Non-expansion specific resources

Community General Discussion
1

There’s absolutely a ton of minerals and such out there, and hundreds of types of plants with different effects,

But you’re telling me cobalt makes better armor than iron? Than Mithril? OR even THORIUM??

listen, some of it made sense. Fel Iron, adamantite, khorium - those are metals from another world, one that’s already been through it’s fair share of troubles and hardships. The metal’s going to be different.
Elementium and obsidian? Makes sense, the world just got sundered, that’s gonna pop up in various places.

But what the heck is Ghost Iron? Or True Iron? Storm silver??? AND MONELITE??? What is monelite?? It’s a taffy-like metal that’s…stronger than elementium armor???

I get it’s a agame mechanic - but I think it’d be cool if all of these metals interacted with eachother more.

i.e. coating something in a layer of molten monelite actually gives you a little more defense because it absorbs shock.

I honestly really loved legion’s profession system because we got more of the lore around the stuff - like how leystone was just ore drenched in enough magic to polymorph a dragon, that needed a special flux - it gave an explanation as to why we were doing what we were, and it was wonderfully described.

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Ghost Iron is iron with ghosts in it. True Iron is iron with truth in it. Storm Silver is silver with storm in it. Monelite is really hard caramel.

(At least one of these is canon.)

I agree, but that doesn’t really make resources not expansion-specific.

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It’s not about the strength, it’s about the fashion. Style’s change!

Elementium was a phase. It’s all about that Laestrite now.

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This is magical.

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What you’re suggesting, would involve Blizzard doing a heavy overhaul of their professions, as messing with the underlying mechanics of the mats will eventually affect the items that one can create, and so on.

I, for one, support your idea wholeheartedly, as I love professions, and I want them to go back to being as expansive as they were in the past, when specializations were around. Crafters helped the economy big time, and (in my opinion), it helped the community on your server as well.

Not to mention, it was a big part of RP and immersion. I miss being an armorsmith; earning the title and signet was one of the best days of WoW. I doubt players nowadays would have the patience for a fourth of what we did then, which is one of the main reasons I want it back now.

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I think that’s something that we might just have to deal with - there’s something nice about gaining patience. If there’s anything this year’s taught me it’s that.

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It’s weird they constantly come out with resources but continue to devalue professions.

I guess it’s a little better this expansion, but it certainly hasn’t been the trend.

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Not sure many would want to have to farm 100 different zones for mats.

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as in all cases where something doesn’t really make sense: just assume a wizard did it

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10

It is kinda weird that elementium, the ore that made deathwings armor that basically made him an unstoppable juggernaut that requires a huge amount of energy to pierce,

Is weaker than some random ore we just find on an island

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11

Agreed. That lack of continuity does seem jarring.

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Just to spit ball a few ideas on profession improvements:

I’ve always felt that since professions like Blacksmithing, Leatherworking and Engineering have patterns for their items, they could use those same templates with different ore and mineral in mind.

For example, the Copper Mace. It requires material you have access to (Copper), a material you can buy or find (Cloth), and ingredients (Flair) that fit the weapon design (in the case of the Copper Mace, Weak Flux to remove impurities).

Blizzard recently added a fourth slot, Optional Reagents. This can be a piece to raise (or lower) item level, or a missive for creating your item with specific secondary stats.

They can take this base template of four requirements, and apply it to every category for that profession: Knives, Swords, Helmets, Shields, etc. This way, old school recipes are maintained, and we can keep professions relevant by making weird, yet useful, items out of mixing old mats with new mats.

Let me simplify with an example: Frost Tiger Blade requires Steel (Mat #1), Jade (Mat #2), and Frost Oil (Flair), with an Optional Reagent slot. It makes a katana. I currently have Sinvyr Ore, Jade, and Frost Oil, with a modern Missive. Frost Rapier Blade in the house!

Alchemy should be THE most random and fun profession out there. Blizzard needs to take a page from ESO: let users mix together all the ingredients and go for broke. You may make an invisibility spell, or an elixir of invulnerability…or you may make a mana regen potion that turns you into a berserker that can’t cast spells for bit :laughing:

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Exactly - especially one that is said to have the qualities of taffy. Like you can pull and stretch it - that doesn’t seem…great.

Elementium however, is that super rare mineral that’s like…pure elemental energy in crystalized form. We’ve had it ever since classic!

But hey, even if you end up farming 100 different zones, imagine if the bars required aren’t like…an insane amount. like you don’t need 300 osmenite to craft those pants - just a couple bars from here, a little flux from there, and so on…you could stockpile pretty easily, and you wouldn’t have an issue with overfarming a single zone!

AND you’d see more people out in the old world!

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The world soul memory of the iron we mined back in vanilla.

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15

Yeah this has bugged me for a long time now. Like in real life, even on the most sophisticated crafts sometimes all you need is the IRL equivalent of a cheap [Copper Bolt]. It makes no sense that everything must be made with the materials you most recently stumbled across.

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Easy solution there is to buy finished parts off of lowbies who will be in those zones on the AH, giving them a reason to work on their professions while leveling and a way to collect some extra cash to use at cap.

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17

This is the cost of eternal growth. A lot of the classic RPG progression denominators just can’t work.

And it’s far more than the materials and crafting. It’s… everything. For instance, let’s take BfA’s Various Pirates. You mean to tell me that these random motley soggy thieves are supposed to pose any kind of legitimate threat to world traveling, plane-hopping, god killing superheroes like us? …

Yeah, that makes 0 sense.

Problem is, there just aren’t all that many believable threats at our experience level. There are only so many evil deities, so many demon armies, extra-dimensional conquerors, ancient anathemas, and existential inversions to contend with. The Epic Level Handbook only has so much content.

In the end, if there’s to be any variety at all, any life to anything going forward, we have to allow for far more suspension of disbelief in terms of “power” and “competition” than in most other iterations of the genre. We have to be willing to go from slaying Cosmic Overgods to fighting pirates, or witches, or whatever else the next expansion brings without thinking too much about how little sense it makes from the purview of progression.

It’s jarring, yes, but it’s something we have to make peace with. I think we can agree that Pyrite makes absolutely no sense as a “super” material after having crafting from the metallic blood of an antediluvian eldritch horror, but that’s just the nature of the game. In crafting, and in all other things.

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I think it would’ve been interesting if they stopped power creep at say the Lich King, with the baddies following him being roughly on the same level as him and the Scourge and the expansions after WotLK being horizontal instead of vertical (e.g. don’t increase level cap, just add more things to do across all level ranges and polish the game as a whole).

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19

Well, the fact that this thread exists suggests differently.

The linear power progression from one expansion to the next is canonically more like a zig-zagging diagonal line. Gameplay =/= canon.

Gameplay =/= canon.

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Sure, but there have certainly been enemies that are technically more powerful than the Lich King regardless. Like even if the expansion’s content didn’t really convey it well, Deathwing was probably on a whole more dangerous, as were multiple characters in Legion. They could’ve held off on that escalation for quite some time without it negatively impacting the game I think.

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