World of Warcraft: Dragonflight - Professions Preview

[TEHPALLYTANK]

So they heard the complaints about gear acquisition and crafting...and they decided to merge them in an attempt to solve the issues? I'm not sure if this is going to be good or bad, though the fact I'm uncertain at least is a hell of a step up from previous systems where I could easily call them shit as soon as they were announced because their design was utter rubbish from a mile away.

Covenants being the most recent example of an expansion feature that clearly was shit when announced, remained shit until a good way through the expansion, and only much later into the expansion they finally implemented some basic QoL changes that people had been asking for since the bloody system was announced.

The only clearly ill-conceived thing that sticks out to me is the crafting speed stat. It is going to be completely worthless, anything with crafting speed on it is going to be regarded as garbage.

On a positive note, it looks like recrafting is something they intend to add so your initial investment in a piece of crafted gear isn't 100% lost when upgrading it.

[Mendzia]

I dunno man.
I feel this stupid rank (quality) system will be annoying as hell and absolute sink of crafting mats.
For some reason this reminds me mobile games...

How about making profs just as it used to be with good perks like cloak proc (tailoring), more sockets (BS/JC), bombs/granades (engi) and more...?
They treat this like it will change whole game... and it is just profs dude.

[MoanaLisa]

Well, it's a start. If it works and if they can hit the target on acquiring materials I would imagine some casual players might stick around and go into business. That's clearly what this is about. As always with Blizzard the ideas may be fine but implementation matters.

[Toppy]

"No real change"
You can now put out work orders to have specific things crafted for you, even using materials that are normally bind on pickup
you have varrying qualities of crafting materials, and even gear itself
there is new "crafting gear" including new "crafting slots" where you put that gear, like mining picks, helmets, goggles, backpacks, and more, that give you "crafting stats" that give you benefits like faster crafting, more efficient crafting, chance to craft better stuff, or craft more stuff.
New type of flask that has a shorter duration with more unique effects, allowing you to swap fight to fight.

Nah no real change, you are right.

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I do love this, because you seem to forget vanilla and tbc professions were RNG too, because of the alchemy mastery, and also the fact finding rare resources out in the world was extremly RNG, as was getting them from dungeons/raids.

Cause man, i would love to see you in blackwing lair crying your fucking eyes out about one run dropping 10 elementium ingots, but then the next 3 runs dropping ZERO.

also wtf you talking about "tiers" and "levels" what levels? do you mean profession levels? Bro we have always had those...

Thank you for describing the bells and whistles.

In the end its an RNG based system to make tiered gear that requires raiding and mythic+ to make gear. So, lots of bells and whistles, no real change other than the RNG.

[RaoBurning]

This is starting to look a smidge like FFXIV crafting, which I personally enjoy. I understand others may not. Crafting specific gear and adding quality control helps make crafting not so monotonous, albeit more tedious.

Bold of Blizz to add in material quality levels right after FF14 took out HQ graded items and such.

[Toppy]

Bold of Blizz to add in material quality levels right after FF14 took out HQ graded items and such.

FF14 didnt require you to raid to take part in a meaningful way. Its like blizzard missed the most key part: make it relevent even if you arent a raider.

Comparing this to the FFXIV system is very disgenuine. Very little RNG in the FFXIV system and the end product is itself not a product of RNG. Its only comparable if you know little of either system and just skimmed over how they work.

[Shakzor]

Bold of Blizz to add in material quality levels right after FF14 took out HQ graded items and such.

FF14 still has HQ graded items. They only took out HQ gathered materials. You can still make HQ Ingots for example to use on other crafts, but no HQ iron ore to make the ingot.

Honestly, I would prefer no alpha or beta so I can make my own mind up about the game when it releases. Rather than half a year of content creators bitching and giving feedback about shit that will never change.

Well, no one's forcing you to watch these people and even less force you to take their opinion as your own.
If there's alpha/beta, you can just watch someone on mute and see the game only

[Qnubi]

Honestly, I would prefer no alpha or beta so I can make my own mind up about the game when it releases. Rather than half a year of content creators bitching and giving feedback about shit that will never change.

