Three requests for professions (Extra slot, BoA mats, cross-expansion mats))

Community General Discussion
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  1. A third profession slot

You removed First Aid at the start of BfA. Can we please have that slot back as a general profession slot? A lot of us created our characters before Legion, so our professions were not chosen with Bind-on-Pickup craftable transmogs in mind. Being able to take Tailoring or Alchemy as a First Aid replacement, Leatherworking on both leather and mail wearers, or Engineering on anyone so we can use the toys we built, without throwing away professions we’ve had for years would be nice.

  1. Bind-on-Account materials

I would like crafting materials that are currently Bind-on-Pickup - like Hydrocores - to at least be Bind-on-Account. This would be less of an issue with the above change since we could just pick up a new crafting profession as a sink on double gathering characters, but this would be an easy quality of life change.

  1. Cross-expansion materials

Since all pre-Shadowlands expansions are now available from level 10, there is less of an argument for having thematically redundant materials in each. For example, there are six recipes that use three types of bear meat, but there’s no obvious reason why a recipe would demand bear meat from Loch Modan and not from Azuna, so why not combine them all into Fatty Bearsteak? It would also be cool if thematically linked zones across expansions shared materials - like if you could mine True Iron in Outland Nagrand and Fel Iron in Tanaan Jungle to emphasise how Draenor is the uncorrupted version of Outland, or find Vashj’ir mats as bycatch in Nazjatar.

3 Likes
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No, no and no.

I don’t think there are enough professions already. So many of my alts have to have duplicate professions of others - like I have 5 tailors and 4 enchanters and 6 or more herb/miners. Giving them an extra slot for professions just compounds the problem.

Why the heck are you talking about old content, i.e. hydrocores? If you can’t talk about profession mats in Shadowlands then maybe there is no problem and they aren’t even doing that anymore.

I really hate the idea of eliminating the different types of materials. Some bear meat is extremely worthwhile farming because of the recipes it is used in, other bear meat you might as well vendor. Combining them all would make they all worthless…

And why would you even trust blizzard to do this type of thing.

No it wouldn’t.

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Why shouldn’t I? If somebody installs World of Warcraft tomorrow, they will play the old content. If somebody talks about the world of World of Warcraft, they will talk about Azeroth, not the Shadowlands. Until Blizzard deprecates the old content with another Cataclysm, it is just as relevant as the flavour of the month.

If you kill a bear right now, it drops mats that can be used in two recipes. If you kill the same bear after my change, it drops mats that can be used in six recipes. Having three times as much utility makes farming bear meat worth more, not worth less.

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No one unless trying to get transmogs would even train a BFA profession.

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But they are not going to farm Hydrocores and the like for old end game gear.

Which would mean our bags full of useless mats that we do not want nor need while attempting to target mats we do want and need.

No thank you! That is overly complicated and unnecessary.

1 Like
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It was removed because it was 99% useless in all situations. I don’t think we need an extra profession slot to make up for this moving to Tailoring.

I tend to favor the idea of this being a character progression game, not an account progression game, but I wouldn’t complain if they made crafting slightly easier in this way.

This one seems a bit more complex for Blizzard to “get right”. I’m not opposed, but it’s another thing I don’t think we NEED. It wouldn’t change much. and I think Blizzard likes xpack-specific mats as a means of forcing people to get out and populate current content zones.

My personal request is this:

  1. Use Professions as a means of filling gaps in class utility.

A mage brings 10% Int. A Warrior brings AP. A Priest brings HP. Bring back the Scribe Scrolls to cover all of those at 70% potency. The real deals get the benefit of being stronger, but let the profession be a meaningful fill-in when you don’t have those classes available to you.

A Monk brings a physical damage debuff. A DH brings a magic damage debuff. Introduce these as weapon oils via Alchemy. These could take the same slot as the other minor oils we currently use – Shadowcore and Embalmer’s.

Hunters, Mages, and Shamans bring Bloodlust. Leatherworking already has Drums to compensate. Just buff them back up to roughly 70% of a full Lust. The 50% effectiveness is too heavyhanded of a nerf.

And lastly, Druids, DKs, and Warlocks all bring Brez. Engineering already has a Brez tool to compensate, but it has like 3 different downsides vs a real Brez. Bring that down to 1 to make it more usable.

Pick One (not multiple, as it is now):

  • Long cast time
  • Melee range
  • Chance to backfire
  • (We could also go with “Longer Cooldown” as an alternative)

TL;DR: Make Professions cover for missing buffs/utility at reduced effectiveness. They went that direction in BfA then backpedaled. I liked it. Bring it back and expand it more.

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It wouldn’t work that way because some bear meat is ridiculous easy to get and some isn’t. There are some recipes no longer in the game that take a certain type of bear meat and that bear meat sells at a premium.

Your suggestions don’t ‘fix’ anything and they create problems for others, including blizzard.

Why do people always want to dummy down the game even more? Is the current game too hard?

They will level through old content. They aren’t going to stop at the end of each area and farm for max level gear, they are just going to progress to the next step whichever way they decide to level.