Issues I See in TWW Herbalism

Gameplay Professions
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Herbalism in TWW has been a much better experience than the one we had in DF, in my opinion. I wrote a very long post about Dragonflight herbalism, the trouble with Writhebark, the problems with the stats and trees, etc. I’ve been gathering in TWW long enough to really sit with it and assess how fun/not fun I find it, so here are my thoughts.

This was the old post:

Like my DF Herbalism post, this will be a long one. If you require a TLDR, this likely isn’t the post for you. I’ll break it up into headings, however, to make it easier to scroll through.

Mycobloom is a Better Common Herb than Hochenblume
It seems they learned the lesson because Mycobloom rectified the problems we had with Hochenblume in DF.

In Dragonflight, Hochenblume was pretty much worthless in the massive quantities of it that we had to gather in order to spawn what we really needed. Mycobloom is actually used heavily in many different professions, so it has remained constantly relevant and worth picking, even in bulk numbers.

This accomplishes something very important that never happened in Dragonflight with Hochenblume:

Gatherers actually take the time to pick the Mycobloom instead of passing it over, which means that the other herbs that can spawn on that node…actually do.

It’s rare to find a zone full of nothing but Mycobloom because we actually need it, it’s actually worth picking, and so the zone doesn’t get depleted of the more valuable herb while Mycobloom sits un-harvested. This was one of the major problems with Writhebark farming in DF, and we simply do not have that issue with Luredrop farming in TWW.

Thank you and well done.

The Mulch is a Lie
The mulch situation is a little bit infuriating, and to understand why it’s so infuriating, you have to consider what came before it and why the mulch feels like an insulting betrayal…because it’s a lesson they should have learned from Dragonflight.

Conversance was a knowledge wheel in the Dragonflight Botany tree that took 40 knowledge points and ostensibly gave you skill in harvesting the corpses of plant creatures alongside one point in Deftness.

After filling that wheel, you were supposed to be able to get elemental essences and useful herbs from harvesting plant creatures, but that was never the reality. Only rarely did you get anything useful, and it certainly never became a viable farming option. The entire 40 points was an abject lie and a total waste of players’ time and energy. At the end, you didn’t feel the harvest cast bar moving any faster, and the aforementioned plant creature harvest never materialized.

In TWW, they got rid of Conversance and gave us the Mulching tree in its place. Like Conversance before it, you fill the wheel with 40 knowledge points and each adds Deftness to your Herbalism harvesting. With Mulching, each knowledge point gave 3 Deftness as opposed to Conversance’s 1. That was well-done (credit where it’s due), but like Conversance, the wheel is still an abject failure.

As you progress through the Mulching wheel, you gain access to “better” mulches that ostensibly give you massive amounts (never specified with a number) of Finesse when used on an herb node before harvesting.

To make Imbued Mulch (the good one, the one you earn at 40 points) requires 4x Viridescent Spores and 15x Mycobloom. The idea is that you go to an herb node, use the mulch that required 15 herbs and 2-4 Sporefused nodes worth of spores, and this will get you a fat harvest with a huge finesse proc…except that it does not guarantee a finesse proc, and you almost never get one. Even when you do, that finesse from the mulch only increases your chance of a finesse proc. It does not increase the yield.

So, like Conversance before it, Mulching…is a lie. LEARN, profession devs. LEARN. I beg you. Don’t do this again in Midnight. Do. Not. Do. It. Come up with something worthwhile or leave it out of the Herbalism tree. Stop wasting everyone’s time.

Props for Cultivation
This one is another positive, in my opinion. The seeds in Dragonflight were not well-received and they were not fun to deal with. Finding the soil was hit or miss, and the specialized seeds were not fun to use. With the Hallowfall farm, the Rich Soil for seed planting was made into a community gathering place, and it has worked. It is brilliant.

