Hello! I’ve been going for the “Best in Slot” achievement lately, and just revisiting Fishing since the expansion’s release is bringing up a lot of thoughts about how good this profession was over any other time in WoW’s history.
What felt great:
- The profession was never enmeshed with PvP or PvE needs, only loosely connected to feast creation, and other profession recipes & schematics. Creating a sweet spot of “rewards are there” instead of “I have to do this”.
- The fishing equipment, profession enchants, available crafted potions, and Tuskar fishing upgrades created a level of depth and mastery over top of the previous expansion’s “get pole and fish” level of fishing.
- Lunkers added a whole new component to the profession. Connecting to the Tuskar people, players were now incentivized to group up to farm lunkers for various rewards - a social activity that I think fits the “chill” nature of the profession very well.
- Rotating fishing spots collected players together to make it more social, and to allow for new scenery instead of large-map fishing routes. However, open-water fishing still had some benefits and pools for those who wanted that.
- Fish stock gave passive benefits that felt good, and also used up spare fish that we had. Also, this provided a community resource that we had to manage. It was fun to applaud the people who restocked for us.
Things that maybe missed the mark a little:
- It is so worth it to farm lunkers in a group that trying to farm out conches in open waters (even with all of the buffs available) is very hard. It takes a long time to fish up x5 conches to even attempt one lunker summon. It’s nested rng that feels very hard to do without other people. I want grouping to be the most optimal way to do lunkers, but if conches were available from pools or had their drop rates increased slightly I don’t think it would change that. All of this includes the fact that people will be going back to try and get lunker achievements without people too. [Annecdote: max perception & rich fishing stock - it has taken over 1hr to fish up a singular conch out of the five needed.]
- It felt weird having all profession items have their own dedicated slots but now we have one dedicated bag slot for a harpoon. Felt a little clunky and as an afterthought. Also, players quickly realized that just doing damage to the lunker counted towards kill credit; meaning players would dps down a lunker even if someone was trying to pull it to shore. I think if we were forced to pull lunkers into shore it would’ve been a better feeling system, yet some might like being able to just drop into open waters and slice up some lunkers. Idk the solution there.
- Some of the fishing elements like the small circular pools feel like they could be innovated upon. Perhaps larger pool areas to fish in, more visually stunning? Could also be fun to keep the same pools but challenge us to get a line under a log or branch or something like that.
Either way loved fishing in DF - looking forward to more from the team 
[Edit: also can we make it so we can fish while sitting? Just a small RP thing. Thanks!]
