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

[Binko]

Unless you want to do the Savage Blood grind it just feels like professions are already completely worthless.

I still have one guy slowly leveling, but he already hit his 3 crafted item max and now he can't even make armor for himself. Feels pointless to give armor to alts because even LFR gear is just as good. Weapons are especially pointless: I give my hunter a 630 gun and if I go to the expense of upgrading it it becomes 640, upgrade it again for a huge cost and it's 655. But even the upcoming LFR will drop 650 items. So why bother?

I'm a casual player who doesn't raid beyond LFR or do pvp. Playing around with professions and trying to max out my characters the best I could with crafted gear was a big part of what kept me playing previously. Can't remember it ever feeling like this in the past.

[Deleted]

Start farming savage blood and you can upgrade that crafting equipment to heroic raiding equivalent.

[Zantos]

Not really no. Enchanting always felt like it was a really big goal to get the best enchants as soon as possible. Now, its not hard at all.

[miffy23]

Where are people getting this nonsense from?
Crafted gear is arguably the best you can get pre-mythic, and well worth the time investment. No reforging and suboptimal itemization for most specs make crafting extremely worthwhile this tier, much more so than in previous expansions.

[Binko]

Where are people getting this nonsense from?
Crafted gear is arguably the best you can get pre-mythic, and well worth the time investment. No reforging and suboptimal itemization for most specs make crafting extremely worthwhile this tier, much more so than in previous expansions.

This is only true for some crafted gear. Armor and trinkets go 640 > 655 > 665. But guns, staffs and offhands go 630 > 640 > 655 while goggles and jewelry can only take one upgrade from 640 > 655.

Making two upgrades at a cost of 250 of your crafting reagent and 30 savage bloods may be worth it for items that go to 665 but feels fairly weak for the effort involved for items that only go to 655. In either case trapping big beasts in Nagrand is not much fun and grinding out tons of savage blood is not really something I enjoy which is why i started my comment with an exception for people who are willing to invest a lot of time in the savage blood grind.

[chibichibiko]

Third level is 670, not 665.

[miffy23]

This is only true for some crafted gear. Armor and trinkets go 640 > 655 > 665. But guns, staffs and offhands go 630 > 640 > 655 while goggles and jewelry can only take one upgrade from 640 > 655.

Making two upgrades at a cost of 250 of your crafting reagent and 30 savage bloods may be worth it for items that go to 665 but feels fairly weak for the effort involved for items that only go to 655. In either case trapping big beasts in Nagrand is not much fun and grinding out tons of savage blood is not really something I enjoy which is why i started my comment with an exception for people who are willing to invest a lot of time in the savage blood grind.

Please stop spreading misinformation.

Armor goes to 670.
Jewelry and goggles are upgradable twice just the exact same way to 670 (wearing my 670 crafted necklace right now).

The cost is:
150 mats/ 15 blood / elemental stuff for tier 2
200 mats/ 15 blood / elemental stuff for tier 3

Finally, the fact that you can reroll your secondaries to your perfect ones is what makes it quite powerful. Many slots are entirely crap in secondaries for many specs in Highmaul, and getting a perfect crafted instead if quite noticable, more so if you do some research and craft for your 3 worst slots from Highmaul.

You may not enjoy it or have fun investing time into the trapping - but it's worthwhile.

As for not enjoying it - when was grinding for crafting mats ever enjoyable? In 5.0 people just fought over mote-grinding spots, for gear that was out-of-date after a couple of bosses on HC. Hooray.

[Accendor]

Yeah, nearly all professions are useless at the moment. There needs to be something done.

[azurrei]

Where are people getting this nonsense from?
Crafted gear is arguably the best you can get pre-mythic, and well worth the time investment. No reforging and suboptimal itemization for most specs make crafting extremely worthwhile this tier, much more so than in previous expansions.

When people say professions are "worthless," they usually don't mean that the gear is worthless...they mean they can't make gold from their professions because it now requires some thinking and market analysis instead of mindless AH spam using TSM.

[dd614]

Blizzard has ruined professions all around. I can't fathom how this current incarnation got past alpha testing. The actual gear and mats are useless, and tying them into garrisons made them even more garbage.

[Deleted]

When people say professions are "worthless," they usually don't mean that the gear is worthless...they mean they can't make gold from their professions because it now requires some thinking and market analysis instead of mindless AH spam using TSM.

