Have Professions Ever Felt So Worthless So Early In An Expansion?

[ablib]

People who were smart and knew how to make money before, probably think professions in WoD suck.

People who weren't very good at making gold before WoD, probably think WoD professions are great!

The big problem now is that with Garrisons churning out tons of mats daily, there are a lot of noobs that think these mats are "free". They're not, and it's destroying the economy.

Right now, my biggest gold maker is off people who think that the mats their Garrison's produce are free mats. So, learn to adapt, guess.

[Eats Compost]

The big problem now is that with Garrisons churning out tons of mats daily, there are a lot of noobs that think these mats are "free". They're not, and it's destroying the economy.

Right now, my biggest gold maker is off people who think that the mats their Garrison's produce are free mats. So, learn to adapt, guess.

Are you referring to herbs and ore? If so, you've got me curious. How are you making gold off of their perception that the mats are free?

[Dazu]

People who were smart and knew how to make money before, probably think professions in WoD suck.

People who weren't very good at making gold before WoD, probably think WoD professions are great!

The big problem now is that with Garrisons churning out tons of mats daily, there are a lot of noobs that think these mats are "free". They're not, and it's destroying the economy.

Right now, my biggest gold maker is off people who think that the mats their Garrison's produce are free mats. So, learn to adapt, guess.

No they arent. All thats been removed were the stupid shuffles really which just took advantage of newer or less informed players anyway, or even worse, took advantage of Bots farming ore/herbs.

I made thousands of gold previously, almost entirely via Alc, Enchant and JC. Mostly via shuffling. But also some from old world transmogs.

Im making thousands of gold now, and its all made via my own play, more than enough to cover my costs for everything. Savage blood is super easy to get, over 3 alts I get 20-30 per week easily. Best part is, I also dont need to sit and play the AH to buy underpriced objects and relist/DE whatever. I also dont need to rely on pure RNG to get things like Motes of Harmony to craft subpar raid gear, which is also gated behind reps/daily CD's. Only thing they screwed up was the transmog market which is completely dead now, BOE epics from cata selling for 25g is stupid, when in MoP I could sell them for 1k gold. Rare transmog bow which used to sell for 10-15k is now listed at 199g on my server, and there is 15+, whereas you might have seen 1 per 3-6 months before the Salvage yard came into the game.

As for the OP. You didnt really use prof previously, except maybe to deck out a new toon in 458 PvP gear in MoP to get them into LFR. I had every prof at max in MoP, I never crafted a single epic past the 476 entry ones because LFR gear was always better and the mats were too expensive to justify crafting an item which wasnt worthwhile due to stats/lack of sockets etc (except for the final SoO 553 ones but that was a 21 or 28 day gated CD unless you spent thousands of gold to bypass the CD, and you could replace both those items from 2 world bosses anyway which you could do at any gear level/any character level). Only reason I made them anyway was because I got so much crafting mats from killing rares/zandalari and had no use for the mats. my lock at one point had 10k cloth either loose or in bolts, and my only use was daily CD's as nothing else was worth more to use it for except to sell it on the AH, crafting was worthless as the cloth was worth more than the item, or the DE. Same as in cata. Farming embersilk was actually more profitable after about 4-6 weeks in MoP than farming windwool was already. And even frost weave was more valuable.

Enchanting is the same as always, few decent enchants are worthwhile, but DE is the real gold maker like always. Greens drop plentiful, you get plenty of blues from quests/missions and dungeons = bulk dust and shards, which will sell quick and easily. Sure anyone can use an enchanting building, but they get a pittance of what a real enchanter gets from doing it (A normal HM epic a guildy DE'd gave him 1 shard for example, 1/10th of what I get from it, so 400g for me, 40g for him and the vendor value was 33g, yeah enchanting is worthless to have....).

Having the prof is also a massive boost so you can use your parts for the upgrades. Saving needing to pay someone else 10k (or whatever things sell for now) for his 150 gearspring parts to make the 640-655 upgrade for example is a big saving. And no you cannot craft the upgrades yourself with the buildings, only the prof can craft items beyond the entry level. So not having say LW for me, is very expensive as the crafted bracers are the best item I can get for raiding in HM (and at 670 might also beat the mythic version of drops because of bad itemisation). Never have I seen entry level crafted epics which were better/equal to current raid drops on normal or above in WoW. TBC might have been the closest with BS only items which could be upgraded and the originally BoP tailor sets which were quite nice (although no stam which hurt for raiding).

