In my opinion, when it comes to crafting Artifice is single-handedly the worst profession.

1. Material cost of crafting is ridiuclous, considering wood is a rarer resource than metal and yet costs 1.5x more than its metal crafting counterparts
2. The weapons them selves are rarely used. So high cost little demand.
3. 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999% of the player base do not use Artifice potions. ( Though I am underestimating, likely 1 out of 10 million people )

Solutions.

1. Combine Artifice and Jewlery Making into a single group. Which would solve a lot of problems with leveling up artifice.

2. Remove all existing artifice potions.If you check Black Lion Trader right now almost no one put a purchase order for any potion. Even expensive potions are being sold for 5 copper.Which means literally 0 people would care if it is removed.

3. Add meaningful potions that are useful to players

• Potion of the Feather - Take no fall damage for 3 falls ( cooldown 60s after each fall ) lasts for 30 minutes.
• Potion of Water Walking - Walk on water ( right click buff to disable ) lasts for 5 minutes

PvE only Potions

• Potion of Angels Grace - On taking lethal damage - gain a shield of 20% of life for 3s. Cooldown 3 minutes
• Potion of Fear - Enemies 20 levels lower than your actual power level do not attack you unless provoked by you. ( Does not work in Dungeons, Raids, Fractals or World Boss spawned Enemies )
• Potion of the Spider - Anytime a stack of poison is applied 20% chance an additional stack of poison is applied
• Potion of the Snake - Anytime you attack an enemy with a stack of poison, 20% chance your attack will do : 20% Base weapon \ ability damage x ( 0.25 x poison stack multiplier )
• Potion of the Bear - Movement impairing Debuffs reduced by 50% lasts 2 minutes
• Potion of the Crow - Ability modifying debuffs are reduced by 50% ( confusion ) lasts 2 minutes
• Potion of the Wolf - Bleed \ Poison debuff damage reduced by 50% lasts 2 minutesetc.

These potions would be extremely valuable to take especially in dungeons and harder areas.People would actually want to use them.

You forgot the Potion of Kill Anything In One Hit /s

Artificer's potions are functional and are actually OK, but there's no demand for them because: a) no enhancements are generally needed in most areas due to low difficulty, b) potions are highly specialized so you have to waste several inventory slots if you want to be prepared for every encounter, c) they're disabled in raids.As of now, potions provide a dirt cheap way to increase your outgoing damage by 10% (against specific targets).

@"Kaidan.6509" said:

2. The weapons them selves are rarely used. So high cost little demand.

So staff, focus and scepter (ignoring the trident...just because...) are rarely used? Nobody crafts ascended versions of those weapons? I'm pretty sure I could go out to Metabattle or one of those sites and find numerous meta builds with those weapons.

Plus, if you happened to miss the announcement, Anet plans to raise chef and jeweler to 500 and is talking of legendary runes and sigils. I'm pretty sure Artificer will be a part of that -- but that's all in the future, so who knows. Either way, Artificer has plenty to offer right now.

@DeanBB.4268 said:

@"Kaidan.6509" said:

2. The weapons them selves are rarely used. So high cost little demand.

If the only purpose of a craft is only level 80 ascended gear it means the path is 99.99% useless and should be removed.Other paths actually provide useful items uptil 80.

@Airdive.2613 said:Artificer's potions are functional and are actually OK, but there's no demand for them because: a) no enhancements are generally needed in most areas due to low difficulty, b) potions are highly specialized so you have to waste several inventory slots if you want to be prepared for every encounter, c) they're disabled in raids.As of now, potions provide a dirt cheap way to increase your outgoing damage by 10% (against specific targets).

Why not compare the current potions ( 100% trash ) to my potion suggestions.Which potions do think would instantly sell and always be in demand?

It never a good idea to make excuses for terrible ideas. Only when people tell Area net their potions are terrible ( which objectively speaking lack of demand proves they are - 0 argument to that fact ) things will improve for the better.

My suggestions for a rework of potions actually makes potions people will always use.

