Professions and Gear Fine-Tuning

[Prada]

Professions have been a necessary, fun and integral part of the game since its dawn and they continue to fulfill the task of increasing the player's power, both via currency and general improvement of spells, gear and players.
Professions have changed over time and some have become dormant, less sought after and while it has made gearing optimally less expensive (albeit with less options), it has reduced the fun part of fine tuning gear to the players' wants/needs.

Professions have been tied to gear power, and to allow them to be interesting again, gear needs to adopt a few traits.

All armor should have some or all of the following characteristics:

• Stamina plus One other Base Primary Stat (strength, agility, intellect)
• One Base Secondary Stat (mastery, haste, crit, etc.)
• One Enchanting Slot (to place a secondary stat the user chooses which is not the same as the items' base secondary stat)
• One Prismatic Gem Socket (to place any gem the user chooses)
• One Armor/Weapon Upgrade (increases the item's level, Epic quality only)

With all these options available on armor, it opens up opportunities for all professions to become more active and allow players to become more powerful in the way that they want.

• Enchanters can create enchanting scrolls of various types for armor and weapons (mastery, hast, crit, etc.)
• Jewelcrafters can create gems of various types (primary or secondary stats), in addition to creating jewelry gear
• Tailors, Leatherworkers, Blacksmiths can create item upgrade tokens for their respective armor types in addition to creating armor/weapons
• Scribes can create engravings which increase the item level of Weapons and Off-hand items, in addition to creating glyphs and certain weapons

What you may have noticed is that reforging and item level upgrades have been baked in to the existing professions to some extent.
This would allow for easier distribution of currency among all professions.

Also, what would make this even more plausible by avoiding skyrocketing prices, is to create an auction house system specifically for profession items, similar to the gametime token system. When a player goes to sell an item, they get a flat price based on quantity available on the market, independent from whatever the selling price will be in the future. The buying price will fluctuate based on quantity. This way, the max buying price of an enchanting scroll or gem or glyph will always be affordable, and if the market becomes flooded, the minimum price wont be soo low as to greatly impede profit for sellers.

Alchemy and cooking would maintain their niche of buffing the players themselves, where alchemy would also provide access to a starter level trinket.
Gathering professions should become secondary professions or be made baseline abilities, much like how anyone can gather in their garrison now without learning the respective profession.

[Stylepoints]

So basically, u want Tailoring/LW/BS/Inscription to be able to upgrade item levels on their respective gear. So instead of players earning item levels and better gear by actually playing their character, they can pay gold and get the boost instead. So are you talking about going beyond the "stage" system that is currently in place for craftables and extending it to all epic armor?

If you swapped out "valor" for "profession" upgrades then nobody would do heroic/mythic dungeons. Which is why they brought valor back...so, you know, people actually play the content they created for more than a few weeks.

[Prada]

So basically, u want Tailoring/LW/BS/Inscription to be able to upgrade item levels on their respective gear. So instead of players earning item levels and better gear by actually playing their character, they can pay gold and get the boost instead. So are you talking about going beyond the "stage" system that is currently in place for craftables and extending it to all epic armor?

If you swapped out "valor" for "profession" upgrades then nobody would do heroic/mythic dungeons. Which is why they brought valor back...so, you know, people actually play the content they created for more than a few weeks.

Well the ilvl upgrade will be limited to just once, and better gear will always be available in raids and new content. The point you made about using valor to extend the usefulness of content is a good one, but this idea does not dismiss that. Patterns will need to be obtained, which can follow the valor system or a rare drop system in dungeons/raids, much like how it was before.

Looking at the bigger picture, I believe that extending the usefulness of professions will be a bigger win that dungeons and raids. There is already enough incentive to running dungeons via the timewalker events and raiding provides the best gear and most interesting encounters in the game.