Inscription In a bad place

Gameplay Professions
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My main this xpac has been inscription since it was released so didn’t even think of changing (Never giving up those BfA inscriptions). That said, I’m really disappointed in how Blizz has handled Inscription. There are just not enough recipes given that we now have specs within each profession. Having specs is almost like having separate professions it seems, as you are locked in (for now) to those recipes available to that spec and not the entirety of the profession as before. This wouldn’t be a problem if there were enough recipes for each spec but for the path i took (General and then Treatise) there just aren’t enough to get you leveled. Things might have been different if that AC rep cheese didn’t exist but it did, so those who cheesed it have had the upgraded profession tools for weeks now and they have sucked up most of the orders that would have been delayed until others had gotten that rep. The only other recipes available cost 10’s of thousands of gold each(Drake customization’s) and have very few orders put in on them.
So I’m stuck at 73 skill and get maybe a couple skillups a week at this point. I’ve had zero issue with leveling Alchemy, Jewelcrafting and Enchanting to 100 so it feels like this is inscription specific (which fits the pattern for this profession)

As to making gold I honestly thought those treatise’s would be selling like crazy given how important knowledge is. Either people don’t know about them or people just don’t take crafting as seriously as Blizz thinks they do. And of course those are so low level they wouldn’t help with skilling up regardless. While orders do pop up for them it’s just not in the quantity I expected and what drove me to go that route.

Caveat here is that I’m on a Medium pop RP server so there just isn’t the high demand you’d see on Higher pop, high progression servers. It’s Blizz’s responsibility to take those differences into account though when designing systems and It looks like Inscription fell through the cracks as well as lower pop servers as well.

Edit: Four days later I’ve gone up three points with two of those coming from the Faire profession quests. The bad news is that I now only have three recipes that give skill ups. An epic Staff I’ve never seen an order for (who would use 2 sparks on one item when you can use them for two?) and two profession items that, as I pointed out above, few orders are to be had as they were filled weeks ago.
There’s much talk about how Blizz has improved but complete silence on this front feels like it’s the same old Blizz.

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My inscriptionist on a low pop server is currently on leave until further notice. She will not get played until Blizzard pays out on my short term disability claim. Either that, or she will have to retire, period.

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Yup, some other professions are like that too.

Now I need to magically get orders to get some professions to 100 because there ain’t any other way and won’t be able to get to the next specialization that actually is useful but that I messed up since you have to read 19238 and do full on research before using the damn thing.

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That’s what’s such a turn off. IF you had access to another spec you could level up more but because it’s locked behind 100 skill there’s no way of unlocking it. Clearly not something they want but didn’t take the time to make sure every profession had a path to max level under real world conditions.

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Yup, they tied it to orders to make sure [my opinion] that it gets usage but I think it was the wrong route to take. They could just as you said, given each route a handful of recipes that help reach 100. And made the spec unlock simply a [use X knowledge points to unlock the next one] sorta thing perhaps, I donno. At least that way you have some way and not the hope that someone asks you to craft some higher end recipe that needs a spark and all the mats just so you can reach 100 and unlock the last spec.

I also think the person who conjured up these professions didn’t really test everything out cause if they think this feels good then boy howdy lol

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I’m leveling up as a new inscriptionist and it feels bad and forgotten as well. In ‘The Burning Crusade’, you learn everything at skill 25. After you only train off researching. It’s a slog of a grind with zero returns since it only takes little research to learn everything. At least by making glyphs you’d be able to sell them on the AH.

Classic felt balanced, at least. Getting skill points for glyphs until cap.

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I feel this so hard, Im a returning player and always wanted to try inscription, so figured with the profession update id give it a whirl, currently hard stuck because the only thing i level off of is cards, but awakened mats take absolute ages to get, and cost an arm and a leg on ah, then when I farm or buy them, I create a basic card that sells for 100g on ah. So I can sink in time/gold with no upside in return, what i thought was enjoyable at first has turned into yet another grind fest.

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I have two gripes about Inscription currently…

The first is actually more of a gripe toward Awakened Order. It’s costly on the AH, and that’s largely due to its absurd niche as a gathered material. Few sub-specs allow for efficient Order farming, and most professions are kept from having access to it at all. I actually have a separate thread noting the design miss of not allowing alchemists to transmute for it. Each drake manuscript costs a whopping eight Awakened Order; customizing the individual aspects (ha) of your dragon is nice, but is it ~30-40k gold nice? The life of the average scribe - particularly that stretch around 75 or so - would improve greatly if Order were simply more ubiquitous.

My second gripe is about Darkmoon decks specifically. Early bugs notwithstanding, these costly crafts seem stuck in the design philosophies of past professions (ie. the usefulness of crafted trinkets should be outpaced by dungeon and raid gear eventually), yet represent the heavier costs of the newer system, as if they’re competitive in the space to warrant it. They aren’t really competitive, but you wouldn’t guess that if you’re rushing their sub-specs early. The larger point I would make here is that there are parts of the profession system that seem phoned in for lack of time, with Darkmoon being a reasonable example. I’ve mentioned this elsewhere and it’s true while I write this: Darkmoon decks are even surpassed by some WQ trinkets. Huh?

