Armory Stats - Professions, Poll, Cinematic Reveal Event Footage

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Armory Stats - Professions
It is another quiet holiday week, so today we are taking a look at the professions of Level 90 characters at the end of Mists of Pandaria and Level 100 characters today. There are 3.7 million characters and 2.5 million accounts that make up this sample. Keep in mind data collection started recently, so there may be some characters that we haven't come across yet.

Warlords of Draenor also changed how professions work, significantly reducing the incentive to cap your profession right away by not gating items with a required high skill level. In Mists of Pandaria, 95% or more of players capped most professions, but this has significantly changed.

If you have any requests for other stats be sure to let us know in the comments, as a quiet week is a good time to fulfill requests!

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Poll - Professions
What professions are you using in Warlords of Draenor? If you have any thoughts about the Warlords of Draenor profession changes, be sure to leave them in the comments.



Warlords of Draenor Cinematic Reveal Event
Our friends over at FinalBoss put together a video that shows a little more of what went on at the Warlords of Draenor cinematic reveal event. Celestalon even makes a short appearance.

[Deleted]

I would've expected a bigger drop in the number of miners.

[GGA1759]

Very interesting look at crafting professions. I'm sure blizz didn't intend for this to happen.

[AeroKargath]

At first I was frustrated that crafting took so long to get maxed but at this point I find them to largely be a profession for alts (for leveling them). Some are still relevant to mains (JC, Enc) but after a couple of weeks the gear becomes mostly pointless with very few exceptions. The random roll stats is pretty irritating but I understand why they added the functionality to do so.

[Avallon]

Was super pumped for a moment because I misread the description- thought it was the Warcraft movie teaser reveal. As Hercules once said: Disappointed!!

[Deleted]

I think professions are totally crushed.
Mining and Herbalism became totally void, cooking also. Buff-food you can produce with cooking is not worth any more as you can get 100's meals from the barn.
Maxing Alchemy was way easier than my main's professions Jewelcrafting or Enchanting (which both are not maxed until now!) - one daily cd for the mana potion's recipe and then brewing mana potions (mandatory for healers) until 700.
I have no miner any more, though my ores are crowding my character's banks. Draenor stones - for work orders at the mine - are also stacking, instead the grain from the garden is too less every time, even with a level 3 garden. So you need herbalism to get 1000 grains fast enough for the pet. Then you don't need them any more.

I will max-level the professions for the achievements, then use the barn for the 100's meals, my alchy for the flasks and potions, my main's enchanting and jewelcrafting for upgrading the equipment and the remaining professions will be ignored as soon as they're 700.

[middling]

RE: professions
From a person that had every profession maxed in Mists I am finding less and less incentive to do much with my professions this time around.
I got all my alts started on day 1 of the expansion, made some gold selling the 630-640 armor, made some gold selling savage blood through mining primal spirits but now it just seems kinda blah.
I don't even do the daily cooldowns anymore. I was super excited to read about doing 3 daily CDs at once only to learn they scrapped that idea.
There is not much point getting professions to max anymore. Also it's a bit of a double edged sword. On the one hand I love that the missions give out decent gear over time, but at the same time this gives me even less incentive to work on my professions.
I'm sure there are people that are still playing the AH game relentlessly by crafting as much stuff as possible but that's just not me.
I also miss having any incentive to go out and get certain recipes. Whether that is gated behind a certain skill level, gated behind a reputation or gated behind a mob drop in a dungeon.
I fondly remember farming Gnomeregan for recipes. Personally it made me feel a bit more special having recipes that were a bit harder to get.
However, I will say for newer players it's probably very nice to not need old world materials or the need to visit the trainer 6-8 times before you are max level.

[Felade]

The only thing about the new professions that bothers me is Savage Blood, and lack of shuffles. Enchanting is just as good as it has always been (source of free enchants for myself, mats and enchants sell well). Jewelcrafting has potential, since the number of sockets people have will tend to increase as people farm gear, and I bet Blizz will slightly increase the drop rate of sockets as we go along. The armor crafting professions depend too much on Savage Blood, and 15 is a bit too much for an upgrade patch. However, I've still been able to sell the base patterns enough to pay for the gear I bought on the first few days of level 100.

I think the lack of shuffles is there so that we don't feel like we need the synergistic effects of having every profession on several alts like we have in the past. It was a fun interaction, but having to level so many alts with professions was too steep a requirement. Professions like Enchanting, Jewelcrafting, Inscription and Alchemy are still useful on alts, though.

