How does Legion's profession system measure up to past expansions?

[JemiS]

TBH, I think people just got too used to professions being way too easy. It's been expected for a long time that you could max a profession with very little time/effort/money (relatively), and that most people would have 1 or 2 maxed. It was also easy to max professions on alts with little-to-no time input, and it was beneficial having alts with professions for money making.

Now, professions aren't "hard" relative to other MMOs, but they're a lot harder than they've ever been in WoW. They take time to max out, they take significant inputs of time and effort to learn recipes from, and have better profit for people willing to put the time in.

I also think people need to stop looking at having all 3 star recipes as a basic starting point, and look at them as a perk that you might or might not have. The intent was that some people have 3 stars in one recipe, some in others, and people actually interact to trade what they can make best.

It's the same problem with artifact weapons- give people something not intended to be maxed out immediately and they don't know what to do with it.

[Mysd]

Pros: Nice questlines (I felt them very rewarding).
Cons: Recipes ranks is a good idea, but RNG in order to get them ruins all. Unbalanced professions (either in gold profit and utility).

[Explicit Teemo Nudes]

Starting to really loose my sh*t in this game to be honest.
Picked it up after a hiatus, you know, since everyone was praising legion and it's a complete sh*tshow.

Whenever you ask how to earn cash with professions, like the very first answer is "Well, first of you will need TSM" - oh, you mean that AH-bot that keeps undercutting until there the profit margin is completely destroyed? Right. Thanks for that. That's why we can't have nice things.

Professions are super-broken. Even gathering is now f*cked. Plant & Ore prices are plummeting due to bots running 24/7 and multiboxers and whatever one could actually craft is made unprofitable by TSM. So all that is left is spending like 6 hours farming Dreamleaf, just so you can sell it for maybe 20k.

Right now there are exactly 3 ways to make money:
1. Botting / Multiboxing / TSM-botting
2. Flipping
3. Manipulating the market

I'm done til the next expansion, unless 7.2 makes professions a viable source of income again. It got rediculous - people openly bot and multibox and Blizzard is doing nothing about it.

What has TSM got to with this? Nothing. You just suck at making gold. People would be undercutting without any addons.

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Heard that argument plenty. "Oh, you just salty and can't make money, so u jelly, ;3;3;3 LeL ". It's the "git gud" answer you get whenever you say that something is unfair or badly balanced or broken.

Nope, not really. Botters are selling herbs below value, to which TSM-botters then buy those herbs, instantly make pots / food and put it back in for a profit margin that is so tiny, that you only earn something if you invest a LOT. We have a player for pretty much every resource, pot and food that put in astronomical amounts of the stuff on the AH. I.e. one them keeps in more than 5000 of EVERY plant except felwort a day on the AH. Tell me how exactly i am supposed to buy out that? And pots / food are obviously plummetting accordingly.

And don't get me this "Multiboxing and TSM are legal tho" - well, yes. So is being a complete and utter tosser, doesn't mean it's a good thing. TSM automatizes AH and destroys any semblance of a healthy marketplace, where the player is actually required to look and search for himself to make a great deal. It takes away all the nuance and skill. You just type in numbers into a sheet and press "go" and this AH-bot does everything for you. However - as soon as more than one person uses it, profit margins are plummeting and you end up with Dreamleaf going from 50g to 9g in 2 weeks.

Oh, but Alchemy, right? Nope. Even at the plummeting prices, a flask costs about 900g, while it costs about 1100g to make one. But hey, i could just craft like 500 of them and hope for that motherf*cking Rank 3 proc, right?

Come the hell on. Professions are more broken than the isles.

TSM and many other AH addons that are automating things have been a thing from many expansions ago; they are nothing new. The people that post things below crafting cost generally don't know they are posting below crafting cost or they just want to get rid of all the things they crafted to level their professions.
Flask and pots below crafting cost on the AH has been a thing for several expansions on my realm.

