Usefulness of Crafting - Jeweler - Chef - Artificer

I was kind of curious about the usefulness of being a Jeweler, Chef, and/or Artificer. I know that these may not be as popular now, but I hope they can still be at least somewhat useful. I really want these professions to flourish (especially since I have them now, lol). So, I was wondering what your input would be on these. Should I keep them or change my crafting professions? I mainly just wanted to see what these professions would do, but would they be good to keep in the long run? I like the new recipes and diversity they have. But I still want to know if these professions will work well for a sylvan ranger. When I think Chef, I think of someone who makes food people eat that recovers health. When I think Jeweler, I think someone who makes gems into bigger gems for better gear and weaponry. When I think Artificer, I think of someone who tinkers with magical items (so far, the Artificer is the least useful to me). Since I'm a new player, I really don't know what they do other than just some of the basic beginner stuff. So, any productive input is good. And, I hope that if these aren't very good professions to have now, should I keep them in case there are updates on the GW2 game to make them more useful?

It's useful to have all crafting professions. I wouldn't discard any of them. You can have 2 per character so put a different 2 on each character.

All crafting professions are very usefull, although it feels you never need to use them. When you need them, you never have them maxed. For example crafting Nevermore I had to max out artificer. Crafting ascended armor, had to max out leatherworker, etc etc. You need them all... Crafting time-gated materials (which sell for a lot on the TP) To upgrade you to waste another 50-150g to max them out. I would keep them. Funny to hear you say you don't need artificer because thats the one i use the most!

In my opinion it is good to have all crafts. You just need 4 characters and you are set. Well you need also fifth if you want to train scribing, but that is mostly for guild stuff.

How I have done with my crafting is that I have combined them like this: Artificer goes with Tailoring, Huntsman goes with Leatherworking and Weaponsmithing goes with Armorsmithing and of course Jeweller is with Chef. And that has worked for me very well as when doing stuff for for example light armour users, they need quite often weapons which Artificer can do and so on.

What comes to usefulness of different crafting professions, my own opinion is that jeweller is most useless currently. Sure you can craft trinkets for low level toons and upgrade lower gems to higher and so on, but I'm just hoping Anet would introduce ascended trinkets for jewellery. Other professions are quite useful. Especially chef. you can craft many types of buff food which can be used. Magic find, gold find, more power, health etc for your characters and that makes things easier when bashing mobs throughout Tyria.

Anyway every profession has their own usage so I would say keep them and get all the craft and divide them between your characters.

@Mikaq.7102 said:What comes to usefulness of different crafting professions, my own opinion is that jeweller is most useless currently. Sure you can craft trinkets for low level toons and upgrade lower gems to higher and so on, but I'm just hoping Anet would introduce ascended trinkets for jewellery.

I'm not sure if we'll ever get ascended trinket crafting, it's a bit redundant since those things are pretty easy to get now with LS3. What you may not have noticed though, is that jeweler now crafts part of the the new legendary trinket. Going forward, as more legendary trinkets are made, that's likely the main role for jeweler.

Artificer makes magic weapons like staffs and scepters, and potions. Chef makes food which gives all sorts of buffs (not just health). Jeweler makes trinkets - amulets, rings and accessories. But all crafting professions also have extra things they can make which are largely unrelated to their main theme. For example if you ever want to make the legendary staff The Bifrost you need a level 400 chef to make the Gift of Colour.

As other people have said it's useful to have all the crafts trained up, at least to 400 (500 is the max for all but jeweler, where it's 400). I don't craft stuff on a regular basis but every so often I find I want something which can only be crafted (or is much cheaper and easier to craft than to get another way) and then it's extremely useful to have them ready to go.

isnt it the case that i can max out all proffesions on one character?like only 2 are active at the same time and i can switch back and forth to any other proffesion without loosing any progression?i didn't try, i just have something like that in the back of my mind and now am wondering if its true.

For ascended you need to max all if you have all weight classes. All but jeweler and cooking (and scribe of course). They aren't really useful, you can buy stuff off the TP. I maxed them 5 years ago and almost never used those two. Ah, last time I need to craft Xunlai Ingots - so there you go, but that's only needed for Legendary Trinkets and even then you can just buy them off the TP.

@kito.1827 said:isnt it the case that i can max out all proffesions on one character?like only 2 are active at the same time and i can switch back and forth to any other proffesion without loosing any progression?i didn't try, i just have something like that in the back of my mind and now am wondering if its true.

Yeah you can do that, however every time you switch between professions, it will cost 50 silver if maxed 500. So in the long run I wouldn't advice having more than 2 crafts per character. Even if you wouldn't play with other characters, you should have craft professions on different characters.

@kito.1827 said:isnt it the case that i can max out all proffesions on one character?like only 2 are active at the same time and i can switch back and forth to any other proffesion without loosing any progression?i didn't try, i just have something like that in the back of my mind and now am wondering if its true.

Yes that's right. You have to pay a small fee to switch between active professions, but it's not a lot and you won't lose any progression when you switch.

But a lot of people have multiple characters in this game, so they find it easier to spread the crafts out between them rather than switching.

Chef and Artificer have their uses as they produce useful consumables like rare veggie pizza and toxic focusing crystal for condi users, plus artificer can upgrade standard agony resistances cheaper than the vendor.

