Why has Blizzard failed at professions ?

[FelPlague]

I'm super hyped for below zeroooo!

And you mean the 340 goggles? They're 340. It's likely there are now 385 versions which is acceptable, but we have a warfront that gives 400 ilvl gear for significantly less effort than crafting even the old 340 ones. Doesn't that strike you as a problem?

345 (remember +5)

375

390

390

405

420

For proof, my goggles compared to the 420 ones i will need alot of raiding to craft.

to point out when 8.1 came out i was right away able to craft the 375 helmet, and then the 390.
and with the raid comign out i was able to farm 15 mythic dungeons and then upgrade from 390 with 4 rings to 390 with 5 rings.
and if i go do 2 heroic bosses i can craft the 405
then once i do 10 more heroic bosses, 420 helmet!



also yes the warfront gives "400" but that is once every 3 and a half weeks...
and that is a RANDOM item, so you could get legs every rotation...

[cparle87]

That aside, i do not believe Blizzard wants to go back to the era where you go outside and farm stuff to craft powerful items, perhaps because characters are overall far more powerful than in Vanilla / BC, thus any farm spots would be horribly overfarmed or people would just easily get powerful item(s) unless it requires an utterly insane amount of mats.

I remember leatherworking in MoP. If you ignored the daily cooldown you could make a raid level BoE belt for 2,100 leather, and legs for 2,800 leather. Just stop and think about that for a moment. A belt that is somehow made of over 2,000 pieces of leather. Broke the suspension of disbelief for me.

[Thetruth1400]

Professions stop being relevant the moment they went all in on catch up mechanics, and even more so when they scale them every patch.


It would be a MUCH better system if they had professions be where we get our catch up gear, not just handouts for doing literally as little as possible aka World Quests. Give us back professions where you can, I don't know, craft some gear we will actually wear, not just stuff to craft and then scrap because it's next to worthless.

Hell, have the WQs offer the higher end crafting materials as rewards once we've "passed a raid", that way people don't have to farm old raids, which for some reason is such a huge taboo to Blizzard now.

[neiljwd]

And then they stupidly removed at least th +5 skill upgrade every month from the DMF

Thats back now, skill up works like it did prior to BfA.

[FelPlague]

And then they stupidly removed at least th +5 skill upgrade every month from the DMF

it was +1 to make it so people couldnt easily level, its back to +5 now that the expansion is abit older.
as leveling professions in BFA was quite important, getting to 150 as engineer is SUPER important cause you need certin levels for certin items to drop, and then you need the helm, 150, and the potion to get the controller.

[Prime92]

I think they took the approach "If you're already failing at everything make it truly spectacular". They took it to heart.

[Oneirophobia]

345 (remember +5)

375

390

390

405

420

For proof, my goggles compared to the 420 ones i will need alot of raiding to craft.

to point out when 8.1 came out i was right away able to craft the 375 helmet, and then the 390.
and with the raid comign out i was able to farm 15 mythic dungeons and then upgrade from 390 with 4 rings to 390 with 5 rings.
and if i go do 2 heroic bosses i can craft the 405
then once i do 10 more heroic bosses, 420 helmet!



also yes the warfront gives "400" but that is once every 3 and a half weeks...
and that is a RANDOM item, so you could get legs every rotation...

Wow engineering is way ahead of the other profs.

[bigbleach]

Indeed, one of the things where I agree among all the negativity is this. Unless it is gathering, professions are pretty crappy and worthless to me.

They are expensive to level for very little benefit, and some recipes and mats apparently only come from raiding? No idea what is so hard to have rewards for Archy like they once had (pets / mounts) or even just add the fisher friends like in MoP or Legion. And then they stupidly removed at least th +5 skill upgrade every month from the DMF

The only professions I am levelling seriously are gathering professions...my BS / JC ...they sit at 1, tailoring at 70...but even there it is now useless recipes that cost me at least 100 gold per skillpoint in AH mats. Yeah, 100 gold is nothing, but there also is nothing coming up. I can make horribly expensive bags of the size that I can make cheaply with WoD mats....so I am still selling Hexweave bags rather.

I really have no clue what they are thinking

I've made over 20 million this expac off of the basic functions of this expacs professions. Dark moon cards, tailoring bracers, leatherworking epic bracers, enchanting, etc. While I wish they would make more recipes or at least a few interesting things for each profession... I am loving that you can do each expacs stuff independently now. Professions need some TLC, but they are much better than they have been in the past few expacs and are more profitable now than ever. You are doing it wrong lol.

[Volitar]

What do you mean Herbalism and Alchemy are totally useful. Those are the only two professions right?

[bigbleach]

Even the gathering professions can be terrible, especially Skinning, as it's more useful on a regular basis for random daily turn-ins for warfronts and WQs, not Leatherworking. Ironically enough, the most useful function of Leatherworking is to assist other gatherers either bardings, not even the Leatherworker. Even the gathering skills that are useful are mundane and boring. At one point, Blizz looked like they were going in the direction of gathering skills allowing perks to the player, but that disappeared almost as quickly as it was implemented (btw, this was one of the good things in WoD that got removed).

I mentioned it in another thread, but Blizz seems scared to make crafting/gathering professions meaningful in the game or even remotely competitive with end-game content. Occasionally one or two items have relevance for a while, but that tends to fade away fast. Even with their limited use, there are some that legitimately have universal usage (like Alchemy and Enchanting), and many of them have near the same functionality as the profession-formerly-known-as-First-Aid. Unfortunately, even the most useful professions have zero depth to them.

