All Professions - two at a time

[shadowkras]

It is convenience, yes, but it's also consolidation. You end up with 9 more character slots that you can build good RP personas with instead of taking space up just for alt farmers.

I really dont see how can you build up alt farmers and not good RP personas at same time.

So you cant roleplay a blacksmith because your alt is herbalist? Did my memory get weak with the age and i forgot what roleplaying means?

For Drimwez: And I can say with confidence that you probably enjoy playing all of those characters. Each of them would still have to level their skills to be of any value with this option, you just wouldn't have had to also drop the gathering skills from your main. If you want the toughness from Mining, go mining on an alt too. Your main remains a focus because you don't have to switch off and play something else to farm. You can do it while waiting in Queue for a BG or dungeon.

In fact, i do, exception being my priest and paladin, out of 9 different alts. I just dont have the time to commit to all of them. Played my lv35 warlock last night and had a blast clearing maraudon with friends, had rerolled him from undead (was already lv60) to troll in cata, same professions, leveled them while questing, while waiting on queue, and while doing dungeons (some dungeons have herbs you can gather).

[Edlarel]

Are you arguing my point or the one I was quoting? I'm saying the same thing you are here.

He would be able to play those same alts with no loss. His reason for making them would be solely to roleplay, not because he needs an herbalist and happens to roleplay with it.

[roxor999]

SO i have 525 enchanting and got my ring enchants and then change something, and suddenly i can't use them anymore. I still have all the knowledge and i can just change it back. How is that Rp friendly.

[shadowkras]

Are you arguing my point or the one I was quoting? I'm saying the same thing you are here.

Im saying the same thing you are. Twice.

Anyway, professions are fine the way they are, the only one that is really screwed right now is skinning, as only leatherworking uses it as resource at max levels.

[Leafen]

I happen to be a fan of RP myself (though not in WoW). It doesn't kill RP, and I even included an RP reasoning in my original post. Are you really roleplaying the alts you use to mine/herb with? You don't have to take time out to level new professions, it just becomes an option. You would still be able to benefit from the mats on the AH. They would also be at a lower price since fewer people would have to have them.

It is convenience, yes, but it's also consolidation. You end up with 9 more character slots that you can build good RP personas with instead of taking space up just for alt farmers.

Well it would be awesome, but what is a WORLD of Warcraft if there is no need for trading, if you are so skilled at all the arts of crafting. For me it doesn't cut it. This game needs to have the choises without choises every character will be same in every way Professions is 1 of the few things still being a good choise.

[Edlarel]

SO i have 525 enchanting and got my ring enchants and then change something, and suddenly i can't use them anymore. I still have all the knowledge and i can just change it back. How is that Rp friendly.

It is RP friendly because you are focusing your time on maintaining something else over your ring enchantment.

If anything, it is less reasonable to say from a roleplay standpoint that your character isn't able to learn more than two things at a time. Just because I know how to sift through dirt and sew a patch on a shirt means I'm not also able to forge a weapon and build a robot later? I have to take time to do each, but not being able to reasonably say I could learn them all IS unfriendly to RP.

People who will RP will continue to RP with this in place. You shouldn't have a limit to your abilities as a means of promoting roleplay. You still have choices to make as far as your characters go. You'll need to decide your two primary professions, since you wouldn't want to enchant your shoulders from inscription and lose it by switching to tailoring. To kill a dead horse, your alts also still have to level their own skills to be of value.

And yes, professions are fine as they are. They work. This is a suggestion for a step forward. I've outlined why it would be a benefit to the game in the OP, and as of yet there has been no good reason why it shouldn't be done.

Here's another thing to throw into the mix for hardcore raiders. You'll have choices of what to raid with. You can have the stamina from Mining on fights where you want the most out of your HP (Chimaeron), then switch it to herbalism (probably requiring a trip to town) for a fight where you want the free self heal (Cho'Gall). This is an example only, and maybe not a good one, but you get the idea.