But I question the value of jeweler, it caps out at 400 and cannot produce ascended jewelry, which anet has seen fit to limit to laurels, raids or ls3 grinds. I know it used to be a lot more useful when there was no ascended gear. But now, i dont see it.

Artificer is as useful as any other weapon crafting skill.

Chef is OK, but I just buy my food anyway.

Jeweler I haven't touched in ages because of Ascended accessories making it rather useless since you cannot (AFAIK) craft them.

many times i wanted to craft food and nurishments myself, had a look over the efficiency of crafting vs buying and immediatly canceled all thoughts.as i saw this thread i doublechecked another time and still will keep buying them.

except maybe artificier for your desired ascended weapons i dont see a good use in those professions as long as you can get things much easier and quicker by buying the items. let alone the cost of pushing your proffession to max lvl.

The only one which needs a review is jewelry ( maybe on pof there will be the possibility to craft ascended trinkets ).

Artificer is unique in that it can refine essences of luck if you're at the cap but don't want to throw them out (lunar new year lets you buy guild hall decorations with them). It's also the only crafting discipline that can refine agony infusions into higher levels. This isn't super important because a merchant can do the same for infusions (like +9), but if you want other numbers you have to make them yourself.

I've made heavy use of artificer while crafting legendaries.

As a ranger, your character will find minimal profit from Artificer. The weapons that job produces are all magical based, so unless you're looking to get your druid a new staff, none of the equipment is for her. Artificer can also make potions, but when I was leveling up my own artificer, I found that the potions tended to just sit in my inventory because it felt wasteful to sell them to the vendor and pretty much nothing but some of the level 80 potions are worth trying to hawk on the Trading Post. If you do have other, low-level characters or are crafting the potions as you level, and you remember to use them yourself, it could speed up the leveling process incredibly, but I usually level quite well without any item's help. Also, the potions only work on a certain type of enemy (eg. dredge, Nightmare court, Inquest), so except for the +10% XP bonus, they're mostly useless. I'd love to see new potion recipes for some of the new enemies, like a potion of Forged slaying, or something for the sand creatures. Perhaps there will even be a surge for Branded-slaying potions once we get into the new Branded area(s).

Chef follows a very similar path, as the food created offers similar effects to those of potions. However, it's possible to use both food and potions, and they will stack on each other. Food is definitely popular, but it seems there are enough chefs out there that you're probably not going to get rich off it. Also, you'll need to collect ingredients from all over Tyria, as each region tends to have one ingredient that can only be found there. (Chili peppers are notorious for only being in Ascalon.) I know raiders love having food, but I don't know if there's a specific item that's in high demand or they just like having some kind of boost to their damage output.

Jeweler is definitely the one in the biggest limbo. You can craft items right up to exotic, but there are many ways to get exotic trinkets such as from vendors, or even from the elite specialization treasure hunts. Ascended trinkets were the first ascended gear to be added to the game, back when fractals were introduced, and they were initially only available through fractals. The fact that jeweler never got a chance to make ascended accessories is probably the biggest mistake in adding a new equipment tier, but that's another matter. There are still certain recipes that are exclusive to Jeweler, such as one of the items for the Mawdrey crafting (I think it's the heat lamp) and certain Gifts for legendary crafting, but those are extremely specialized and probably won't come up if you're a casual player.

Overall (and this is the tl;dr section), all the crafting skills have their place, but they won't all come up for every profession. No one profession is totally covered by one crafting category for weapons (although engineer comes close with Huntsman), and there are exclusive skins for all the crafting classes. For instance, the Krait and Bandit collections can only be completed through crafted weaponry. None of it is account bound, so you could just buy it, but it's more satisfying to craft it yourself. I'd say don't be afraid to change which crafting category your character uses, but eventually try them all out, as you might need it eventually.

In my opinion:Jeweller is mostly useless; (at present), sure you can make exotic trinkets, but why? Ascended trinkets are easy to acquire whilst doing content that you find enjoyable. Levelling jeweller is a grind, a time sink, and a gold sink. Or even just for logging in each day. I think I have now 4 sets of Ascended trinkets. They are account bound so reusable.

Chef is mostly useless: Sure you can craft consumables, and if you play high end content and find yourself or guild mates consuming a lot, then yes, chef is useful. However, chef is a convoluted mess, so many recipes, so many components/ingredients, so many unnecessary buffs from food, and just a few useful ones. For the time and effort required to level up and then make the food, the rewards are small, at least for me.

I am sure there are certain situations that would make ALL professions useful, but I am yet to encounter them. I deleted my crafting mule that had both levelled to max, to make an engineer, have not yet lived to regret it.

Jeweler was very usefull in 2012 at launch, because I used to gear all my guild with trinkets weeks after weeks.

Its true since 2013, I've never used again my Jeweler, nor Chief or Artificier.

I have no idea on how to improve Chief or Artificer, but IMO Jeweler should be raised to 500 and should be the way to go for Legendary Trinkets.

Thanks guys for the responses. So far, the least useful is the Jeweler, right? (Maybe I should look into other crafting professions.) As for the chef, it still sounds super useful for guilds and groups. And the Artificer... I guess I could keep it, but it seems less of a desired profession for a ranger. Still, the option for potion making has its merits.

I use my Artificer to craft potions and that's about all.Unless I'm using crafting to help level a character, I don't touch Scribe or Jeweler.Sometimes it's fun to just go into your Chef and try to discover new stuff.