Why has Blizzard failed at professions ?

[AlmightyGerkin]

That wasn't very good design. You basically was forced to learn some professions in order to min-max your character. If you're DPS warrior, you can't just learn mining and be happy.

I like current iteration of professions. I think that crafting professions should have all slots available for high-level craft, but only allow 2 different crafting slots to be equipped. This way I would be able to complement slots I did not have drops yet.

Best design they had. Now professions are just lame.

[pinelakias]

Because they have effectively removed everything that was good about them.

- Daily cooldown removal - one thing ensured that every profession had a profit
- Bonuses removal - It was great having these around, especially when every profession had them, including the gathering ones
- Removal of recipes rarity - Everyone can craft the same thing (ironically they even commented on this not being ok and did it anyway)
- Ranks - maybe works for gathering and proccing professions like alchemy but for the rest it's just pure bullshit

You know it's a garbage system when it's cheaper to buy crafted things than it is to craft them yourself.

Where is the like system when you need it....

[Neuroticaine]

Sadly, professions have been terrible for a longer part of this game's life than they have been decent.

[Benedictu]

Due to certain people nagging, Blizz was convinced that professions were just a waste of time and not fun. I of course completely disagree with such bullshit.

I don't think so. Blizz realized that certain professions were a lot more powerful than others and perks were hard to balance so nobody gets perks and nobody gets a profession that could be good. A lot of the time the simplest solution for Blizz is nobody gets nice things.

[RobertMugabe]

Titanforging is the main factor that has ruined professions, but also simply the high loot drops have also kinda ruined it .

It also just seems that Blizzard doesn't want players to craft good items very often and thus they've sorta "timegated" these as well. From vanilla until cata or mop you could most of the time farm or at least buy all the raid mats you needed for a good item, now you have a set cap on these (you can only get breath of bwomsandi from raid bosses and you can neither buy, sell or get them from any other source)

[Biggles Worth]

If they're not going to make gearing viable through crafting, I'd like them to do something or just get rid of it all together if they're going to keep being trash.

[Kralljin]

Best design they had. Now professions are just lame.

Professions should be there to craft gear, not just add some superior enchant or socket.
That could be a thing for JC / Enchanting but not every profession.

[vsb]

Best design they had. Now professions are just lame.

Quite the opposite. Current design is much better. Old design was plain bad.

[AlmightyGerkin]

Quite the opposite. Current design is much better. Old design was plain bad.

Each to their own.

[Chromell]

Because they can't decide for the life of them what they want professions to be or mean. That's the reason professions take a 180 degree turn on a new dimension each new expansion.

[hyphnos]

Because they don't care about them for one. For another, they are so obsessed with navel-gazing every goddamned item and reward in the game and how it should be "earned" or whatever, they just err on the side of making professions meaningless except as a way to generate token sales so players have the gold they need to function in the game.

[Djuntas]

Cause they dont want drums 2.0 from Sunwell I guess. Honestly, it sucked ass...unless you make gold, then you have made a killing on the AH Thats the only thing professions are good for. Love my LW, JC and other proffesions

[Grimbold21]

I want professions to make gear that last the current raid tier. I don't care if people feel forced to take a profession of that. Who are we kidding? The people that do that are the min/maxers and the top raiding guilds looking for an edge. Besides, the fact that you can pick up a profession and just level the current expansion items invalidates that "hassle".

Moreover, I want the old benefits back and more. I don't like this minimalistic vibe we have going on now. With gem slots being a proc and what not. Give belt buckles back and stuff like that. Didn't we BSers also have something that we can craft a socket into a wrist item? Oh but that gives an unfair advantage? Tough luck.

[Polarthief]

Professions could be very rich and for casual players a reason to hang around those extra months between patches. If they got the attention that pet battles have you could easily add a few hundred thousand more folks to the game happily running their professions for fun and profit.

Perfect example: FFXIV. Square handles their professions to a ridiculously awesome degree, by making them "classes" that you level up. Granted, that system only works because you can change class whenever you want, but I think WoW could at least pull off some of the complexity that comes with it.

For anyone who doesn't know (though I'm not a master of this by any means; I only played FFXIV in 2.0 and a little bit in 3.0), both crafting and gathering professions use gear for special profession stats (like increasing quality of materials/crafts, increasing it's special resource (think "mana" for crafts), etc) and also have a lot of skills tied to them. For example, their version of herbalism has you gathering tree, herb, and other various nodes. Each type of node can have a ton of different types of materials and also differing qualities. You use your resource (CP) to use skills that alter how you gather the node. Maybe you just want extra hits on the node and go for that, or maybe you try a little risk-reward by risking your CP to increase the quality of your hits, or to try and get the rarer materials that are way less likely to drop. Crafting is basically the same except it's changing the quality of the piece you're making (and I think you can also fail crafts and lose a portion of the mats? WoW's equivalent would be not getting a skill point I guess).

A system like this drastically alters how you look at professions. It's no longer "I need X mats to make Y item", it's "I need X mats to make Y item, but I also need Z gear to increase the quality of the piece so it'll be better" or "instead of just mindlessly collecting nodes, I need to think carefully about which skills I want to use to get the most out of each node".

