Guild Wars 2

I think the real problem with crafting for yourself as you level up is not the crafting itself, it is the drop rate of the blue materials, which just recently changed when a lot of the cooking mats that used to sell for karma where moved into the drop tables. Prior to that change I could reasonably easily keep my armor/weapon crafting characters supplied with the materials they needed both for discoveries and to craft the gear I wanted every 5 leves. After that change the only crafter I can keep supplied is my cook - easily 50% of the drops you used to get from loot bags is now food instead of blood, scales, etc. Additionally the drops from mobs seems to have been reduced.

Considering that cooking is only 1 craft out of what, 8 crafts, having so much food supplies dropping in place of blue materials for the other crafts has crippled my ability to keep up with my armor and weapon crafting. I really think the drop tables need to be balanced so that you get more non-food items. The mob drop reduction may be reasonable - it used to be a bit insane how many blue mats you could get just by farming mobs, so I don’t object to that. But when I do a centaur invasion event, get 10 loot bags and half of them drop cooking items there is clearly something wrong.