My argument specifically states:
1) Where two of those slots come from and
2) How everyone has access to those two.

I am not quite sure how you missed that, but it's right in the post!

Herbs can be dropped for a couple hours, poisons can be dropped for a couple of hours. In the grand scheme of things pretty much anything can. The argument is solid despite Sahmiam's claim to the contrary. The moment you can have more than one tradeskill (which anybody can these days) you are no longer required to drop your trans tattoos... and even if you do temporarily, you lose almost nothing (exactly nothing if you have a doctoral cord) when you take it back up.

The claim that it is 'needs to be better' because it 'only exists if you have trans tattoos' is just plain silly, for the reasons described in my post. If you want to keep trans tattoos you can. If you don't want to deal with extra trade slots you can just swap them around as needed with the skillflex system.

You do not have to forget the skill and lose 20%-50% of your invested lessons any more. That is the only situation in where this claim holds any water, when there is a significant loss and disincentive to practice multiple tradeskills. Without that loss... at worse you lose the trans tattoos benefit for a couple of hours at most when you need to rebuild one of your other trans artifact skills and that's only if you don't avail yourself of the other options to bypass that altogether.

Now, if you personally don't want trans tattoos that's fine and that's your own personal choice. Pretending that having trans tattoos is somehow 'difficult' in the current Lusternia environment is pointless.

Yet with your set up you have indicated that you would not drop herbs or poisons.



Should tailors and forgers lose their splendours or master armour when they flex out the skill? It is effectively the same situation, just that a trans tailor who gets tattoos doesn't lose their splendours or have their dmp halved for flexing the skill out.



I love the idea of tattoo armour, it's the reason I changed to monk. However, given that Saran is level 83 and I am a student, I'd rather pay rent than dump $540 into lusternia so I'm kinda stuck with one tradeskill, so arguments that effectively read as "Spend your limited free time aetherbashing" or "Spend your moneys on lusternia rather than real life are rather rude. There are further considerations such as all the other artefacts that peo

I guess the real question is does tattoomaster have to be equal to splendours?

I fully support a change that disables (eg you can nolonger wear/use till you flex back) tradeskill related items after forgetting the abilities.

Shiri I see you reading this topic: invoke shiri split topic

So much for skillflexing then, since I'd be stuck with Tailoring.

Agree. Same with skillflexing of anything. It's not common, but I know Warriors who when they do switch for some reason, spend the day walking around with Drawdown + Stagform.

If I had one less tradeskill slot I would, in fact, drop herbs temporarily (and just keep Bookbinding flexed out except when I needed to remake my tome). With my setup I can just flex Bookbinding as needed instead, sure; that changes nothing. The skillflex system adds extraordinary flexibility to the entire player base. I am stating that nobody in this day and age is "locked in" to one tradeskill... something which is quite demonstrably true (which is the reason for the posting of my AB, in fact).

I also disagree with the 'effectively the same situation bit,' since in the case of splendors or master armour you are investing a fair bit of resources (and in the case of robes time as well) on one item. If you lose the skillset and can no longer wear that one item... you are not merely being 'downgraded' to the regular amount, you lose the thing entirely and then need to go buy a second set. In the case of tattoos, you lose your extra effect temporarily and then it comes back when you flex back to tattoos.

In this case it is much more like the Herbs and Poisons benefits for a user. Nothing extra is invested, there is no particular item, you get the benefit when you have the skill and lose it when you do not. Simple as that. Pick the skill back up again when you're done doing whatever you were doing and you're all set. You're not pushed into fighting naked or into re-inking yourself with a lesser set of tattoos if something comes up in the couple hours you don't have the skillset.

Even if you do not want to avail yourself of the myriad ways to earn credits (in-game events such as this great hunt that is happening right now, various promotions, gnomes, challenges, artisanals / bardics, and on and on) you still have the skillflex system available to you which will let you have your trans tattoo benefits 99% of the time except for that one day that you want to create something different; a far different situation from the old days where you had to have just one trade skill because changing to another meant up to 150 credits lost, and changing to that other and back again could chew through a good 300 each time!

