Over the first few weeks of testing in the Burning Crusade Beta, we’ve found it useful to elaborate on and bolster the “some changes” philosophy that we expressed at BlizzConline (and in posts like this one). As we’ve said, we’re open to making further alterations to Burning Crusade Classic, and we’re guided by the goal of authenticity in how the game plays, especially given how players in 2021 approach a game that was designed in 2007.
We’ve decided make the following updates to Burning Crusade Classic:
“Lesser” versions of Leatherworking drums will be available from the beginning of the expansion, and will approximate how drums operated in the first few patches of original Burning Crusade.
“Greater” versions of the drums will become available with the phase that includes the Zul’Aman raid.
Throughout Burning Crusade Classic, using Leatherworking drums will invoke the Tinnitus debuff, preventing reuse for two minutes.
This decision follows a great deal of consideration of the options available. Ultimately, the “some changes” philosophy is a method for identifying problems where specific design choices made in 2007 don’t completely match the design intent of 2007. Having identified a clear issue of that type with drums, we naturally look for changes that were made at the time to address the problem. Tinnitus is exactly such a fix. It was added to the game in the very next major update after the Sunwell patch.
Tinnitus simply limits the number of Leatherworkers that a guild will consider beneficial to one Leatherworker per party. It fits with the design of The Burning Crusade, which encouraged guilds to carefully plan their raid composition to ensure access to various buffs and to make the best use of various drops, such as Primal Nethers. This change should preserve Leatherworking’s unique niche without devaluing it too much compared to other professions, which was the goal of the overall profession design of The Burning Crusade.
Our next step is to test it, so we’re updating the Beta today to include Tinnitus, and it will be in place when we resume testing in Karazhan. As before, we’ll be carefully following what testers do with it, and feedback from testers. We encourage you to use the in-game bug report function in the Beta.
Thank you very much for all of your testing and feedback!
Does this mean you are no longer worried about such a change affecting the difficulty of the raids? Or have you simply decided to give in to popular demand?
what kind of chimps do you have working on these issues?
this is possibly the worst change you could have done. Now you have 1 person per group “forced” to have LW and everyone else will have to be ench/engi.
You’re not solving any issues with these dumb changes done to drums. The ench/JC changes however were great
The only chimp here is you mate, you will have people in your raid that will naturally have LW since it’s useful to them as a profession. There’s literally no better solution than tinitus.
This tinnitus stuff is all good and well, but what about adressing LW as a “lacking” profession?
Drums were originally buffed in late TBC to make LW a more appealing profession, as it wasn’t really an attractive option compared to many of the alternatives.
As it stands now, nerfing the drums makes LW, again, a rather weak profession for the individual user.
Personally I’m levelling a feral druid for TBC now - a class and spec that you would think would benefit from having LW regardless.
Yet it’s rather questionable investment, when I could be picking up better profession alternatives (and there are stronger options for most of the BoP crafted gear from the same tier).
Primalstrike set for instance is just a joke compared to the craftable stuff that BS and Tailoring gets.
Considering to just drop LW right here and now, as I don’t see the point of gimping myself when I could always be taking solid alternatives like Enchanting, JC, Engineering (trinkets and goggles) or even Alchemy (trinket).
Not have it require LW or make it only affect those with LW, latter makes more sense with what they did to ench/jc. Drums in the current state is the only profession with skill involved in the stat increase, i.e stacking up during mechanics warrants it being better than all passive stat increases from professions
I’m cool with only letting 1 guy be LW, but that guy is really sacrificing a good profession slot for the benefit of the group.
Personally I’d like to see LWs get a slight compensation if that’s the case, as it’s otherwise unappealing to go for at the moment.
It doesn’t make good money compared to the alternatives, and the BoP gear is rather lackluster.
Atleast it’s steps in the right direction. Could have just made the drums not BOP also. And I think everyone would be okey with it. LW would become a money making proffesions then atleast.
So, make EVERYONE be forced to be a leatherworker?
Ahahaha, because this will make it 100x worse LOL.
Maybe, who knows. - All I know is at least you won’t have the majority of your raid needing to be LW.
Clearly you haven’t played the game, please stick to retail yourself.
But then you’ll only ever need 1 leatherworker in your raid.
You can just supply him with the leather and he can make it all.
Thus practically making leatherworking worthless.
But then you’ll only ever need 1 leatherworker in your raid.