Profession Catch Up Mechanics Needed NOW:

Community General Discussion
1

Because of the changes made to Professions in Dragonflight, we need a catch-up Mechanic for the perks. It seems both unduly harsh and over the top that a player that decides to invest in their profession is essentially locked into it ‘forever’.

I’ll use my Alchemist for an Example. Right now they have mastered everything for Alchemy except for the Potion Mastery stuff. Yet if I want to level another class, or start a new Alchemist now; I am looking at 120+ Talent Points that I cannot grind out, and I cannot ‘buy’ from the Vulpera NPC.

This effectively ‘locks’ me into playing a specific class as the effort to create a new one is absurd. Adding insult to injury, these extra points are also time-gated meaning I would need to spend upward to 9 weeks before catching up.

Not even gearing a player has this type of insane turn-around. Please address this and force the game to remember player’s talent choices when they drop a profession for one. Asking a player to start over from scratch in the Dragonflight Profession bracket is flat out unconscionable and predatory game-design.

Also for a second request please remove the cap on how many of the skill up items we can find each week. If I want to Grind Herbs until I catch up, that is my prerogative and Blizzard gating it to 7-8 a week is flat wrong.

Finally, we need a means to trade Flightstones for Draconic Stones, and Barter Bricks need to be account bound as well as easier to find. I have only found 4-5 in all the time I’ve played this month out in the game world. Having them only gained from Weekly Quests is not cutting it.

You guys really need to up your game.

25 Likes
2

Blizzard doesn’t care. They’d rather hold this game hostage by timegating everything. They want to roadblock everything with this so they can sunk cost people into valuing spending money.

Profession skill point timegate is one of the things that knocked me off DF. The other is gearing isn’t meaningful it’s just cheesing timegate as progression. Weekly vault + raid lockouts make it not worth playing with others.

I was doing AH stuff because it’s not worth it to deal with others over timegate. Blizzard probably saw people chasing AH grind as the thing big thing™ to timegate. It’s their one stop shop of a solution for trying to force people to value paying in their game via sunk cost fallacy.

All this timegate garbage does is make me want to only stay f2p and pay for sub time with tokens via gold, and not want to deal with others in this game (not interactive doing chores over timegate proc for gear). It’s 2023, not 2004, people know the song and dance of timegate pressuring people to force players valuing something when the content itself is worthless.

8 Likes
3

no, it doesn’t. you can easily craft stuff for your other character

1 Like
4

Yeah it’s time for some sort of catch-up. I’m in the same boat I have a couple toons I’d like to switch to Alchemy for the toxic healing potion perks but it’s a months long process

4 Likes
5

A new toon will always be sveral weeks behind due to what the OP is talking about, no catch-up for professions. There are 9 knowledge a week locked behind the quests, and no way to grind them out. So yes a new toon could make stuff via Orders, they won’t be able to make the s2 stuff since they don’t have the knowledge level. :see_no_evil::hear_no_evil::speak_no_evil:

6 Likes
6

There it is. I knew that eventually one of that type of person would show up in time. The sort of person who’s logic is “I have to oppose this but can’t give a legitimate reason why”.

What Kb said is outright incorrect. It does.

By contrast, what Fluffergyrl has said is the core of the issue and ultimately the correct response. We need the ability to get profession knowledge on an unlimited basis. If a player wants to grind and do the work for it, that’s their right and decision.

Speaking on a different subject that connects to this one, it should not be Blizzard’s right, nor business; to put a hard cap how much the player does, ever. We are paying for full access to this game. Not limited access or even access with a cap on it.

I have 2 Alchemists now, and I believe it’s complete bullcrap that one is fully set up but the other (the character I now play) will never be able to catch up to my other character, and a lot of that is due to balance issues that seem to change dependent on which class screams the hardest to Blizzard, or tends to be their favorite (looking at you Frost Mages).

I based all of this off my personal experiences with this character. This character is on a different server. My primary Alchemist is on WRA.

Yet despite what Kb said, my primary Alchemist CANNOT send mail to this character on Moon Guard, even though Cross Faction / Server mail is supposed to be a thing.

We have gear catch up during new patches, and we need Profession Catch-up before the next patch. If that means Blizzard makes an item that we can buy for Flightstones or more preferably for all that Elemental Overflow we’ve got now (seriously what is the point of doing Elemental Invasions in Season 2? No one does them and why would they?), that would solve this issue quickly and succinctly as it needs to be.

Oh and said item absolutely MUST be Account Bound.

These kinds of shenanigans need to stop.

6 Likes
7

They should absolutely do this, and it wouldn’t hurt the long time crafters either because they still have the RNG patterns.

1 Like
8

Professions is a stupid new system.