So the real answer is: Yes. Tattoomaster does have to be equal to splendors.

Edit:
Note that the above reasoning for being able to use the item when flexed away from it is my opinion on the situation despite it having no actual effect upon me one way or the other.

Unless you want to make trans tattoos an item, I guess; I don't really mind that. I just mind the argument that it should be better than splendors because you 'must have the skill active'. That's not much of a cost, as discussed in my posts, for anyone who truly wants it.

In short: Skillflex lets you ply and use other tradeskills as you wish. If you simply cannot handle temporarily losing some of the extra benefit provided by the skillset then you can avail yourself of the options to buy extra slots, allowing you to keep it active all the time. In the end it is really up to you, but there is nothing in here to justify it having a greater efficacy.

I've had my splendours for quite a long time. I think somewhere along the lines of 8 RL months, and they still have 38 months left on them. I have yet to mend them.

It's possible to store them.



I think you're contradicting yourself by invoking the other tradeslots by arguing minmaxing. They're quite expensive. Lets walk through this, shall we?

250cr for one tradeskill.
Endowment is 2000cr.

By your argument, I can pay 2500cr to get tattoos and some other tradeskill.
By mine, I can my splendours for 250cr, forget tailoring completely for a 20% loss (50cr), and get a second tradeskill for a total cost of 300cr.

It's the difference between 2500cr for two tradeskills or 300 - 500cr for two tradeskills depending whether one forgets the tradeskill or skillflexes. Under my system, you can in fact learn 10 tradeskills without forgetting any for your price of two and end on a tradeskill, such as herbs, that requires the trans. There's no reason to end on tattoos if I can get the same benefit from splendours and end up on herbs. Spendours + active herbs would be better in every way: same benefits at tattoos, plus faster herb eating and you have arguably the most profitable trade in the game.

You could argue about the demigod power: my reply to this is that in a time/cost analysis, you'd find it better to purchase the endowment and go to work than spend time earning demigod + 75mil essence (safe buffer).

You cannot get around the cost of requiring a skill to be active to receive the full benefit. No matter how many slots you add. If tats give the same armour as splendours, they're immediately worth less than splendours for the sheer fact that splendours allow you far more freedom.

You have missed the subsequent post which states this:

"In short: Skillflex lets you ply and use other tradeskills as you wish. If you simply cannot handle temporarily losing some of the extra benefit provided by the skillset then you can avail yourself of the options to buy extra slots, allowing you to keep it active all the time. In the end it is really up to you, but there is nothing in here to justify it having a greater efficacy."

If you really enjoy spending all kinds of time and resources keeping your splendors alive, then by all means; your summary completely leaves out watching for decay-times, ensuring that your robes are in a safe place, using oil of preservation, etc. I'm on the other side of the spectrum from you on this. I far prefer permanency to upkeep. Maintenance is not really fun! Further, if someone steals those robes from you (rather more difficult now admittedly with recent changes to selfishness), you're out another 250 credits. If the robes decay because you don't keep them up, or you decide you want another set, that's yet another 250 credits (because you didn't skillflex it, you forgot it permanently). At that point you'd probably just keep it and skillflex it so as to not have to do so again... but in that case you might as well keep and flex tattoos instead, unless you really prefer robes. At least you have the choice!

You also leave out that tailoring is has a high chance of not being in the same pool as any other tradeskill you'd be wanting, so that's a 50% loss, not a 20% loss.

None of this reasoning you're throwing up justifies trans tattoos having a greater efficacy than splendors. So you have to have it active? So what, really? Use skillflex! Use extra tradeslots! They're all available to you.

I hope this will be discussed as much on Envoys! In any case, I agree with Sahmiam. You can't drop certain tradeskills if you want to benefit from them in combat (herbs, poison, tattoos). You can drop tailoring, though. This, however doesn't justify armour values of 78/78. I'd personally vote for something around 70. Since I only read the most recent posts, I hope I didn't completely miss the point