Boo hoo, the method you use to farm relic frags isn't as good as mining/crafting. Who cares.
1. Who ever said relic fragments are supposed to be super rare and hard to get? obviously they're used in abundance in imbuing, and even with mining/crafting they're still greatly more rare then residue and essence.
2. Imbuing still helps PVM. More people are making more characters/suits now that the crafted armor pieces are so accessable, and thus need more useful arties. Also imbueing has made 1 or 2 of the useless arties actually desirable. not to mention farming of max intensity mats in the SA dungeon.
The main justifiable complaint about pvm post SA that I can see is that the new SA peerless drop all trash/gargoyle items.
Just because you're interpretation of the expansion and relic fragment crafting methods was "relic fragments are only supposed to come from peerless and doom because that's what I like" doesn't mean that's what was intended. I've gotten relic fragments off rotting corpses.
I think the only real issue is unattended scripting of mining/lumberjacking. But if they make peerless/doom the only places to get relics you're just going to see a lot more sampires at dreadhorn looping their way to a solo kill tieing it up for half an hour, and more afk monster farming scripts at high fame monsters.
My problem once again, is not that crafters can get relic fragments, before making half asses responses go back and read the thread. Crafters should be able to get relic fragments, I just don't think this is a legit way. BoD turn in could give relic fragments, like getting rid of some of the crappier rewards like bear rugs, stretched hides, you are given an "Artisan's Satchel" which has a chance to give a few high tier ingredients, such as relic fragments, abysmal cloth, etc.
I am not against crafters getting relic fragments, I am just against the fact it is making a never ending loop of top tier items. Try to follow this:
-Burn the bronze hammer/emeralds, get 45 relic fragments.
-Burn cheap shadow hammers to get weapons with things such as Sc no-1, HCI/DCI, etc. Use those weapons and the 45 relic fragments to make a handful of top notch weapons.
That just doesn't seem right to me. I don't like the fact that so much is being gained from so little. Just because people don't want to work for their items doesn't mean those of us who do work for them should be penelized because:
A) You're lazy
and
B) Other people run scripts