Its funny to me that people complain about how long it takes to reach 700 skill in their professions. Why does it matter how long it takes to reach 700 if you can do everything that's important starting at 1 skill?

[middling]

Its funny to me that people complain about how long it takes to reach 700 skill in their professions. Why does it matter how long it takes to reach 700 if you can do everything that's important starting at 1 skill?

I think the main thing people want is the "extra" materials created when your skill is 700.
I don't know the math on what % better it is, but as far as I know that's the only advantage.

[holaadios]

Well, Blizz has effectively destroyed professions, if this is not rectified the economy will follow in the next few months. I honestly have no idea what they were thinking but the economy in WoW is a much more important part than in D3, for example and it is more complex.

[Shadocat]

Professions got totally broken.
Herbalism and Mining are useless now, I did not even bother to send my gathering char to Draenor.
I have ore and herbs like never before and can do less with it than ever.

Enchanting is a bad joke now, especially since old enchants can not be applied to items above itemlevel 600.
Engineering got three pets, an useless toy and the swap-blaster which for some stupid reason is not a toy, everything else is just new versions
of things we had before.

Oh, forgot about cooking and fishing.
Cooking is useless now because the best meals are supplied by the barn.
Fishing got canned with this stupidly quick change to alchemy, before it was not half-bad.

[zrankfappa]

The 3 craftable item limit, coupled with the vast number of BoE's, Mission gear, and random stats has hurt the crafting professions. All of my alts who have crafting professions are at 100, and yet I have only crafted a couple of items. I do the daily cool downs on them all ... i have shiatloads of crafting materials but no motivation to craft anything. If I could outfit an alt entirely with gear that i made, then yes I would make stuff.

The first week I crafted a neck for my guardian druid, then made/bought a dozen re-rolls in an attempt to get some bonus armor. It really turned me off to the crafting professions in WoD. Since then ... i made a couple shields and engineering googles. Occasionaly some cards for decks.

[Unknown0rigin]

I am really hoping that Blizzard adds more to each profession with each major patch. Alchemy doesn't even have a transmute! and the potion master, transmute master, elixir master is completely useless now since you aren't getting additional procs. Please fix this blizzard... why do you hate alchemy?

[Taiknee]

I went with Skinning and LW on my boosted shammy (didn't realize at the time how much gathering professions were no longer needed)

[Tenjen]

there's data right here and people are still stating their own things or trying to misinterpret this to their own ends with vague generalities

[nexmagus]

What I would love to see is a graph gold per player and another with gold per account. This is not readily available in the armory but I am sure Blizzard has access to it.

[MrExcelion]

The high JC/Ench figures are definitely telling, great professions for long term income once Foundry obsoletes craftables. Plus the Enchanters Study illusions are awesome. Must have been a lot of JC rerolls since it was inferior for some classes DPS-wise last xpac. I'm planning on doing 2 JC rerolls myself.

Engi is still up there from last xpac and non-consumable versions of the glider, jeeves, and moll-e make it one of the best main profs. Definitely the best for quality of life if golds not a huge deal.

But yeah, don't see how the other profs can keep up unless they introduce new craftables. At least tailoring has bags.

[Smartie]

I dislike the new professions, I hate having to log on and do the same set of things in my garrison to grind materials most days.

I miss sitting down to a task and finishing it, I leveled all my alts profs in MoP, but the thought of doing it in WoD, or the point of even doing it. It is just rubbish, the slow grind of logging on each day making the craftables.

They've ruined professions. I haven't even gone out into Draenor to gather any of the materials needed, they've all come from my garrison. The only exception would be those god damn traps for the barn, which I hate grinding with so many other players in the same location.

They should scrap all gathering professions and make them part of the main professions, you get LW and you can skin, you get enchanting you can disenchant, so it makes sense. Make going out into the world and spending a little time gathering materials to level your professions part of the game again.

[Cholerabob]

Professions are ssooooo broken it is sad. They are almost completely useless now because of the high amount of base materials needed and the limited amount you can get each day. It's a total joke. I don't even work on them anymore. Mining ( you can't even smelt anything anymore ) and Herbing are a joke, anyone can do it. After this they say " don't buy gold it's bad for the economy" well YOU fucked up the economy this time not the gold sellers....

[iriecolorado]

RIP Professions 2004 - 2015.