Every time I get a pile of seeds, I go up there, and I have never been there alone for long. People come, coordinated or spontaneous, and we plant the seeds and harvest the herbs. It is amazing how cooperative, polite, and happy everyone is for this process, and it is honestly one of the most successful profession side gigs I have ever seen in this game. Open, social, community activity. And it works. It is a chef’s kiss. You nailed this part.

Well freaking done.
/salute

Overload is Terrible - The Whole Tree is a Failure
Overloading the Underground is the TWW counterpart to Dragonflight’s Mastering the Elements tree. In Dragonflight, finishing out the MtE tree meant a markedly reduced effect from special nodes and a larger yield of the rousing essences we got from them.

Overloading the Underground does nothing of the sort. We still get knocked around by Irradiated herbs and we still have the annoying green poofs when harvesting Sporefused herbs. It’s like the tree did literally nothing.

200 knowledge points that pile on finesse and deftness and skill points, but we get exactly the same number of essences as we did at herbalism level 1. Two. Hundred. Knowledge Points. That’s what goes into this tree. At the end of it, we get fewer bronze quality herbs from these nodes, but NO more essence than at the start. No hay nada, y’all.

Please learn. I am absolutely begging you. If I put 200 knowledge points into a tree, the experience of picking herbs better feel different at the end of it than it did at the start. It doesn’t here. The entire tree is a failure.

Crystalline Powder vs. Everything Else
Speaking of the Specialized Herb Nodes, the Crystalline Powder is not used in as many or in as highly sought-after crafts, so it’s essentially vendor trash while the Leyline Residue from Irradiated nodes and the Viridescent Spores from Sporefused nodes go for up to 200g per item depending on the day.

When you are apportioning these things for mats in various crafts in future expansions, please consider the value spread while you’re considering how to work the knowledge wheels for the gatherers of special nodes.

Conclusion
I honestly feel like TWW Herbalism is a massive improvement over Dragonflight. You got rid of the most demoralizing issues that DF Herbing introduced, and I think the dev team that worked on this should be commended for it. You got rid of the Writhebark nightmare and did not reproduce it in TWW. I see it; I feel it; and I appreciate it.

That said, you still gave us an entire specialization that does literally nothing for 200 kp. It was an absolute waste of my time. I can say that because picking special nodes on my main, who has 160 points invested in Overloading the Underground, does not feel better or yield more than picking those nodes on my alt who has zero points in the tree.

Fix it in the future. Seriously…work it out. We’re counting on you.

In addition - don’t do the Conversance/Mulching thing again. Just don’t. Stop it. Either let us do whatever the wheel insinuates we’ll be able to do or leave it out. No more lying about the cake, you feel me? It’s beneath you and we’re all sick of it.

Happy gathering, y’all.

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I appreciate your thoughtful post. You took a lot of time to think about things. Thank you for that.

Couple of things though. Overloads are actually quite good. Once you have the double overload you get almost continuous overloads. basically it triples yield (or more if you are fast) every time you find an irradiated node or sporefused node. It massively increases your overall yield. And deftness is perfect for the sporefused. It’s a speed challenge.

The other overloads … Well writhing is just never going to be worth it when I can make infinity number of them with skinning. If that were not the case this would be more worth doing.

And the portals, eh, the time it takes to take them is more than the time it takes to just fly to another node. I think they didn’t understand why that was the most used overload in DF… Had nothing to do with the portal and everything to do with rousing order.

Why are leyline so expensive? It’s because a) they didn’t balance the weapon imbues and the one that everyone uses costs 10 leyline b) it is ONLY gathered by herbalism. If they swapped the final node of the luring tree from writhing to leyline in skinning, leyline would drop like a rock.

Mulch is good actually. It just shouldn’t be for only one herb. In its current state it is not cost effective. This is a tuning thing. Making it should spawn 5 of the items not just one–that would make it cost effective. That’s the only thing it needs to fix it.

Magical mulch gives 45 finesse, or 1.5% finesse
Imbued mulch gives 75 finesse, or 2.5% finesse
Empowered mulch gives 150 finesse, or 5% finesse.

