Legion: They haven't fixed professions.

So, I have enjoyed professions in World of Warcraft in the past…

     Let me take a step back first and say despite the tone of this post, I am still loving the crap out of Legion.  While it's early to be very judgey it has some of the best starting content we have experienced in game in my humble opinion.  If the rest of the expansion lives up to it's launch it is going to be a great time in Azeroth.

    Warlords put a bullet in the head of professions.  Last expansion with all the garrison options almost no one needed to work on creating potions, armor, and the rest because other than in a very few choices you could have a shop in your garrison for what you needed.  This meant that my paladin didn’t need to have my DK fashion plate armor for him, he could just make it himself.  And ore? Shoot, if he didn’t feel like going out there was a steady supply coming through his garrison.

    The only point I will give Warlords in regards to professions, is that they were still useful when you leveled.

     Legion has killed that for me.  In almost every past expansion my engineers have worked hard to grind up mats so I can have engineering googles to start raiding with.  I love the techno look mixed with the usefulness of being able to make myself a decent bit of gear to hop in with.  In this expansion, not so much.

     By the time I got my first recipe for goggles, I had already out geared them.   I made a pair and threw it on for transmog, but otherwise I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to use them well for leveling.  Now, at 110 I have a quest to be able to make my ilevel 815 goggles, but I can’t access the dungeon they are in until I’m further in Suramar.  To top that, I already have an 840 helm from world quests, so I am in no hurry to make them.  Now I know I can with the fel forge (I can’t remember the exact name) make items to level the goggles up.  But stating at 815, (825 if I get lucky and it wins an upgrade roll) that means I have to make, and destroy a few dozen items after doing a quest that cost me about 30k gold after completing to level them to the point of this drop.  That means my profession goggles, the thing that marks me as an engineer is useless for anything but transmog.

     And I have heard other professions having similar issues.  I heard a complaint about it with Blacksmithing on a podcast I listen to.  Now I haven’t played deep enough to know if this is all professions, but if it is then yes then what use are they?  Why do I want to make gear I will never be able to use, unless I put a lot of effort into making it equal to what I can get with a five-minute world quest?

     Of course, Alchemy, Jewelcrafting, and Inscription may not be effected by this.  I’m thinking mainly crafting professions like Leatherworking, Tailoring, Blacksmithing, and Engineering.  Unless we get some pizazz and sizzle in each patch to make these worthwhile, it is going to be another expansion where people don’t care.

     Or am I wrong?  If I am let me know.

      All I know is that I have every profession at least once with all my alts.  If there is no bonus or point in doing my professions why should I bother leveling them this time around.  IF there isn’t reason, it may be the final nail in the coffin for me.  And I have always enjoyed professions before this point.

     Heck, I had three engineers at the end of Cataclysm….

     How are you feeling about your professions?

Lag

Did Warlord's Break Professions.

I’ve been thinking about professions a lot.

                Warlords was not kind to professions.  Everything was made so readily available by garrisons, that for the most point it felt pointless to have any gathering professions, let alone any making professions.  You could upgrade a few select items for yourself or others with a lot of work, but for the most part, it felt pretty useless to be a blacksmith etc… after a point.

                With Legion it sounds like we are taking a step back to the old way of doing things, with a few improvements.  You will have your blacksmiths, doing all the blacksmith work.  Jewel crafters doing all the gems and so on.  The improved part is that if you are not at level with Legion professions, you will still be able to make the items.  This means you won’t have to slog through all making all the Vanilla Wow recipes on up before you can make current gear.

                I look forward to this.  I miss professions feeling meaningful, rather that something you might do so that you can make one or more extra items that through hard work will be comparable to that next drop you get in a dungeon.  I know I’m kind of looking back at things through rose colored glasses on this.  I remember grinding to make a couple of items to get my ilevel up and ready to raid, just to replace them a week or two later.

                However I also wonder how many people are looking forward to going back to the old way?  I remember flying around Uldum for hours grinding ore so I could work on Engineering and Blacksmithing items.  Now because of my garrison, I don’t remember that last time I went grinding for ore.  Well, it’s been a couple of months, but it was in Pandaria to make Sky Golem mount to sell.  I still do that on occasion, but that is a gold earning thing, not a current need gear that works right now thing.  As far as current engineering work, I do the same thing I have done since the beginning of Warlords, I pop out a Blingtron 5000

                Now, since we have not had to do much gathering, are people going to be willing to hope back into that again?  How about professions when it comes to making stuff.  Are people going to have the drive to bang out a bunch of items after it just felt useless?  Or is everyone else’s experience different than mine, where people making a lot of items with professions and making it feel worthwhile?  I am honestly curious.  How is this going to affect people’s feelings going into Legion?  Am I just crazy to be having these thought?

What do you think, are you ready to hop back into professions come Legion?

Lag

               

                

Invasive Gearing.

I think this is the easiest time I've had getting geared for raid.

         Seriously.  Between garrison raids, Apex crystals, heroics, and having a blacksmith on my garrison it hasn't been that hard to get to ilevel 632 where I'm sitting right now.  My Pally seems to be doing good dps and I'm feeling happy with him.  I have only finished two or three heroics and I'm doing fine and happy.

        Legendary ring is going to be my focus this week.  I still need to get a couple of bands to pop it up to the 680 ilevel.  This will also be my last week off as I'm going to throw us into the frying pan next week and start raiding.  Mwha ha ha.

