This expansion I decided to focus on professions as I was mostly done with high level raiding and my old mythic+ team weren’t playing.
I have every profession covered and I will be finishing the skill trees on all of them except blacksmith before the end of July.
I haven’t focussed on making money because sitting in trade advertising is not my thing. And making the best money depends on having the best recipes soon after they are released at the start of the expansion or in a major content patch.
So in 10.1 I decided to go looking for recipes by doing lfr and joining some old raid friends runs occasionally. I was out rolled for the blacksmithing pattern I wanted twice in lfr. I saw the people who won the rolls put the pattern on the AH for 500,000 gold. I spoke to one of the people auctioning (not in a hostile way) and all they had done in blacksmithing was to train the profession and had very few skill points. If they sold the recipe they will have made more money from the profession system from one dice roll than I have from fully developed professions.
So for 10.2 there are some consistent items of feedback like a catch-up mechanism and a one-off option to respec points - I can’t list them all. This late into the expansion I’m interested in what feedback you would give in time for 10.2.
The feedback I would give is :-
i) don’t make new recipes or new materials ‘rare’ - often this is fixed after some weeks - the peak regearing time after a new patch in the first 2-4 weeks - so late fixes do not work - make it part of the design for the start of a new patch
ii) make the drops of recipes in raids more frequent
iii) as well as new good recipes that are raid drops or bought over time from some currency add come new core profession items
iv) some professions have really boring products of what used to be signature items - for example the inscription trinkets are mostly useless - they used to fill an early trinket role - but not this time - the alchemy trinkets aren’t great either. Given these are signature items for both these professions it makes them not so useful as professions. Some new core trinkets (or redesigned existing ones) would be good for 10.2.
v) Most of the standard armor for bs, lw and tailoring are rarely used - though with the ability to craft close to max level items every 2 weeks that may change later in this patch cycle. It would be used more if you could use the catalyst on them - but I know there are reasons for not doing that. But maybe in the longer term some crafting set bonuses or something to make them more appealing.
Professions have been a major feature of this expansion. There are some good things but in its present form it will be scrapped. Implementation has been the problem. I’d rather some effort and feedback instead to make a version two of a skill tree based profession system for the next expansion.
I hate the Dragonflight profession revamp. Hate it.
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Most people I know who have dabbled in professions over the last decade plus, dont wish to participate in this incarnation or have dropped their professions for gathering. Its too complicated for most people and too time consuming for the buyer that just wants to buy the item off of the auction house and return to playing the game.
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A small portion of the playerbase seems to really dig it, but does that matter when you have effectively removed crafting as a time eating side game for the majority of your playerbase that used to participate in it?
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Id call that an absolute failure.
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That doesnt even address the broken public work order system which may as well not even exist. I mean, when the most efficient way to level your profession is 2 points every month through the Darkmoon Faire…you done messed up designing the system.
You know what sucks about crafting in DF? Getting all the mats together, placing a generous tip down for a crafting order, and seeing a 3 or 4 star craft pop up. Just feels like .
I get the mats. Then ask in trade for a rank 5 of whatever I am after. Usually get a couple of whispers back. One is usually from a person with maxed crafters for every profession. Occasionally I will use him, but I’m more interested in the others that I haven’t used before.
One or two quick sentences. Usually to ask how much they want for the insight. (Required to get rank 5.) Then submit the order and… done.
Been pretty painless and quick. For alts with sparks I will take someone that can do rank 2 or 3. Because I don’t care at this point. I figure might as well give someone the first craft point.
For what it’s worth. I actually like the system. I’m not even close to finishing off my points. Mostly because the grind… is a grind and I’ve given up on it. (Most of my chars are double gather mine/herb. I have an Engineer that I will eventually max out. The tailor/enchanter and alchemist will probably never max out KP.) I’ll eventually max everything out with the weekly points and DMF for my gathering chars. In the beginning I tried to work out the best path and the optimal place to put points. Now I don’t care. I pick a wheel or a branch and just put points in until it is full and then move onto the next.
They should have just cut all the required Knowledge Points in half and called it good. Along with giving people an easier path to max out Prof points, since this is the first expansion with this system. Then next expansion they could have moved more towards the system they have now.
With that said… I don’t think I will ever level a crafting profession through DL after this expansion is over. For OCD people looking to finish off DL professions later on… good luck with that.
In my opinion (posting concerning my alt Mist) this is so far beyond a revamp! I am SOOOO struggling to just get leveled to 75. The amount to time to level your ‘skill’ but beyond that leveling Knowledge, this could be a game in itself for self immolating peeps? Having alts… OMG… for me, just MY opinion if Blizz just did 50% ‘revamp’… like Legion… but this is like Trigonometry … I didn’t take that in college. I bet the children in China are mastering this! I keep seeing videos of what very young children are learning… Math! …just an aside.
I’m just out here frustrated,… looking for others frustrated so I don’t feel so alone. All my 5 toons now in DF… except for my main Alchemist (so far the easiest? kinda) to level up… the technicality of leveling knowledge/skill …how can Blizz not know this… unless they want their players to suffer… hmmm… could that be true? Nah…can’t be?
Try checking your unlearned recipes! I think every crafting prof except like leatherworking has a non spark/mettle way to get to 100. Scribes have the rolling pin, tailoring has the fishing hat, blacksmithing has the master’s hammer, JC has gems or the hoards, enchanting has the illusions or the weapon enchants, I guess engi and alch you kinda sorta have to spec out of the way into bombs/research in order to get to 100. At least with alch you’ll probably want to spec it anyway for the bonus it gives when it backfires.
Thank you for the pointers, I am leveled up mostly on my main, Alchemy. Inscription is where my frustration came from… when you really have no way to level up except those ‘orange’ level up items that cost so much, are bind on pick up, and you really have no peeps to make them for. I have my alts to help out quests.
Some of the mats are expensive to make many parts too. Sometimes it’s cheaper for me to buy others mats on AH… then even make them. This may have always been a thing. Again, thank you for the pointers I will look closer at that.
For inscription try getting the rolling pin recipe from the artisan’s consortium rep if you have gotten that up. It’s ~2k per craft and it’s orange up to 90, yellow to 95, so it’s maybe 40-50k to max inscription from 65 if you get literally 0 orders from other people
I also don’t like professions in DF, and I was the one who was excited after seeing the initial presentation of them. They’ve become too grindy and timegated. It’s kind of fine if you’re a blacksmith and making items for yourself, but if you want to start making any gold, especially if you started late - it’s hard to compete with people who have fully specced trees and highest rank unlocked. The lower ranked crafts are selling for 10% of the mats cost at best. Much more effective to just sell rough mats.
Past expansions professions were much easier to get going. At least consumables. I had the most popular recipes after a week or two and could sell stuff for decent passive gold.
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