Also yes the 3 crafted might seem like a limitation, but when have you ever used 3 entry level crafted epics ever previously (not including resist sets)? Most I can think of would be Mists with 2x items + a darkmoon trinket, but those 2 items were fixed stats also and not always that worthwhile. Atleast now I can fill in missing pieces/bad itemisation areas from raiding.

[RuneDK]

I havent felt so useless profession wise this early in an expansion ever. I use professions to make money and that's it. I ultimately don't give a crap about craftable pieces but they are bonuses if you get the right stat rolls. I just hate how garrisons give everyone almost every way to make items from other professions. Pretty much the only way to make gold as a scribe at the beginning of an expansion is to make cards, on my server there are less than 5 cards that sell over 1000 gold and if they do the undercutting is strong. It's ridiculous that people can throw a scribe tower in their garrison and craft the only thing scribes can make good money on. Yes they can make money on glyphs but you need to be the market controller for that to happen and it requires a lot of monitoring.

[Wilderness]

Are you referring to herbs and ore? If so, you've got me curious. How are you making gold off of their perception that the mats are free?

Because people still think that the ore is near worthless (like it was right at the start of WoD) and sell it for dirt cheap even though it was changed, a while ago, to be able to shuffle ore into dust. A lot of people seem to sell herbs pretty cheaply, rather than turning them into potions, or flasks, or milling them. Probably because its easy enough to just pick some herbs in the garden and throw them on the AH without having to think about anything else.

Garrisons have made it easier than ever for people to get whatever mats they want and then turn those mats into useful, profitable items without even needing the associated professions and people are still just dumping their ore/herbs. In past expansions you needed at least several profession alts in order to shuffle ore or maximize different professions that went together well, but a lot of that has been removed. Not all, and a horde of alts with various professions will still be more useful than not having them, but the playing field has been leveled quite a bit except that a lot of people don't seem to realize or take advantage of it.

As for the OP - I just don't understand it. You said that it feels pointless to give armor to alts b/c LFR gives gear just as good - but you can't use LFR gear while leveling can you? You can't re-roll LFR gear to give you the ideal stats that you want. If I'd known how easy and cheap it would be to craft weapons for all my alts I'd never have spent so much time trying to get them all heroic Garrosh kills for the heirlooms. On top of that, you have more crafted gear available than ever before, and you can select the best stats for your spec - which is particularly useful at this point in the raid tier when you have limited bosses available and very limited options as to what raiding gear is available. If you don't raid higher than LFR you can still get 670 gear, gear that is itemized well for your spec and in the slots that you either desire or haven't been able to fill through other means. Its better than ever from a crafted gear standpoint.

You don't need to bother with Savage Bloods to make money with professions. Bloods are, even now, still good for making gold, but they are far from the only way to do so. There's plenty of other ways to use most other professions to make quite a bit of gold, even ignoring crafted gear entirely. I'm not at all sold on Garrisons being a good direction for the game to go, but its not because of professions at all.

[miffy23]

I think the bottom line is that it's much more accessible and takes less effort (especially with alts) to make gold and provide for yourself with professions this expansion - but it's no less engaging or fun than in previous expansions, the system is pretty similar, and it's actually very valuable this tier.

The crafting system in general could indeed use a lot of improvements and be made a lot deeper - but I doubt that will ever happen in WoW. After 10 years, I think those looking for a full-blown crafting focus in the game besides playing the AH and making a couple of good items each tier need to accept that it will never go there. For many reasons.

[Turismo]

I havent felt so useless profession wise this early in an expansion ever. I use professions to make money and that's it. I ultimately don't give a crap about craftable pieces but they are bonuses if you get the right stat rolls. I just hate how garrisons give everyone almost every way to make items from other professions. Pretty much the only way to make gold as a scribe at the beginning of an expansion is to make cards, on my server there are less than 5 cards that sell over 1000 gold and if they do the undercutting is strong. It's ridiculous that people can throw a scribe tower in their garrison and craft the only thing scribes can make good money on. Yes they can make money on glyphs but you need to be the market controller for that to happen and it requires a lot of monitoring.

You're forgetting about the Tarot cards. When the Darkmoon cards were starting to go too cheap I switched to saving my mats for the Inferno Tarot and made a lot of gold and still do. It's something you don't have to think about and every week or so (if you have the Scribe building) I can provide the mats to make one and earn 10-12k.