Keep in mind razorstones give you 75 finesse. With all my consumables, I have 38% finesse. Adding the mulch takes this to 43% finesse.

This doesn’t seem mind-blowing but it actually is…if you use it right.

Lush nodes roll everything twice, including finesse and perception. Green thumb causes a third roll to happen.

So this means your odds of getting one or more procs of finesse on a lush node with green thumb is ‘1 - (1-p)^3’. For example, without mulch it would be 1-(1-.38)^3 = 76.1% proc chance. With mulch that goes up to 81.5% chance. It’s not guaranteed but as close as blizzard will let you get. The problem is that the finesse proc results aren’t worth the mats you put in. It’s just tuned wrong.

This is why that green thumb ability is in that tree. You need to stack it to make mulch more effective.

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It’s also used in haste flasks 2 per, mastery flasks 2 per, and algari mana oil 10 per.

They put it on literally everything most desirable in the consumable world.

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Yeah the mana oil is what I was referring to. Leyline is used in a lot of crafts, but that’s the one that really trucks my stash.

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Very good list of grievances Meri. I agree with the whole of it. It also reminds me that now that I am closing in the last few KPs for that professions ( finished in mulch duh!) that I need to get finesse enchants for the herbalism arm of the alt army.

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I want to add a few more issues if you don’t mind Meriweather. I’d like to see how you view these issues.

Before I start though, I want to say that I LOVE DF/TWW professions, both gathering and crafting. I find them a lot of fun!

Perception
I’ve been complaining about how perception works since DF BETA.

This is how bad it is: if you did two trials, one where you had max perception (i.e. threw on a perception tool/enchant/pot) and one where you had max finesse, you would not be able to tell the difference based on the number of rare items gathered. In other words, perception, even at the maximum amount you can swing it, does not make a statistically significant difference in the amount of rare items. Why? The proc is too rare and too small. The average value is not outside of 1 standard deviation, which is the minimum needed for statistical significance.

There is, however a way to distinguish the two trials. If you look at how many normal items you have collected, removing finesse for perception massively decreases your yield of normal items.

To fix this, they could just make the proc chance a constant. Then perception could change how many items you got when it procs. For example, minimum perception gives 1 extra rare item (as it does now) and maximum perception gives 5 extra rare item. Boom! Statistical significance! AND the proc chance, being independent of the normal drop chance, could be modified if the rare item is too rare or not rare enough. Easy to modify.

Phial of Bountiful Seasons vs Truesight
Truesight increases the number of nodes you see by 25-35%.

You have to choose between these two phials, but who would choose a small amount of finesse when you could have 25-35% more ore/herbs? That amount of finesse is NOT going to make up for missing that many nodes. This is not a legitimate choice.

Seasons ALSO only works as finesse during “Summer”, which I originally thought would be “outside of the city” but noooooooo it is literally the physical RL summer season. So, this phial, even if it could be comparable with Truesight, would only be useful half of the year. Why???

The HAVES and the HAVE NOTS:
The difference between “people in the know” and people who are uninformed is just sooooo huge.

If you know how overloads work, how stats work, have the buffs, you can get yields like 1000 ore/herb per hour. NOT knowing these things causes you to be significantly gimped. NOT using these overloads/stats/buffs gives ~500 herbs/ore per hour. That’s a massive difference.

On one hand, “yay my stats and abilities make a difference” but on the other “daaannggg it sucks to be uninformed”.

I think Blizzard assumes WAAAAAY too much that sites like wowhead, wowprofessions, and method will tell other players how to play. Those sites have SO much misinformation or dated information that just doesn’t get updated ever.

The thing is, for crafters and gatherers, information is GOLD. We are not incentivized to help our fellow players. More people knowing how to do things means more competition. It’s not the same as, say, being a dps—you aren’t going to do less dps if another person knows all your dps tricks, so you can share what you know. But how many times have you seen a crafter come on and say “yeah, I’m not going to tell you my methods”. Because more competition = less gold for you.

