Why has Blizzard failed at professions ?

[Sencha]

Tbc had some great conepts when it came to crafting and professions. Stuff dropped in dungeons and in raids that were needed to complete really expensive crafts.

Then it feels like blizz did a 180 turn on the entire crafting system.

Fully agree. Why are they afraid to come back to this?

[Alex86el]

It's because they don't want to bother with it.

Imagine if instead of just having BiS gear drop...
You had BiS-gear-recipes drop from bosses.
Which would require boss-drop-matterials to craft.

Same result, more steps, but also more fun.
And it also "lengthens" the content, and with it, subs.
But without unethical mechanics that dictate your minimum and maximum progression.

[Nobleshield]

The problem is the time vs. reward, and the fact that 90%+ of what you can make is useless filler garbage that has no real purpose anymore, so it's literally just doing chores creating vendor trash until you get high enough to get the better stuff, and often even *that* ends up being useless compared to what you can get elsewhere so why bother doing it in the first place? It's the same problem rep gear has, a lesson I thought they learned in Pandaria: By the time you have enough to get it, you don't need it. Combine that with the fact profession gear doesn't scale while they continue to invalidate their own content as an expansion progresses, and you have something that gives practically no worthwhile reward for the amount of time you put it.

This depends on the profession of course. Like, Alchemy stays useful because of flasks and potions. Enchanting stays useful. But Blacksmithing? Why bother with it? There's nothing worthwhile to craft for how long it takes you to farm mats and raise the skill.

I like them splitting the professions up, because it was utter nonsense to have to go back to the level 1 zones and get even more useless stuff and waste even more time before you got to the "good" stuff, but the overall issue is that they can't seem to properly balance giving you meaningful things to make as you are progressing with a handful of good stuff at the very end.

[lollerlaban]

ITT: people want gear better than raid gear that they can sit in the city and craft.

If it makes them farm for materials which equals 30-40 hours ingame, why not? They sacrifice a lot of their time just like a raider would.
I remember back in the days when you could get Stunherald and all those other goodies

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The problem is the time vs. reward, and the fact that 90%+ of what you can make is useless filler garbage that has no real purpose anymore, so it's literally just doing chores creating vendor trash until you get high enough to get the better stuff, and often even *that* ends up being useless compared to what you can get elsewhere so why bother doing it in the first place? It's the same problem rep gear has, a lesson I thought they learned in Pandaria: By the time you have enough to get it, you don't need it. Combine that with the fact profession gear doesn't scale while they continue to invalidate their own content as an expansion progresses, and you have something that gives practically no worthwhile reward for the amount of time you put it.

This depends on the profession of course. Like, Alchemy stays useful because of flasks and potions. Enchanting stays useful. But Blacksmithing? Why bother with it? There's nothing worthwhile to craft for how long it takes you to farm mats and raise the skill.

I like them splitting the professions up, because it was utter nonsense to have to go back to the level 1 zones and get even more useless stuff and waste even more time before you got to the "good" stuff, but the overall issue is that they can't seem to properly balance giving you meaningful things to make as you are progressing with a handful of good stuff at the very end.

This. Why is the epic item tied to exalted when it takes 1+ month to reach it and in that time you've already achieved items from mythic. If the reps were acc bound i could understand so that alts have an easier time, but they're not

[Xsorus]

Its hilarious even more when you realize that games like Elder Scrolls Online, have gear that comes from every spectrum of the game including crafting and that you really need crafting in that game to compete and its absolutely used constantly...vs WoW..where crafting is just shit every expansion.

[danbertarelli]

I like what they did with 8.2.. I mean at least they added SOME stuff.

As far as the quests I enjoy them

[Casperite]

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.

Because if they made gear from crafting good we would be responding to a thread titled "why are non raiders getting raid gear! Whaaaaaa I am not feeling special!".

[shadowmatrix]

Because if they made gear from crafting good we would be responding to a thread titled "why are non raiders getting raid gear! Whaaaaaa I am not feeling special!".

