Since Legion Mining, smelting bars is no longer possible. Instead, Mining and Blacksmithing work with raw ore alone. This is a step back in practicality and reason.
First, smelting bars make forges relevant, condenses materials, and simplifies the crafting process.
“But it makes crafting take more time!” It really does not add much time. It takes about 2 seconds to make a bar, and there are various enchants that could speed that process. Shaving off a few seconds here and there for the sake of logical blacksmithing role-playing and fantasy immersion is asinine.
Second, how does it, in any way whatsoever, make sense that a blacksmith would forge weaponry or armor swinging his or her hammer on impure, raw ore? I can imagine chunks of dirt, encrusted ore being slammed on with a hammer only turning into more useless dust.
Smithing bars makes sense. It makes logical sense that a blacksmith would use bars of purified metal to forge crafted weapons and armor.
I am disappointed where professions are now, and the development team should go back to using smelting alongside the use of “mining techniques” for mining and blacksmithing. Looking toward 9.0, moving toward a more practical and reasonable crafting system will help profession immersion.
I doubt we will ever see smelting ore into bars in mining return. While I would like to see it come back I understand why people would not want it back. Once you gathered a great deal of ore you then have to smelt it in order to get the usable bars. Also, working from ore allows you to send it to Jewelcrafters in order for them to prospect it. You don’t have to make a choice between smelting the Ore or just sending the raw ore to a jewelcrafter.
While I would hope for an improvement in 9.0, I would wager to say that if you want to go back to full immersion you will need to play Classic.
Personally, I like the new system better. Here is why:
I have split my alts into dual-gathering and dual-manufacturing. The manufacturing alts (I call them factory-alts) are organized by the mats type. So I have a BS/JC alt. With the smelting system it was a huge pain, since I had to send the ore to the alt, then let him prospect the ore for JC, and once I got the gems I needed, I had to send it back to the mining alt to smelt the rest, and then again send the bars back to the JC/BS alt to use in BS. Was really tedious and unnecessary.
The new system allows me to just send all the ore to BS/JC alt, and let him make the decision which ore to use in which profession, without mailing it back-and-forth.
So - thumbs up, Bliz!
What I would really LOVE would be to bundle the gathering into manufacturing (so BS can automatically mine) or maybe even allow 3 main professions. Bundling Smelting into BS would also work for me - and this would be appropriate, since its the Blacksmiths who usually smelt the ore found by miners in real life. So we could have mining staying with the current mining skills and adding Smelting to BS to make it more realistic and still keep the feature.
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