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Not at all! I want stuff like this to be a discussion thread where the devs can see how people are receiving it. Stuff we like. Stuff that we don’t think is working. Thank you for adding your thoughts to it.

100% Me, too. I love the new profession system and want it to be a success.

I find this to be the core of the issue for all of the “stats,” which should never have been called that because it isn’t what they are. They are RNG procs–like trinket procs–not stats.

It’s disingenuous for Perception, Finesse, Deftness, Ingenuity, and Resourcefulness to be called stats. They’re procs. The end.

They need to make them…stats. I think that would solve pretty much all of the issues with the “this doesn’t feel good” aspects of the new crafting system. Now, I am fully aware that this would require a complete departure from the current way things get calculated.

If that departure is not something they wish to do, then they’re going to have to get better at the math of probability-based procs than they have been with their current assignment of numbers (as you illustrated so beautifully).

Right from the off in Dragonflight, it was a huge mistake, imo, to call the new profession stats…stats. Yes, “stat” is short for statistics, and they technically are that, but they don’t work like Haste, which is a constant % or Mastery, which is a constant %.

% to proc does not serve the same function at all as % added to Intellect.

It is my current belief that this tension/mismatch is why so many of us were so confused for so long (and some of us still are) about how all of this is supposed to work and why so many find it unsatisfying.

This. You nailed it. And my frustration from day one has been that none of this is in the tooltips. If it is, it is not there in clear ways. There is a lot of filler language in the tooltips that has nothing to do with how this thing actually works, what makes it proc, or even what the actual numbers truly are.

I am so appreciative of your posts on these topics, Teishoku, because you actually lay out the math. I don’t know where you found it / figured it out - where you sourced it from or deciphered it…but I am appreciative.

I just wish it was that clearly spelled out ingame.

Edited to add:
I farm my herbs on this here druid. I typically use a Phial of Truesight and a Darkmoon Firewater and spend a half hour in one of my favorite places to farm (usually the north end of Ringing Deeps for the Orbinid and Luredrop or Isle of Dorn for Blessing Blossom, Mycobloom, and Arathor’s Spear).

I go until the Darkmoon deftness pot wears off and stop.

There is no guidance in the game that would lead me to understanding how to stack myself up better. There is no transparency in the numbers or how any of it gets calculated and I am not an AH player. I just farm for my own needs, so I don’t spend a huge portion of my ingame hours researching 3rd-party sites for the math. I never felt like someone who should have to take it that seriously, but the lack of transparency in how the basic stats that affect gathering actually work…has led me here to this discussion.

And it shouldn’t be that way.

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I am usually not giving away my methods either… :sunglasses: Unless tis for past expansions and it no longer matters :grinning: Like my rags to riches story in DF with toxic patches!

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Oh, I take a LOT of data. I have pages of notes. I am IRL a professor of physics soooo math and taking data is kinda my thing lol.

I don’t think anybody shows all of their cards. I’ll post things here though because TBH this part of the forums doesn’t have as much foot traffic. Just talking to my fellow crafting enjoyers mainly.

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Well I am going to go full finesse once the wheels are filled. For Herbing at least, the side gather is what? The lotuses? When it shows up, the only thing perception CAN do is getting me an extra one? No biggy. Wonder bout the seeds, I do like the seeds, but I do not recall a perception proc on the seeds either.

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They do proc perception. It’s very rare though.

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Physicist meet Engineer.

Engineer meet Physicist.

Everyone else, please cover your ears and exit the building posthaste. After the probability approaching 100% cataclysmic event we will let you know if it is safe to reenter the destroyed laboratory.

Sorry, grad school humor that seemed a lot more entertaining when it happened.

Deftness is a 'stat that is always active. Now I will admit that I find it odd that we have different Deftness stats for each type of mining and herbing node until we reach all of the Deftness bonuses in all of the respective wheels. And then the real outlier, EZ-Mine nodes where there is also a distance modifier.

