"Would you miss gemming and enchanting?"

[Aliok]

I would miss both the professions, though they aren't what they used to be. There have always been those designs and formulas that made me go "huh?", but there were plenty of others that offered a semi-realistic benefit at the very least. I used to see demand on my server for all sorts of cuts and enchants. Now stats have been removed or homogenized; I think that the latter is the major contribution to the de facto "optimal" choice for PvE.

I personally would like for item level upgrade feature to go away forever. If I have to go outside of the game to look up what the final version (last item level upgrade, i.e.: 2/2) of a piece of gear will be in order to make comparisons, then I think there is something wrong. This is not to say that I ought to be able to look at gear for my spec and say upgrade/downgrade in under a second, but that I do not want to agonize over item-level upgrade vs other gear piece (from somewhere) vs vendor gear piece plus reforging on top of everything. It's too much for me. Maybe if I didn't have a low ceiling and/or cap on JP and VP, I would not be so concerned about risking what I've managed to accumulate.

As a side-note: Stay away from my racials.

[Xihuitl]

I wish they would ditch the whole gems and enchants thing totally, and look at reforging to make it less necessary to reforge and entire gearset when you get a drop.

I like the engineering model, where you get nice gizmos from the profession, maybe do that for the others, so you dont have to gem, but JCs get nice options on a JC theme.

Limit enchants to say weapons, and chest and legs, limit gems to hands, belt, shoulders for instance, split it up a bit maybe.

[Spinachsandwich]

If jc and enchanting were removed from the game i'd be pissed big time. Why change something that isn't broken? And as far as reforging goes, i spent 100k on a mount with a reforger on it, so if reforging was removed i'd also be angry. Ghostcrawler is a dipshit creating controversy where there isn't any. The guy really needs to be replaced.

[Jacob6875]

I don't know if this is a solution to the problem but it is annoying that every time I get a piece of gear I have to enchant / Gem it and then reforge 1/2 my armor in order to reach the hit cap.

Then this patch they added in the item upgrade system making the entire process more annoying.

[mmines]

I would hate that, it seems like they're taking everything out of the game until you're eventually left with just a character that you don't make any choices on and are the same to everybody else.

[Talen]

The important bit is the thought experiment of what that might do to professions? I'll admit that gearing choices can be a bit overwhelming these days unless you're simply working off of a BIS list.

For me personally, this is the most interesting thing to pop out of GC's head in a while assuming that it's something that is in the back of his mind.

So, what do you think?

It is interesting, but is something better considered with gearing as a whole.

Gemming and Enchanting have an issue here in that they effectively do the same job. Improve gear. Reforging is another culprit. And many players do get a degree of fun from this

Can the system be improved?Probably.

What if, for example, all gear was transmog gear. It had a look, it had an armor value and an armor type. What if gemming added white stats, while enchanting added procs and green stats?

Too radical?

EJL

[Xihuitl]

If jc and enchanting were removed from the game i'd be pissed big time. Why change something that isn't broken? And as far as reforging goes, i spent 100k on a mount with a reforger on it, so if reforging was removed i'd also be angry. Ghostcrawler is a dipshit creating controversy where there isn't any. The guy really needs to be replaced.

Many would argue there is a problem already, and that it is broke.
I've turned down gear, and seen others do it, because its too much hassle to calculate the necessary changes with gems, enchants and reforging.

Its just unecessary metagaming.

[Zaizo]

Primary stat enchants and gems cause very little diversity in options tbh.

[Zeglo]

Yes. I like the customization. It's a bit of a chore, but I enjoy feeling "complete" after a long day or customizing.

[Etherius]

I like enchanting and jewelcrafting. There is variety, a little more for enchanting perhaps would be nice, but so what if elitist jerks or any research tell us this is what's optimal? I see many people ignoring haste / mastery / crit gems and gemming purely str / agi / int and ignoring the gem bonus. Some will claim their way is just better, well some of us aren't looking for elitist jerks NOR do we care about "what's optimal" according to them? I find haste / mastery / crit make a huge difference if you look at the rotation you're comfortable with. If you're looking for this kind of information, fine, go ahead! No one will stop you~ But there are others out there like myself who will look at advice once in a while, but not rely on it like a bloody walkthrough.

As for reforging? Yes! It does help because it allows us to give us the stat numbers we are solely looking for and NOT hoping for that one piece of gear to give us the perfect hit cap or more haste / crit / mastery or whatever. A gold sink? Yeah, well everything in this game is.. but you get that choice of what you spend it on.

[MasterHamster]

So far no one seems to consider the effects on those who, you know, produces these gems and enchants..

[Nerevar]

Definitely not. These little things are annoying nowadays.

