I have encountered some problems with sub special specializations in alchemy and herbalism that make them feel useless and/or a waste of knowledge.
Advanced potion research and advanced phial research. The sub specs only increase your chance of discovering new recipes, once you have unlocked all the recipes, the sub spec is useless so if you spent knowledge on it, the points are effectively wasted. If you didn’t spend points on it, which hopefully you didn’t, it’s completely useless to spec into. The 20 knowledge points and mats aren’t worth the 2% inspiration you get. If I was speaking to a new player I would recommend not spending any talent points on these sub specs. I think to make this sub spec worth taking, have it permanently modify skill.
Cultivation. This also feels like a waste of 40 points for this sub spec. It allows you to gather seeds at an increased rate. However, I am currently sitting on 38 seeds because the spawn rates on rich soil are so low that I can never use most of them. Again, I would not recommend anyone take this sub specialization. To fix this sub spec I would recommend vastly increasing the number of rich soil spawns or creating an area in Valdraken or Ruby Life Pools where we can use our excess seeds.
Transmutation is a useful sub spec but it lacks utility, it should grant the ability to transmute to primal order not just from it.
Knowledge needs to be resettable. There should be an option to reset knowledge points so that wasted points can be utilized since the crafting system is completely gated by renown/rep farming and weekly knowledge caps. As players have stated over and over, we don’t like being locked into bad choices and we like don’t months long time gated systems. The crafting system being gated and locked like it is won’t effect player retention, it just makes the game less fun. You should reconsider either removing the weekly knowledge caps or allowing crafters to respec once a week or biweekly with either a large gold penalty or a small loss of knowledge.
Advanced experimentations are totally worth it. Lowered CD + increased inspiration; especially since Alchemy has no means (that I know of) to guarantee rank 3 phials and potions. Once you’re “done” spending artisan’s mettle on other things, this is basically free money.
They’re not free money because they don’t just cost metal, you’re either ignorant or just lying to try to be right. They cost metal, omnium draconis, and alchemical solution that you get from reclaiming potions.
If you’ve picked up herbalism like damn near every alchemist out there, omnium draconis is not hard to come by, and rank 2 suffices. The dragon’s alchemical solution: what do you think people are doing with the 5,000 rank 1 potions that come from dirt piles/explorer’s packs? Effectively, the only “cost” is the draconis, and all it takes is one rank 3 phial proc to already make a profit, depending on the phial.
I’ve been doing this on my alchemist all expansion. I’ve both sold equivalent amount of herbs as to what the draconis would cost and experimentation, and I’ve made far more money from the experiments. I won’t have to pay for a sub for a couple of years.
But please, continue to call my own empirical information ignorant.
The advanced experimentations are quite useless. I wasted 40 points in advanced phial experimentation thinking I needed the advanced experiments to learn all the recipes. You don’t. I had no real trouble learning the potion recipes with the basic potion experimentation. That’s 40 points I’ll never get back.
You get the inspiration buff, plus some inspiration points here and there on the way through the tree. I think as the expansion ages, the price difference between ** and *** products will widen, as people demand “only the best”, and inspiration is the only thing that will net more 3 star procs.
So I’ve been doing this a lot actually. Once I went on a string if 20 something research without blowing up. You can just buy up all the mats you need to make it, and burn mettle until it’s gone, sell everything and easily make 100-400% of your gold back. It’s a no-lose situation.
Why would you waste omnium draconis on experimentation getting random phials and potions when you could just use them to craft something useful like cauldons or elemental potion of power every time? Metal is also better spent on orbs. But hey, play how you like just don’t expect the rest of us to be stupid with you.
Because literally everything in every prof is a loss if you craft it yourself. Like literally everything, people are selling at huge losses. This experimentation is the only thing I’ve seen that isn’t like that.
You can’t compare wasting one on a phial that is PROBABLY going to be a 2 star phial and getting 50g back for the 100g you spent. It’s dumb. The experimentation, on average gives you way more 3 star phials. Also doubles of 3 star sometimes. You could make 800g on one craft.
is essentially correct, and you’d see that if you played with other profs. Whether it’s “meta” or appropriate if you’re trying to be entirely self-sufficient is beside the point, or at least, not the point people seem to be trying to make here.
It also seems like every profession has some “dead” talent trees; at least tailoring seems to. Even then, they’re not 100% useless.
You act like I’m asking blizzard to remove advanced phial and potion research, I’m not. I’m suggesting they they improve the sub spec, not the spell that you get for knowledge point 20.
Not everyone crafts to sell stuff on the AH, that’s not why I do it. I took this spec because I thought I needed it to discover certain recipes I wanted, turns out I didn’t. So for me and many other players it’s useless. For me it is a waste of time to burn resources using advanced research on a crapshoot. I use all the mats I farm to craft cauldrons for raids. I don’t want the extra step of using advance research to sell the pots/phials then buying what I need on the AH. It’s a waste of time.
Great, you like it, but your wrong if you think it’s good for most players and shouldn’t be improved. Wouldn’t you like 20 points more in skill? Your literally arguing against making the sub spec better.
Also, all recipes are profitable if you gather the herbs yourself.
I think Blizzard should give people a one-time respec of professions to eliminate any mistakes they may have made, which I imagine that most people made. They seem to not want to do that for some reason. But if they do ever rework a sub spec it would come with a respec option anyway. So, I dunno, maybe in 10.1.