We already pretty much have a soft cap of how much we can earn a week, with the shards of knowledge being the only real randomness. The system would, of course, be started for the new expansion, and thus everyone would be on equal footing to start for profession knowledge. The “hard cap” would simply prevent issues like we saw at the beginning of Dragonflight where some people found that they were getting a lot of bonus Dragon Shards of Knowledge, allowing them to get way ahead of everyone else who didn’t find out before that was fixed.
The benefit for those who didn’t plan ahead or who got into professions late is that they’d be able to get extra knowledge by playing the game more to help them “catch up” in a way. Lets say, as a rough example, Blizzard calculates that 10 “bonus knowledge” from treasures, monsters, and shards of knowledge, is what they intend players to be able to get at the most (some will just get less due to playstyle). After 4 weeks, that’s 40 knowledge points. But lets say you’ve been playing since the start, but aren’t getting many bonus points. You have 28 total, while the cap is 40. That means that the game would continue to drop bonus profession knowledge points from treasures, monsters, and also shards of knowledge until you also have the cap of 40 (or whatever it is for the current week). If you just started crafting and have 0 bonus knowledge, you’d be able to get 40 that week, should you play long enough.
For those of us who kept on top of our profession knowledge, we pretty much wouldn’t see any difference, because we’re already basically capped as it is. For those who are behind, though, it would be better to help them.
For those who don’t plan ahead… they’ll always complain. I just suggest they learn to plan, heh.
I would love this. I love how complex Retail is getting and it’s why I can never go back and play classic. The modern changes making WoW the pinnacle of RPGs is why I keep coming back, I want more layers added to EVERYTHING. Glad to see other people who agree.
Yeah, I understood that much, it was the full hard cap I was more arguing against.
Maybe I’m biased here, but I didn’t dirt farm and I still did just fine crafting. (Let’s ignore the issue with them getting a bunch of mettle and only focus on the knowledge. Them getting a lot of mettle absolutely was a problem, however…) Assuming they were putting points in correct places to begin with, each point really had a diminishing return in terms of how much gold they could make from it. A lot fewer people needed leather chests vs leather belts for instance.
Setting aside the fact that I don’t think professions need a catch up since they aren’t player power in the same way gear, artifact power or covenants were, it still doesn’t solve the issue for people who think they spent their points incorrectly, and really only makes it worse. Let’s say for instance they spent literally every point wrong somehow and were still keeping up with the cap every week, suddenly they now just have no recourse, are hard gated, and can only catch up 10 or 15 points a week, whatever the cap ends up being. Whereas in a soft cap system, they can still catch up by farming dragon shards. I still think it’s better than implementing respecs, but I don’t think it’s better than the current system.
Yeah, I’m just always concerned I guess that Blizzard will give in to people who clearly don’t understand the system they’re trying to critique, nor have they ever actually tried to understand it. My pipe dream is some super involved and hand-holdy scenario for people the first time they learn a war within profession, but that’s probably not going to happen since people would still complain.
Right now yes, but in the early days gathering was a relative mint. I easily earned a token every couple weeks just harvesting nodes as I quested/leveled without any farming. But the regional AH killed that.
Let me say that my paladin has been a miner/blacksmith since the day he first stepped foot outside of Quel’thalas. Every expansion he has been maxed out except BfA cause i stopped playing during that xpac. Even at max level, with a VERY FEW exceptions, crafting has never been able to compete with even entry level raid gear.
I was super excited to find out that professions would FINALLY be able to make useful end game gear or weapons. Got into it. Started off good. Then hit the wall you’re talking about.
John Snow laughs at me as i try to climb the wall. With no tools. And wet hands. A few days from S4 and i still havent maxed BS.
Could I, yes. If i wanted to sink the time into it. But i rather enjoy pushing content and enjoying the story more. But even if i did spend the long time it would take to farm out everythibg i needed to make the super expensive stuff id have to vendor, i would still have to run thriugh x raid with finger crossed or find x random rare and pray for x random pattern drop to push past hitch points or get recipes leople might actually buy on the AH or put crafting orders in for.
TLDR - I feel your pain and hope they can find a happy medium for TWW
While they are at it, why don’t they just toss a grenade in the room that the server that hosts the game is in? Then just do a slow walk out while putting on
I could disenchant a purple, and get a purple crystal. It was that easy. And i only needed crystals/shards/dust to do my job. Now i need a bunch of random drop elements and occasionally some dracothyst that i either gotta farm or buy off AH for a stupid amount of money
I had to max out disenchanting before purple crystals started to become semi-regular drops from epics, and it’s still possible not to get one.
Not to mention, i still can’t guarantee rank 3 weapon enchants despite my entire profession being maxed out. I have to use an inspiration and shatter an element to guarantee it.
They took a very cheap, hands-off, and easy profession and made it tedious and expensive.
Professions are relevant all the way through endgame and across the entire expansion. I love it. There have ALWAYS been rare recipe drops and recipes locked behind faction rep. There are things that could be improved, but this is the most meaningful that crafting has been since BC. Things to improve: recipe drop rates and ability to use/send knowledge tokens across your account. I’ve farmed Vault/Academy soooo many times and never saw BS patterns drop. Gave up and either bought the pattern for ridiculous gold or placed a crafting order. That being said, it wasn’t hard to fill all the points on two toons professions, although it isn’t alt friendly if you start a profession late. But I’ll take this any day over what we’ve had for the last umpteen expansions where gear professions were useless after max level.
After leaving wow in SL I came back to the game around 10.1. Although catching up with crafting since I was months behind was a little painful, I love the new system and was pleasantly surprised. It actually makes professions more than a one and done thing. And for the initial poster, soul zappers could be bought in the ah. If you want to make everything yourself it will take some time.
I for one would be extremely disappointed if they got rid of the new system.
I would like to see some tweaks to the system. I’m still unsure if base crafting mats (ores, herbs, skins) need crafting ranks. Getting rid of ranks on the base gathering mats would help to reduce some of the inventory bloat.
I would also like to see the number of skills balanced between profs. I got every single jc skill over a month ago, but my bs is still plugging along on their final two armor slots.
I like the concept of what they were going for but it’s just like they had a great concept but feature and knowledge creep got the better of them. Like all the tools you’d need to make other items (like the zapthrottle) should be from a trainer not from two different specialties.
Professions would’ve been pretty decent if the whole sub specialization thing was cut out.
We already have recipes with multiple ranks, with materials that also have multiple ranks… that are made from other recipes with multiple ranks.
Takes long enough just making the normal recipes, let alone maxing out sub specializations.
I have yet to meet anyone who’s completely maxed out their professions without dumping massive amounts of gold into them.
You sir are a menace
(Lol seriously there would be so many tears if they did this)
I really hate that I can’t do profession as a side thing right now. I didn’t mind doing dailies in the past to get recipes, but the whole quality thing when I craft useless bronze quality for the same mats that I could just sell for gold to buy a golden quality from AH is annoying.
I still enchant my own gear for RP, but selling anything for profit is a lost cause.
You’re not thinking fun enough! They need to gate materials that you need to get the last ten skill points behind getting a rare drop from a rare spawn, that you then use to summon ANOTHER rare from that then has a sub 1% chance to drop the item you need.
Then to get the pattern you need, you need to go back to old content because they put it on an old rare with a two week respawn timer (but didn’t buff the HP so it dies in one shot to someone leveling who doesn’t even know what it is). And said rare only spawns at a time when most poeple are asleep. That’s fun and ENGAGING.