[Itisamuh]

I wouldn't miss it at all. I don't make any gold PvPing, and without them, I wouldn't need any. It'd greatly improve my WoW experience.

[slasher0161]

While its true they aren't all that exciting for a person hell bent on min/maxing they are a quick and effective way to see if a person puts in effort. The complaint of "yay an upgrade, QQ I have to spend 500g to make it optimal." is a joke. Gold is simply too easy to make to complain about 500g to get a piece sorted, lets work on a figure here of 1000g a piece for example, you have 10 slots (11 if DWing) that can possibly take gems and enchants (ignoring rings for chanters because lets be honest here you guys get enchants the cheapest of anyone), that is 11,000g to completely optimize a gear set. Now the average joe can comfortably farm 1000g per hour, that means to completely optimize a gear set at worst your investing 11 hours of your time. Consider the amount of time spent acquiring that gear in the first place and suddenly the 11 hours to optimize it is minimal.
If your worried about replacing the piece rapidly, cheap out a bit you can reno a set of gear for around 2k if you take the moderate enchants and think ahead and stock a couple of spare chants when they are cheap (worst case scenario you resell them when prices are high and make some gold on it).

The real problem here is they are features that just simply can't be removed at this point in the game, if they were removed profession perks would have to go entirely, gold becomes completely redundant (not only 90% redundant) and the ah market slowly grinds its way to a near stand still. If they were to remove them they may as well remove primary profession limits because gathering profs won't make money (they hardly do now for time investment) there will be far less transition of gold between players, crafting profs will only make gold at the start of expansions and then hit a near complete stand still for the next 18-24 months, etc.

I really don't think the point needs to be taken much further if it isn't clear its not viable to remove them without stupid levels of overhauls by this point then I doubt stating anything further would change opinions.

TL;DR - They are a necessary evil by now without stupidly large overhauling (which blizz might need a new ui for [that is the flavor of the month excuse right now after all]).

[Cinnamohn]

I kind of feel like Enchanting/Disenchanting should be more like Path of Exile's Orb system.

You could have various options, along with level ranges for leveling up purposes.
- White to Green (Adds up to 4 stats, and improves quality)
- White to Blue (Adds up to 4 stats, and improves quality)
- Green to Blue (Adds up to 2 stats (cannot exceed 4), and improves quality)
- Blue to Purple (Adds up to 2 stats (cannot exceed 5), and improves quality)
- Upgrade Green (Max 2/3/4/5 stats)
- Upgrade Blue (Max 2/3/4/5 stats)
- Upgrade Purple (Max 3/4/5/6 stats)
- Disenchant (Removes enchantment from item)

Stats would be completely random and could be on the same item up to two times. Disenchanting an item would reduce it's item level by a very small amount to prevent infinite attempts.


Gemming could be slightly altered to where only jewelry has sockets. Instead of a maximum of 1, necklaces could hold the meta gem and two others, rings could hold 3 each. The stats would need to be tweaked and such, but it's something. They could also have a durability and eventually break to keep the market going.

[Aquamonkey]

If they are going to keep enchanting, they should add more enchants so each slot has more than 1-2 valid choices.

They should get rid of meta gems. It's not even a choice like it used to be. You just pick the single best one for your spec.

[MoanaLisa]

So far no one seems to consider the effects on those who, you know, produces these gems and enchants..

To be fair, the quote and my question for the discussion was to ignore the damage it would do to the professions.

Clearly something like this if it were to be seriously contemplated would be done in the context of a total redesign of professions generally. Perhaps to re-purpose those professions affected toward something else or the idea I like better, to allow people to take more or all professions and make craftable gear and weapons that would require elements of several professions, all of which you could manage on your own to the degree that you had brought all of those professions up to par.

Grindy? Yeah, probably. But many of us have done this to some extent on mains+alts. I'm interested in the idea of perhaps accomplishing it solely on a main.

[Ascendant]

I don't really care so long as they find a viable solution to keep the professions useful in some way, what I'd like to see gone or actually revamped for real is inscription. They said they were going to make glyphs a choice, at the moment most glyphs have no downside.

[Granyala]

"Would you miss gemming and enchanting?"

Gems: Since everything is precalculated by the theorycrafters, there are virtually 0 options you can take. You know your BiS stones, if you don't take them, you're a fool. Only exception is when trying to reach a haste plateau while not having the item level to support it quite yet. (minor thing really)

Enchants: 0 alternatives on most if not all slots.

Seriously, why am I doing this? Both just seem like a mindless resource sink to get an item ready for usage.

I love reforging though. Such nice flexibility. Was such a PITA having to swap around gears back in the day to stay hitcapped.

[Xothic]

I would, yes. Gives you that little bit of extra control over your stats.