Some years ago, I tried crafting for various reasons. To make specific items for transmog. As a possible source of in-game income selling items in the Auction House. Etc. But above all I thought wouldn’t it be great to make items for myself. So I could use as I leveled up. Specially as a hunter, making better guns, scopes, and ammo. My dream of becoming a grade A gunsmith. But that didn’t happen.
Like if there were no Auction House. And each player could craft all kinds of fantastic gear and items for themselves at least maybe it would be worth it.
But after trying most of the crafting professions I came away kinda dismayed that whatever I crafted was many levels below my characters level. And the nightmare that Engineering was to level up was a big waste of time for what I actually got out of it.
I normally got better items from loot-drops. And Wow Tokens hammered the nail into the coffin for crafting as far as I was concerned. As a casual player. A $20.00 Wow token provides more in-game money then I need to buy gear, potions, etc. Professions for me just become an obsolete part of the game.
So what do you think, are crafting professions a waste of time and effort?
Modern crafting - assuming you’re willing to jump through the hoops - lets you supplement drops and Vault slots with a couple of upgradeable items that also provide enchant-style Embellishment bonuses. At least for JC/LW/BS/Tailoring.
As someone that had always, and still has alts with every profession to be self-sufficient, I’ll say: too many variables to give a straight, yes/no.
One main thing for no: the people that are SUPER sweaty about this sort of thing push it so hard, they are masters of the skill “Resourcefulness”, which means they are getting TONS of procs. They take advantage of all those extra procs when they sell.
If you’ve ever made your own and checked the intrinsic costs, you’ll see that it costs you (sic) 100g to make something, but that same item is being sold on the AH for 87g!!! wtf?! No one’s selling for a loss, how can that be??
It’s because of procs. And until you get at the THAT LEVEL, it actually makes more financial sense to just buy what you need off the AH.
So: 1> It takes A LOT of time and effort to just get at that level. And 2> There are some items/ some servers/ some situations/ some items, etc etc where people just jack up the price because they can. This is where it easily pays off to have your own profession.
Now imagine: what I just explained is only about 20% of trying to fully answer the “is it a waste of time” question. There’s A LOT of nuance to it.
But if that’s only 20%, it’s probably the most important 20%.
Crafting was at it´s best, when it was required for raiding or twinking.
You could sell potions, low level gear or resistance gear for a lot of profit. Nowadays, twinking is disabled as no queue ever pops up, raids can be done with quest gear / LFR, flasks or potions, are not needed unless you run mythic and there folks have their own stock of things.
They could maybe boost crafting a bit if they would enable transmog selling at the AH region wide, but so far, it´s a waste of time, as nothing ever sells.
Crafting is always worth it to me for the RPG of it. It’s a package deal to progress both my characters and their professions. As for gold value I miss the days when the rare old recipes that some of us worked hard to obtain had value. I’m not a fan of each new expansion making all other expansions near worthless.
I don’t bother. I just pick enchanting to disechant gear and that’s it. Crafting in my opinion is laughable. The current system should have died with dragonland.
I feel that there are too many whales in this game. People have a crazy amount of gold and at the start of each expansion, they go all in to play the monopoly game, crafting, auction house game. This is bad for those who don’t have crazy amounts of gold accumulated since 2004.
Ultimately prices drop and soon enough it doesn’t make sense to even do crafting due to time to cost ratio. You’re right, you can just buy a token and forget crafting even exists. Maybe the system is working as intended though? Mo’ money for blizzard.
there is no enchanted carved crest. its just base craft, runed and gilded. the weathered crest is to upgrade blue gear to an ilvl lower than spark crafts.
they are pretty much now - I liked them better in Dragonflight but these patron orders to get knowledge points is just such a gold sink. I don’t think there is any way you can break even unless you do work orders on a regular basis.
You said it, not me. I also didn’t say revert back to the old system either. You seem to be defending the current system heavily, what stake did you have in the development of the current system? Are you claiming the current crafting system is good? If so, what makes it so good?
It’s not my job to come up with an alternative, it’s the game designers job to make it less crap.
I dont bother with professions anymore except Engineering for the wormholes and gadgets for personal use…and mining to fund Eng and to make gold with early expansion. the other professions just arent worth the effort since I dont raid so dont need to make potions or foods or anything.
Clipping my words out of context isnt an honest conversation.
Ok. So whats an acceptable alternative?
Nice attempt at turning it around on me.
Mr “I dont answer questions, let me ask you a bunch instead”
Dev 1 : So they said crafting is crap
Dev 2 : Did they say why?
Dev 1 : No
Dev 2 : Did they say what would make it better?
Dev 1 : No
Dev 2 : Did they say anything? Give any actual feedback we could act on?
Dev 1 : No
Dev 2 : …
In another thread some players were mentioning that max level crafted items with embellishments can result in a 5-10% performance difference apparently? I had no idea the gap was anywhere near that compared to heroic or mythic gear.
I’ve never felt the need for crafted gear beyond maybe the first few weeks of a season. But once I get into my m+ groove, that feeling dies away fast. It’s just more fun to farm gear through combat than through specific mat hunting. But I can see why that would appeal to some players too.
