I just spent a lot of time and gold leveling it, and right now it seems bad to me. But I’m hoping someone can shine a light on why BS is even worth taking.
My current view: Being a BS confers nothing special. There is no unique bonus I get, like the alchemist trinket or whatever. So the only thing going for it is that 1. I can potentially make gold from it, and 2. I can craft my own shadowghast pieces.
However, making gold seems to require crafting the higher ilevel shadowghast pieces and that will cost a huge amount of gold buying enchanted elethium or trying to get my own enchanter to 115 to do it… so I see no room for profit atm. And on the other side, crafting my own shadowghast pieces… who cares? Why would I invest the amount of time and gold it would take to craft a whopping 15 pieces of shadowghast just to reach the next upgrade tier, when I can just spend much less gold buying my own tier 2, 3, and 4 shadowghast pieces from the auction?
The whole process just seems innately bad right now, and I can’t figure what Blizzard was trying to achieve with this. I could understand if being a BS let me craft maybe a slightly higher ilevel shadowghast piece that was BOP… but that’s not the case. So after reading a bunch of articles on google praising BS in this expansion, I have to ask… what even is the point of it?
In summary, it seems like only the richest people will be able to make gold from BS, while there is no special unique bonus for taking the prof, and in the end it will be way cheaper to just buy your shadowghast pieces from auction.
So is blacksmithing just a junk prof this expansion? What am I missing?
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Just posted this same thing, and then saw this. I have the same thoughts. Also on lower pop realms, everyone is making at least 15 chest pieces so they sell for less than the ore.
The only way i see making money currently is being ahead of everyone on the ranks. But even then people dont buy the new ranks fast yet, because they dont have the soul ashe to upgrade. This just gives other people time to catch up on ranks.
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I’m not even going to bother to level mine.
Like its pointless.
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Yea I think BS is a trash profession this expansion, and it’s disappointing. It cost me half as much to buy the shadowghast rank 1 piece as it would have to craft, which is bizarre and actually the opposite from what most people expect. Crafting is supposed to provide unique benefits and/or save money… and BS does neither.
I actually wasted like 20k in mats just to train up to 100 skill quickly, before realizing it was trash. So Blizzard, I don’t know what you were thinking, but you kinda botched this aspect of the expansion big time (overall enjoying SL a lot though).
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Not sure what “shadowghast” is but aren’t you able to later on craft plate legendaries?
It was bad in BFA too. But it’s all about making those weird legendary pieces now. So I guess that’s all they care about. Leatherworking and Tailoring are on a similar boat.
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Shadowghast is a type of plate armour, and is needed to craft the legendary armour for plate wearers. You bring the materials to the Runecarver once you’ve unlocked him.
So the only thing BS contributes to the crafting of the legendary item is the Shadowghast item. But you can’t even craft it without Enchanted Elethium Bars, which are expensive on auction, and require max level enchanting to create yourself (which is super hard to get due to the extreme rarity of the purple enchanting materials).
In the end, I paid half as much to buy my Shadowghast item from the AH as I would have if I had purchased the enchanted bars to make my own Shadowghast item.
It’s a really stupid situation.
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But if you make it yourself it says “made by Yourself” instead of “Made by Buttcheerios” or whatever random players name you get permanently tied to your legendary when you buy it off the AH.
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I mean, I guess that’s meaningful for some people?
Can’t say I think it’s worth paying about 12k more for my rank 1 shadowghast. Also, the name on the item will be replaced as soon as you use a higher rank to upgrade the legendary, so even if someone got a poop name they could just pay attention next time. xD
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I’d be honored if my leggo was created by the one and only buttcheerios
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Yeah as a BS/Engineering I was noticing this too. Not really anything to make outside of the legendary base pieces…Blacksmith should receive a unique socket that they can put into their gear or something…really no point or benefit to being a BS.
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I maxed mine but I don’t think I will bother with making any of the Legos. It’s much easier and cheaper just to buy them off the AH. I would drop BS but I have way to many old recipes I don’t want to loose.
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Yup. BS is not useful at all. I crafted a second shadowghast helm in order to try and work toward rank 2. I can’t sell the damn thing and will likely take a huge profit loss if it even sells.
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Yea especially since now it costs almost double to level thanks to increasing the vendor mats from 5 gold to 9 gold a pop now.
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Pretty sure you can always relearn old recipes if you drop BS and re learn BS.
You just go to the trainers. Someone can correct me on that.
I found an enchanter looking to skill up his profession and he did all my bars. For free. I got enough bars to craft every tier 1 plate vessel.
Kind of weird that he’d be looking to skill up considering the bars can’t be enchanted until he has max enchanting…
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Nah man i casually maxed BS in SL and only bought one stack of ore to hit max, which i didnt need to do in hindsight.
You do BS for a few transmogs.
I was done with crafting like day 5 of the xpac. Now mats pile up as i cant help hitting ore nodes when convenient, which is how i got all the mats to max crafting.
I have never once maxed an xpac crafting skill btw, usually i do this same approach and only unlock enough to be somewhat useful while levelling.
I dropped Blacksmithing because of this.
For blacksmithing, you need 3 professions, and eight different materials.
One zone-specific ore for Bastion
One zone-specific ore for Maldraxxus
One zone-specific ore for Ardenweald
One zone-specific ore for Revendreth.
On top of that, you need a rare elethium ore only found in Maw or low proc drops from zone-specific ores.
Then, you need an enchanter to turn that elethium ore into enchanted elethium bars, which requires another material of soul dust.
Then you need the tax materials; oboreal shards and luminous flux.
Compared to tailoring, that is usually paired with enchanting anyway, you only need the cloth which doesn’t require a profession to gather and the enchanted cloth that you can use with your paired enchanting profession; so you don’t really need other players to provide you the materials.
Comparatively tailoring legendaries is way easier and less costing than blacksmithing/mining.
Edit: you need a tax material for shadowghast ingots as well. So not only do you need more materials than tailoring for legendaries, but you’re also taxed more for it (shadowghast ingot tax and legendary crafting tax).
They can balance it more by removing the tax with shadowghast ingots, increasing its yield, and requiring leather for tailoring.
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I am slowly levelling up Enchanting but the ‘roadblock’ of having to buy Eternal Crystals is painful. What I am tending to do is buy the crystals, make enchants and sell the enchants to try and recoup at least part of my expenditure, but it i still costing me tens of thousands of gold. Putting that sort of extremely expensive mat into a levelling process is unfortunate, to say the least. So I feel your pain.