Professions Revival

Community WoW Community Council
1

I think most people can agree that while WoW has many things that remain set in stone it would seem that certain things fall at the way side and while most of that stuff is okay I think a huge part of what makes an MMORPG at least for the RPG part is professions.

I have been an engineer on my main toon forever mainly because it has been the most useful thing inside PvP scenarios (Glider, Frost grenades, Invis belt, Stealth goggles) like Wpvp and Bgs. I think the main reason most people choose each profession is how it applies to what they plan on doing in the game. For me personally I will probably always be an Engineer on at least 3 different characters for the PvP and Alchemist for situational potions and PvE stuff. This has left me with almost no room on my main to do any farming and while that is easily solvable by making an alt to just collect herbs and mine I think that the easiest solution for how the current game shapes out to be would be to at the very least add a 3rd slot for a gathering profession. Now for some that might be something they don’t want and maybe they want triple gathering and that would be fine with me. I just think as long as we have these simple QOL changes professions really needs to be at the top of that list.

Crafting gear. I think gear disparity has been a huge problem for people for a few expansions and while we have had good crafting gear it always really comes from either PvP or Crafted rings/Necks and that has been fine but it feels like every patch pushes that crafting gear aside to do absolutely nothing with it later in the expansion except for maybe JCs. I think that BFA had alot of good ideas especially when it came to crafted gear being actually good and I think they really need to bring that back.

Profession specific items. I think that BFA again had a good idea when it came to profession specific items like the Engineer Uber Spanner which I probably crafting instantly and used it about 20 times. I think the certain moments of seeing someone use something specific to their profession has really vanished entirely besides chasing someone and they use a glider. I can think of those great moments when in vanilla you would run up to someone and see they have a engineering trinket that would totally mess you up and I really hope we can create those moments again.

Timegating professions. I think most people would agree that creating X crafted material every single week to craft Y for a week CD like Titansteel, or Alchemists transmute was fun for a while but really stifles the idea of crafting a bunch of stuff instead of just logging in to use a transmute and then logging out because the CD is down has really become an ancient way for a RPG to run.

Level cap. I think that if someone wants to use a free action potion from vanilla to evade my stun they are an absolute madman and should be allowed to. I would admit some of the old school potions and engineering things I use if I didn’t think blizzard would nerf them with a level cap. If I or someone else wants to spend 20 minutes farming old school mats to get rage potions for their warriors that last thing that should happen is it becomes useless once I hit level cap or move out of the expansion range it was created in.

I think lots of people have really good ideas about what they want from professions and they forget how much they use to enjoy them because certain things have either stopped existing or gone backwards in a certain way. This post has become super long but I feel really strongly about it.

21 Likes
2

I agree with most of this, a couple of comments and other points I have:

I’m not sure what to think about a third profession slot. I think it would be pretty convenient, and I’m not sure if it’s the sort of thing that could be abused somehow (people more into the economy might know). I sort of fear it might mean everyone now has engineering on all of their characters, or 3 gathering professions to maximise their productivity at all times.

I really like (some) of the direction professions have taken in Shadowlands, particularly with optional reagents. It’s something that can make crafting relevant throughout an expansion, simply because there will always be a demand for catchup gear, and I think professions is a great way to create that. But if we’re talking about making profession gear relevant in progression/endgame again… Legendaries are crafted, and while that isn’t necessarily the issue with legendaries, a crafted piece of gear becoming BiS could have the same effect. It’s something that one would have to be very careful in implementing.

The Uber Spanner and similar things were pretty cool, I’d love to see more things like that in the future. Professions were always designed with the social element of trading in mind, so it makes sense that they’ve focused on items that you can sell to others, but when you’ve made an effort to commit to a profession; why not get something to show from that?.. As long as it doesn’t force anyone to play X profession in order to do Y activity. It should probably be limited to cosmetic and non-competetive fun items.

While archaic, I can see the reason for putting cooldowns on these sorts of things, at least from the immersive point of view. It is annoying, though, and perhaps there should be ways to accelerate the process, at the very least when the crafting is no longer relevant in the current game.

It would be a nightmare to balance most of these consumables, and if an old consumable suddenly became the strongest one, it would mean that suddenly you have players going back to old zones to farm reagents there. I don’t necessarily think the latter is a problem; I think it would be really cool if reagents from old expansions remained relevant forever, though it would potentially not be very fun to gather. Old consumables would still have to compete with new ones… so perhaps it might work out, after all? I’m a bit split on this.

So, a couple of points I’d like to add:

Recipes should be account wide. Sort of. These days I don’t have more than one blacksmith, one tailor, one scribe, et cetera, simply because I don’t want to farm recipes all over again on my alts. Now, granted, modern iterations of professions don’t usually require you to farm recipes, nor do they require you to have all of them in order to make that profession function, but that isn’t really my problem with it, either. I hate wanting to craft something, perhaps for transmog, only to realise that I don’t have that recipe on that particular alt - but I do have it on my main. It’s a minor inconvenience, I just have to relog and send my materials to my main to craft it there, or I could just acquire the recipe on my alt separately. But the thing is, some recipes are very rare, or costly, or requires a lot of work to earn. My point is; if I have already put in the effort to earn these recipes once, I would like to be able to teach my alts how to do it. Perhaps adding all known recipes to the profession trainers, or being able to craft known recipes to send to alts would be a good idea, so that there’s a slight barrier of entry to it.

Oh, and to make sure, I’m not saying professions or skill levels should be account wide, just the actual recipes they are able to craft, assuming that they have the skill level for it.

More profession-related content would also be great to have. Primarily, but not necessarily just through quests, but all sorts of content. Fishing has been able to spawn bosses in the past; let’s get new bosses to summon that way. What if cooking, or alchemy, or blacksmithing could spawn bosses a similar way? Minigames, like the noodle cart game from Mists of Pandaria, would also be very welcome.

Something that has been brought up in my community pretty frequently (I think it’s in the RP wishlist post as well) is profession stations, like the noodle carts of Mists of Pandaria. It would be neat if you could craft similar things for other professions, allowing other players to interact with it for some sort of benefit - and also just so that you’re able to show off that you’re a master in that profession and that you can share that with someone else.

5 Likes
3

I think 3rd slot for professions would have to be two crafting 1 gathering at the VERY least to not create inventory madness. Im also for everyone getting one extra bag slot of a profession only bag to just make life easier

5 Likes