Greetings fellow travelers.
Returning player, I left after Lich King, so I have some catching up to do. I rolled a new character (Shaman) and am trying to level Blacksmithing in Dragonflight. I am Lvl 43 (ish?) now and it looks like that nothing at all that I can craft is useful in any way. All weapons are lvl 70+, all armor is plate only.
I checked the recipes from the trainer, thought I missed something, checked the AH, nothing.
So, is there any point at all to Blacksmithing? By lvl 70, I assume any quest green will be more powerful than anything I can craft?
None at all.
All jokes aside, you should be able to hit blacksmithing level 60 pretty easily. I would recommend to open a guide (just type TWW blacksmithing guide in google, I like to use professions .com or whatever it is called). But, all professions hit a soft wall around skill level 60. You will need a large amount of materials to level up past that, to be honest. But, if you do level it up it is absolutely worth it, as you can reach a pretty high item level through crafted gear ( I think ilvl 636).
Crafted gear can get up to 636 given you can get gilded crests.
As far as blacksmithing it only makes plate stuff, mail is made by leatherworking but blacksmithing is able to make shields and weapons.
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BS only makes plate and some weapons. If you want to craft armor for yourself as a shaman, mail armor is crafted as part of the Leatherworking profession.
You said you were working on Dragonflight BS? Assuming that’s not a typo and you’re working your way back into the game via Dragonflight, the overhaul to professions as you see them now was introduced in that expansion. Due to some growing pains and learning on Blizzard’s end, it will be extremely difficult for you (especially now, with War Within live) to level any Dragonflight crafting profession past ~50.
As far as crafting being useful at max level, there is a layered system of additional reagents that can be included in new crafted gear to make them viable. Minus those additional reagents, yeah crafted gear will generally be worse than what you could simply find in dungeons. But, the additional reagents are not terribly difficult to come by, and you get some of them naturally just playing the game.
As a previous poster suggested, I’d recommend looking up a guide for a more detailed explanation. You can simply google “wowhead dragonflight blacksmithing” and you should find the relevant info pretty easily. For instance, that search leads here:
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Ok thanks this is interesting. I was looking for any consumables, like buffs, sharpening stones, anything like that that I could use while leveling. Other than a couple of tools, (hammer, pickaxe), there doesn’t seem to be anything. And all weapons seem to require lvl 70, not 60.
My smithing skills aren’t great because I cant motivate myself to make anything and directly vendor trash it. Maybe I just need to keep pushing…
What blacksmithing is worth to you depends on what you want out of it.
Some pursue it as a gold-making enterprise, both in the auction house and in the (relatively new) work order system. To be competitive, especially in the latter, you would need to invest in skill and specialization appropriate to what you want to sell in order to create the highest quality goods using the least resources, because materials and other crafting resources are costly.
For personal use (crafting for self and alts), it’s not much different unless you’re content to create lower-quality items and use them before investing too much in specializations that improve quality. But AFAIK, crafted items don’t have many advantages for a casual player, except for the possibility of creating higher item level gear than a casual character could access from PvE or PvP rewards, but even then it could be bankruptingly expensive on a per-item basis.
This is very helpful, thank you. And yes, I had no idea that mail armor is not made by blacksmiths but leatherworkers! I’ll check out the guide, ty!
