So, I like inscription. I didn’t think I would, and I only picked it because I already had an alchemist, but wanted my Druid to be a flower picker.
Anyway, just to sum up, scribes can make the following:
1.) Glyphs
2.) Contracts
3.) Unlocking Scrolls
4.) Tomes and Codices (for changing talents)
5.) Buff Scrolls
- These were straight primary stat scrolls for single players, only in previous content. Now, we have group-wide buff scrolls for Intellect, Stamina, and Attack Power.
6.) Off-Hands
7.) Trinkets (books or tarot card decks that become trinkets)
8.) Certificates of Ownership (pet renaming for hunters)
9.) Vantus Runes (that increase player power against a specific raid boss)
10.) Various and Sundry (like enchanting vellum) in older expansions.
It’s a useful profession, and if you have a decent and generous inscriptionist in your guild, your runs will never want for war scroll buffs, unlocked boxes, or contracts for reputation gain.
Having said that, there are some problems with it that I think would be really easy to fix. I haven’t heard much about inscription from the alpha, yet, so here are my thoughts. Anyone else’s would be most welcome.
Glyphs
My understanding is that many of our visual/cosmetic glyphs are going away, and their effects are going to be largely added to the barber shop via character customization. I believe this is a good thing, but I’d like to know what will be given to scribes as a replacement.
If glyphs, as a whole, remain, there are some huge problem with our current profession interface that I really think NEED updating.
- They are separated by expansion. This makes searching for them difficult, and if you don’t know the particular name of it (they aren’t all intuitive), it can be ridiculously hard to find out if you have what you’re looking for. They need to be placed together in one list.
- They are NOT separated by class. Since glyphs are, up to this point, class-specific, the interface should be updated to separate them by class so that we can look up all of the warlock glyphs or warrior glyphs–for example–that we have available.
- There is no preview of the effect. This seems very odd to me since we can preview pets, mounts, and transmog, I don’t see why we couldn’t have a preview screen for glyph effects.
About the Trinkets and Off-Hands in BfA/Hope for SL
Inscription is the ONLY crafting profession I’m aware of that was not given a higher-level item in 8.2. We had no upgraded off-hand to make for ourselves unless I just totally missed something crucial. We also had no BoE to sell here. In 8.3, we finally got an ilvl 400 item at BoE, which was nice, but where was it back when that was a viable ilvl for endgame and we needed it on our mains? Again, we got nothing higher than 400 to make for ourselves in 8.3.
By comparison, the alchemy trinkets, which were BiS for some classes at several stages of the expansion…you can see the dismay on scribe’s faces, right?
The 400ilvl trinkets we have for BoE sales are marvelous, and I hope we’ll be offered something like this again in Shadowlands. Excellent for alts hitting 120, and they sell well. It’s one of the few real money makers we’ve had in BfA.
The BoP gear for scribes should offer the same ilvl as the BoP gear in other crafting professions. This was the bitterest pill of BfA inscription for me, so I hope that is remedied in SL.
Shadowlands Stuff We’ve Seen in the Alpha
The Word of Power scroll will be a reagent that can raise the ilvl of a piece of gear. This sounds like a great idea, and we’ll see how it plays out for marketability in SL.
The Writ of Grave Robbing will be an SL iteration of the Scroll of Unlocking…used presumably to unlock boxes and doors.
Vantus Runes and Contracts are coming back in SL, and we can assume they’ll remain much the same.
Blank Darkmoon Cards will be an occasional spawn when we craft the regular Darkmoon Cards for decks (presumably to make trinkets as usual). These blank cards will allow us to make our next four cards from that specific deck, increasing our chance of completing said deck. Sounds…either interesting or frustrating. Time will tell.
Staves will be an inscription invention again, which is handy for a lot of classes. We’ll be able to make four different types of staff according to the alpha videos I’ve seen, so let’s just hope they’re good.
Off-Hands will make a return, as well.
Druid form options will no longer be tied to glyphs. They will be barber shop changes, instead. This is a good thing, imo. I can only assume that there will be other cosmetic glyphs (such as the shadow form glyph, perhaps?) that are removed in favor of just allowing the player to customize that look in the barber shop. Again, however…what does this mean for glyphs in Shadowlands?
What Do You Guys Want for SL Inscription?