You forgot the "BLIZZARD IS FORCING ME TO TAKE BLACKSMITHING/ENCHANTING!" threads of the past.

[Luxeley]

The level up process is still wayyyy too slow and it's doesn't pay off or at least most professions don't, a couple do. If players could invest time and gain 10-12 pts rather than 3-5 pts, it would be a great change and good start.

[Linri]

i liked professions a lot more when they offered perks to them
i also liked professions cause i felt like it was my "job" as a certain class

it was kind of cool to be able to make things for yourself, or do quests or something to be able to make an ultimate piece of gear

[RangerDaz]

I have suggested many times a whole revamp to the Profession system, but there are always niches that a few people want to keep (because it gives them gold lol), so i always receive angry answers dismissing my suggestions from 2 or 3 people (probably people who selfishly prefer to maintain the archaic profession structure because they could loose part of their AH gold income lol, without caring for the sake of the game and of the update of this profession system).

So here it goes:


The professions needed a big change, as the game has greatly changed since its classic version.

For me, there are a few things that should to be addressed:

1. Account bound recipes:
This should be finally implemented. Just look at the Account bound collections.. we have toys, mounts, pets, heirlooms, etc, but every character needs to relearn all the recipes that other alts already have? This would also help when people change professions: they won't lose all the hard work they previously invested in that profession which is about to be abandoned and could focus on the professions they really like or need for that character. This should be for both primary and secondary professions.

2. Easy switch of the two main professions for every character:
Allow an easy switch between professions, so that people actually play the professions they enjoy and that are useful for that class. This absolutely requires the account-bound recipes. For this reason i would allow free choice and change on cooldown on the two main professions, so people could chose the one they prefer or change when the profession no longer makes sense to them without deleting all the made progress. Any profession change shouldn't be permanent, but people shouldn't be able to change it all the time: for example changing professions every day or even hour. There should exist a cooldown for a profession change availability so the choice should have a meaning. I would suggest a cooldown of 3 days / a week / a month, or something like that. Do remember that other MMOs in the market give more flexibility to the exchange of professions: Final Fantasy 14 comes to my mind.

3. Integrating gathering professions in the crafting professions:
If possible to simplify the professions and allow a more efficient use of the two profession slots, another change could be made: Merging gathering professions into the others who need them. Example: leatherworking would have skinning incorporated, and the skinning profession would disappear. Alchemy and inscription would have herbalism incorporated in them, and herbalism profession would disappear. Same should happen to mining and blacksmithing + engineering + jewelcrafting. With this system we would have 8 primary and 3 secondary professions.

4. Account bound profession leveling:
Because of this, i would also suggest account bound profession points leveling. The fun should be in leveling each profession ONCE and hunt + gather all the possible recipes for each profession, not repeat over and over the 100/150/etc points in 2 professions for each character. Do note that important recipes require expensive mats, so each character would need to do that gathering for itself. This should be done for both primary and secondary professions.

So the hard work should be to focused on:
- leveling each profession ONCE,
- gathering recipes ONCE,
- and get 3 stars for each recipe ONCE.

Doing this in all professions only once still is a lot of work that needs to be done by each player.


5. Account Bound Profession Hall, where all professions would be managed account wide:
A "profession hall" could work as the account bound hall of profession achievements. The hall represents the achievements and the progress related to the professions of the owner of the battlenet account, and not of the characters. The characters would help to upgrade the hall with new recipes and the profession leveling points, upgranding the profession expertises of the hall.


6. Archeology being integrated in another profession just like First Aid:
As a side note, Archeology could be incorporated in another profession just like first aid, giving its leveling points to that profession (mining seems the most logical?).


This is obviously a brainstorm of ideas to change professions. Some could be cut, some could be used.

[Aleax]

All in all professions are to me almost useless currently, same opinion than other people, come on Blizz, you can do better professions than current. Do it - you proved by your general design everywhere else that you can.

