'Professions' system

I try to ignore its existence. It’s needlessly complex and makes me seek out and interact with ridiculous egos to use it. Blizzard has no incentive to make it better and every incentive to make it cost more, so I’ll just get the loot from dungeons and forget crafting.

As was the case throughout DF, even the mere step of allowing a quality lock on public crafting orders would at the very least make it functional as a system without requiring me to talk to idiots, but until that point, I’ll just do without.

7 Likes

Mats are nothing when you can reach the priority on big tickets crafts and double the profits. It’s the same even on classic. Selling Bolts instead of cloth would save 10 minutes to someone mass producing bags, they would buy those to put bags up for sale quicker. You can literally just fish to obtain bolts of cloths, it’s easy profit.

Your fault if you can’t understand economy or see how to make deals.

How base.
Money will turn someone you know into someone you don’t.

I am talking about a system that employs gold farming bots and RMT buyers that edges other players out of the system. Money is not an issue, but I didn’t expect to run into a PTW system in WoW.

1 Like

I love the new system. It feels really rewarding to progress though quality levels as you make different items. I do think it has a learning curve, but every area of this game has a learning curve.

Definitely is a very systems-heavy mini-game and honestly reminds me of games like Civilization/Sim City/etc. where you have to manage different resources, which understandably is not everyone’s cup of tee. It is very unforgiving in that you can brick your tree very easily and you can’t respec.

2 Likes

I’m a tailor/engineer. To level engineering, I have to buy every single piece of bismuth that I use. I turned a profit on the first day I leveled engineering by selling profession tools while buying every single piece of bismuth, iron claw, and aqirite to do it. And that’s when bismuth was 100g+ per piece.

The first day?
The 23rd?

Right.

Such a simple, easy to understand reality that still eludes so many.

2 Likes

Honestly, DF professions wore me out and really turned me off of the game. I completed season 1 of DF, but then took a year+ hiatus from the game.

I was dragged back by my guildies for TWW, and I am really happy with the TWW professions. They fixed pretty much all of the things that frustrated me about the DF system. They got rid of inspiration. They let recipes stay relevant for skill-ups longer so that you don’t sit at 60/100 skill for weeks without spending 1m gold. They made the invested knowledge/spec points actually improve performance in a way you can see and feel ingame.

I like the new professions.

I have been a gatherer and crafter since Vanilla. I enjoyed the old style of professions, and I like this new system as well. What made professions great in Classic versions of the game is that everybody depended on the stuff crafters made and the mats gatherers provided. It was all economically viable for the duration of the expansions.

As things got simplified and gearing changed, we moved away from crafted items, and for a very long time, crafting was not generally worth the effort. While alchemy and enchanting remained relevant, the gear crafting did not.

DF changed that, going back to a system that once again made players depend on the crafts and mats. That was good, but the DF system was frustrating and exhausting.

TWW has repaired a lot of what was broken in DF, and so now we’re back to a very Classic-like interdependence on all of the profession crafts and mats in a system that actually feels good to play and spec out…so far, at least.

1 Like

This so much.

Gathering doesn’t take in-depth understanding of how to efficiently game Acuity/knowledge.
Gathering will never cost more gold to improve than you profit from it.
Gathering doesn’t cost anything if you don’t want to bother with improved tools.

Building up crafting profs with your own mats is not free even if you gathered them.

You don’t believe people can make money having to buy materials off the AH and producing goods? Then you’ll also be shocked that I make a profit off inscription without having an herbalist.

I don’t have a single gathering profession on any character that I actually play.

I like some parts of the profession system, like the fact that you can craft endgame gear and even make some powerful items using embellishments. Concentration being used instead of mettle was a great step in the right direction given now you just have to wait for your concentration to refill over time over being hard capped per week. Followed by it does keep the material market at least a bit more relative through the differing ranks, which is useful when you get your crafting super high. The other thing I like about this version is that there isn’t any big ticket items that are a uber rare drop from events or rares that also happen to be stupid powerful.

Yet that brings me to the side of what I dislike about the crafting system, in which I’ve found it to be prohibitively expensive since shadowlands when they made their first version essentially. Currently as it stands you have to RNG the bulk of your recipes and schematics for engineering and alchemy. It’s worse for alchemy because you waste a TON of herbs trying to RNG out the recipes. With engineering not being as bad due to using scrap to get the schematics, yet still RNG schematics again is not much fun.