6 Likes
9

Oh I’ll tell you, to farm the ridiculously low drop rate Elemental Lariat recipe, which makes one of, if not the strongest necks for a lot of specs. Too bad 10.1 made it so only one Storm was up for 2 hours. By far one of the most messed up part of Dragonflight crafting.

Crafting Orders being server-specific is insane too. I’ve made zero profit off of Leatherworking cause nobody does those orders on my realm group.

All in all;, everything about DF professions is objectively predatory.

4 Likes
10

Don’t get me wrong. I like the idea of specializations. My Warrior is a master Axe Crafter and it’s a cool RP idea. But at the same time, I am a realist on this matter and the realist in me says this crap has to change. Not Soon™. Now. Like next patch cycle.

A item that can be bought for Elemental Overflow would do it and incentivize running them.

The fact is, when you get to the middle of an expansion or don’t give players a way to recoup their profession points either because Blizzard intentionally changed something, or something was not working as intended and so legitimate players that don’t abuse exploits abstained from it (looking at you Potion / Phial Experimentation Bug), you failed at your task as a Developer. That happens in game design, but even so the players should not be punished for it.

We need a means to buy Profession Knowledge that is not done with Artisans Mettle. We need the limit on gathering skill up items removed with prejudice. We also need assurances if this is how Professions will be going forward in the game, that this will never happen again.

I would challenge any Developer to give a logical and honest explanation to all of us on the reason why a Alchemist who drops Alchemy, to learn another profession; but later comes back to Alchemy magically forgets ALL their profession knowledge? Seems a bit dumb for any game in 2023.

That doesn’t seem like a very intelligent design especially given how time-gated it is. It does seem very predatory however, and given how Blizzard is known for changing things on a whim ‘because’, it becomes intolerable and unacceptable at a certain point.

5 Likes
11

The cloth generation bug was hilarious, but they didn’t do anything about that. I made like 1000 bags early on.

12

Exactly, but they claimed that they were going to do something about the people who were abusing the Phial Experiment bug. The point and problem is that the people who enriched themselves off it got away with it, while the people that chose to play by the rules got shafted for the hundredth time.

3 Likes
13

Yeah, it really is a bad showing by Blizzard. Heck I didn’t know it wasn’t how the system worked until I figured out I was making too many cloth and I figured out how to reproduce it.

I did profit quite nicely off of this “bug”… “exploit”

That is the motto around here: exploit early and exploit often!

1 Like
14

I actually agree with op about having a profession catch up mechanic. I started late in the patch and so i am behind most. Would be nice to be able to farm and catch up to everyone.

4 Likes
15

The profession timegate and the gear catch up is why my alts don’t matter.

The time sink involved in leveling their professions is arduous, and, as others have said, they’d be behind for a very long time.

With the gear catch up mechanics, I have no need for them to “keep up”. I have 5? 6? 70’s right now, but just play Piddy. I can drag and drop and get almost 400 gear on any of my alts right now. When the next patch hits, I’ll be able to probably drag and drop 430 gear. Nothing prevents me from skipping tiers. And there’s no need for the toons to “do anything”. I don’t need rep for them, since I don’t need recipes, since I don’t do professions.

I just dropped out of the DF professions.

All that said, I really like playing in the Dragon Isles. I do the events, still, even though I have rep, I have gear. But I like soup, I like hunts, I like the game play.

There’s just no reason to reset and do it on another toon. In the end, when the next expansion is about to hit, they’ll all get better gear than I would probably have just for bonking bosses or whatever for a week straight.

In SL, I had to play the alts if I wanted to work the covenants, and see those aspects of the story. In BfA I had to run a horde and alliance toon to see both sides of the story. Here? I can see everything on my Warlock. No story need to play anything else.

And professions just exacerbate that because I’m not the type that would want to run my cloud of alts, every week, to do their “chores” to keep up on profession points. I’m more a “put one alt away, and play another for 3 months”.

But FOMO exists, and I’d hate to “be behind”. So I don’t even start.

2 Likes
16

What happened to buying knowledge stuff from the vendor? Doesn’t that “catch” them up to a certain extent?

17

Each patch so far introduced another set of purchaseable knowledge. Just do renowns, get currencies, buy rep knowledge.

1 Like
18

You can’t do that. Instead, you spend extra knowledge points to buy Artisan’s Mettle.

Which is completely backwards from what most people need.

2 Likes
19

You absolutely can do that. I just don’t know how much of a help it is to get into what people want.

20

Oh you’re referring to that old vendor? He sells 3 knowledge items that can only be purchased once. It’s no catchup system. I bought those on my gathering and crafting toons. Still got a long way to go.

2 Likes