I originally thought Piece By Piece (
Increases remaining progress by 1/3, ARM50) was marginally useful, but it turns out that it's like some sick philosophical joke.
It doesn't increase progress by 1/3rd; it increases
remaining progress by 1/3rd.
So if you have a synth that requires 162 progress and you use PBP, you will gain 54 progress and have 108 remaining. But if you use it again, you will gain 36 progress (i.e. 1/3rd of the remaining 108) and have 72 remaining. Use it again and you will gain 24 progress and have 48 remaining, use it again and you will gain 16 progress and have 32 remaining, etc.
ARM has the worst abilities in the game by far. They are totally useless. It's sad to say but true: ARM's best unique ability is Brand of Ice. Ingenuity II (
lower synth level to 3 below you, BSM50) is actually better than PBP at what PBP does, because if you use I2 you will automatically get a huge efficiency boost to your progress synths and you'll be able to complete anything with 3 uses of Careful Synthesis I (with 0% failure rate to boot).
edit: more:
Steady Hand
Has anyone else noticed that the tooltip for Steady Hand (increases success by 20%) is different than the icon for the buff itself (10%)? I haven't verified it, but one of my LSmates mentioned it. Also, has anyone failed an 80% success action (e.g. Standard Touch) with Steady Hand I active? I'm not entirely sure whether the success bonus is additive (80% + 20% = 100% success rate) or multiplicative (80% * 1.2 = 96% success rate).
50**
Has anyone been able to craft the base 50** mats (e.g. vanya silk, treated spruce lumber)? I just finished off my HQ AF set and Luminary v2 yesterday, and I'm at 300crfshp/296ctrl before melds (my current gearset is
here). 50** requires 345 crfshp to attempt, and I'm not sure it's even possible to get 40+ crfshp from multimelds based on the materia bonus caps I've been seeing so far.