Professions could easily be a vehicle to not only RPG enrichment of the game, but it could also help with some issues that cause tension in the game. For example, there's endless debate over warforing and titanforging, mostly because it's purely RNG... but it doesn't have to be. Armor crafting profession could easily be a source of upgrading armor manually in the case where you don't get lucky, allowing some good-luck protection in the form of player investing in a crafting profession.

the most useful thing about leatherworking is creating vieled crystals for under 150g... gathering professions are for people who don't know how to make money using professions correctly. I sit on my AH mount and make money off of everyone elses work with next to no effort.

They took away the bonuses to professions because it felt like everyone who wanted to be competitive had to be JC and BS on their toons for the extra socket and better gem. I liked having them matter more back in the day, but it is nice to not have to worry about what toon has what now.

[Tyris Flare]

the most useful thing about leatherworking is creating vieled crystals for under 150g... gathering professions are for people who don't know how to make money using professions correctly. I sit on my AH mount and make money off of everyone elses work with next to no effort.

They took away the bonuses to professions because it felt like everyone who wanted to be competitive had to be JC and BS on their toons for the extra socket and better gem. I liked having them matter more back in the day, but it is nice to not have to worry about what toon has what now.

What people want is to be able to craft obvious items at a profit rather than make money via arbitrage. But that has literally never been the best way to make money in this game (or any MMO). Exploiting ignorance/market inefficiencies always makes more money than actual labor.

(a good lesson for why the real world economy is also completely broken!)

[Merie]

I remember when JCs could craft bop gems for themselves that blew away the gems available to everybody. I remember when BS people could add a bop buckle to their belt that let them socket an extra socket to their gear that no one else could. And it was great because no matter how high end or low end your gear was, the extra stats were ALWAYS relevant.

[Lagwin]

because they are lazy and are trying to cut costs...same deal with flying, they have said no to it at the beginning of an expansion because they don't want to pay for the work to make it happen, eventually cave to pressure but make it so that you need to go through a load of shit to get it in an effort to get you disgusted enough that next time round you don't want to do it and they can not spend time and money making it work.

[Benomatic]

WoD was fantastic for professions in regards to levelling and catch ups, Legion and BfA have killed them to the point that only the rich prosper and the raider depends on the minimal enchants, nonchalant gems and detrimental feats and cauldrons.

Classic for example had the case of being "Holy shit! that BS has those plans!" and he'd be in high demand for raid worth weapons.

Bring back min maxing, bring back profession passives and bonuses. Bring back FIRST AID!

[Kokolums]

Blizzard operates on a 2-tiered game:

1. Creating difficult content for the bleeding edge raiders.
2. Showering everyone else with gear.

Professions don't really fit into that. However, they seem to like experimenting with new systems every xpac. One year its IEs and Warfronts. Another year its legendaries. Another year its garrisons. The new systems are designed in a way that makes me think they function to help build the CVs of the programmers. Programmers want to be able to say "Yes I was on the design team for Island Expeditions and they were a successful new addition to the game as you can see by player activity". And then they load it up IEs with mogs, pets, toys and mounts to try to drive traffic to IEs.

Maybe one day the new system will be a profession revamp and they will load it up to the brim with mogs, pets, toys and mounts to drive traffic to them.

[MoanaLisa]

Blizzard operates on a 2-tiered game:

1. Creating difficult content for the bleeding edge raiders.
2. Showering everyone else with gear.

I could argue that there's a 3rd tier and that is creating content that will keep people around for an extra month or so.

This is what confuses me about developer ambivalence about professions. Professions could be a relatively deep and layered mini-game that with some thought would very likely succeed in doing just that: keeping people around for a while longer and extending their subscriptions. If showering everyone else with gear is one of the design metas for the game then why not one more? One that will keep people subscribed and out in the world gathering mats while they craft useful gear and other things. "I built one of the most regarded professions systems in any social game" would be a fair point for a CV as well.

[bigbleach]

What people want is to be able to craft obvious items at a profit rather than make money via arbitrage. But that has literally never been the best way to make money in this game (or any MMO). Exploiting ignorance/market inefficiencies always makes more money than actual labor.

(a good lesson for why the real world economy is also completely broken!)

Wut..? Like how has the profession system been in the past achieve this, that it doesn't now..? Knowing the economy and how to craft efficiently is a great way to make money. I do not farm, I snipe here and there, but all of my money comes in through the AH from mats I bought off the AH. I was making 2 million a week a few months ago, now I'm towards 1 mil a week through crafting. Flipping across multiple servers is the best way to make money, but playing on a single server, crafting is the way to go.

[Tyris Flare]

Wut..? Like how has the profession system been in the past achieve this, that it doesn't now..? Knowing the economy and how to craft efficiently is a great way to make money. I do not farm, I snipe here and there, but all of my money comes in through the AH from mats I bought off the AH. I was making 2 million a week a few months ago, now I'm towards 1 mil a week through crafting. Flipping across multiple servers is the best way to make money, but playing on a single server, crafting is the way to go.

Not really sure what the disagreement is?

I'm saying people who complain that "professions don't make money" literally want to just log in, buy mats, click craft, and sell their items for money without doing any real research on costs/economy. And that has never really been great money maker save for a few exceptions. The only way it could be is if it was brutally difficult to actually get to high crafting levels so there is far more scarcity, kind of like old SWG crafting. E.g. if you are the only person on the server who can make X item, then it will always be profitable to make it. But WoW doesn't really work like that because nothing is really rare. So making money from crafting isn't about "crafting x item that only you can make," it's about researching costs/materials and exploiting gaps in markets.

[Miamii Paradise]

Well i love herbalism, its great way to make nice gold but other professions seems garbage to me

[macatk]

herb alcy is has been my best money maker in legion I had all my main recipes rank 3 and made tons of money selling things like invis pots for 50g and all kind buffs pluss health pots but in BFA i can make more gold most times selling herbs