*requires pressing same cooldown for 5-15 days and posting once on AH along with some animal trapping, turning GR from 10 alts into Draenic dust, and letting your TSM Sniper run for 3-8hrs a day.

It requires zero "market analysis". That's what previous expansions required. I'm on 3rd EU largest server and I had barely any competition in some markets. These are some of markets I had to drop because they have very low or non-existant profit margins and they were profitable during Cata/MoP for me:
-TBC and WotLK gems
-LW bags
-old Enchants (Mongoose
-some bar xmuting/smelting (Saronite, Trillium, Titansteel etc)
-crafted mounts
-part of xmog gear that appears in Salvage yard
-part of xmog gear from instances VERY easy to solo now
etc.

It's not that professions are worthless, it's just that "niche" markets went to hell, and you can't even be creative about your goldmaking anymore.
Get your 10 lv96+ alts, spam CDs and you'll probably make a solid 300k a month.

[Binko]

The first sentence of my first post on this topic is:
"Unless you want to do the Savage Blood grind it just feels like professions are already completely worthless."

Guy responds with elaborate posts showing how you can get high level crafted items by doing the Savage Blood grind.

I'll concede that many professions can make a few high level items if you are willing to endure a lot of grind and time gating.

But my main point was this: for average players who are not trying to min/max their gear for high level raiding professions feel pretty worthless very early in this expansion. At least it feels that way to me.

[Captainn]

Yeah I don't really care for the professions this expansion. I guess I like being able to level them at my own pace... But I don't know. I've made a lot of gold from it, but I feel like it's really boring and leaves a lot to be desired.

[Headayke]

I've been level 100 for more then a month, just realized I could grind out burnished leather to craft better gear I've been getting from heroics and LFR. The only reason to have enchanting was to be able to disenchant, now I've got a building to do it for me. I don't think they are pointless, maybe boring but so is everything nowadays.

[miffy23]

The first sentence of my first post on this topic is:
"Unless you want to do the Savage Blood grind it just feels like professions are already completely worthless."

Guy responds with elaborate posts showing how you can get high level crafted items by doing the Savage Blood grind.

I'll concede that many professions can make a few high level items if you are willing to endure a lot of grind and time gating.

But my main point was this: for average players who are not trying to min/max their gear for high level raiding professions feel pretty worthless very early in this expansion. At least it feels that way to me.

Only that it's not a grind and arguably takes less time than previous expansions, where you had to dedicate significant amounts of time to mindlessly grinding mobs for Motes of Harmony or rare profession mats.

There is time gating in the garrison system, yes, but the amount of time actually invested and used doing it is very minimal.
Even trapping 21 Elites takes maybe half an hour, and that lasts you for 4 days almost.

Would you rather be forced to spend a day grinding one area of the game repeatedly in order to "progress" your gear as a casual? Instead of spending a bit of time and then having time to do other stuff while it goes through the gating process?

[BergErr]

Doing good money from most proffesions atm.
Also this time around we could craft 3 items instead of 2, 50% increase!
Could even make raid quality gear before raids opened, not 1month of disenchants into raids.

[MoanaLisa]

I've made more money from professions this time around than previous expansions. Tailoring has some worthwhile items which in the past, let's be honest, were not that great from the start. Enchanting is going well. I like having access to basic materials and sell everything of that nature that I put in the AH although selling cheap. It's free gold basically.

I wouldn't mind having to go out in the world a little more to support them. So no, overall I don't see professions as being terrible at all. Just very different.

[Tenjen]

it actually feels a hint more useful with the 3-tiers

[Binko]

Would you rather be forced to spend a day grinding one area of the game repeatedly in order to "progress" your gear as a casual? Instead of spending a bit of time and then having time to do other stuff while it goes through the gating process?

Neither, actually.

I'd rather we had a rich and interesting crafting system. WoW's crafting was always somewhat weak compared to other MMOs. But WoD has dumbed it down and simplified it and tied it into Garrisons to the point that it's painfully dull.

I guess the real source of discontent is that professions now just feels so unsatisfying. It seems that Blizzard was so intent of making crafting instantly accessible to the great mass of new players and players returning after a long break that they forgot to make it interesting for those of us who have actually enjoyed it over the years.

[Theangryone]

I dunno, I am not lacking for gear and have made more gold this xpac than I have the last two.