      At this point only my hands and one trinket are not ilevel 630 or higher.  I still need a couple of enchants, but those are coming along and I will buy the ones my mage can't make by next week.  As much as I don't like the profession system this time round, I do have to mention that you can just pull your alts up and through to about halfway through Shadowmoon valley, and then have a decent profession base to work with.  My shaman has made the 640 neckpiece I'm wearing, and she is only level 91 as of yet.  I've had to mail her some ore, but I get so freaking much from my level 3 mine I normally have a ton to spare.

      Other then that, I can't say enough about doing the daily Apex crystal grind.  It normally takes an hour or so, even quicker if you get in a group. (Group finder list is great for this.)  But there are a ton of 630 pieces you can get in Ashran by trading in 4000, or 3000 of those crystals.  After you buy the piece you can even get the upgrade for even more Apex crystals... then there is yet another upgrade you can get for the piece for, you got it, even more Apex crystals.  You can through the apex grind get a bunch of gear up to the 665 (I may be off a little on that) ilevel pieces.  Basically, 3rd tier level purples for a little work.

     I can't say how much I love garrison invasions.  So far I've earned about one a week by doing my crystal dailies.  These are awesome because you can invite a couple of guildies in, go crazy blowing baddies up, and if you can get gold rating (which I have 2 out of 3 times) you get a bag with a chance at a purple in it.  I'm sporting a ilevel 645 helm from one of these.  Gold doesn't seem to hard to get either, as long as the people you invite in are consistent on blowing crap up, it's attainable.  Honestly the only time I didn't get it, I dc'd a couple times at the beginning of the fight and wasn't able to be there for a bit of it.  I am not sure if these adjust difficulty to the amount of people you have present or not, but there is no reason not to give a couple of guildies or friends a chance to get some gear.

     Level up your followers too, I haven't gotten any pieces worth replacing what I'm wearing yet, but the heroic mission you put them on can score you some ilevel 630 gear as well.  Don't just get one follower, but get a few up past ilevel 615, and then you can start getting stuffs there.

     Really, there is not much reason to not get your gear up past 630 to start raiding.  There are so many paths they have given us, including heroics, to get the stuff you need.  Heroics themselves seem a little tougher this time round.  As long as you pay attention though, it doesn't seem so bad.  I won't lie, I think Blizzard will give the heroics a nerf eventually, just ever so slightly.  I have a lot of groups just falling apart and not making the end.  Not because it can't be done, but because people are impatient and tend to jump ship after one wipe.  You get people constantly jumping in and out, and it makes life a bit harder.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on this week.

Lag/Lazyeye

How To Make Professions Not Suck

So, Wow Insider posed a good question today, How would you change/fix professions in WoW?

       And that is a wonderful question.  I presently have every profession in the game maxed with the exception of Leather working/skinning.  That will be fixed when my Monk finally gets to max level however.  (As a side not, leveling leather working so far has been the worst profession grind in my opinion.)  With Warlords of Draenor, professions will get another 75 point kick, if they stay consistent.  That means if you start a new character that is 675 points of professions to work through to max any given profession.  That is a little daunting.

      So first I would suggest adding in profession quests.  Cooking has one of these, so does fishing.  Imagine however if you had a daily/weekly quest you could take based around your profession to gain +5 or +10 points for completing it.  Only one or two points if it's a daily.  I know we have a monthly +5 we can get from the Darkmoon fair, but with that being just once a month it doesn't feel like that big of a kick up.

      Second I would add more meaningful/fun items.  I have two engineers.  I wouldn't mind having more.  Why? Engineers are like freaking Batman! You get belt rockets that help you to run on water, a glider attached to your cloak and other fun toys like rocket boots etc.. that you can play with that gives your character a nice flavor.  It however has the save disadvantage a lot of the other professions have.

    There are gaps where it feels useless....

     With each profession you get to make raid entry level gear.  Then you have to wait for the next raid to come out, for new gear that is insanely expensive to make.  This gear's only advantage is that it brings you up to the gear level of whatever the current raid level of gear is.  Normally by the time you can make it, you've been running the raid for a few weeks and in all likely hood a hard core raider is going to have something comparable all ready, and any one who isn't pushing hard against the raid is unlikely to care to drop tons of gold on a one gear piece boost.

     So first I think we should be able to get some simpler to make pieces with each new raid tier.  I know that Blizzard wants to gate things, but you can make equipment difficult to make without making people need to buy whatever item is dropping from the new raid to complete the items.  Daily cool downs, rarely found/picked items all this can be used to gate new equipment.

     I think there should also be more gear made purely for transmog.  Since this has become a well know used and loved feature, there should be gear that can only be used/mogged by members of said profession, and other items with some flare that can be used by everyone who would normally be able to use such armor type (Mail, Plate etc...)

     Then we come to gathering professions.

     I think player should, for a fee or quest, be able to get assistants who farm stuff for them.  I like the farms in Panderia at Sunsong Ranch, but the problem is that eventually it just feels grindy.  Give me a companion in my garrison who I can send to gather mats, knowing that sometimes he will come back with a very low yield, and occasionally he will come back with some cool stuff.  I know farming mats is part of the game, and you could still do that while using this feature to speed up your gathering ability.  You could also gain rep with different farmers you send on quests to get better yields and possible pets/mounts.

    Anyway, I would love more stuff to keep professions interesting and profitable.  Obviously some gates have to exist to keep the gear from all falling to dirt cheap prices right away, or making the professions meaningful.  I do believe however, that some of these gates could creak open a little more, or even if your looking at past Xpack gear that a way to speed through non-current/useful patterns/items could be nice.

   The real question is, how would you fix professions?

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye