So I enjoy the professions. I feel like TWW improved on DFs model. I love how professions can create end-game crafts for everyone and how profitable crafts are even as the tiers wind down. I love the patron order system; it’s a nice way to handle a lot of issues from DF like crafting order quests, leveling, and giving a little profit to those who don’t want to interact in trade. I made a profit of about 20k on it just this week lol. I feel like Blizzard did a good job this time of matching up the gather rate and the use rate of materials, for the most part. I also think that the way they tied all basic materials together in price using thaumaturgy was genius. This way, easy-to-gather materials don’t plunge to very low prices and hard-to-gather materials don’t scale too far out of reach. (People asking how to disenchant to get storm dust profitably are asking the wrong question…)
There was one new TWW ability though, that the more I play with it, the more I hate it.
And that is Flask/Potion Spillover from alchemy.
Blizzard experimented with short-term buffs for a bunch of professions:
- Shatter Essence for enchanting (raises all stats by 185) for destroying 1 crystalline powder,
- Everburning Ignition for blacksmithing (raises stats by 245 but 270 for resourcefulness) in exchange for 1 AA, 5 crystalline powder, and 1 core alloy,
- Inventor’s Guile for engineering (+150 to all stats… although the tooltip doesn’t say resourcefulness) for 25 scrap
- Potion/Flask spillover for alchemy (+240 to all stats) for 10 casts (not items, casts) of potion/flask recipe
If you look at the value of the items used to activate these buffs, most of which are 5 mins (inventor’s guile is 12 hours), there is a striking disparity between them:
- 1 crystalline powder (shatter essence) is 0.65 g.
- 5 crystalline powder + 1 core alloy (everburning ignition) is 83.24 g
- 25 scrap (invent) is untradable, I’m just going to peg this as 0.25 g since I have soooo much of it that it is basically worthless
- 10 casts of the cheapest flask recipe (flask spillover) costs 1874.2 g
The cost of the buff is so far out of line that you can’t afford to activate it and be profitable while selling flasks. I realize the idea is that you would get it “naturally” by making flasks, but it requires 10 casts! Blizzard designed the flask concentration curve to do only 6 casts. Which means it would never fully activate if playing “normally”.
Note: if you are not aware, the concentration curve for consumables and reagents are a bit different compared to crafted armor. It is constructed of 3 splines. The last spline has a very low slope from 80% difficulty to 100% difficulty. That’s the point where you would use Rank 2 materials. This is done to make it easy to figure out what to place in the recipe–you don’t need craft sim or whatever addon. You know that using all Rank 2 materials gives you about the same concentration cost as a mix of Rank 2 and Rank 3. This means you don’t have to think “Hmm, what mix of Rank 2 and Rank 3 would be optimal”-- all rank 2 is already optimal. The concentration cost of the last spline is based on how many items that Blizzard estimates you’ll make in a 4 day cycle. For whatever reason, this is 6 for flasks.
Here is a graph of the concentration curve for duskweave bolts as an example: https://imgur.com/a/OFXzidJ
The idea of the concentration curve is that a) we have way way way too many crafters b) if crafting involves only pressing a button then you have way way way too much supply (there’s no value added) c) the tendency due to factors a and b is for price of crafted items to go towards the price of the ingredients (or lower due to multicraft/resourcefulness). So Blizzard knew that if there was a way to make crafts cheaper (with Rank 2), prices would gravitate towards that value. (The concentration curve ALSO makes it uneconomical to make with Rank 1 materials–Rank 1 is the first spline). So the concentration curve limits how many you can make. It ensures that more crafters can see profit by heavily limiting production at the cheapest feasible resource cost.
The problem is the buff requires you to cast 10 times (so even if you make 10 flasks, it doesn’t count), but the concentration curve limits you to 6.
Not only that, but making ANYTHING ELSE in the alchemy profession–including FLASK cauldrons–deletes your stacks of flask spillover.
So cost to buff is too much, can’t buff to full. What to do? Well, the only solution is–NEVER PLAY THAT CHARACTER. What I do is I will prepare to make flasks on my two flask alchemists (make vials, check that I have the right amount of rank 2 herbs, check prices etc), but I do this preparation on my transmutation alchemist. On my two flask alchemists, I already have a stack of 10 spillover on each–I have kept it running for over a month now. I jump on those characters, cast flasks 6 times, sell the results on the AH, and then jump off those characters as fast as possible. The goal is to never let that 5 minute buff elapse so that I never again have to pay the cost of stacking it.
Do some old achievements on that character? Nope. Can’t. That would cause my buff to expire. Level it if it’s not 80. Nope. Can’t. That would cause my buff to expire. Need a truesight phial? Nope. It’s not a FLASK so it will destroy my buff. (Good thing I have 4 alchemists).
I know I could just not look at it—but it’s already bad enough that 6 casts makes it really difficult to get a multicraft proc considering the bounds of the binomial distribution.
Now I bet I’ve made all of you paranoid about flask spillover. You’re welcome! XD
In any case, I hope Blizzard doesn’t include flask/potion spillover in the next expansion. Or make it last 12 hours like invent. Or change its cost. Or make it so that it is not destroyed by other crafts.
What do you think?