The epic fail. What's wrong with crafting and how to fix it

Community General Discussion
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Crafting has improved from DF to TWW. But there are some issues that bother myself and many of my friends.

  1. How we get crafted BoPs. What we call the “bots” who constantly post in trade and their weak auras that automatically reply to our requests. This current system makes it feel odd and synthetic. And it takes away gear pride from consumers.

  2. I know enchanters or alchemists leveled enchanting/alch from expansion to expansion. But even some who are 100 skill lvl can’t get max rank 3 enchants on their own items (because they are still lacking the knowledge points. This forcies them to go to the AH and spend gold on their own enchants for their profession. The potions Alchemist’s consumed aren’t maxed for their own use.

Both of these issues make crafting feel odd to crafters and consumers.

The solution for alchs is that potions they consume that they brew, if they are maxed skill lvl, scale to max rank 3 for their own use only. Enchanters who enchant their own gear pieces (bop items) should always scale to max rank on their own pieces. Those fixes are ez. Nothing feels worse than being max 100 skill lvl as an enchanter, having tons of knowledge and still not hitting a rank 3 while enchanting your OWN bop items.

Lets talk about the first problem, which is the #1 issue.

Being a consumer, having to post in trade chat for a profession item is a very odd feeling for BoPs. I also don’t like how it works as a crafter looking for customers.

This is how I think it should change for BoPs, not all items but specifically BoPs that aren’t crests. Lets say I’m a tailor/blacksmith/JC, I make an epic item of 567 lvl, no sparks, no crests involved. I can place this item on AH for a flat fee. I put the effort into farming or buying some mats, I’m setting my prices. This item can be scaled later by the PURCHASER.

As the consumer I buy this lower ilvl BOE epic from the AH or a guildie. I didn’t have to wait in trade chat to find a crafter. Then next I EMPOWER it. Because empowering items is fun.

Step 1. I right click an enchanting crest and drag it to the item to raise its ilvl and make it BoP. Omg, this feels great because now I’m the one taking an action. It feels like I’m earning these lvls! I already like crafting that much more.

Step 2. Then I farm the sparks and right click those and add it to the now BoP epic maxing its ilvls! Maybe this item also required a few other items that I could either farm or purchase on the AH (missives, etc) but either way I got to apply those items to the BoE to empower it.

Wow, I did it. I didn’t just go to a fast food restaurant to get my crafted BoP. No. I farmed the items to empower it. I didn’t have to wait in trade chat to find a real person, who isn’t a bot to craft it. I got to find the lower lvl epic BoE on the AH. I feel like I scored at a great price. I was a good shopper, good player and I put the effort into get this item.

WE FIXED THE CRAFTING GAME! Now everyone likes crafting. Blizzard wins, the players win. Everybody is happy.

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Soooo you want shadowlands legendary crafting.

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In my honest opinion, most players aren’t willing to spend 2 hours researching how to send and receive crafting orders, which Embellishments are the most valuable, and where to obtain them—whether they drop from raid bosses, if they are exclusive to PVP, or come from other sources.

I crafted tons of things in SL and DF but WW just seems all over the place.

8 Likes
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No, we had to go somewhere to craft the legendary. I want to right click a spark or crest and apply it to my item to raise its ilvl. For crafted BoPs I dont even want to go to the valor guy. I want to empower it myself.

Another reason shadow lands legendaries sucked because well, it made legendaries feel like fast food and no longer special as there were too many. This is also about epics, which have a different school of thought altogether.

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I like your idea of selling base item and allowing the buyer to eventually add his own mats in order to ascend the item.

I think that way the seller can judge the market on his own and decide how much to put in the AH in order to get some consistent selling etc.

The alch changes you proposed, not so much, i think this will kinda ‘‘force’’ pve mains to spec into alch for flask/pots r3 in order to save gold if they are making their own. Then all PVE mains will be forced to spec into pot/flask and only alch alts will be touching transmute tree etc.

Herbs will also crash alot faster then today’s since everyone’s buying them and alot of undercutting will happen. Already passive gold farmers are taking herbing/mining and dumping on the market on day 1 in order to cap on the high prices and then spending frugally as much as possible.

What i think needs to change is the ‘‘level your profession over the course of the expansion’’ mantra, maybe not totally but some tweaks would be nice.

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It doesn’t need to be that complicated. Just let people making a PUBLIC Crafting Order set a minimum item quality like they can when they place a Personal order. That’s the only problem and that is what is making people post in trade chat looking for crafters. Once they find a crafter, they can then place a Personal order with that person and set minimum quality.

EDIT TO ADD: It’s beyond stupid you can’t set a minimum quality to public craft orders. No one uses Public craft orders because of this limitation in the system.

