Method recently had an interview with Shani Edwards and Morgan Day, and in the video they talk a bit about goldmaking professions. During the video, Day asks Method if they had any ideas regarding how they could fix professions in the upcoming expansion, and while I’m definitely not Method, I do have ideas on how Shadowlands could improve the profession system so that professions (specifically those that aren’t alchemy) could be more lucrative and rewarding for players to engage with. For me and my guild, this was a major topic we were hoping would be touched on during BlizzCon 2019 and since it wasn’t, I’m going to share my thoughts! Enjoy!
Augmentations
An augmentation is a profession effect that enhances a piece of gear by providing you with additional stats or special effects that are applied directly to your items. Back in Mists of Pandaria, almost every profession had something similar to this to provide players with, but it was removed because the Devs worried that it felt bad to make players wait before putting on a new piece of gear. Augmentations’ removal has significantly hurt most non-alchemy professions because for many, it was the best thing the profession had to sell. Here are some concepts:
- Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Tailoring: Stat additions comes from these professions rather than enchanting, and are called Reforges. All three get patterns to add secondary stats to your gear, applied to your helm, shoulders, and chest.
- Enchantment: Enchantment adds special abilities to your MH weapon, neck, boots, rings, and clock. Enchantments on your weapon and neck are equivalent to the Middle Ring traits of the Heart of Azeroth and there are a bunch of different ones to choose from. Enchantments on your rings, boots, and cloak are equivalent to the Innermost Ring of the Heart of Azeroth; they tend to be procs will long cooldowns or effects that play with tertiary stats.
- Engineering: Engineers can place gadgets onto your gear. There are 2-3 gadgets per gear slot and all have wacky on-use effects. (No other profession can add on-use effects to gear.) Engineers can sell these effects to others, but since they’re augmentations they don’t stack with stuff like gylphs (see below) or Reforges (see above). For example, an enchant might add a passive speed boost to your movement speed, but an engineer might give you rocket boosts that blasts you forward a short distance (think Roll) on an RNG cooldown (anywhere from 1 second to 5 minutes).
- Inscription: Glyphs are back, but instead of having a Glyph UI they act as augmentations to your trinkets. There are class-specific glyphs that are equivalent to the Outermost Rings of the Heart of Azeroth as well as General Glyphs; they do stuff like increase proc rates or add new procs to abilities.
- Jewelcrafting: No more warforged / titanforged sockets. Instead, all necks and rings (as well as some trinkets) have sockets as part of their itemization. Gem’s like live’s kraken’s eye don’t add primary stats; instead there’s a general cut for each class and a cut corresponding to each class, and the gem provides a benefit based on the cut. For example: a smooth palladite gem might give your attacks and spells a chance to reduce the cooldown of your divine shield and lay on hands by 1 minute, while a stalwart palladite gem might increase the proc chance of your grand crusader passive.
Consumables
Consumables are items like potions and flasks that provide you with benefits when they’re consumed. There’s been this design philosophy in recent expansions that giving professions out-of-combat passives (like the stirrups for Blacksmithing) is a good thing for them to sell, but in truth consumables are only profitable if they add value in combat. With the augmentation system described above, however, there’s no real pressure to give consumables to other professions. Therefore the primary role of alchemy is to create things like potions, elixirs, and flasks. Any fun consumables (like stirrups or mount blankets) still exist, but they’re not seen as major things for professions to sell.
Crafted Gear
One of the major problems that gear-oriented professions have had since Warlords of Draenor is that starting in WoD, design philosophy clearly has shifted so that Crafted Gear is seen as a catch-up mechanic that you don’t actually want rather than an item you work for and get to keep long-term. For professions like blacksmithing and tailoring to truly hit their stride, crafted gear needs to be desirable and salable to others. Crafted gear often needs items from other professions (like enchanting needing Jewelcrafting gems to make a magic staff). When you make a piece of gear, it’s like a bethic item wherein you have to click it to activate it. When you click it, a UI opens that gives you the option to place up to three jewelcrafter gems into it. If you do, the item automatically allocates its secondary stats to the stats corresponding with the gem you put into it, divided evenly among them and consuming the gem in the process. If you don’t, the item’s stats are rolled randomly. Once you’ve chosen your item’s stats, they’re locked in. You can change them, however, by bringing them to an ethereal NPC who can reset the item for you, but doing this wipes all of the item’s augmentations and costs a fair amount of gold, multiplying each time you do it like the Heart of Azeroth respect cost.
- Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Tailoring These are the primary professions for crafted gear. They can make items for the head, shoulders, chest, legs, feet, waist, and arm slots. Blacksmithing can also make most metal weapons, while leatherworking can make bows and crossbows and tailoring can make cloaks. (The only difference between a tailoring cloak and a leatherworking cloak is appearance.)
- Enchanting: Enchanting can make staves, wands, and off-hands.
- Engineering: Engineering can make items for the head, hands, and feet, as well as a limited array of techno weapons and shields, plus and guns and trinkets. They have cool techno-themed appearances to them.
- Inscription: Inscription can make off-hands and trinkets (they’re mostly basic trinkets with “chance to proc stats” effects, like Live’s Eye of Rezan).
- Jewelcrafting: Jewelcrafting can make necks and rings.