I will only read MMO-C for some info bits, not watch content creators this time around. Having information for systems such as this crafting is fine.

[Celement]

It works as I expected to and seems an annoying tedious waste of time like most of blizzards new systems....

Why the hell would I want to tip a Chinese bot low balling the market to get an item that should of just been a drop from the raid I'm doing anyways?

[Varaben]

Why is it taking so long for Alpha? With a 2022 release date - this does not bode well.

Considering they are only releasing 4 dungeons at launch plus the limited borrowed power, it may be they really don't have a hell of a lot to do for this expansion. Crafting professions and talent trees (the latter of which is just skills/passives we've had in the game forever off and on) are the two biggest pieces from what I can see.

[Dzonathan]

FF14 didnt require you to raid to take part in a meaningful way. Its like blizzard missed the most key part: make it relevent even if you arent a raider.

So much this.

Professions will never become truly meaningful until crafted items become equal to high difficulty raid drops.
If crafted gear will only be as good as pre-raid BiS then players will naturally min-max them out of consideration.
Why bother fiddling with crafting when you can just jump into a M+ and get a better reward for same kind of time/effort commitment?
The sooner they bite that bullet, the better.

[Azadina]

In mop they redid all of jade forest questing in like a month near the end, In wod they changed like all of frost fire and gorgon from blizzcon to beta, they can pump out huge changes incredibly fast when they deem it needed.

Cool. Where was the other half of WoD then? They had time. They had A LOT of it.

[Vexenar]

I really hope they scrap the idea of quality levels on consumables and enchants, so far that just seems needlessly complicated for the sake of arteficial time investment.

It's like raiding and m+ right now aren't expensive enough, now you have an RNG lottery next to it.

[Uselessrouge]

yikes i hate quality procs..

[Varaben]

So much this.

Professions will never become truly meaningful until crafted items become equal to high difficulty raid drops.
If crafted gear will only be as good as pre-raid BiS then players will naturally min-max them out of consideration.
Why bother fiddling with crafting when you can just jump into a M+ and get a better reward for same kind of time/effort commitment?
The sooner they bite that bullet, the better.

This new crafting system doesn't appear to fix that, since you need Mythic material to make Mythic-level gear. I think the trick will be, is that Mythic crafting item BOP or not? Even if it's BOE, it will be prohibitively expensive I assume, so non-raiders won't realistically be able to get their hands on it.

I kinda hope they reverse this decision; crafting has in the past been very important, probably the peak of this was TBC. When the crafted gear for casters/healers at least (and blacksmithing weapons) could take you all the way through the expansion. I really liked this system especially since it was only a few slots, so it's not like it was a contained system to fully gear you out. But it definitely made crafting worthwhile.

[Ilookfly]

Considering they are only releasing 4 dungeons at launch plus the limited borrowed power, it may be they really don't have a hell of a lot to do for this expansion. Crafting professions and talent trees (the latter of which is just skills/passives we've had in the game forever off and on) are the two biggest pieces from what I can see.

They are releasing 8 dungeons. Just 4 of them will be doable in m+ season 1 however.

[Myela]

It is, but the white knights will never concede that. It'll be framed as reinventing something that was boring.

The hard truth is, simple professions were better. Crafting gems, enchanting gear, etc. Selling stuff on AH. Give me that. Not this nonsense garbage with tiers.

Hell no, get out of here with this classic mentality. Simple does not mean good.

[Tiwack]

Not a fan of more rng...

[Coldkil]

I like this. Just that, i find relaxing farmi g heebs and crafting potions. I think i'll make a lot of use of work orders both for getting gear and selling potions/phials.

[Morae]

I have my worries. Mostly the quality system, but I'm not saying 'no' yet.

Personally I feel there will actually be one quality and that is the maximum quality. Any other quality is not relevant. No matter how rare it is, no matter how difficult it is, no matter what kind of supply problems there will be... its going to be only the maximum people want.

Its going to cost a lot of gold in AH or craft fee, whatever. Gold you can get by.... token! Is this a step towards pay2win?