I’m torn. On one hand it would be nice to have a ‘little’ more clarity on how the gathering secondary stats work. As too many people have pointed out since DFs release (I don’t follow the Beta reports so my start point is always release), Blizzard’s UI reported probabilities rarely proc in such a way that player’s experiences come close to the given numbers. My experiences of mass crafting generally fall 1-2 standard deviations off the expected value. Gathering is closer, but still with too wide of a variation to explain. Something is wrong with everyone’s models, or Blizzard made the calculations too complex on the back end and needs to change to more accurately represent what players should experience.

On the other hand, I can’t think of many RPG or MMO genre games where the developers were so clear that players did not have to spend time determining the most effective and efficient employment methods for their play style.

As horrible as this may sound, a 50% difference in yield over time between a player who takes minimal to no effort to understand how the various bonuses work and interact and someone who does the Teishoku route of identifying every niggling detail seems pretty fair. I fall somewhere in the messy middle averaging around 700 herbs/ore per hour when I actually farm to farm.

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I got my degree in History (Maths people, meet a Humanities nerd). I’m not bad at math, but I do not enjoy it or seek out opportunities to wield it.

That said, I have often wondered if these things are wonky in practice because of the insistence on bronze, silver, and gold-rated reagents.

If they have a totally different set of variables for each of those quality levels in crafting, then does it follow that perhaps those variables have added layers to the actual gathering side, as well?

I always assumed that the quality of the herb was the last spin of the RNG wheel–after procs for perception and finesse were spun. But if a bronze herb has different perception variables on it than a silver herb, and if the order of RNG calculations pulls the perception and finesse variable AFTER the herb quality has already been spun up…

Anyway, that was the direction of my thought process.

I’ve felt from the beginning that we should have quality levels on crafted items, not reagents. It makes things far more complicated than they need to be, and in the back of my mind, I have wondered if it is this hierachy of quality that makes the finesse, perception, resourcefulness, and ingenuity procs (add in multicraft chances for the crafting side) feel so much less than they should be. Return on KP investment should feel more…muchly.

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HA! I knew it! There was something you posted and I was like “I bet that guy is an engineer”! Nice! I’ve only set fire to TWO robots I’ll have you know… and we have a perfectly functioning fire extinguisher to prevent the laboratory from burning down.

I wonder what you’re doing differently… hmmm.

Here’s my stats/buffs for herbalism:
For regular herbs:

  • I have 100% deftness buffed by Weaver buff + Darkmoon firewater. This is essential for a) clearing away from irradiated before they go off and b) never being interrupted by mobs.
  • I have 17% perception, buffed by Truesight phial R3
  • I have 37.4% finesse, buffed by Ironclaw Razorstone R3 and Steaming Phial of Finesse R3, finesse tool and finesse enchant

These stats go up to 20% perc, 40.4% finesse when interacting with an empowered node (irradiated, crystalline, etc.).

The steaming phial of finesse is a DF material. It stacks with TWW phials. I did tell Blizzard about this in beta, but they just left it as is. I think they figured it wouldn’t be worth it with the new scaling of stats. And they were probably thinking that since it costs mettle, people would run out of mettle eventually. Little do they know I have 37,898 mettle from DF. lol

The process as far as I know is:

  1. Roll for amount 1 -3

  2. Roll for quality R1 - R3

  3. Roll for finesse (uses finesse %)
    If finesse procs:
    3a. Roll for amount 1-3 (the quality is determined by step 2)
    3b. (Herbalism only) roll for improved finesse proc (from node 20 in each of the sub trees in Bountiful Harvest. Not entirely clear what it does, but it can add up to 3 mycobloom (and I think smaller amounts of the others)
    3c. Add the # of herbs. If finesse proc’d, add the line “Your Finesse helps you gather something extra” and print the total amount of herbs.

