I got the impression that they were overhauling professions in order to turn them into a meaningful endgame option for players who might prefer “world content”.
But what I find is basically this (BS/MI):
- I can’t make use of any of the items I can create, because the gear I find is better or much faster to obtain.
- I can’t sell any of the items I can create, because there are never any Crafting Orders up.
- I can’t maximize my profession’s potential and feel like a master craftsman who unlocked it all, because the best stuff is reserved for players running other forms of endgame content such as raids or M+ (plans and materials).
- I can’t solely focus on doing “professions-related” content, because a lot of it is controlled by the Renown grind and more.
Basically, this iteration of professions (while shiny) frustrates me even more than the one we had in Legion. It’s sold as endgame content for CRAFTERS, but in reality it’s still mostly a form of side-content for dedicated raiders and M+ groups.
Can we PLEASE, for once, just have Professions be something you maximize by literally roaming Azeroth to find materials (some rare) that you shape into cool items? And let players who spend more time in outdoors actually gain an edge for this feature over those who play mostly inside instanced content.
42 Likes
I think its flaw is not only the things you listed but also that it’s convoluted and there’s not enough stuff to actually craft. Just the same old rubbish but it now requires 5 Awakened Frost, 3 Titan orbs, 5 primal chaos and 2 stacks of Garrosh dust. What gives.
4 Likes
I also dislike how convoluted the system now is: skill points to unlock recipies aren’t enough anymore, you also need the “knowledge” and to aquire it is a hard grind. Collecting the materials to craft and get skill points really would’ve been enough effort…
Also, crafting orders would’ve been a nice idea and BoP items surely “solve” the “pay to win” aspect of previous systems (looking at you, SL legendaries), but it’s frustrating that barely anbody uses them… which makes it impossible to max out the profession, since mats are either timegated (sparks) or etremely hard to get in large amounts (for example blue ore).
3 Likes
I am not impressed with how convoluted the system is.
I have friends running multiple alts with the same profession just so they can actually point into the relevant specialities and support each other doing the same profession, that is so farcical it should not be needed.
I do not like multiple ranks of ingredients and outcomes. I don’t even have enough space in my bank in the profession tab to house everything.
I detest the work orders system. I have to get a friend to put three orders on for me every week so that I can complete my weekly quest. There are never any work orders and it seems rather daft that to find orders I have to click on every single thing I can make in my crafting window whilst being in range of the crafting table. Personal orders do at least just show as a list of things available to craft. Having things recrafted can’t be done as a public work order, you have to go through the hassle of contacting someone.
I get the idea of the work orders but in practice it very much depends on what profession you are doing as to whether or not you can any work from it. You have no control over the quality you are getting back and crafters have to go through the pain of making many before getting good results.
The specialisations would be better if it wasn’t how we unlocked things to craft.
I love the UI changes, mostly, and the equipment for crafting is fun, I do not understand why I can’t stick my fishing hat in the UI though.
13 Likes
But i give them that they tried to revamp profession to be actually good
they failed hard but they tried this is what i want to see.
I believe they will look at the data and see that very low % of players is using work orders
i’m basically doing just alt and main so i can complete quests for my profession.
One positive about this is that gathering profession mining and herbalism right now?
is so much fun and better then ever before
I made so much gold in few days after i learned those 2
selling awakened order like crazy 
2 Likes
As I mentioned in another thread I struggle to make gold even with those o.O
I have now just about managed to acquire 80 knowledge points (I am not a fan of grinding renown) and am lost on how to make it pay more.
And awakened orders are still hard to find and when I do I only find 2 maybe 3 rousing at a time.
Overall though, professions wise I am not a fan either. I send 2 hours farming to make enough flasks/phials for 2 hours worth of M+. And dont get me started about the potions…
Then as mentioned about the knowledge points.
And why is the codex of ultimate power potion a drop from bosses in raid ???
Ill tell you what the profession system is good at though. Its good at making people buy more and more and more tokens to be able to afford things because everything is so stupidly priced.
Take the sockets on our Necks as an example (Tiered Medallion Setting). The wording on that item suggests that you get a number of sockets based on its rank (ie R1 = 1 socket and R3 = 3 sockets).
What it doesnt say is you have to apply a R1, then an R2 and then finally an R3 to get the 3 sockets.
So imagine my surprise when I bought a R3 Setting to put 3 sockets on my Elemental Lariat to discover the R3 setting only put 1 additional socket on… So now I have to spend another 10k gold (20k total now for 2 sockets) to add the third socket because of poor clarification on tooltips.
o.O
2 Likes
Can you imagine Amazon or eBay forcing customers to jump through the same types of hoops needed to buy items from crafters in DF? I don’t know what the devs were thinking, really I don’t.
2 Likes
IIRC, crafting orders are server-only. That’s a serious mistake - it should have the same reach of the AH
2 Likes
They actually already do, and amongst other reasons its a very big one why I stopped using them unless I really have no other choice left to me.
1 Like
Also its so fun to sell things for 15k that costs you 25k to produce.
Disenchanting gives you less value, then selling Items, even to a vendor, and buying Dust/Shards.
Excluding epic Shards, that btw only come out of +380 (?). 372 only giving blue shards 9/10 is a joke.
1 Like
Lol its very simple and easy,to make people sink gold.
And sell tokens ofc.
A new concealed pay to win.
2 Likes
The problem is that most players want to craft items, because that sounds fun, so they pick crafting professions. But when most players pick crafting professions, there’s a ton of supply to craft items, so the ratio of work orders per crafter is extremely low.