People forget that you don't need to grind the Savage Blood when crafting items. You can get the person who wants the item to buy them and have them trade them to you before you craft it. They have to spend that gold either way.

I think one issue that causes lower prices on a lot of items, specifically darkmoon cards, is that you don't need to level your profession to near max to have access to all the new recipes. This definitely floods the market along with the fact that you can already make items without having the profession it self. Having said that, I've made almost 200k since the start of this expansion and I only recently leveled an alt. It's certainly not hard to make gold, it's just finding a new way to do it and also not spending the gold you have on needless items.

[RuneDK]

You're forgetting about the Tarot cards. When the Darkmoon cards were starting to go too cheap I switched to saving my mats for the Inferno Tarot and made a lot of gold and still do. It's something you don't have to think about and every week or so (if you have the Scribe building) I can provide the mats to make one and earn 10-12k.

People forget that you don't need to grind the Savage Blood when crafting items. You can get the person who wants the item to buy them and have them trade them to you before you craft it. They have to spend that gold either way.

I think one issue that causes lower prices on a lot of items, specifically darkmoon cards, is that you don't need to level your profession to near max to have access to all the new recipes. This definitely floods the market along with the fact that you can already make items without having the profession it self. Having said that, I've made almost 200k since the start of this expansion and I only recently leveled an alt. It's certainly not hard to make gold, it's just finding a new way to do it and also not spending the gold you have on needless items.

I'm used to making money off ore/herb shuffling. And would have made five times that easily had they basically not gotten rid of the shuffles in the game. Tarot cards are cool and all, but it's not THAT much gold for a weeks worth of time...I made more than you do a week on that tarot in a day for the first month at a minimum the past two expansions. Settling for 12k a week is pretty terrible.

[Deliverer]

I have never seen so many people using crafted gear for end game content.. Some items even compete with mythic cause of bis stats.
Also I started kinda late my barn and with 3 chars it takes like a week to upgrade to lvl 3. I make something like 5 savage bloods a day running 3x lvl 3 barns and in 625/630 gear it takes 15/20 min to get enough caged beasts as tank at least. I've never made so many golds like I am now and never rly played with professions like I am now. I enjoy the changes so far.

Also I finally dropped mining on my pala and got jc and don't have to worry about materials since I can get enough from garrison.

[Bubbzy]

Despite professions being more hard to level in previous expansions (not even that hard, just more work compared to Wod), it was fun. It was satisfying. Currently there is an artificial block where we cant craft as we have to wait for work orders. They become a side thing, together with follower missions, only occasionally useful when we have enough crafting mats.

[SilkforCalde]

SWTOR crafting is far more interesting and enjoyable than WoW's. And it's very accessible. EQ2 had a very interesting crafting system.

Honestly, I'd be fairly happy with the way WoW's crafting used to be. You had to go out in the world to gather mats. And you often had to work on rep or make some other effort to get recipes.

In what way is SW:ToR's crafting more interesting and enjoyable than WoWs? I would never claim that, the opposite if anything.

[Wilderness]

I'm used to making money off ore/herb shuffling. And would have made five times that easily had they basically not gotten rid of the shuffles in the game. Tarot cards are cool and all, but it's not THAT much gold for a weeks worth of time...I made more than you do a week on that tarot in a day for the first month at a minimum the past two expansions. Settling for 12k a week is pretty terrible.

Its silly to compare making money at the start of an expansion to even a few months in when all prices have down a lot. And "settling" for 12k/week isn't terrible, its easy gold that requires little time/gold investment. You can only make limited items with war paints, and the market dictates the value of those items. If its profitable, you keep making them, and selling them. When it becomes unprofitable, you stop. But its not like he's choosing to make 12k/week when he could be making 50k/week from those same items.

[Madruga]

Yes, professions are almost useless, and much faster than ever before.

Too much cooldowns, too much randomness in each piece, too expensive to get a somewhat useful item you may replace very soon in raiding.

I think they had it right in MoP, no idea why they had to make professions so boring only to have the Garrison built around them. They could have kept what they had in MoP just slightly nerfed to acoomodate the Garrison.

And oh I miss the shuffle...

[Deleted]

Warlords of Draenor killed professions.

This is not the solution to sprucing them up, at all.

Whoever made the decision to implement these changes should not be earning a salary for doing so.

[PursueTheChase]

It was a nice idea to try and intertwine them with garrisons. But the execution was so poor, and the removal of character bonuses made professions lose almost all flavour and uniqueness.