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I know it’s not bots, I know it’s an addon and that they have to click it to send a prewritten message. But I absolutely cannot stand it. In Dragonflight I could whisper someone a quick “I can craft that for you!” or “My alt can help with that!” And I would probably get the crafting order 6 or 7 outta 10 times. Now in TWW? Maybe 1 out of 10 IF I’m lucky.

I tested it on an alt and linked an item pretending to want a craft just to see how bad it was. I got 8 whispers in under 2 seconds, most of them large paragraphs. They can’t claim they’re keeping the craft order system the way it is because it promotes social interaction, when there is no social interaction. It’s ‘prerecorded messages’ essentially. It’s incredibly off-putting. It reminds me of that addon that was popular in legion(?) that would immediately whisper people a prewritten “Hello, If you don’t need XX item, may I have it?” I never traded those people either.

I want some sort of request board that allows crafters or customers to post items/payment/expected quality/mats provided or not, plus show whether the crafter is online.

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The problem with alchemy is that first KP tab, where you have to put 40 points in each herb to get the most out of each. We already have 3 levels of raw material, now spend 240 KP to get the most out of those?

But I will say as an altaholic that has every profession at max, this is soooo much better than DF. I can make everything my alt army needs. The only crafts I have to buy off the AH are enchants I haven’t gotten the recipe to drop.

1 Like
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That pretty much exists in game in the Public Crafting Order. All they need to change is allow the requester to specify a MINIMUM quality. If they did this, the Public Crafting Orders would skyrocket. As of now, NO ONE posts Public Crafting Orders because they can’t guarantee a minimum desired quality. They could also require that the person accepting the order completes it within 2 minutes, not 30 min., to prevent crafters from accepting orders they don’t intend to finish just to grief.

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I’m not gonna lie this sounds infinitely worse than the current crafting system lol

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They made it over complicated for some reason. And for those like myself who dont care for crafting i like the simplicity of how it used to be. So ill never touch the new version.

Its a problem with the entire game. Complexity just for the sake being complex. It doesnt make anyone want to try harder. They just quit. Its really common sense.

14 Likes
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But when you do, the rewards are awesome!

My engineer made my gun, my LW made the weapon grip and bracers, my tailor made the bracer embellishment and bags, my inscription made the missives and staffs for my Druids, my chanter made the enchants and oil. My alchemy keeps my potions and flasks coming. And finally, my gathering toon cooks for my entire army.

It will take time to get all blue tools and accessories on some due to being starved of acuity, still recipes to buy along with crafting their tools, but it’ll get done.

In the end, it’s really not that difficult. The trick is to put your KP towards your goals.

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But I’d like something on the crafter’s side too. Like - shows them online ready to craft, what they can craft, and what they charge based on mats used. Like - ‘Using all r3 mats? Pay anything. Using r2 mats, but want max rank results? Pay 5k. Online, ready to craft immediately.’ Maybe a button next to their name that lets the buyer whisper to negotiate/let them know they need something.

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Yeah, i still dont care and im still not going to.

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I could not imagine having to buy every single thing I need, but you do you.

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I will and you as well.

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Sitting in trade chat waiting sounds so boring to me that I’m not surprised people use bots for it

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I don’t like PvP. I despise PvP. The most PvP I ever did was at the end of vanilla and they had changed some rule about getting the flashy PvP sets and I did lots of AVs then. That is it. Most PvP I see these days is when there’s an open event and some flagged weirdo walks into the aoe when everyone is trying to kill some objective. Simple look at my profile will let you know I am surely not kidding. I do not engage in PVP. I do not care for PvP.

Now having said that. What kind of credibility would the PvP crowd give me if I wrote a long and emphatic post about how PvP fails and how to ‘fix’ it? Chances are I would prolly be quite laughed at and replied with a fair amount of condescension no?

I am a crafter, I have crafted in WoW for a long time. A look at the profession section of my achievements will give credence to that. The changes that were made in DF and continued in TWW are the best changes to professions that happened in a very long time. Don’t agree? Start crafting in any meaningful manner and come back to me. Haven’t crafted since BFA? Your ‘fix’ is good for undercutting morons and speculators. And a simple forum search will tell anyone why the public listing has no quality setting. I ran that auto-reply addon for a whole of 10 min and then dumped that garbage in the trash where it belongs. Simple spreadsheet with prepared answers with my toons names gets me plenty of crafts. You just have to glance at the trade chat when zipping trough the cities.

3 Likes
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Just bring it back to exactly the way it was back in the day. Still can’t change my forums posting toon. I hardly ever even play it anymore, want to change it but can’t…just throwing that out there. Site bug that Blizzard needs to fix.

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This one’s easy.

  1. Keep the marketplace to allow crafters to fulfill orders. (this is the only change that was EVER needed)
  2. Ditch the multi-rank materials and overly complex crafting trees.
  3. Go back to the simple 1-75 crafting levels of the pre-DF world.
4 Likes