It kills the "I need to be a ____ because that's the best buff for my class", yes. Because that's what they set out to put a stop to.
It doesn't kill the primary purpose of a profession at all, which is to make/gather shit. In fact it means you can pick whichever one you want - and if you don't care about professions you don't need to max them either.
Excellent change IMO.
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Apart from gathering they more or less do at the moment.
But assuming they were all perfectly balanced and all gave you +X main stat, then all they are is another thing you have to mod a piece of gear with when you pick it up. Annoying click click for no real reason. That's exactly what they're trimming from the game.
Professions are pretty boring aside from a couple of them now. They are simply stat sticks that you should probably have, and the interaction with crafting is pretty diminished.
Pretty sure crafting professions randomly have a chance to be warforged/tertiary/socket in the expansion, basically making them critical crafts. This would essentially give longevity to craftable items, making them useful for much longer.
Personally preferred the really old system with super rare crafting materials that were either hard to come by or a really big grind. Most craftable items are usually an after thought and almost exclusively used for catch up. Catch up is fine, but it's been two slots per tier, which is sort of boring.
I completely agree with this. If Professions are going to offer nothing special in combat, the only use would have to be grafting/making something fun - this would be as hard to balance as a combat bonus and people would still complain how x profession gets y and z professions doesn't get it.
He wasn't talking about the point of professions, but the bonuses granted by professions.
It should be fairly obvious since the reason they put combat perks in the first place was to encourage people to use them, which wouldn't change if the perks were equal and would still fill the role designed for them - it just wouldn't pigeonhole everyone into whichever profession is best (usually engineering + X).
Professions point is to be used to make stuff, profession bonus point is to encourage people to actually do professions. It's called an incentive. It's why LFD and LFR, random BG's, and scenarios work.
Professions can offer MORE of what they currently do, such as an LW/BS/tailor being able to make 6 different raid ilvl slots instead of 2 (f.ex.) but still using teh mats from the raid tehmselves. It adds good trickle down to people who focus on money-making and buy a lot of their gear, gives people more to save up for if they don't raid - and keeps the professions relevant for longer.
Updating the other professions after patch 6.0 would also add a lot more to their use. Engineering, inscription, enchanting, are all very active the first tier but die off later on except for when they are fed a bone. The benefits don't have to be BiS things.
Professions became unintersting after TBC. They had much more value before. You could actually craft something good for your character that worth the effort of leveling the profession and spending the time to grind for materials. And it only affected the first tiers back then. Was tailoring set imba? yes it was, for the the first tier. As soon as you got 2 pieces of T5 you could replace it easily and no longer game you any advantage over someone who did not had tailoring.
The best mage of our guild did not had tailoring and yet people were bitching and crying about "mandatory" professions... And what is the problem if a profession is mandatory? If it is part of progression? Is everything out of raids supposed to be just for "fun" and completely "optional"? It is not a moba game, it is MMORPG.
The trick of selling a FFA-PvP MMO is creating the illusion among gankers that they are respectable fighters while protecting them from respectable fights, as their less skilled half would be massacred and quit instead of “HTFU” as they claim.
I definitely preferred the TBC profession system. Multiple professions were capable of crafting t5/t6 raid equivalent gear, but the mats were either really rare, really expensive, or the patterns were rare and BoP. IMO this system doesn't hurt raiders, since they will get raid-equivalent drops anyway, and it gives all of the non-raiders/PVPers something to do via grinding mats and/or gold to buy what they need. It just gives another avenue to gear up that doesn't require 24/19 other people. I think it should still be very time consuming and/or expensive, but I see no issue with making non-heroic raid gear equivalents available via crafting.
I love this change. Professions should be money-making tools, not something you just spend a day and a lot of gold to level just to get your stats bonus, then forget about it. I will not feel obliged to max 2 professions on each of my alts to not feel underperforming.
Combat benefit perks does that mean all engineering tinkers will be removed? So I could be in a top guild with mining and herbing on a hunter for example?
I agree it would be nice to have some interesting perks, something that differentiates them.
But that sort of uniqueness simply should not be applying in combat, because it makes some simply better than others.
It is arguable whether there should be a flat equal perk for every profession or not.
Either way someone suffers, as professions become something you are expected to have if they have a combat perk, or they penalise those who levelled them for a perk if they are removed.
Basically yes.
All the perks which made any given profession superior as far as dps or throughput goes, are gone.
Your performance is not hurt by your choice of profession.
I actually think that it's better for professions to not offer direct combat bonuses.
Frankly, professions should be something that are levelled by people who are actually interested in levelling the professions and selling the things that they can then craft. The market for crafted items is so terrible in part because everyone has to have two max level professions, like it or not, so most people can end up just making whatever they want for themselves. Get the people who don't actually want to deal with professions out of them, and the market becomes better for the people who are left. Then add recipies for things that are actually worth buying/selling, and we've got a system that resembles working again.
I welcome the change. Personally I won't stay away from tailoring+engineering combo, but I know a lot who will. More people will select professions that can give them any benefit, not nessecarily combat only. More plate wearers will go blacksmithing and more mail wearers will go leatherworking for their usable armor and transmog possibilities. More people will go gathering professions because they don't "have" to have the best ones anymore. Brings a more balanced price towards super expensive/cheap items due to inflation because everybody or nobody runs with X and Y professions.
Oh, just letting everyone know. Leveled mining and herbalism to 700. Professions perks are supposed to have been taken away but...