Why doesn't Blizzard just remove professions?

[yetgdhfgh]

I must say this is the only xpac where i literally cannot be bothered to level up proffs to max level (without doing DMF)

The reason for this is because blizz has gated so many patterns behind 5 mans, Raids and RNG drops.

Crafted gear is worthless, All the good patterns are gated and thus i have said to myself i may as well wait till i can solo instances in the next xpac than to wait for a que to pop up.

Gold is so easy to come by now and the amount of work you need to put into a crafted piece of armour you know prolly wont sell you could be doing other stuff like WQs for gold.

I dont believe blizz should remove proffesions i just feel they shouldnt have gated it behind so many instances.

[SL1200]

Professions are another thing that have been completely ruined since this new era of developers took over.

[Themanintobuildafire]

the ranking system has to go.

I guess they dont want people doing the shuffle like in cata with gems/enchanting/JC...but back then you did get a lot of use for the common gems...what do you do with them in legion? I got a bank tab full of them...

[Klingers]

I make 100s of thousands a week on professions, so no, don't remove them

I make 100s of thousands a week with a profession too. Buy a WoW token with money from my job, post it on the AH.

[Super Kami Dende]

I make constant gold from professions. Showing that they are still a core part of the game. I tend to find people that cry about Professions are generally people that don't want to put any work into them.

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I make 100s of thousands a week with a profession too. Buy a WoW token with money from my job, post it on the AH.

Where it likely gets bought by someone that used Professions to make the Gold. Full-circle.

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Professions are another thing that have been completely ruined since this new era of developers took over.

lolwut, they are better now than they were in Wrath.

90% OF MAJOR PROFESSION NERFS AND CHANGES HAVE BEEN DIRECTLY BECAUSE OF PLAYERS COMPLAINING.

"OMG YOU CAN GET A GOOD ITEM FROM PROFS?? THAT MEANS YOU ARE FORCING ME BLIZZARD!!!"
"OMG YOU CAN GET SOME COOL NON-LORE BREAKING BONUSES FROM PROFS? WOW YOU ARE FORCING ME BLIZZZRDD!!!!"

Professions were nearly completely destroyed by Raiders and pseudo-elitists complaining that you could get slight buffs from some profs so they were mandatory and not fun.

So where the normal population enjoyed being able to work really hard and someday make themselves a StormHerald, or some like cool things such as Herblism giving them a cool little Heal over time, or mining giving a Stam bonus for the immersion of getting more stamina because you mine for a living. You had spastics come in and complain that as a tank they would HAVE to be a miner because "OMG +500HP!!"

So basically, you can keep asking for professions to be good again, but I know that the moment they went back to having cool little effects or having the ability to make raid quality items with a lot of work YOU SAME PEOPLE would complain that you now feel forced to HAVE to do X prof.

Basically Blizzard is stuck these days where things can't give a bonus, but things can't be useless. SO they have to make things like current Professions which make 90% of professions pointless after the first month of Raiding and only worthwhile for Potions/Elixirs/Chanting/JC, whereas crafting Armour is mostly just catch up.

TL;DR - Professions are only mediocre because Blizzard can't do "Fun" things without Pseudo-elitist trash crying about theorycrafting and numbers in WoW.

[Morg]

Jc and alchemy,are to professions that's actually directly needed today because of flasks and gems. Same with enchanting. To say otherwise is stupid.

The gear crafting pofesssions are the ones that are underwhelming atm. some of them have merits but rarely for people on this forum who have high ilvl mains

I mean to say otherwise isn't exactly stupid.

JC as it stands is stupid and just another level of RNG that isn't necessary. If gems went back to being guaranteed on items that provided some stat choices and variations then id agree with you that they are needed. Unfortunately since the dumb down of secondaries i dont ever see this changing.

Enchanting is in a similar position, it feels necessary now but what would we actually lose if all enchants were removed? Youd lose an absolute trivial amount of stats from rings/cape enchants and a small amount of dps on neck enchants but when everyone's losing it what does it matter? Theres no customization at all its just anther thing to grind.

