I wanted to bring up an idea that I think would improve the crafting system in World of Warcraft, especially for those of us who are dedicated crafters. Currently, if you’ve specialized and put points into crafting skill for higher-tier items, it can become nearly impossible to produce lower-tier versions of those items without either swapping out for lower-tier crafting gear or restraining yourself for putting points into skill.
- Crafting Tiers Should Be Flexible
If I’m a crafter capable of making high-end gear/materials, I should logically be able to craft lower-quality versions of that item if I choose to. Just because I’ve put in the work to make better items, that shouldn’t restrict me from fulfilling requests or meeting market needs for lower-tier materials.
- Swapping Profession Gear for Lower Tiers Isn’t Practical
Right now, crafters sometimes have to swap out crafting gear or try to adjust their skill levels by removing certain gear to hit the “sweet spot” for lower-tier items. This not only interrupts workflow but feels counterintuitive for the crafting profession experience. If I’m a master tailor or blacksmith, I should be able to control the quality of what I produce without needing to reconfigure my setup.
- Skill Points Should Be About Enhancement, Not Restriction
We spend time and resources investing points into our profession skills, so it’s frustrating when that investment unintentionally locks us out of making certain items. Investing in skill points should enhance our crafting experience rather than limit it.
Suggestion: Allow high-skilled crafters to intentionally craft lower-tier items if they wish. This could be as simple as adding an option to choose the quality tier of the item we’re crafting, no matter our skill level.
This change would make crafting much more flexible and enjoyable and would make it easier for dedicated crafters to meet all types of market demands. It would also eliminate the need for gear swapping and micromanaging skill points to “work around” the system.
Thank you for considering this suggestion, and I’d love to hear feedback from other crafters or the dev team on this!
Happy crafting,
It might help if you explained why you’d want to do this. (Besides IRL analogies or RP)
I could see this causing issues when someone does it accidentally.
I feel like the intentional removal of gear makes it less likely that someone “oopses” a craft lower.
My thoughts exactly…why would you even want to craft lower quality gear if you have the ability to craft it at a higher quality??
I haven’t found a reason this xpac, but it might be like last expansion where there was a big cloth turn-in for a quest and it specified 2 star (or maybe even 1 star.) Any skilled tailor with equipment wouldn’t be able to make significant amounts of the low quaility bolts even with taking off equipment.
I do recall that quest. It was quite annoying, yes. But I also recall not having that much of an issue. There was something you could buy that was rank 1. Those are materials though.
Personally I think for materials, and only materials, anyone should be able to downrank them by right clicking (and clicking ok on a warning box obviously). That is how it is done in FFXIV, although they got rid of their rankings in most materials.
Main reason being quests and things like milling that require stacks of so many exact same rank herbs.
…why, though? About the only thing I can think of are for certain completed 1* items inexplicably being more expensive than their 2* and 3* versions (See the item that added sockets to jewelry in Dragonflight, which inexplicably had its 1* version being roughly 50% more expensive than the 2* version, despite the fact that you could just use 2 2* versions to add two sockets, then a 3* version to add the third), and I don’t think that’s enough to justify adding this as a feature.
The dragonflight quest that demanded lower rank was annoying. There’s weekly hand-in quests in TWW for enchanting, skinning, herbalism and mining that sometimes only work on rank 1 - but unlike dragonflight where for some items rank 1 became hard to get without taking off gear rank 1 generally persists in TWW.
Which one? All the gathering quests took 2* mats (which were the baseline mat at max skill+KP), and all the crafting quests either had no * requirement (for gear or items with no * ratings, like fireworks), or a 3* requirement (for gems, enchants, etc.), if I remember right…
It was one of the tailoring weeklies.
Looking through the tailoring weeklies… most of them are to collect items from mobs.
Of the ones that involve actually crafting or just purchasing the completed items off the AH:
A Knapsack Problem - Craft a Simply Stitched Reagent Bag. (Does not have quality)
Sew Many Cooks - Craft 2 Wildercloth Chef’s Hats. (Does not request a specific quality)
The Cold Does Bother Them, Actually - Craft 2 Surveyor’s Cloth Robes (Does not request a specific quality)
Weave Well Enough Alone - Craft 3 Wildercloth Bolts (Specifically requests 3*, max quality)
None of the quests require less than maximum quality.
Read the comments for this quest on wowhead. Yes, you had to turn in exactly this quality (R2). You could not turn in R3.
The craft was vibrant wildercloth bolt, which was made from wildercloth bolts and vibrant shards. Recall that neither cloth nor shards had quality. Wildercloth bolts were very easy to make R3. You could not make them lower than that “naturally” especially by the time these quests came about. (This was a Niffen quest). Not only that, you could not control inspiration, and you needed 75 of these godforsaken things, so even taking off gear you’d still randomly make them R3 anyway. Definitely very annoying.
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Recipe difficulty of Vibrant Wildercloth Bolt: 300
Skill you can achieve naturally:
100 (from 100/100 DF Tailoring skill)
+26 (from tailoring equipment: 10 from Dragoncloth Tailoring Vestments, 6 from Khaz’gorite Needle Set, 10 from Khaz’gorite Fabric Cutters)
+90 (from Knowledge Points)
+75 (from using 3* Wildercloth Bolts. Remember: DF skill gain from 3* mats is 25%, not 40% like it is in War Within)
…which totals out to 291 skill. 293 if you’re a KT human (who get +2 to all professions).
While this was high enough to cause Random Skill Variance [which is no longer a thing in TWW] to potentially make a 2* vibrant wildercloth bolt into a 3* one, it was by no means a guarantee, and selling the unwanted 3* versions on the AH that came from RSV or inspiration procs likely made you a profit anyway.
Again: There really isn’t much of a point to being able to craft lower quality versions of items that your skill is too high for you to be able to make. The one use case I could think of was crafting 1* Tiered Medallion Settings, which inexplicably sold for almost as much as a 3* Setting despite a 2* Tiered Medallion Setting selling for dirt cheap and being able to add the same socket a 1* setting did…
WILDERCLOTH bolts, the MATS for this, have a crafting difficulty of 60! If you even leveled to 100 you already could not make them at R2. Then you had TWO things which could proc you higher to R3 for the vibrant wildercloth–one was a random gaussian chance which was independent of inspiration and a second was inspiration proc’ing. Once again, you had to make 75 of these. What are the odds that you’re NOT going to inspiration proc for 75 of these in a row?? The point wasn’t that “I can’t make a profit” the point was that the quest was stupidly annoying because you had to craft so many extras and take off gear to “help” you not make R3.
The market for tier 1’s and 2’s are different from one another. You if you accidentally spec too many skill points into a profession, you essentially lock yourself out of entire market that you can no longer sell to.
T1s are still profitable in some cases, and sometimes even more so. So you sometimes will make less money than you would if you less skilled in the profession.