Stat weights (equivalents) in BFA?

[ssambakd]

Hi, i've been away from wow for a few years but recently came back and actually enjoying this expansion a lot ( A LOT to learn too haha, perhaps because a lot of things were added during the expansion itself). I was just looking for gems to put on a new gear at the AH, and was surprised to find that there were +80 and +120 Intellect(or Agility/Str) gems for really cheap, while the secondary stats were at +40 and +50 and much more expensive(especially the +50 one).

I may be mistaken in my memory, but I think in the past, stats like Int/Agi/Str were more valuable per point than secondary stats like haste, crit, etc. Has that been reversed to the other way? In general, is each point of secondary stat equivalent to multiple points of primary stats now (or maybe it's from before BFA, like Legion)?

Do people generally put in secondary stat gems now? Is there any case where the primary stat gems are used any more?

On a side note, i noticed gem prices seem quite.. inexpensive (compared to in the past or.. simply in absolute terms haha). Also seems like you don't have that many gem slots any more. In terms of leveling a profession, is leveling JC a good idea, or even leveling any profession in general? I'm at a stage where i haven't done pretty much anything yet with professions so i was curious if i should actually level them.

Thank you in advance.

[Gurbz]

Gem slots showing up on gear drops are much more rare than in the past. Thus people don't need many that often, so there isn't a huge demand overall which pushes prices down. And as far as the primary stat gems, they all are unique-equipped, so you can only have one slotted in at any time. Thus even less of a demand for those.

IMO, crafting professions haven't been super useful past maybe a short time at the beginning of an expansion for the last few expansions. Maybe alchemy for pots/flasks? But I feel like you could skip it and just buy whatever you need and not be losing out on anything. YMMV.

[Tradu]

At the very beginning of Legion/BfA primary stat gems were beating secondary stat ones(and then again briefly when they added the bigger primary stat ones and buffed them). The reason is that Blizzard is awful at fundamental multiplication and doesn't understand that limiting secondaries makes getting more secondaries much more valuable.

[Saltysquidoon]

Pretty much all crafting professions (bar alchemy and to a lesser extent enchanting) have been entirely marginalised/ rendered useless over time.

There was this weird push to 'let gear be gear' that for some reason meant the slow erasure of gems and enchants (inscriptions, leg patches, belt buckles) which is essentially what sustained most of them long term during an expo.

[ssambakd]

I see, thank you for your replies. I understand better now

Speaking of inscriptions, what happened to all the glyphs? I realized there doesn't seem to be any slots (or UI for the matter) for glyphs any more. Are they all gone? There used to be (is are they still here?) some minor glyphs that added interesting visuals for fun in the game. Do scribes just pretty much make "contracts" now?

[Gurbz]

The glyph system got removed at the beginning of Legion, making scribes basically useless outside of contracts.