So one of the things that I was thrilled about the professions for BFA was the fact that the professions themselves (Quests, Ranks, etc.) were not gated behind content that I had zero desire to do on most of my professions toons.
Come 8.1.5 it became I WAS thrilled.
What changed? Still need to PVP for honorable and sinister ranks 2 and 3?
Whatcha talking about? Most of the rank 3 stuff is exalted rep or WQ drops. Some of it is even from post exalted supply caches.
Think I’d rather have a little quest chain than having to grind out rep, and really profession leveling should be from the profession itself. They made that aspect brain dead easy but now any alts you have just for the profession have to grind out all the content.
Which in a way is a good thing. Professions should have been 2 max per server, not character. And more interdependent of one another. That would have been the foundation needed to create a real robust crafting economy. But there’s no way they can walk that one back at this point.
Goto one of these guys and see all the rank 2 and 3 stuff they sell for marks of honor (Wowhead doesn’t list the sinister stuff yet, which supplants honorable)
Here, here. Plus they’ve been “dumbed down” so much. No smelting anymore, no using mats to make components, to make items. And if you want the high-end crafted gear, you need mats from instances and raids THAT CAN REWARD EQUAL OR BETTER gear. To me, this really sends the message that the devs don’t give a damn about profs or the player base, and only really care about their jobs.
Grinding dungeons that offer no upgrades just to get materials that only drop there is not considered gated content?
Its ALL gated content. Doesn’t matter if you have to wait for a cooldown, run a dungeon, buy materials off of the AH, or kill a million mobs. Blizzard is going to make you “earn” the item in question beyond paying them cash for the privillage of logging into the game and pushing a button.
Would you rather speed-run a dungeon you out-gear or spend a week grinding mobs in Voludun for a low drop chance of the materials? Ideally, enough players will be using the LFG tool to make the system “feel alive”, at least for the week or two it takes everyone to craft the tools of the trade items. Worst case, a few more players queuing for m0 which helps players who aren’t interested in m+.
Higher rank recipes are mostly gated behind PVP or rep. Yea gotta do dungeons for some of the mats though.