@Kaidan.6509 said:If the only purpose of a craft is only level 80 ascended gear it means the path is 99.99% useless and should be removed.Other paths actually provide useful items uptil 80.

Artificer is no different than any other. They all provide items up to ascended (ignoring chef and jeweler). So all crafting should be removed then, according to your logic?

How exactly is a level 40 staff of no value to a level 40 elementalist?

I also use artificer to combine the agony bits from fractals.

But yeah potions are useless.

I went to check just in case, and it turns out some builds at SnowCrows run potions of slaying for specific fractals. I guess the only real downside of the current potions is their specificity, after all. Most players prefer to never bother.

Well, at least you're trying.

@"Airdive.2613" said:I went to check just in case, and it turns out some builds at SnowCrows run potions of slaying for specific fractals. I guess the only real downside of the current potions is their specificity, after all. Most players prefer to never bother.

The utility half of the system suffers heavily from its lack of inventive interactions with builds. The majority are just stat padding, while the Slayer potions are too overly specific for general use, and a couple (bountiful) have way too much force multiplication to be considered anything except best in slot. Slayer Sigils suffer from similar issues.

On the one hand, slayer pots/sigils were designed for Dungeons; and there hasn't been a clear path to adapt the concept to any other situation. But on the other, PVE is far to damage focused to make good use of the other sigils. Personally I think slayer items should be dropped entirely. I "was" going to suggest a replacement that exploits mechanical weaknesses common to their archetypes, but ultimately only a few have something that can qualify as a racial mechanic or trait. Dredge are immune to blind, Destroyers are immune to burning, but what do Bandits have in common? Or flip the script, and have those utilities convey qualities of those groups...... I just wish it wasn't an obvious balance nightmare.

Food doesn't really have this many problems. Mostly due to them being fairly straight forward as stat bonuses, or make use of mechanical triggers for build synergy.

@starlinvf.1358 said:Personally I think slayer items should be dropped entirely.

I agree. I think it was one of ANet's points as well to promote healthier gameplay over inventory wars (in this case, rotating through a set of potions/sigils).Nevertheless, there are numerous types of potions (and sigils) now and it's not a trivial task to change all of their effects. It's actually a great idea for these potions to somehow convey the flavour of their, ahem, ingredients. In this way, I can see it work just like the OP would suggest, though it's still a large number of potions to rework and balance (and I highly doubt it's possible to remove items from the game).

@starlinvf.1358 said:Personally I think slayer items should be dropped entirely.

Might be the best option. A thing to improve this would be to reduce all slayer sigills to just one sigill that scales with the slayer title. Might work for the potions as well. I think something like that was already suggestion in the old forum.

I think the real use of the potions is the EXP bonus, and that they're fairly cheap to make. I recall that when I was leveling Artificer, I made a bunch of potions at a couple of points to gain skill.

@Kaidan.6509 said:

@DeanBB.4268 said:

@Kaidan.6509 said:

2. The weapons them selves are rarely used. So high cost little demand.

@"Airdive.2613" said:Artificer's potions are functional and are actually OK, but there's no demand for them because: a) no enhancements are generally needed in most areas due to low difficulty, b) potions are highly specialized so you have to waste several inventory slots if you want to be prepared for every encounter, c) they're disabled in raids.As of now, potions provide a dirt cheap way to increase your outgoing damage by 10% (against specific targets).

An option that people always use (at the expense of all other options) is not really all that optional in my opinion. As someone in this thread said, "its never a good idea to make excuses for terrible ideas."

I completely forgot Artificers created potions.

In my suggestion thread for crafting being expanded into services (a player ran shop), I could see potions being an interesting service, combining them or concentrating them but requiring immediate use (i.e. it's not an item that sits in your inventory but a purchased limited-time buff) and Artificer supervision.

Maybe I should make a separate thread? I still wouldn't know what Armorsmith/Tailor/Leatherworker/Weaponsmith/Huntsman would provide as a service. Jeweler should have the prestigious useful ability of extracting desired upgrades from equipment, though.