+add professions memory please. When we level a profession to full, it means that we forever learnt it even if we change professions. We should lose the former profession, but be capable to re-learn it to its fullest with a days cd, if we want to get the old profession we already maxed out back then (limit 2 professions still). Ghostcrawler mentioned Blizzard thought about that, back when he was a Blizz dev, maybie do it finally?

Edit : I did not read the whole thread, It seems professions memory is asked already.

[Alroxas]

Bring back sockets, bring back enchants on everything! Bring back making cool armor that takes weeks to make and you can compare it to Mythic plus plus!

No additional sockets & enchants on everything leads to either:
A) the values are compensated so that they only provide marginal benefit per socket because taken as a whole they add up too much
B) the game is fundamentally broken because secondary stat scaling creates uber specs to the point where if you aren't in said spec, you are automatically declined for being an inferior spec/class

Example of A:

Instead of having 2~3 sockets that can fit in +50 secondary stat gems, you get 18~20 sockets but only gems that give +5 ~ +7 secondary stat. The total still comes out to the same amount but individual sockets are worth less per socket because you have so many.

Example of B:

Look at mastery scaling for Disc priests back in Cata/MoP days. No need to bring other healers because of how much healing (shielding) that Disc priest gave with a ton of mastery.

Bring back having to get mats from all xpacs and you have to fly all over the world to get the stuff.

This idea is so short sighted. Think about it: You would need to farm older content but at your player power level, you would likely 1-shot everything. So now imagine other people 1-shoting mobs that you need to kill to get mats for your crafting stuff. Unless you wanted HP scaling for mobs from older expansions?

Bring back patches for the pants that make you tougher, bring back spikes for sheilds, Have some new and cool ideas that make people go WOW

How does legging enchants or shield enchant make people go WOW? If anything it just means that when a piece of loot drops, you need to go back to town and buy the gem/enchant/reforge to make that item usable before heading back into raid. Seems lackluster to me when the alternative is here's a drop, sure it doesn't have a socket nor can be enchanted, but it is an upgrade that you can equip right now and continue with the raid.

[Djdizzy]

Blizzard has turned professions from more or less mandatory into something thats nice to have, but not really offering any benefits. Dropped gear is currently way better than crafted gear, and without sockets on everything, it leaves certain professions quite lacking imo. Same thing with scribes and glyphs. They had a real purpose back in wrath when glyphs could be swapped out and such. Now, they just make contracts?

[Musta]

Utterly. /10chars

[Sanguinerd]

I've always felt like they made profs useless because of the "I'm forced to be this and that" kinda threads whining about one prof being slightly stronger than another and like mentioned above people feel like it's mandatory to have them.

Which is odd since most people I know and play with want profs to be useful, then again we're just casual players and our opinion doesn't really matter around here

[jackofwind]

At the end of the day professions are useless because Blizzard doesn't want to give people true end-game quality items without making them raid.

Gone are the days of BC crafted maces being BiS for PvP, or Vanilla Lionheart Helm being essential to the kit of a DPS Warrior.

[Maquegyver]

Easy...

1) Titanforging/Warforging invalidates most crafting items
2) Even without tittyforging the items generally suck in comparison to actual drops
3) They are soul bound

Thinking they failed is a failure. They don't want professions to be good. It is too guaranteed to exist in their current loot pinata treadmill bullshit.

[Daan]

Awful design when the only interesting recipes for Engineering and Blacksmithing are locked behind very low drop chances.

[anon5123]

Easy...

1) Titanforging/Warforging invalidates most crafting items
2) Even without tittyforging the items generally suck in comparison to actual drops
3) They are soul bound

Thinking they failed is a failure. They don't want professions to be good. It is too guaranteed to exist in their current loot pinata treadmill bullshit.

This

Blizz wants to keep you playing the Diablo-styled RNG loot pinata, they don't want you crafting "bis" items like back in vanilla/tbc/wotlk and then playing the game less because of it.