Professions are unnecessarily complicated for consumables

Gameplay Professions
1

I manage a raiding guild, and have done for over a decade, taking care of the guild bank & finances, people management, etc. while my officers run the raids. For the first time, I’m actually jealous of the raid leader. With every reagent and every consumable having so many tiers of quality, it genuinely feels impossible to run a useful and functional guild bank without making it my full time job.

I usually manage the guild bank with the help of a spreadsheet I make, so I can plug in the cost of reagents and determine whether it’s cheaper to buy a finished item, or have it crafted. Unfortunately, with the current system, even something as simple as stocking health potions for raid night is now nightmarish.

First, with everything having 3 levels of quality, if I want to have an “at a glance” set up with favourites, I need to favourite 3 different quality potions, 3 different quality herbs, 2 versions of the Air reagent (because is it cheaper to buy Robust or Awakened?), and 3 different quality vials, as well as knowing how much the vendor cost of vials would be. Ideally I’d just be able to favourite one tier of each, but prices can vary drastically and for a lot of things the lowest tier isn’t consistently the cheapest; several times, it was cheaper to get the top tier item than the low tier one.

Next I need to evaluate how many items I can reasonably expect to get from a recipe craft; when we used to have alchemists with “flask” spec or “potion” spec, the proc rates would be consistent enough that I could apply a fixed % increase on my calculations. Now, there’s so many modifiers, and so little information on precisely how it affects the recipe yields, I can’t even assume the recipe is going to give as many as it states when viewed in the guild professions interface.

Finally, I would normally do some very basic maths (or very basic spreadsheet formulae) to determine whether it’s cheaper to craft or buy the completed item. Right now, with so many variables, I don’t think I can actually even calculate that.

That’s just trying to get health potions stocked up. Repeat for mana potions, combat potions, gems, enchants, personal food, feasts, weapon enhancements, etc. and it quickly induces an anxiety attack.

On top of that, as a skinner, I find I suddenly have no bag space, because even with a new gathering bag, I have 3 different versions of everything. I’m certainly glad I’m not running two gathering professions, and playing a class that only needs to carry at most 2 sets of gear. My sympathy goes out to all druids at this time.

What I would like to see changed is the removal of quality tiers from basic reagents and consumable items. Keep it on crafted equippable items like armor and weapons, so the spec choices, optional reagents, crafting gear, and crafter’s skill level change the quality (ilvl/stats) of the equipment created. It would be a compromise that allows those things to have a meaningful impact, without making everyone carry 3x the reagents around, and without reducing the speed of the AH to a crawl.

I don’t expect I’m the only person to find the current level of complication for something like buying potions feels unreasonable and unnecessary. I hope something is changed soon to make professions less anxiety-inducing both as a user and as a crafter.

12 Likes
2

Well said.

The quality tiers for consumables does not make a lot of sense. I can understand it for armor crafter’s for different gear ilvls, but for consumables it’s just overwhelming on so many levels.

Trying to keep a guild stocked with consumables is a huge burden right now and I am surprised more people aren’t voicing their concerns and frustrations. I think the idea of the new trade skill system is neat, but I think it has its flaws and some things need to change. Starting with removing tiers from consumables, get rid of the 4 hour cool down on the alchemy table from explosions to start. Trying to get potions and flask for personal use let alone crafting them for the guild is extremely difficult, time consuming, and expensive.

2 Likes
3

the worst offender has to be the discovery system but the altar of decay at the end of a dungeon is up there… i mean what the hell i have to keep an m0 lockout with the dungeon cleared just for it. thats silly

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4

Honestly, having further thought about it, I’m starting to think the quality system is completely redundant. I thought keeping it on gear would be fair but if the ilvl is directly linked to the quality, what’s the point in the quality marker at all? When I’m searching the AH for gear, I’m not looking at quality, I’m looking at ilvl. When someone’s inspecting my gear, they don’t give a crap about quality, they’re looking at ilvl. At that point, why keep quality at all, just let the ilvl do the talking.

2 Likes
5

add enchanting to that…3 ranks of enchants is stupid

i said it in another topic but the ranking kills the whole crafting , remove it

for gear MATRIX is there u know and ppl still need to specialize in slots.

1 Like
6

Tldr: OP turned the game into a spreadsheet and their head exploded.

7

They’re just kind of unnecessarily complicated in general.

Even for armor and weapons, it’s not necessarily obvious what “Quality: Fat Topaz” versus “Quality: 4 diamonds” means at a glance. And even then, from the buyer’s perspective, the materials are the same, except with a percentage chance to get Fat Topaz versus 4 diamonds or versus 3 diamonds. So unless you yourself have done some crafting, it’s not really obvious what quality you’re going to get, even though you’re spending what are essentially the same materials.

That means the game essentially boils down to either trying to micromanage cheaper materials to get quality 1 items, or just making sure that you buy highest-quality mats for everything.

Even then, I gave somebody highest-quality mats, but didn’t know their skill was capped at Quality 3 instead of Quality 5 - the materials cap at 3, so why would I think there was Quality 4 Diamonds and Fat Topaz for the thing I’m buying? So I trusted the crafter was going to return the highest quality possible, whereas the crafter trusted that I knew what I was after by getting a Quality 3 item, and even though neither of us were trying to scam each other, both of us were wrong.

If all of this was inherently obvious to you, then that’s great, but I guarantee you there are lots of us out there making mistakes like this despite trying to be careful, lol.

8

Im clueless when it comes to profession and the crafting thing they have . Ive done hundreds of quests and cant get cooking past 60 same with leather working. Cant find recipes either. Why do i only have stam recipes or stam low agility / intelect. And no skill ups. Im completely lost.

9

You can manage a raiding guild but can’t wrap your head around quality levels. I don’t know. Call me a tad skeptical.

10

This harkens back to classic alchemy labs for Flasks being in Blackwing Lair.

1 Like
11

you got to get lucky in fishing, sometimes you get these bottles that gives recipes. Or get lucky with the community feast event… It kind of sucks because i have a char who has recipes from the community feast but i have no desire to max cooking on. I wish i could just give my main character the recipe

12

Those cooking recipes from fishing can also be obtained from a quest chain for the Tuskarr that unlocks at renown 11.

1 Like
13

oh nice, im getting close to that on the character i want it on :slightly_smiling_face:

14

this , u get 1 recipe for leveling , and it can proc another recipe

the main issue for cooking is the recipe from fortune cookies…ugh is overpriced atm , and if u buy cookies the % is low