Looking for recommendations for professions as a tank in Midnight… currently herb/mining.
What might provide the “best” utility? I don’t mind getting consumables from the AH (flasks, pots, etc.), and I would think that weapons/armor (blacksmithing) would be quickly out-geared through dungeon runs and mythics…
I suppose that might leave JC, enchanting, or engineering?
That is a very big can of worms. Depends what kind of profession user you are. Passively gather stuff while on your way to your mythics/raids? Stay with your rocks n foliage. Watching /trade and offering your services, crafting is for you. Make stuff to put in AH pvp and re-list? JC/enchanting/alchy. Skinning is for murderin psychopaths that stay in a zone with fast spawning mobs AKA the bees an the dogs.
Engineering is in a class of its own, it can be useful one exp and ignored the next. Got a few toons with it, but its utility is from its history Imo.
Tough call. As far as I know, professions have not been data mined in Midnight.
In TWW the Blacksmith stuff stayed high end throughout. It was the same with most of the professions, if you wanted a top-quality ring and were a jewelcrafter, you’d wear it proudly.
But a bonus to tanking via professions is a good challenge question.
Blizzard have mostly neutered professions from having specific bonuses only for their users, so no “mining gives you more stamina” buff like older eras of the game have.
Any crafting profession will remain perpetually useful throughout Midnight. Nothing we’ve seen so far on beta indicates Midnight will change gear crafting (beyond reducing the number of ranks to an item), meaning any epic item you craft can be upgraded with crests obtained by raids and dungeons and will remain commensurate in item level with drops/vault loot throughout the expansion.
Of course, the items will be the same whether they are crafted by you or by someone else via crafting order, so as Kaladnei said, it ultimately boils down to how much time you wish to invest into crafting.
Each craftable slot will require knowledge points to invest in, meaning continuos work to keep up with KPs in the form of weekly drops, patron crafting orders etc. You will of course be able to sell your services to other players once you’ve put in the work, but if the work itself sounds like a chore, well, you can keep herbing/mining & just buy the mats off the AH and find a crafter in trade to make the exact same item for you instead.
The only profession nowadays with an actual tangible perk that cannot be duplicated via a BoP item/made via crafting order is alchemy. Alchemists get double flask duration from their skill trees, which won’t make you stronger as a tank but could save you money.
Pretty much.
They realized that it’s not productive to give professions advantages in non-profession parts of the game, lest the profession become mandatory for the sake of the non-profession advantage.
TBH thats been the case since like…cata onward, alch and encahnt is all that matters anymore.
Blizzard is way to afraid to let us get bonuses from having professions. If anything i think they should bring them back, then just disable the bonus in Mythic and M+ content.
They need to bring it back IMO.
Raiders will always complain anything is an advantage (eg racials) so no point holding back the rest of the game. In all honesty racials and profession bonuses were never game breaking with the exception of maybe BE arcane torrent silence.
Eh, I get it…
I think they should bring back profession buffs (mining = stamina, skinning = critical chance, etc) because it adds a bit of flavor. It makes each profession unique. The racial was always part of the reason why my horde warriors were almost always Tauren - stamina buff (and the AoE stun).
Truthfully, I think the real reason why Blizzard initially had profession-specific unique’s was because they wanted to incentivize the player base into taking up professions at launch. The stamina buff for mining was really never that ‘game breaking.’
Now, it seems that engineering has been neutered to the point where you should only go engineering if you want access to toys and mounts that the other professions don’t have. Which, I am not opposed to having profession-specific mounts/toys… but give it something more. The decor items are a nice plus… but allow engineers to craft more gear-centric items, and bombs!
I don’t know of any engineer that actually utilizes the currently available craftable bombs in raids or in mythics.
“Players caught in the blast increases healing received by 5-10% for 12 seconds with a 5 minute cooldown.” What? Come on… that’s really lame.
”Players caught in the blast increases their movement speed by 5-10% for 20 seconds with a 5 minute cooldown.” Lame.
Even the rez “Big Red Button” is not really used… there is almost always a healer that can rez after a wipe and then cast mass res. Or, once you release, its a quick 5-second walk back to the encounter. This engineering item is absolutely worthless.
Enchanting, alchemy, JC… those will always provide benefits because (as an example) people will always need flasks, potions, etc. Heck, I’ve avoided blacksmithing for years because I always felt that the gear was too quickly outdated by dungeon running, raids, and mythics. Especially for the cost of materials, time spent mining all over the game… a few LFG/mythic runs and I’ve already outgeared the craftable gear by a large margin.
I think with the crafting system, players can craft some really high level stuff which, IMO, allows those professions to remain relevant through an expansion. This has been a needed change for years, so good stuff!
But engineering sucks now… it was long considered one of the most expensive professions to level in the game, but it provided some amazing perks to offset the costs. Now… engineering kinda sucks.
They are available on the Beta.
They shouldn’t be. Potions are just straight up better in every situation. Even a best case situation for a bomb will under perform a worst case for a potion.
If you did not have a lock in group there were 2 or 3 fights this expac that they could be worth using.
And it is getting significantly more expensive in Midnight…while also remaining basically useless.
Tell us more!
Your gear will be functional up to endgame activities at the highest levels, thanks to the ability to upgrade epic items using crests in crafting and recrafting.
In terms of pure utility: Alchemy and Engineering are going to provide the best for most classes in every situation. Alchemy historically enables you to have doubled duration from flasks and engineering has a slew of wormholes to use for teleportation.
The exception here has been blacksmithing on plate wearers. When you max out the specialization for a particular armor slot or weapon type, you get the ability to repair it for free. That will add up in time.
Professions generally don’t provide in-combat buffs anymore. Some let you salvage items, and occasionally there are dungeons that interact with a particular profession, but they don’t provide you with any sort of stat buff. Maybe engineering consumables require engineering but I don’t think I have ever used one.
They kept the same basic idea of randomly learning recipes. But with some distinctly worse changes. You no longer scrap junk, I assume this is meant to simplify things. But that means no drops. What actually happens is that you need to get 5 of some crafted parts from any profession and then recycle them for a random chance (seems about 1/3 or 1/4 chance per recycle) to learn a random recipe. The parts themselves are more expensive, at least for engineering. I have not checked part requirements for other professions. But for engineering the parts you can scrap take 5 of one ore and 10 of another per single part (think the Bismith and Ironclaw type ore). You need 5 of them per scrap. So every chance at a new recipe takes 25 ore of one type and 50 of another. The recipe rewarded is also purely random, no choices. And there are no scrap type drops from mobs to farm, this is entirely crafting and rolling the dice.
And that is just the learning new recipes part. To craft most recipes will also require items found from recycling. Notably there are multiple items you can get from recycling, and as you might guess, all random. And you can’t recycle those items. So, for crafting actual items also requires 25 and 50 ore per chance at getting the part you need. And recipes will call for multiples.