I like the idea of specializations, but not being able to grind out knowledge points on all professions feels unbalanced. Gaining knowledge points for mining and herbalism is easy: in addition to the +3 weekly quest and +1 dragonic scroll thing, one can get around +10 per week from just mining and herbing for about an hour or two. But for crafting professions, it’s too hard to get additional knowledge points. AFAIK, the only way is to get +1 items from those random treasures in the open world, or +1 items (dragon shards?) from bosses, but both of those have super low drop chances.
I feel like I’m making decent progress on herbalism, but maxing out knowledge on alchemy will take years.
Interesting to read everybody’s experiences with the new crafting system.
Were it up to me, I would simplify some things.
- No more ranks on materials.
- All the benefits come from simply gathering and crafting. If you want rarer materials, try digging more in hard to reach caves. You don’t need to do a bunch of other forms of content.
- Crafting good gear for yourself and your alts becomes easier if you’re a pretty dedicated crafter, to make up for the fact that you might not spend a lot of time raiding.
- Gain some cosmetic perks from gear you’ve made for yourself.
- New recipes are found in the world, or by discovery through crafting.
Specializations can stay but maybe they could benefit from some permanency instead of feeling like a temporary feature akin to Artifacts.
Altered nodes can stay as well, they’re exciting.
In the long run, I think all gathering should be available to all characters, and all you do is pick a single crafting profession, which becomes a more meaningful choice. Sort of like your class choice. A way to alter your entire experience.
3 Likes
I always had the exact same experience with professions, regardless of expansion.
Basic items have so much competition that there is no revenue in trying.
Many patterns were always raid drops, often BoP, or just too expensive.
Even right now in BC / WLK, just like back then, I can sink the money to reach a high level, but it’s all going to the vendor. And then what.
Some professions can generate small cash, disenchanting on average adds 25% gold compared to vendor prices. And revisiting old endgame dungeons.
It’s sensible, just note that everyone will have it. Like in GW2, everybody has the mats, everybody can craft ascendant for themselves, eventually that is. Second best (exotic) gear is very affordable, best (ascendant) is a bit more difficult, but attainable. So the market is mostly about farming specific looks (transmogs) - and materials for profession swapping (you keep recipes but need to xp up again).
Since one character just needs one set of gear, and only if you need more than what drops, ultimately the balance is to gear up just one character per crafter. Not much. Of course people learn it and learn ignore professions, so it gets better.
is it? IS IT REALLY? When I fly 800% speed towards a World Quest or a rare boss all I see are Herbs below me and I’m like: 
naaaaaaa.
1 Like
Perhaps they should separate the items for instanced vs non-instanced content.
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I like the concept they came up with but I’ve found that as time has gone on, my interest has dwindled for these reasons:
- Some of the mats required to even make the most basic recipes are difficult or uncommon to get e.g. Writhebark and all the elements. The amount needed vs amount reasonably acquired without no-life farming is ridiculous.
- The specialisation thing is confusing to begin with and there is no reset available so we are stuck with any mistakes - if they are worried about whatever it is they are worried about then just make it more expensive each time.
- I can get primal storm gear to 385 by the time I’ve managed to make 1 piece of 385 gear due to the amount of primal chaos required.
I like gathering, I usually gathered and funnelled the mats into the guild bank. I was really excited to have a profession army or some such but now I’m thinking I may as well go back to gathering. At most I am going to get 4 pieces beyond 385 due to the renown gift but by the time I will have made any of those I probably will have better. (Noting I don’t do dungeons/raids beyond once).
I’m also not interested in earning money. I don’t spend it on anything. Long game is making the mail set on my leatherworker for looks… yaaay…
I can’t speak for gear crafting professions but alchemy (while interesting and rather adventurous, so to say) has very limited use too. I am confused with all those weird phials and basically limited myself to 4 recipes. The rest I don’t care about.
The trinket also looks boring and a hassle to craft.
I feel it is the same old stuff but with bloated reagents - three grades of each, and bloated end products - three grades of each. Also, in order to craft some pots I really need to perform 4 steps and be at the bench. Omg.
The only thing that bothers me is the insane soft cap on the experience points, like at least let us exchange stuff like primal chaos for skill points or something, or some sort of catch up.
I decided to level an alt druid to 70 as a main gatherer, and i just realised when i got it to max that it’s going to be perpetually like 20 knowledge behind on both professions for months, which is very demoralizing.
It would be cool if we could get something, be it slow, but steady that allows us to get more knowledge than the like 10-15 we are capped to per week through quests and the rare finds.
Non-gathering professions are too confusing for me to understand and it’s not intuitive, so I just don’t bother with them. I can usually follow a wowhead guide but I levelled leatherworking to about level 50 and saw the extreme number of mats required to progress to 100 and thought it’s not worth sinking all that time and money into something I don’t really get and potentially waste materials which will take me weeks/months to get back.
I might do a crafting order or buy a crafting service from someone, if I understood fully what it was about. I don’t get the optional reagents, fees I should be using, or anything about it really and not about to just “have a go” in case I end up losing materials or get some item I don’t want.
So, I just won’t bother with crafting in any way.
Gathering I just about get, so sticking to that and selling what I pick.
In my opinion, the pendulum swung too far the other way, professions needed a revamp but not to this extreme extent.
Maybe the “Professions updates” advertised coming in 10.1 will help…