Now that we are about 6 months into the war within I have been thinking a lot on my progress into my professions. I am the primary flask provider for my guild and as such have dedicated all of my talents for both herbalism and alchemy in that direction.
For herbalism, something that I find myself frustrated with is that I have completely maxed out bountiful harvest and botany and am working in on overloading the underground and yet I am still constantly finding nodes, and getting a single tier 1 herb from them. or I find lush nodes and get two tier 1 herbs from them. It makes the whole profession feel utterly worthless when I have put hours into leveling it. Prior to the Dragonflight change to professions, herbalism was already on a downward slope with how stingy the game was with returns (thinking back to shadowlands herbalism and how much time I spent gathering with maxed professions). Now it feels 10 times worse because I’m putting the same amount of work in but battling with herb quality which ultimately triples my time spent.
In a similar vein the time gating of professions like herbalism feels really bad, and serve only to punish people who miss weeks for one reason or another. (Yes I recognize that there is a catch up in place with the bonus points from gathering but it doesn’t make the experience any more fun or rewarding.)
Then there’s alchemy (and other consumable professions). The problem I have with these is the same as the general time gating. When it comes to raiding I expect my team to have the best of the best consumables, and it makes it very hard to do that when I am the only one in my guild (with a very few exceptions) who has the time to spend gathering and preparing herbs for cauldrons. I have had a tough time this past year IRL and haven’t been able to put nearly as much time in as I would like and rely on the patron orders to help me catch up. The issue is that the patron orders often times include recipes that I either cant make. OR qualities I cant make without burning through my concentration which I need to make rank 3 cauldrons for my guild.
I understand the need for time gating in certain places, like crafting professions, you don’t want people to be able to max out crafted gear week 1 and have people running around in full heroic level gear. That, and it creates a general community around those crafted pieces. But for alchemy there is no community, people don’t use the crafting orders system for alchemy products, and the current system feels like it punishes me for my experience with previous systems.
I know its a bit of a rant but I feel very frustrated with the fact that I’m 1/3rd of the way through this expansion and am still only able to provide 2 out of 4 tier 3 cauldrons for my guild every week. (never mind how incredibly stupid tier 3 gilded vials are with the difficulty to make them) Personally, I feel consumable and gathering professions should not be time gated. period.
The cauldron thing annoys me the most. Of course I’m going to provide rank 3 flask and pot cauldrons for my guild. I had to make 2 alchemists to do that based on our weekly needs and how fast concentration replenishes. But now I can’t provide r3 flasks for their m+ needs unless I make some more alchemists.
Crafting and helping others with crafts is my favorite part of the game. I’ve supplied the guild bank for years because I want to, and it really sucks that they’re making it way more difficult/time consuming for me to continue doing it.
I am the “professions person” in my guild. I have 4 alchemists, but only two of them were set for cauldrons. I, too, came to the conclusion that it was not feasible for me to provide everything myself. Do you know what I did? I asked my guildies for help. Because Blizzard intends for these things to be group projects.
Were my guildies upset that I asked them for help? No they weren’t. They were actually super happy that they were being asked for help. One person helped out by spotting me with horticultures another with R2 and R3 vials. It’s a group cauldron which requires group effort. MY job, as the “profession person” was to tell my friends the easiest ways to get to those things that were needed in the fastest, least time-consuming fashion so I did the research, but they did the crafting.
Also we used R2 pot/flask cauldrons (provided by others) on re-clear days and R3 pot/flask cauldrons on prog days. Easy. For gathering herbs, I have a guild sign up for every Wednesday; we have “Seed Parties”. Only 3 of us actually have seeds, but everyone gathers. Everyone is helping.
If your guild isn’t helping, then you need to let them know that they need to help or there will be no cauldrons.
4 Likes
True, being solo provider of consumables is a pain.
That is why I gave up on it, since apparently noone has time to help and I just felt like a slave.
“So, guys, there is AH and go buy raid consumables there” was my answer.
1 Like
I sympathize with you for the lush herbs, few things were as frustrating in DF than finding a lush witherbark and for it to yield 2 R2 herbs. While a friggin hochenbloom gave 14! It is somewhat mitigated in TWW for alch/herb thanks to thaumaturgy. It is far from perfect though.
Few things strike me for the cauldrons though. Did your guild finance the initial buying for 4 cauldrons?? That’s 228k gold right there! It does not need to be gathered, just the guild chipping in, but ok. Also, so they are not into gathering/crafting, ok fine, I get that, but they expect the finest R3 phials/pots at their runs??? Do they buy the R3 mats for you? Is there a JC amongst them that could furnish you with the vasts amounts of R3 Vials 4 cauldrons demands?
You want your team to have the best consumables, I get that, but from the description you gave, I am of the opinion that your guild takes you for granted and does not appreciate you at all!
You are leveling alchy. And until you fill the potion/flask tab, you cannot always make the patrons WOs at r2. Lets forget the R3 ones they are useless. Ideally you also want the mastery one, but that one takes a while. So unless your guild is ready to finance your leveling, I would say that they really should lower their expectations in regard of the quality of there consumables. Or its your OCDness talking and you cannot live with less than perfect R3 all the time, in that case the blame is partly on you.
3 Likes
Agreed! You need to put your foot down. These are NOT intended to be done by one player.
And the “not have time” excuse for them is TOTAL BS.
When I first started organizing Seed Parties one of the guys was like, “but I only have Herbalism 1! Haven’t even leveled!” And I was like, “dude it doesn’t matter just come”.
You wanna know what happened? In the seed party the guy got so many herbs he leveled it. And he saw it was fast and easy. That dude was the guy giving me R2 horticultures later on; sure he could only get R1 herbs, but he could give me R2 horticultures because he used his concentration as his contribution to the guild. And with R2 horticultures I could use MY concentration on the cauldron (or not and get the R2 ones for the re-clear days). All he needed to do was get enough points to get the recipe. That is not hard.
To give you some hard numbers:
On my last Seed Party before our guild went on hiatus for the season, I had one hour allocated because I had meetings before and after. People showed up late. Everyone is busy. That’s how it is. So we only had 45 mins to plant.
In those 45 minutes, I collected 705 herbs, 7 null lotuses, and 36 random essences (leyline residue and the like). There were 5 guild members helping, and each of them got similar amounts of herbs.
Between the 5 of us, there was more than enough to make our cauldrons for the week and then some.
45 minutes. Come on. That’s not a lot to ask. If they’re not willing to do that, then it’s time to find another guild.
5 Likes
I think the overall goal should be to have multiple people in guild farming. If you are the only one doing it then yah prolly gonna feel crappy. You should address your guild about that instead of the forums.
1 Like