Honestly, professions have been in need of streamlining ever since they were overblown in Dragonflight. The adjustments since have been nothing more than tweaks to bloat.
So here are my ideas, so far. What are yours?
ALL mats are Warbound. No more Soulbound.
Cut down some of the trees. Enchanting is the worst but all the “forests” could use trimming.
Knowledge Point requirements cut in half…and sped up.
No critical mats locked behind limited/limiting content. Probably the worst offender is Dawn Crystals but there were a few, like Petrified Root, that were required from the start.
Discovery requirements/pace simplified.
Bottom line, professions need to be unchained, ESPECIALLY now with SO MANY new mini-games (Abundance, Prey, Housing, etc) being added all the time.
It definitely got worse from tww to midnight but some of these changes might just make everything worthless. The only reason crafters make any gold is the scarcity of materials and kp
I want 3 rank mats to make a comeback, currently with nothing bridging between the lowest and highest rank of material it just makes anything except the highest rank not worth dealing with outright.
whether or not it is good is subjective, sure, but anyone saying wow’s current system is anything but a poor attempt to replicate ffxiv’s (it literally dropped in a rushed state immediately after everyone jumped ship to ffxiv during shadowlands lul) is deluding themselves
also, no. ffxiv is only fun within 2 weeks of major patch releases
Dragonflight was THE BEST version of revamped professions. Every change they make now makes them worse not better.
I do agree though there is a heck of a lot of dead branches in those knowledge point trees. Everything else on your list is okay as they have now though. Soulbound is far far better because warbound will result in abuse of one nature or another. It is okay some items are rarer than others, although I do prefer all the rare items be available from world content at the start.
Some people still have professions as their main game play, so pretending prey or housing will be a substitute is sort of silly because entirely different type of content, intended for different audiences. Abundance just complements professions.
Petrified roots are probably one of my favorite design as they reward playing content and Id like m+ and raids to get something like it.
Dawn crystals act the same way and are pretty easy to acquire if you’re an enchanter as many easy and fast content now reward epic gear.
Not sure what mats are still soulbound outside of crests and sparks which obviously to me makes total sense to be soulbound.
What I would like to see streamlined is where they put bonus skill points in the profession trees for some reason tailoring has put them all around. It’s a mess to have to look throught all nodes to see which ones actually give skill points.
So… is this the new thing people are going to say instead of calling them “overcomplicated” or that nonsense…? Just be honest and say you don’t like professions and leave it at that.
From top to bottom:
Soulbound reagents exist to make it a requirement that you play the game. Every other reagent already is either not bound at all, or already Warbound.
This is a nonsense-statement that means nothing.
No, because professions are meant for something you can engage with over a long period of time. Not be over and done with once you hit max level.
Again no, because the point is for you to play the game and to play the game requires you to engage with the content where these materials come from. If you don’t want to do that, then use the auction house and buy 'em.
Literally everything have tooltips and you can read what is necessary for each item, what each node does, and so on. The other thing you mentioned here was the pacing, which again you already argued to speed up, and could already be dismissed.
As has to be stated with all of these threads … it is fine if you don’t like crafting, but don’t argue to have a piece of content you don’t like be ruined just because it is an engaging activity since TBC/Wrath (depending on how you count).
The rework in DF was amazing, and whilst they oversimplified stuff in Midnight and caused some issues because of the lack of qualities, it is still in a really good spot.
The only complaint I have about professions is how rare some of the recipes are.
And to clarify; I understand and personally don’t mind a few being locked behind raids/dungeons every expansion. I’m more speaking of the drop rates. I have yet to see a single recipe drop from delves in midnight, and that’s horrible considering how many I’ve ran.
My opinion: Professions in whatever xpac is current can stay on whatever intricate-bs trajectory theyre currently on.
Dragonflight and up, when we turn over to the next xpac, should get a boost to mat drop rates (I said shard removal, but I retract that after thinking about it. Fragged Shards drop rate is actually fine on raid bosses.). A catch-up mechanic for KP being implemented would be nice, too.
Everything pre-DF is fine, but recipe drop rates need a boost. Like the Sunwell recipes I’m still farming 2 decades later.
Yeah I was actually about to take a break from the game when I decided to give professions a real shot and it completely hooked me.
When I first got back and saw how much they’d changed I was overwhelmed but after actually putting in the work to understand them I’m a big fan.
There’s a couple tweaks I’d make, like I wish it was a little easier to catch up with KP across all professions. Alchemy is super easy but some of the other profs the patron orders are ludicrous. Ideally I’d like if each one had a mechanic more like enchanting where you could catch up relatively quickly by focusing on it. I’d also like if you could respec in some way, like maybe for a few hundred moxies or something.
Pretty small potatoes though overall, really really been enjoying building out all my characters as crafters.
I enjoyed learning the system back in DF and made it easier to understand in the following expansions. It can be slightly daunting at first, but I was able to learn it without outside help and just diving in.
You might spend some points wrong at first, but once you understand it, the system is quite fun and engaging.
That last part is important, because before DF, professions weren’t engaging at all.
I started new-age profs June of last year when I came back after a few years of self-imposed exile.
Yeah, they are absolutely overwhelming at first. All the trees, learning the new terms and what they do. VERY overwhelming.
Now that I’m used to it, they’re a lot easier to understand, and the extra “buffs” via all those new terms are absolutely nice. I definitely understand what the hell they were thinking when they did reboot the profs.
I’ve worked my way to over 11m gold from the 100K I started with in DF, after coming back from a 12 year hiatus. I haven’t paid the game since a few months into DF.
They’ve been streamlined twice since DF and are now faster to level than they were in Legion or BfA. Getting the knowledge points takes a bit more time but that’s a good thing. They don’t need any more streamlining.
How? Between TWW and midnight, the knowledge trees got even smaller, the number of mat tiers was cut by 1/3, and you get to 100 even faster.
