There are a lot of posts in here talking about how we need to be able to respec professions but not a lot of discussion on why respeccing would be terrible long term, so I’ll dive in to it.
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Why do people feel like they need a respec?
- Because knowledge gains are limited and spending them is permanent.
- To make specializations significant, the amount of knowledge we gain has to be limited so that we can’t just learn everything at immediately. It creates an environment where no one person is going to be the end-all crafter for a profession for at least the next few weeks. This means that the market is more competitive because people have to decide on their own crafting niche, which reduces the number of people competing and driving the price down.
- Knowledge gains have to be permanent, otherwise it erases the niche that specializations create. If we can respec it would mean the best way to work a profession is to constantly respec for the bonuses to each craft. I could start out blacksmithing in smelting alloys, smelt a few hundred of each, then respec to armorsmithing and craft my chest piece, then spec into weaponsmithing and craft my mace.
- Allowing respecs undermines the best part of the system; the specializations. Normally at the start of expansions one of the most reliable ways to make gold with professions is gathering and Darkmoon Decks. Everything else is crafted so easy and by so many people that the window for profitability is tiny and prices race to the floor. Now there are a number of different competitive markets because we have to specialize. The profitability window is much longer because the supply is constrained.
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There are pain points
- There is a very high knowledge burden, and it’s fronted loaded because knowledge comes most swiftly early on. You’re presented with a dozen choices you need to make before you’ve really seen what all of the options are.
- This could be solved by having a little more in game guidance on the crafting UI. Tips showing how to see what recipes are locked where, or more apparent warnings that knowledge points are permanent so you need to look through the trees.
- Because knowledge is permanent, you can work yourself into a corner easily. Specializing in Hammer Control Blacksmithing looks like the best way to make the best equipment, but doing so first locks you out of the recipes in the Armor and Weapon smithing trees, and other recipes are available as rare drops or much later in the renown grind.
- This problem will solve itself over time as knowledge gains increase, but there should be more transparency on what is time gated and what is still available to you for the time being. The journal is the perfect place for this, and there is even a line in the Mining journal, but it needs to be more apparent than nested 3 clicks deep.
- Some professions are buggy, with things like Discoveries for Alchemy being turned off. This means some players are locked out of progression for reasons outside of their control, and they can’t just choose to specialize in something else. Some others like Engineering are either bugged or very RNG dependent and it isn’t easy to tell this early in the expansion.
- A solution would be making discoveries 100% with the correct specialization, or adding a progress bar to the journal that shows how close you are to your next discovery. I have a friend who has crafted more than 40 engineering pieces with only 1 bracer discovery, and we’re now left wondering if it’s bugged or just bad luck.
- There is a very high knowledge burden, and it’s fronted loaded because knowledge comes most swiftly early on. You’re presented with a dozen choices you need to make before you’ve really seen what all of the options are.
By the time Blizzard could implement a respec system that still respects the benefits of the system, the largest problems will be solved because of the knowledge that has accumulated over time. I think the error Blizzard has made has been being less transparent about the knowledge time gates that are built in to the game. They have said that it takes significant time and gold investment to progress a profession, but the opaqueness around the amount of restriction time gating is putting in place takes agency away from players. When you’re leveling you see knowledge gains frequently because of first crafts or gathering items, and those gains abruptly end and leaves the player feeling like they’ve made specialization mistakes based on the assumption that their gains would continue at the same rate.