  4. For rare items in loot list:

  5. Roll for rare items; amount =1

  6. If rare item procs, roll for perception (uses perception %) (amount is = 1)

  7. Add the #of rare items. If perception proc’d add the line “Your Perception helps you…” and print the rare item.

This entire process is repeated 2x when picking a lush herb or rich ore. It is repeated 3x for seams and EZ-Mine ore.

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It was too much for one post, so continuing here.

Looking at the info from the previous post, you can see that finesse is the key thing for herbalism. It gets multiplied by the improved finesse proc, which is stronger (somehow) for mycobloom than other herbs. Because Blizzard lumps all of the rolls into one line, it’s hard to tell what procs from what.

For mycobloom,

  • a normal herb can give up to 9 mycobloom (3 from the first roll, 3 from finesse, and 3 from the improved finesse proc).
  • a lush herb can give up to 18 mycobloom (9 from each process)
  • an overloaded irradiated mycobloom can give 27 mycobloom (9 from the original, and 9 from each of the 2 copies)

I usually farm the Isle of Dorn and I focus on mycobloom, spending as many irradiated procs on it as possible. Mycobloom is the most affected by the improved finesse proc.

If I see an irradiated mycobloom I will perform the following sequence:

  1. Overload (getting dismounted by the cast)
  2. Cast arcane duplication
  3. Mount
  4. Gather the 2 copies
  5. Gather irradiated.
  6. Fly away before the irradiated blast goes off

I usually do a 1 hour run, log out, and (sometime later) do another 1 hour run. I try to get the entire 2 hours worth of the razorstone buff.

Yesterday, I completed the second hour and this is what I got:
Mycobloom: R1 = 461, R2 = 619, R3 = 328
Blessing blossom: R1 = 210, R2 = 173, R3 = 92
Arathor’s Spear: R1 = 78, R2 = 128, R3 = 49
Null lotus = 29
Crystalline Powder = 66
Leyline Residue = 45
Total # herbs = 2168 or 1084 herbs per hour
Total worth on AH = 49,891.99 g

Then I grabbed 1000 of the R1 and R2 Mycobloom (around 14k worth on AH), and I transmuted them using thaumaturgy. Then I transmuted the transmutagens. Then I performed mercurial blessing/storms x8 on the last dregs of the transmutagens, which makes more transmutagens, which makes more herbs/dust etc.

The result of that was: (all rank 2 because rank 1 mycobloom transmutes to rank 2 of whatever else if you have thaumaturgy maxed)
211 storm dust
210 weavercloth
144 bismuth
26 orbinid
43 luredrop
36 gloom chitin
13 aqirite
35 stormcharged leather
55 arathor’s spear
9 ironclaw ore
14 blessing blossom
3 leyline residue
1 null stone
1 thunderous hide
1 extravagant emerald
1 ambivalent amber
10 blasphemite

1000 mycobloom (14k) —> 21.5k of materials

Oh, and after that I used all my concentration to make as many R3 storm dust, bismuth, weavercloth as I could. I think I got around 20 of each.

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That is an impressive write up. I salute your dedication and perseverance in order to figure this out and then execute a gathering strategy.

It makes me… want to go do something else… lol

10 years ago I could sit for an hour and fly around gathering. Now I spend a few minutes and call it done. :slight_smile:

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Oh the buffs max out at an hour so that why I did it in chunks of hours. And hour 1 is usually days apart from hour 2.

But you can do 30 minutes. That’s the minimum of the buffs, for the most part.

As sweaty as all this sounds I’m honestly slow flying the entire time and listening to peaceful music.

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Quite simply, I am not trying very hard. I don’t even have all three of my blue Prof Equipment yet. I don’t use the DMF buff or the Truesight Phial. Even using the Razorstone is a sometime thing. 45-60 minutes of mining provides all the materials I need for a week. 45-60 minutes of Herbing provides all of those materials I need for a week too.