[KahnOWhoopass]

The problem with this is people would go to gathering while questing and doing dailies, then switch to crafting for bonuses to mini-max for dungeons/raids. If everyone and their grandmama is able to skin, the economy on leather would be a nightmare, not just on the AH, but I have enough issues on my druid having to compete with mages in dungeons to skin mobs. (Apparently mages are the new paladins in terms of never responding or acknowledging /p). Example: Try running violet hold w/5 skinners, you'll see what I mean.

Miners get stam, so tanks might keep it in their main spec, but most others would go for something that does a dps increase (even skinning gives crit, not sure if enough to not do another profession). But really, the whole point is to make choices. I'm guessing a lot of the perks of a profession are there to replace the old BOP crafted items (or are they still made) Throughout BC there were a number of BS/Tailoring/LW patterns that the item made was BOP, thus you'd just make one. This is where you'd get a perk over those without your profession, but you had to get that pattern, and upgrade would erase the perk.

Again, it's about choices. You have to make the choice of your two professions based on what you want access to w/o using an alt or the AH, and what perks you get from the profession. Thus everyone can be slightly different, rather than everyone minimaxing everything out.

Edit: Even if this were to ever happen, I'd say any piece of gear w/an enchant from an inactive profession should no longer be wearable, and that the professions would be directly tied to your talent specs, so you could really only have 4 primary professions, not ALL of them, and which two you have active is completely dependent on your active spec. The best part? You'd have to train up a profession twice if you have it for both specs!

[Edlarel]

I don't follow your logic. So, because I'm skinning on my main instead of on an alt, I suddenly crash the economy? Why doesn't skinning on any of my characters have this effect? People will min-max no matter what you do with the game. Almost everybody still takes JC because of the broken personal gems or Blacksmithing for sockets.

Characters continue to have choices. Those don't go away. You don't maximize anything by having access to switch professions. You get benefits the likes of which have been spelled out, and little else. anybody with characters already trained in professions (I have like 8 across my toons at 525), we can leave those on that toon or take the time to level them again on our main. New players get the advantage of being able to level up their skills without having to take focus away from their main character to level other professions.

As to the suggestion you propose, why forbid the item entirely and not just the enchant like they do now? That makes llittle sense compared to the rest of your post. Also, tying them to your spec makes no reasonable sense at all. Are you trying to achieve balance in something that isn't unbalanced to start with? You're proposal is way too restrictive in the context of this thread.

[Nachopie]

Just no, i would have no reason to play half of my alts.
Plus, people would swap from gatherers to 2 crafting professions all the time (miner -> blacksmith/JC). Would completely destroy economy.

It wouldn't destroy the economy. I have alts that jc mine and blacksmith. Does it really make a difference if you put them all on one toon?

[KahnOWhoopass]

It's more fun that way. You want to be able to train every profession in the game on one toon, but you don't want restrictions, save only two active at a time. This is even worse an idea than "tri-speccing", a topic that has been beaten to death enough.
The point of linking with spec is to streamline the buffs you get and/or what you have with gear sets.

Oh, and let's get to talking about needing on drops/designs and things like chaos orbs. You're an enchanter/JC (they don't use orbs) what, you have an inactive profession so you should be able to need on them? Or can you switch before rolling to allow need? Or does it only matter what you have active at the time of the drop?

I might be persuaded to agree that gathering professions (skinning/mining/herbalism) could be freed up to be more like secondary, but there's still problems with that - namely everyone would grab them all and gather everything as they level... but in such a case, having all that and 2 crafting professions is still extreme, so at most you'd have all 3 gathering professions, and ONE crafting profession, and leaving it as that, no dual-crafting. Not even having inactive crafts on the side. (Meaning no more BS/JC combos).