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This was what I thought as well, the only way I can actually get requests is on a Tuesday after the servers come back up and at that I see maybe 10 - 15 requests then that is it … Inscription was one of my favorite professions but now it just consumes gold with minimal payback and very limited paths to max it out.

Either allow us to respec or allow the 3rd tree to be unlocked without needing 100 in inscription, maybe instead of the 100 make it you have to spend a total of 100 points before it unlocks.

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Similar issues here. I went staff crafting because someone in my guild gave me a pattern. I can’t craft anything except that to get skill points, but nobody wants it, so I’m completely stuck. I can’t even just invest my time in collecting mats because it’s gated by sparks, which I need for my own stuff (and yes, I’ve crafted my own staff).

I’m kind of losing interest here… it’s just not fun to play. I even brought this up with my guild and asked for help, but the general consensus seems to be disinterest. They can just buy lower ranks of the runes I can craft on the AH for cheap, which they have deemed “good enough” and so there’s just no real incentive for them to have a high level scribe in the guild.

At this point I’m pretty much thinking I’m going to give up on professions and just stop caring until something changes. I’m not a fan of things that are outside of my control and this very much is.

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The professions are not balanced in terms of mat cost. My tailor is already 80. My inscriptionist is stuck at 38

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The only viable path at present is to hit rank 4 of artisan’s consortium on your scribe and spam out the enhanced ‘rolling pins’. Unfortunately if you are using the AH for the mats in question this will cost something in the order of 600K gold to get those last 35 skill points. Definitely not worth it imo and hopefully something blizzard can address sooner rather than later.

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Totally. They need to revisit Awakened Order specifically in a big way. The way that reagent works across profession feels like 3-5 people independently designed the recipes without communicating to see where things meet in the middle.

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Professions take some time and effort now.
For inscription, there’s a recipe for a rolling pin (cooking gear) that you’ll unlock from the artisans’ consortium at R4 that’ll be easily crafted to get you further along. The guides say it requires mettle, but it only takes runed writhebark and draconium.

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The Darkmoon Decks are complete waste pf time. Its basically just chasing those Aces. I sold only two decks due to the low drops on Aces.

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Another week and still stuck at 78. I’ve pretty much given up on Inscription at this point.

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Inscription is near garbage. I’m about to where I’m going to spend about 100k providing crap cooking equipment to the public so I can unlock the last tree and provide the crap I can make at max ranks.

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The worst thing about the profession system is the way in which Blizzard tied tool and accessory crafts to late-skill leveling. I understand that it’s relatively “easy” (if costly) to create rolling pins on the way to Inscritipion 100, but it just isn’t why folks are choosing to craft in the first place. I don’t mind farming or buying rare mats, but I don’t want to pour that effort into making rolling pins. Who…would?

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I feel a bit of an odd duck here…I’ve been mostly happy with Inscription, despite a few quibbles, but I think that’s primarily because of my specialization route and because I farm my mats. I went the staves route, and then to profession tools, then to codexes. I’ve gotten tips/commission from guildies, trade chat, and crafting orders. The crafting orders for these are rarer than treatises, but the commission is much higher on average.

Other than crafting high-level epic staves/codexes and 372 prof tools, I sold the 346 ilvl prof tools, staves, and PVP trinkets (I was especially surprised how much the PVP trinkets sold for: 8-10k gold each the first few weeks of the xpac!). I’ve probably brought in 500-600k with Inscription so far this xpac. I hit 100 a few days ago. Stuff is definitely selling less on the AH now, though. Also, it’s not like Inscription brought in the gold like JC with the Lariat crafts early on. That was on another level.

After a raid or a dungeon, or whenever I have 3-5 minutes (waiting for queues, etc.), I do an herbing loop east to northeast of Valdrakken, a hotspot for Awakened Order. Or I do a loop in Thaldraszus for Writhebark. Elemental herb nodes are especially helpful. I also have 40/40 Writhebark, Botany, and Masting Elements. All that really helps.

Darkmoon trinkets would have to be my biggest disappointment in Inscription. As a priest, I don’t find any use for any of the Darkmoon trinkets, and the trinkets elsewhere just seem so much better. People are really looking for trinkets that interact with their specific spec (line up with certain CDs, etc.), and Darkmoon Cards don’t seem to meet that need.

I’m dismayed when I see crafting orders for treatises going for very low amounts, but they are still being fulfilled. I’m wondering if Blizz lowering the max number of fulfillable crafting orders will help drive up the price, because Scribes will have to start turning down excessively poor commissions.

I just finished speccing Vantus Runes (may be a good way to make use of excess mettle) and will soon finish speccing Fauna Runes. I’m honestly thinking of not even going into Archiving until I max out Perfect Practice and Infinite Discovery from the Rune Mastery section.

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Another thing only being hinted at here is the absurd cost of Runed Writhebark. I feel like it only took 1 writhebark on the beta, but they upped it to 5, when each writebark is selling for 80 gold each, plus another 100 gold for the rousing air, or 500 gold to buy them whole. And you need like 12 to make one rolling pin. That’s what’s adding hundreds of thousands of gold to the price of maxing out inscription.

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