but the cheapest from 400-500.

Total values taken from gw2crafts.net

Seriously? The cost difference between 400-500 leveling between tailor and armorsmith is completely negated by the cost difference making ONE ascended chestpiece once you do hit 500. The extreme costs of Damask are just killer.

It’s really just the pants and chest that are major since you need 4 damask for the main component which is around 50g by itself, while the equivalent piece on armor is around 15 g and leather more like 5-6g. Don’t tell me that’s fair.

Arioso.8519:

Wanze.8410:

I dont know how you come to the conclusion that tailoring needs adjustment, as armorsmith is the most expensive one from 0-500, with 73g compared to 68/69g for leatherworker/tailor.
Tailoring might be the most expensive from 0-400 but the cheapest from 400-500.

Total values taken from gw2crafts.net

Seriously? The cost difference between 400-500 leveling between tailor and armorsmith is completely negated by the cost difference making ONE ascended chestpiece once you do hit 500. The extreme costs of Damask are just killer.

It’s really just the pants and chest that are major since you need 4 damask for the main component which is around 50g by itself, while the equivalent piece on armor is around 15 g and leather more like 5-6g. Don’t tell me that’s fair.

But the OP said the bigger problem is the higher leveling costs for tailor, which i simply proved to be false.

I’m pretty sure it’s the introduction of ascended crafting and damask that’s made cloth so expensive. Before ascended crafting was added you literally couldn’t give silk away (at least I couldn’t). Which is why they made it require so much of it.

You can see it on GW2 Spidy 9th December 2013 silk scraps were selling for 19 copper, 16th December ascended armor crafting was added, and by 6th January 2014 they were selling for over 20 silver each.

Honestly Wanze I was going off personal anecdotical experience of recently caping all of the crafting professions & I hadn’t looked up any numbers.
AS may have more actual raw gold cost but it mitigated by the fact that Metal comes from gathering and salvaging while Leather & Cloth are salvage only.

I think we can all agree that high level Leather items being vender trash because they are not worth salvaging in not working as intended.

I can see the price of damask slowly increasing over time to 20+ gold a bolt if something doesn’t change.

& honestly “solution” was a poor choice words for the Thread title but that was the 4th version because the others were too long. maybe idea or suggestion would have been a better choice.

Grimmtooth.4163:

Honestly Wanze I was going off personal anecdotical experience of recently caping all of the crafting professions & I hadn’t looked up any numbers.
AS may have more actual raw gold cost but it mitigated by the fact that Metal comes from gathering and salvaging while Leather & Cloth are salvage only.

I think we can all agree that high level Leather items being vender trash because they are not worth salvaging in not working as intended.

I can see the price of damask slowly increasing over time to 20+ gold a bolt if something doesn’t change.

& honestly “solution” was a poor choice words for the Thread title but that was the 4th version because the others were too long. maybe idea or suggestion would have been a better choice.

So why make the effort to present a solution, if you havent proven yet that there is a problem?
Leather and cloth doesnt come from salvage only, compared to metal, they are on the loot table of alot of containers and loot bags. During Season 2, Anet introduced alot of new cloth faucets, like the generosity reward from the star of gratitude, the gift from mawdrey, bandit chests or salvageable wintersday clothing, just to name a few. Before that, we paid a silver more per silk scrap compared to now.

The high price for damask is intended because its the only ascended mat that is used for all three armor weights.