[RyanRetnolds]

The only thing preventing one person from having their own personal self-sustaining economy is the fact leveling alts is time consuming, and swapping between them is time consuming. If we could all have every proffession, we would have very little reason for the AH. You farm the ore on your main, then prospect it/make bars, use bars for Eng/BS and use gems for JC, DE jewelry, make scrolls, etc. Yould do everything on your own.

[Edlarel]

The only thing preventing one person from having their own personal self-sustaining economy is the fact leveling alts is time consuming, and swapping between them is time consuming. If we could all have every proffession, we would have very little reason for the AH. You farm the ore on your main, then prospect it/make bars, use bars for Eng/BS and use gems for JC, DE jewelry, make scrolls, etc. Yould do everything on your own.

Scenario now: I have a LW on my rogue, but I also have Engineering. I need leather. I jump on my mage and skin mobs for two hours, then back to my rogue with no need to go to the auction house.

Scenario with my suggestion: My LW goes to Org and swaps Eng for Skinning, skins for a couple hours while also queing for randoms, then back to org to swap for eng with no need to go to the auction house.

I leveled my mage because I wanted to play a mage, not because I needed a skinner. Others find it necessary to level alts only because they want the skill. Some don't bother with alts at all and focus on the AH. The Level as a barrier argument doesn't fit since it's not a real barrier anyway. Players should be able to create the characters they want to without feeling obligated to keep room open for an alt that can farm.

This will all remain true with the suggested changes since existing characters still won't want to go back and grind low level skills up to 525 and new players actually get the benefit of catching up to the rest of the game faster since they don't have to play through 2+ characters to get the skills they want. There will always be those who hate farming or just don't want to level it. The AH is still there, it just won't be so horribly overpriced anymore.

As to patterns and whatnot, they will only be available to the skills you have active when you roll on them. Since you couldn't trade skills in the middle of the dungeon, you'll be stuck with whatever you came in using unless your group doesn't boot you for leaving in the middle of the run to trade your Skinning for LW.

[Speaknoevil]

Just no, i would have no reason to play half of my alts.
Plus, people would swap from gatherers to 2 crafting professions all the time (miner -> blacksmith/JC). Would completely destroy economy.

I do this anyway?

How does this break the economy?

I have every profession.

Although since I have a preferred character, what difference does it make to have it on just the one?

[Deleted]

No, would kill alts and also completely kill the opportunity costs involved with professions.

Not often I'm this blunt, but this is an amazingly bad idea imho.

[Deleted]

This kind of thing would not work in wow because of the way blizzard made proffesions work and how the economy is affected by proffesions atm.

Having all "proffesions" works in a lot of online games and mmos however blizzard just made it too easy to level proffesions for this to ever work in wow. If they ever introduced such a thing it would take people a week to have all proffesions maxed and thats why the economy would crash.

On the other hand if they made it really hard to level proffesions it wouldnt have such a huge impact because many would say "no chance im leveling another proffesion" just like a lot of people say "no chance im leveling another alt" and most of the people leveling these proffesions would only use them for the extras they give.

Personally I would love to be able to have all proffesions on my main, screw the extra enchants you get. The OPs idea about activating the proffesion is kinda bad, instead you should just be able to choose from which proffesion you want the extra stuff maybe like the way engineering and BS once worked where you would choose a path letting you craft some special items, instead of choosing a path within the proffesion you would just choose which proffesion you want to be better at or something. As mentioned above this would require blizzard to make it much harder to level proffesions, they would basically be something you would have to invest up to 100 hours into to get to max level otherwise it would crash the economy of wow.

[Pnyx]

I think it would ruin a part of the social aspect of the game, because if you did have all the professions yourself, you wouldn't ever have to get someone else to craft items for you and stuff.

[Heca]

I don't follow your logic. So, because I'm skinning on my main instead of on an alt, I suddenly crash the economy? Why doesn't skinning on any of my characters have this effect?