If DL was 50g on your realm 2 weeks ago it must be some deadass realm with no players on it. 9g is way more than you would get for a herb in other expansions at this point in the expansion - especially for a herb that is so easy to farm.

[JemiS]

DL was only spiking to 50g, and has never dropped to 9 g according to TUJ, so I call shenanigans. Especially since you're the one selling multiple stacks at the lowest price point currently, when there's no reason to undercut stacks of 1 with stacks of 200. You're currently the only person selling 200 stacks, which command a premium, and you're 3G under the realm average, and nearly 2g below the next lowest person who is selling small stacks to make a wall.

https://theunderminejournal.com/#eu/...as/item/124102

Also, there aren't even 5k herbs of some varieties (say, DL) and the markets don't seem to be dominated by on person.

[l33t]

TBH, I think people just got too used to professions being way too easy. It's been expected for a long time that you could max a profession with very little time/effort/money (relatively), and that most people would have 1 or 2 maxed. It was also easy to max professions on alts with little-to-no time input, and it was beneficial having alts with professions for money making.

Now, professions aren't "hard" relative to other MMOs, but they're a lot harder than they've ever been in WoW. They take time to max out, they take significant inputs of time and effort to learn recipes from, and have better profit for people willing to put the time in.

I also think people need to stop looking at having all 3 star recipes as a basic starting point, and look at them as a perk that you might or might not have. The intent was that some people have 3 stars in one recipe, some in others, and people actually interact to trade what they can make best.

It's the same problem with artifact weapons- give people something not intended to be maxed out immediately and they don't know what to do with it.

I think it is idiotic to design stuff not intended to be maxed out immediately. Blizzard must stop creating artificial time sinks and walls to squeeze a few more subscription dollars, they just make things worse by implementing more and more that shit with every next expansion.

Also: saying that leveling profession to 800 is "hard" is stupid as hell. You do know about Darkmoon fairie quests which give +5 skill, don't you? So, leveling profession equals to 20 months of subscription, doing a braindead quest once per month. Does that look "hard" to you? Because to me it doesn't. Professions were hard in vanilla, and somewhat hard in TBC, when you had to put a tremendous effort in leveling it, both in time and in gold - but if you did that, you become a fabled crafter well known among people of your realm. That's how it should be. Not some absurd RNGfest, when you can easily never see three star proc in your alchemy flask recipe, while Jonh the Idiot gets his three star proc from second flask he crafts, five minutes after he dinged lvl110 on his new main demon huntard to which he switched from common huntard at the start of oh so awesome legion expansion.

[Bugg]

I dislike it because it's just a pathetic time gating of content with a touch of random (3*).

[Deleted]

One more (minor) gripe - the fucking First Aid quests that randomly drop from mobs and get auto-added to my quest log. Yeah I am TOTALLY gonna travel across whole zone for 10g and 15 order resources.
Just annoying constantly deleting them from my journal.

[Deleted]

I generally don't mind the amount of RNG they added in Legion but when it comes to profession i don't think aspect of the game shouldn't be subjected to the same level of randomness.

Also the Q&A interview with Paul Kubit didn't give me any hope that professions will become any better, it gave me the impression he has no clue what he's doing beyond "let's do this and see what reaction we get".

The only thing i enjoyed were the profession quests, but that's only a small part of the whole experience.

[Marrilaife]

One more (minor) gripe - the fucking First Aid quests that randomly drop from mobs and get auto-added to my quest log. Yeah I am TOTALLY gonna travel across whole zone for 10g and 15 order resources.
Just annoying constantly deleting them from my journal.

Not even mentioning first aid is back to useless again since healing pots are back in alchemy.

I think Legion is the first expansion where I have actually levelled archeology (all because of the spectral moose mount) before first aid.

[Exotath]

Professions have always been a tedious and monotonous task to me. I don't think they could do anything that would ever make them fun or interesting to me.

But they are necessary so I do them.

[Wondercrab]

I think the Legion system does some things right and some things wrong. The quests are kind of a neat addition, but after running through them on one character I wasn't really all that interested in jumping through a bunch of hoops (particularly running dungeons) on my others characters to level up their professions.

