Ok so rank metallurgy to 9 pre r2 refine? Or wait off on metallurgy to save me some AP? And should I even bother ranking Prod Mast now? It's only at novice atm
dont rank prod mast till you're done with all your r2 refine fails.
Your point...? Metallurgy may not add a whole lot of DEX compared to other life skills, but it's still there, and anyone who has any intention of maximizing their ranged damage in the future is going to want every last bit of DEX from skills they can get their hands on. The skill is easy enough to train compared to other skills that give DEX, especially if you work on it alongside refining, and that extra boost will bring you that much closer to reaching the minimum DEX needed to use low-balance weapons. Also, if you're going to rank it to increase your ore-gathering efficiency, why waste time getting it on a whole other character that isn't even going to serve any purpose beyond being a regular mule once you're done with refining when you could just rank it on the character you actually play? Because, you know, your main character can actually put the bonus stats to use.
my point: metallurgy 6 plus prod mast 1 = best results. if your main ranks metallurgy and no prod mast, you're not metallurgizing as efficiently as you can. i'd rather metallurgize efficiently on a mule, since both prod mast and metallurgy are a sinch to cap. after finishing all your fails for refine, you can cap or at least get prod mast really high on your main to help you with the rest of the successes in refine. later on, when you do decide to add dex for arching, you can rank up metallurgy easy, like you said. in the meanwhile, there are better dex giving skills that are more ap efficient that you can rank up first before ranking metallurgy for dex, since it only gives 4 dex total.