Here is the difference: I'm flying to <insert wherever> on my Priest (with all professions leveled, and currently have mining/herbalism as my two "active" professions.) I stop along the way, get some herbs and ore, then switch back out of these professions when my raid starts.

Since normally I would only have two raiding professions, I have just gathered mats where I normally would not be able to. If I truly wanted those mats, I would have to log out, get on my Mage, fly back to <insert wherever> and hope I could still gather the herbs if someone else didn't get to it yet.

By allowing every single character in the game to have gathering professions (in addition to crafting professions), it would beak the economy. Your example of "why would skinning on a main be different from getting on an alt," is moot since you would have to get off the toon you are currently on, get on the alt, get to where your main is, hope the mob is still there and didn't despawn/hope no one skinned it already. This can make a huge different on a higher pop server where markets are already flooded with gathering materials and gatherings are always flying around. If all you had to do was switch into a different profession... this is where the issue is.

[Ineras]

No, would kill alts

Oh, I didn't know the only reason to have alts was for the different professions as opposed to being able to bring a different character to a raid if needed.

---------- Post added 2011-06-04 at 03:32 PM ----------

Your example of "why would skinning on a main be different from getting on an alt," is moot since you would have to get off the toon you are currently on, get on the alt, get to where your main is, hope the mob is still there and didn't despawn/hope no one skinned it already.

I don't believe it would be as bad as you think because skinning it yourself, hopping on an alt and skinning it with them, or someone else coming along and skinning it all result in the same amount of leather being produced. If you didn't have skinning on a character and fly over a skinnable mob there is a chance that it will despawn but there is also a chance that someone else will come by and skin it.

---------- Post added 2011-06-04 at 03:40 PM ----------

The only thing preventing one person from having their own personal self-sustaining economy is the fact leveling alts is time consuming, and swapping between them is time consuming. If we could all have every proffession, we would have very little reason for the AH.

I have all but one profession spread over my characters and I still use the AH. I have the ability to go and farm ore/herbs etc, but does that mean I have the time to always farm when I need mats. Nope. The AH will usually be more convenient than the time it takes to farm materials. Take cloth for example. Everyone has the ability to go farm humanoids and pick up cloth and yet it is still on the AH and sells.

[Edlarel]

Here is the difference: I'm flying to <insert wherever> on my Priest (with all professions leveled, and currently have mining/herbalism as my two "active" professions.) I stop along the way, get some herbs and ore, then switch back out of these professions when my raid starts.

Since normally I would only have two raiding professions, I have just gathered mats where I normally would not be able to. If I truly wanted those mats, I would have to log out, get on my Mage, fly back to <insert wherever> and hope I could still gather the herbs if someone else didn't get to it yet.

By allowing every single character in the game to have gathering professions (in addition to crafting professions), it would beak the economy. Your example of "why would skinning on a main be different from getting on an alt," is moot since you would have to get off the toon you are currently on, get on the alt, get to where your main is, hope the mob is still there and didn't despawn/hope no one skinned it already. This can make a huge different on a higher pop server where markets are already flooded with gathering materials and gatherings are always flying around. If all you had to do was switch into a different profession... this is where the issue is.

Except you're flying without that skill active. see the node or skinning opportunity, have to fly back and trade your skill, then get back to where you were and hope it's still there. Same, if not more time flying there and back.

and /agree with Ineras, same point I made earlier. We shouldn't level alts because we need professions, we should level them because we want to play the class.

[Marksman79]

I like the idea.

Though if you are running a heroic, and suddenly you kill a beast or come across a herb or ore node, everyone will suddenly be switching to their gathering profession to try to take it. Not only will there be much more competition and anger over who gets it, but the whole process will waste time. Also, a lot of people reluctantly play alts just to farm from time to time. Think about if they could farm on their main. Many more people would be farming in their free 'Dalaran circling' time while in a queue or something. That would increase supply, decrease prices, and make it much harder to farm without a substantial increase in the node spawn rate.

Do note: I still do like the idea.