Alchemy i agree is necessary but they miss the mark so often its mind blowing, look at the new argus stuff this could of been another cool choice of items to use depending on classes but instead they've locked more shit to open world content and who the fuck is dumb enough to buy expensive potions and elixirs for world content that falls over to my 880 alt. Alchemy could very easily be replaced with a purchasable source of pots/flasks and if were being honest a huge % of the population already do this with the blood vendor, theres just a middle man alchemist crafting it.

As far as the crafted gear except for a few trinkets which were very strong the gear is replaced and is never worth the cost to make it, with the cost of getting a 935 item from crafting it should be better than raid gear (like it was in tbc) and this seems to be the big issue they're afraid of having BIS gear (even a paltry amount of items) come from professions where as other games thrive on this approach


I agree the profession system needs one of three options
1) make them all fun and not needed but enjoyable to get similar to how engineering is at times.
2) get rid of them and use vendors for potions/flasks, ditch gems and enchants as they no longer function
3) overhaul the whole system, give more room for fun options with jc./enchant etc so everyone doesnt have the same stuff and allow BIS weapons/armour to come from the crafting profs

[SL1200]

90% OF MAJOR PROFESSION NERFS AND CHANGES HAVE BEEN DIRECTLY BECAUSE OF PLAYERS COMPLAINING.

Blame the players? We don't make the decisions.

[Trond]

Professions aren't rewarding enough, and they are tideous and expensive to level.

[Emmagad]

it will take a big part out of the game, a part there have been there since the very beginning.

[Sosua]

It would help if they truly made some of the professions useful ( such as Blacksmithing and Tailoring), with better patterns at all levels, perhaps even the odd Epic. Make people WANT TO get a profession, make them feel like they are losing out by not doing the grind. When you spend hours farming mats to level your prof, to finally make something decent, then you just get better items from Dungeon drops, whats the sense???

[Ichifails]

Professions aren't rewarding enough, and they are tideous and expensive to level.

I really wish I could stand behind someone like you and watch you play video games.

Professions takes minutes at most to level, they cost close to nothing and they make you a literal fortune. If at this point in Legion you're not making 1m+/week passively it simply means you can't read.

[cparle87]

Yeah, definitely a big no, if only for all the mog looks that you'd either have at the time they removed the professions, or had to accept you're never be able to get them.

[ingsve]

I would like to see more novelty and customisation built into professions. Something like having dynamic recipes. By that I mean you could have a transmog item that uses some base mats for your profession, but then you could also add other trade goods to the recipe and the appearance would change accordingly. For example you normally craft a plain belt. But then you could add some JC gems to the craft and you get a gemstudded belt instead where the colors could even match the gems you used. Or you could add secondary or teriary stats to the crafts based on the materials used. Something like that could potentially revitalize the whole professions game.

[Deleted]

Difficult topic...

On the one hand, I agree that crafting professions are completely pointless at the moment.

On the other hand, it would quite suck if you just killed mythic Avatar or KJ and got a great piece of loot, stepped out of the raid and the local tailor around the corner that has never left Dalaran has crafted something better for himself.

There needs to be a balance and Blizzard definitely has not found that yet in Legion. First professions were far too powerful and by now they are completely useless (except for the AH trading / Stat lottery winning game).

At first, I found the JC WQ really cool where you actually had to cut a gem and thought. Wow, they could make all professions like this. Then however, I quickly realized how dull and repetitive it gets. Just to prove: There probably won't be a silver bullet for this.

[Trond]

Professions takes minutes at most to level, they cost close to nothing and they make you a literal fortune. If at this point in Legion you're not making 1m+/week passively it simply means you can't read.

This is hypothetical, and is only duable if you play the game more than the average, have alts, already farmed mats, or used real money for gold, pick and chose. Most people play the game for other reasons than moneyfarming, like me that are busy with raiding.