The biggest change I'd like to see is the opportunity to skip all of the quest parts of profession leveling by paying gold for the recipes instead, essentially following the exact same formula garrison blueprints did in WoD. Either you earn them via questing, or if you want to skip that part you can just pay a bunch of gold. This would be a good way of incentivising the quests while also offering an alternative for the people who just want to power level professions.

[SupBrah]

I actually dropped engineering for the first time since Wrath because it's so garbage now. The nerf to Gliders was just the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

IDK if Blizz is trying to get rid of engineering to make room for a Tinker class or what, but there's basically NOTHING worthwhile for engineers this expac.

Anything remotely useful is from prior expacs

Reaves is mostly useless even after adding in a rechargeable battery.

Blingtron 6000 drops garbage (sure there's a suuuuper rare chance at a legendary, but I've yet to have such a thing drop.)

Fail-Detection Pylons are a nice idea but the super small range makes them basically useless if you don't have a rezzer next to them when you wipe.

Gliders are great for the world, but I can just have my alt engineer make them, and after 7.2 they won't be as useful. I decided to finally go Alchemy on the main (which is also a pain because of RNG procs, but at least it's suuper profitable).

[Polarthief]

Likes:
- World Quests give mats and patterns
- Bloods can be used for mats or some recipes. Bloods are by far the best part of the whole system (AFTER the blood vendor; prior to Blood Vendor, they were worthless)

Dislikes:
- The quest system is fucking stupid and locks out my Level 100 toons from getting professions up.
- The rank 1-3 system just doesn't work well. Literally everyone only looks for Rank 3; why bother if you don't have a Rank 3 in flasks or a recipe or whatever?
- COOKING GOT SO FUCKING FUCKED HARDCORE LIKE HOLY SHIT ALL YOUR SHIT'S 100% RNG AND YOU FORCEFEED THOUSANDS OF MATS DOWN A DREADLORD FAT PANDA'S THROAT FOR HIM TO BURN IT LIKE WHAT THE FUCK NOMI I TAUGHT YOU SO MUCH 2 EXPANSIONS AGO YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE SHIT I HOPE WE GET TO FUCKING KILL YOU ON ARGUS BECAUSE I KNOW YOU'RE REALLY A DREADLORD.

Overall:
- Worse than most expansions, but still leagues better than WoD where nothing even mattered. I also love the blood system giving me easy mats or resources and hope that continues into the next expansion.

[Deleted]

Theres a certain feel to having to go places to discover new recipes. It adds to the story. I would be all for elaborate puzzles to discover new (parts of) recipes. It would give a certain prestige to professions. "hes the only one on this realm who can craft the "X".

Thing is with the internet n all, it takes only one person to figure it out and then the funs off because it will be all over the internet.

Take the Kosumoth mount for example. How prestige would that be if the puzzle wasnt all over the internet by now? There would be a very select few who would have it. They would be gazed upon. It would encite competition... But we cant because people need Youtube likes like a crackwhore needs crack.

[Puri]

I think professions have hit rock bottom by now. There were in a decline for long already, but I dont think it can get any worse than this. They made it as hard as it hadn't been for a long time to reach max skill, and they also made it as pointless as it ever was. Additionally, they actually managed to introduce RNG into the profession system - where before the profession crafted items served as a protection towards bad RNG - most funnily even in the gathering ones.

Alchemy, enchanting and JC are and remain the only mandatory professions. Not necessarily in the sense of gold making, but by producing goods that every player needs. All other professions (except gathering of course) might be deleted from the game without any consequence. Obliterum updates were too low at the beginning already, considering the high amount of high itemlevel loot quickly available. And they increased that cap way too carefully. They even managed to destroy the market of the new cafted legendaries for leveling alts as they announced heirlooms are coming soon.