If this sounds remotely interesting to you, I highly recommend looking up an actual guide from someone who has played in the last year or so since my information could even be outdated, but I find it extremely fascinating compared to WoW's extremely dull and tedious profession system, almost overwhelmingly so. It was incredibly fun to just gather nodes and figure out what skills to try and use, and it didn't even feel like there was a "best solution" because sometimes you'll want rarer materials, sometimes you want higher quality materials, and sometimes you just want a lot of materials, same with making crafts.

[AlmightyGerkin]

Perfect example: FFXIV. Square handles their professions to a ridiculously awesome degree, by making them "classes" that you level up. Granted, that system only works because you can change class whenever you want, but I think WoW could at least pull off some of the complexity that comes with it.

For anyone who doesn't know (though I'm not a master of this by any means; I only played FFXIV in 2.0 and a little bit in 3.0), both crafting and gathering professions use gear for special profession stats (like increasing quality of materials/crafts, increasing it's special resource (think "mana" for crafts), etc) and also have a lot of skills tied to them. For example, their version of herbalism has you gathering tree, herb, and other various nodes. Each type of node can have a ton of different types of materials and also differing qualities. You use your resource (CP) to use skills that alter how you gather the node. Maybe you just want extra hits on the node and go for that, or maybe you try a little risk-reward by risking your CP to increase the quality of your hits, or to try and get the rarer materials that are way less likely to drop. Crafting is basically the same except it's changing the quality of the piece you're making (and I think you can also fail crafts and lose a portion of the mats? WoW's equivalent would be not getting a skill point I guess).

A system like this drastically alters how you look at professions. It's no longer "I need X mats to make Y item", it's "I need X mats to make Y item, but I also need Z gear to increase the quality of the piece so it'll be better" or "instead of just mindlessly collecting nodes, I need to think carefully about which skills I want to use to get the most out of each node".

If this sounds remotely interesting to you, I highly recommend looking up an actual guide from someone who has played in the last year or so since my information could even be outdated, but I find it extremely fascinating compared to WoW's extremely dull and tedious profession system, almost overwhelmingly so. It was incredibly fun to just gather nodes and figure out what skills to try and use, and it didn't even feel like there was a "best solution" because sometimes you'll want rarer materials, sometimes you want higher quality materials, and sometimes you just want a lot of materials, same with making crafts.

too complicated for Blizzard.

[Balir]

I've recently been playing Elder Scrolls Online. The way they do professions there is superb. That is definitely something Blizzard could copy and maybe even refine.

[tristannarutofan]

once again the answer is "because thats what the players want"

players have repeatedly criticized blizzard for allowing professions to provide powerful bonuses, so they cant make it so that the professions give anything Good, other than what is available elsewhere, any 'bonuses' have to be tiny. like engineerings access to transmog machine, or LWering making drums in case out of 10 people there are no mages or shaman or hunters

players have repeatedly criticized blizzard for making professions difficult, with working out a profession being a major undertaking

now you COULD argue that 'its more than that" that the problem with legion professions wasnt all the quests but that the lvl 1 recipies were gated behind them ect ect ect...

but for them to decide to devote man hours to this little side job thing that most people ignore you'd have to get over the hurdle of design that is "i want it simple but complex. easy but hard"

yes other games have good systems but you cant compare them. in Elder scrolls professions are HUGE undertakings, you can take everything, and some like armor crafting,enchating and alchemy are basically manditory.

while star wars you can level doing your profession, however this is a combat based game. it would be fun if you could level without resorting to combat all the time but its doubtful they'd go that route.

the only solution is for professions to be different from the ground up. to go back in time and change them. which is impossible.

so the only OTHER solution would be a huge well thought of gigantic undertaking that would rework the whole system without alienating the players that are fine with professions being things that can be ignored. just consider any other part of the game. do you think you'd be so willing for them to scrap everything and give you something entirely different?

yes warcraft is powerful in that it has a solid base but part of that means that they cant do any drastic changes without considering minimizing dmgs to people who dont want changes to the systems they want to change.

[deenman]

I want professions to make gear that last the current raid tier. I don't care if people feel forced to take a profession of that. Who are we kidding? The people that do that are the min/maxers and the top raiding guilds looking for an edge. Besides, the fact that you can pick up a profession and just level the current expansion items invalidates that "hassle".

Moreover, I want the old benefits back and more. I don't like this minimalistic vibe we have going on now. With gem slots being a proc and what not. Give belt buckles back and stuff like that. Didn't we BSers also have something that we can craft a socket into a wrist item? Oh but that gives an unfair advantage? Tough luck.

and they do...in fact bfa and wod were the only expansions where profession gear was equal to top tier ilvl raid gear

[Grimbold21]

and they do...in fact bfa and wod were the only expansions where profession gear was equal to top tier ilvl raid gear

Then I'm completely oblivious. Where're the items to bring up craftables up to 400 ilvl or something?

[deenman]

Then I'm completely oblivious. Where're the items to bring up craftables up to 400 ilvl or something?

once you craft a piece you get the recipe for the next one