Then I think the entire system being more complicated in comparison to DF, in order to make things harder was a major step in the wrong direction. Ultimately professions fizzle out after the first couple months have passed given that’s enough time for people that have been keeping up with knowledge points to be mostly maxed out.

Followed by the change to how you obtain cloth now for tailoring was another very STUPID idea, at least with skinning when you kill skinnable enemies, you are guaranteed to get scales or leather. Over tailoring where cloth is completely RNG, and restricting it to only tailors can loot it now from mobs was a very stupid idea. As the different cloths they could make to me were what kept the profession relevant and profitable.

I think the removal of profession quests in favor of having patron orders was overall just not a good thing. I would have rather had both, instead of just relying on patron orders for the bulk of extra knowledge, given a lot of them require levels that aren’t able to be done currently.

All in all I mostly enjoy the new profession system, but it definitely has a lot of glaring flaws that makes it difficult to get behind at times.

1 Like

Look.
Everyone knows there were mass layoffs.
If the game is on the rocks, I like WoW.
Sub has been 15 bucks a month since 1999.
However
To create a system that is a carefully shrouded paywall is sleazy and undermines customer confidence.

The crafting system is intentionally labrynthian and the only people suceeding are the people who RMT. If the intention was to stretch crafting progress over 2 years, why are people with suspiciously fat wallets capped on day three? Blizzard is not budging. I am not trying to become a bajillionaire in a video game. Some of us just want to craft for our alts.
Instead here comes all the goblins ruining it for everyone with this financial subterfuge.

I in no way expect people to come clean.
I am saying it is BS, and you are likely to lose more money in subs and potential new players than can be gained in a black market economy of 50000 gold for 35cents and a ball of lint.

4 Likes

Crafted gear has never been this powerful or this widely used, it’s a huge improvement over the old system when most crafted stuff was garbage.

You don’t need anything of the sort to craft, you just need to read the tooltips and use your head.

?

Concentration doesn’t replace Artisan’s Mettle, it replaces Inspiration.

Artisan’s Mettle is still in the game, the TWW version is Artisan’s Acuity.

You keep claiming that crafting is for RMT players. Do you mean people who buy a token for real money and sell it for in game gold or people who buy the tokens with in game gold?

I use professions as a way to customize my gear and make gold in game so that I can play for “free”. I haven’t used real dollars to pay for a WoW expansion or Blizzard game since they opened up tokens for Blizzard currency.

I sure hope you’re not saying that being successful at crafting requires players to invest real money into the game in order to purchase gold, because that is absolutely not true.

Apologies that was a bit poorly worded, I definitely meant it as a replacement for insight to guarantee crafting ranks!

1 Like

…what on the world are you talking about? You been playing project 99 too much or what?

I don’t even bother with crafting orders at all because I’ll only do public orders. I don’t know how private ones work. I don’t want to deal with it. Which means I’d just get low tier garbage if I attempted a public order. I just want to buy crap off the AH or a listing. I don’t want to make stuff because it’s convoluted and timegated. I just do gathering. But would rather not miss out on this part of the game that used to be so fun. I hope they roll back this bad system. Total rework. Streamline it. Make it fun again. No private/public order nonsense with timegated augment currency crap that clutters inventories up.

The professions have been the worst part of the expansion, and was bad with DF too.

3 Likes

I like them a lot more now that I’m double gathering.

If I were someone who wasn’t doing double gathering, I would do Herb/Alch because that combo is bullet proof. It won’t sink you like Tailoring and Blacksmithing will.

JC doesn’t work until Season 1 comes out, no one is getting gear right now that is worth a peanut.
I hear enchanting is good, but only sweats are enchanting before the 10th when Mythics come out, it’s all going to be replaced shortly.

You have to base your prof decisions on what Blizzard does with seasons, it’s kinda cringe.

We should put it up for a vote:
Would players adjust some for 25 years of inflation and pay 25 dollars per month for a sub with the agreement that Blizzard would completely eradicate the RMT economy and bots from the game. Within 30 days.

Most players here are in their 30s+.
50 dollars is a sober night at the bar. I didn’t buy early access on principle.