The AH game for raw materials does not interest me so I only farm for my own needs after the first couple of weeks of an expansion.

And yet this methodology, which seems very likely, is why I think many people are complaining about the current gathering system.

Flying between Bountiful Delves yesterday I hit two EZ-Mine Bismuth nodes.
Node one provided 3 R1 ore with a Finesse proc of 1 R3 ore.
Node two provided 6 R1, 4 R2, and 6 R3 ore with no procs.

363 EZ-Mine skill should not result in that much variation between nodes. Even accounting for the first node was a literal worst case scenario before the Finesse proc.

Skill has never been a good indicator of what quantities will be mined from a specific node. Yet the variation has become more pronounced (and I think many people perceive more variable even though I think it is actually the limits of the variation expanding) with DF and TWW.

Which is where players like Meriweather end up with the sentiment of there should be no ranks on gathered materials.

While I like the idea of the whole system, there are too many layers of complexity that produce too much natural variation within the system before players start applying things they can control (Phials, Tools, Enchants, etc.) which creates even larger variation windows.

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First. I’ll just say I like the DL and TWW changes. No complaints, even though I have chosen to not optimize my play or to dive too deeply into how it works.

This quoted statement rings true to me. I looked at the all the possible knobs to turn and variables to balance… and just decided… nope. Basically MEGO. (My Eyes Glaze Over.) Not going to try to wade through all the online info, or carefully gather data to figure out what is what.

  • If I play through the expansion they all get filled in anyway. Via DMF, Treastise, weekly points.
  • I’m not going to waste time trying to optimize. ^^^ See #1 above.
  • I’m not going to worry about being gimped.
  • I noticed that once I got all the points filled in on a char… I stopped gathering on that char. :slight_smile:

So after getting the flight thing unlocked I just did each big wheel from left - right. Then went back and did the sub “wheels” from left to right. I did find some folks leveling their crafting alts that crafted the gathering tools for me at a subsidized cost. [1]

On the way I noticed that where I put the points never made much difference. The changes accumulated slowly over time. Until the end of the expansion when I’d mine on a char with maxed points and then swap to one I was leveling in war mode via gathering. In that case it did seem like yeah, I guess all those points did something.

Pretty much ignored the phials. Even though my Alchemist made them for my gatherers. Just kept forgetting them. Like the overloads. Only used them a few times in DL. Even though they were on my bars.

I don’t feel I missed out on anything.

However… :slight_smile: With the explanation of gathering rates as outlined in this thread. I’m rethinking things. Likely not enough to really change much. Guess I’m happy with my mediocrity! lol

[1] - The private order system was/is probably the best part of the new system. Got to talk to a lot of people that I would not have otherwise connected with. Typically I avoided the big gun crafters on my server cluster. Too expensive. There were plenty of leveling crafters that were glad for a private order with all rank 3 mats and $1500 gold.

I never crafted any of my profession tools. Even on the alts that could. Cheaper to just buy from someone else. Especially as I had multiple on some chars. (Crafted with different missives.)

I made more flipping mats/pets/cloth on the AH than gathering.

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I think the biggest issue for me is that this is a game. I get that when they design these things, they have to design them for the AH economy, but I think focusing there is something of a mistake.

What the gold farming min/max crowd will or will not do with a given system shouldn’t be the driving force behind design.

What will be fun and feel good for the player who gathers and/or crafts should be the driving force behind design.

And I think that has been somewhat lost in all of the layers and gating they’ve put in place. I think we got off in the weeds somewhere of trying to make sure the people who would exploit the system cannot do that, and we’ve lost sight of what will be a good gaming experience for the average player with herbalism when they log in of a Wednesday afternoon, turn on a podcast, and spend an hour picking flowers.

The idea that I still get a lot of bronze quality herbs, I still get single quantity on a regular basis, I still get 1-2 essence off of special nodes and never more than that (except for writhing overload mobs, which drop a varying amount that is more than 2).

It feels bad and that’s the problem.

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