Then there are so completely unexpected arbitrary changes. Why does every engineering recipe require npc items worth dozen and even hundreds of gold? Why do some of the utility potions cost not much less than a flask to make? And that considering the WoD ones also work exactly the same and you can just use your garrison to mass produce them. What's up with Nomi, who thought what a great idea he had to keep players interested in playing by adding a bizarre layer of RNG to a secondary profession?

I really don't get many of those things, but as I said, it just continues what they started when they removed the profession perks from the game. Making professions more and more obsolete.

[Marrilaife]

Obliterum updates were too low at the beginning already, considering the high amount of high itemlevel loot quickly available. And they increased that cap way too carefully. They even managed to destroy the market of the new cafted legendaries for leveling alts as they announced heirlooms are coming soon.

The fact obliterum upgrades require bloods on the buyer, not the crafter side, kills any obliterum business on alts. By the time your alt gets enough bloods to upgrade their gear, they'll get enough gear from other sources to not bother anymore. "Twink" boe sell like hot cookies, if Blizzard had qualms how much gear a fresh char can get, they shouldn't have sprinkled so many boe epics around, instead of limiting obliterum upgrades by the bloods chokepoint.

Also the fact you can't apply obliterum to crafted relics is a fucking joke.

[Fatel]

I raid with my main and all my alts support that via professions by supplying crafted items as needed. This xpac was a nightmare. The crafting system was a joke and the whole expansion was seriously alt-unfriendly. Three thumbs down

[JemiS]

The fact obliterum upgrades require bloods on the buyer, not the crafter side, kills any obliterum business on alts. By the time your alt gets enough bloods to upgrade their gear, they'll get enough gear from other sources to not bother anymore. "Twink" boe sell like hot cookies, if Blizzard had qualms how much gear a fresh char can get, they shouldn't have sprinkled so many boe epics around, instead of limiting obliterum upgrades by the bloods chokepoint.

Also the fact you can't apply obliterum to crafted relics is a fucking joke.

How are you not hitting 110 with tons of BoS bagged?

Take heirloom shoulders, enchant with bloodhunter. Send to alts.

When they hit 110, send them an 815 shoulder enchanted with bloodhunter.

Heck, it's one of the best ways to sell shoulders- enchant them with bloodhunter, put them on the AH at a premium.

[Marrilaife]

How are you not hitting 110 with tons of BoS bagged?

Take heirloom shoulders, enchant with bloodhunter.

Tried it with my recent alt, got less than 50 bloods total, no idea do people deliberately try to circumvent the 1h internal cd on the bags when levelling alts or what, and let's not forget many class campaigns ask you to hand 10 bloods or thereabouts. I have no idea how can you have "hundreds" bagged, it takes what, 6-10 hours of /played to ding from 100 to 110? Most bags give 1-5 bloods so you'll be averaging less than 5 per bag.

It takes 2 bloods per obliterum so 20 per slot, so after levelling you can maybe upgrade 2-3 items tops, far from fully decking yourself in obliterum gear. If you're doing WQ after 110 with bloodhunter you'll probably get 1-2 bags per day tops unless you're planning around circumventing the internal cd or you literally spend hours upon hours doing WQ. I usually get 1 bag per day per char from shoulder enchant if I do emissary caches.

[Kokolums]

the gun for a hat for engineers is pretty nice when leveling. Every other pull you basically take a massive chunk of their hp off. You really notice it when leveling. Leveling goes quite a bit faster with it.

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I raid with my main and all my alts support that via professions by supplying crafted items as needed. This xpac was a nightmare. The crafting system was a joke and the whole expansion was seriously alt-unfriendly. Three thumbs down

This expansion is extremely alt friendly. You NEED alts. If you dont have a slew of alts at 110 by now you are seriously behind and will keep falling further behind.

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One of my favorite games is "hide the blingtron". I put a blingtron on top of the well in dalaran and see how many people fall into the well trying to use it. You can also park them on top of buildings. There is a toy that lifts you up in the air and then pushes you forward that has a 10 minute cd. Can put you on top of buildings from second story viewing areas.