[AcidicSyn]

~snip~

The problem with them is pretty much a problem with the whole game. Insane power creep. In BC a crafted item was good start to finish because sure it wasnt as strong as a BT or Sunwell piece (for the most part) but it was entry level compitive still. In Legion they tried to keep up with it with the upgrade system but now that they have cut that off its over.

Played a mage in BC; I don't even remember when it was finally worth it to remove my Spellfire 3pc set; all dmg increased by 7% of total int along with the buffs each piece had individually- yeah, I'm pretty sure I had these 3 pieces equipped until BT.

As for the topic at hand; the most engaging, satisfying, and fun crafting system I have ever played with (in this style of mmo- theme park I think is the name) has got to be the system currently in FFXIV. I would be thrilled to bits if Blizz poached the shit out of that, "blizzified it" and put it into WoW. When I played there, I actually considered my crafting jobs my "main", and to an extent, you really can just play as a crafter.

Of course, with that said; ignoring the type of MMO then Ultima Online hands down. But that would never work in a game like WoW. The fact that you lost what you were carrying on death played a pretty big role in why it worked there. Player crafted items were by far the most widely used items in the game; magical armor/weapons existed sure, but again; while using them gave you whatever advantage they had; the cost was risk of losing said item should you fail. It's an extreme when compared to WoW of course, but is an example (in my opinion ofc) of a game where "professions" were truly valuable.

[Cosmic Janitor]

As an alchemist and blacksmith (on one character) I can tell that one of these jobs makes a couple of flasks and pots every month and the other hasn't been touched for almost 11 months. The legendary you can craft is utterly pointless and the items are also shit in a world where people struggle to keep the various tier pieces and proper legendaries somehow on their character In reality our gearing options have been effectively reduced to 4-5 non-locked slots max, fumbling around with some shitty ass crafted pieces (you can't even craft full sets, only a single lousy piece) that require extensive material investments for upgrades is not worth it in the least. While blizzard ripped of the story lines for craftig from other games, they sadly forgot to rip of all the other interesting parts.

[Fabinas]

RNG ranks... ewwww...
Alchemy trinket rank 3 crafting bugged till 7.1.5... ewww
Shitty mythics needed to complete professions chains.... eww...
Professions are...eeewwwww in Legion.

[GreenJesus]

It's also funny that they invested time and effort to make the Legion Profession levelling "fun and engaging" by tying it to a quest and story chain (i disagree, but anyway) and then they forget to build up on that on the rest of the game, making ALL that player effort useless. Add the RNG elements and it's all a piece of shit.

They basically added an engaging "intro" but without any engaging middle or conclusion. That is the problem with legion professions. Then they took away 80% of the need for professions on top of that. RNG gems, only a couple enchanting slots, tomes that are too expensive so people don't use, glyphs basically removed, engineering ends up being an expense instead of source of revenue, etc.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

They basically added an engaging "intro" but without any engaging middle or conclusion. That is the problem with legion professions. Then they took away 80% of the need for professions on top of that. RNG gems, only a couple enchanting slots, tomes that are too expensive so people don't use, glyphs basically removed, engineering ends up being an expense instead of source of revenue, etc.

I feel like they missed the boat with crafted legendary items. After the profession intros on Broken Isles, some of which were actually interesting, the quests they gave us to craft legendaries were just silly. Caveat: I only completed the blacksmithing one because reasons, but the quests were just illogical. My objections aren't about the quests being hard or time consuming - I'd expect that for crafting a legendary item - my objections are about being asked to do things that don't make sense. Pretty sure the developers who did the early profession quests are not the same ones who did the legendary quests.

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OP: People play this game in all sorts of ways, and not all of them are into instanced content. Some play just for pet battles, some just for professions. I like the idea of making professions more engaging. As Preach observed, it might be cool for that player in your guild who isn't into raiding to maybe become your guild's master smith, learning the rare recipes to make items all of you will value and appreciate. Legion started out like they might be headed that direction, but it never panned out that way. Just my thoughts.