Boosting professions
If you’re like me, you’ve had every profession this game has to offer at one point or another. Personally, my main has had more professions than I can even remember. I started out a Miner/Engineer, then changed to Mining/Enchanting. Then I tried Alchemy and Herbalism, then back to Mining again. I definitely hopped around. I eventually settled with Mining/Herbalism while leveling, which I’d recommend to any new player. You need cash to level, and the easiest way to do that is with two gathering professions.
And therein lies the problem with professions. Crafting professions are a giant money sink and provide almost no benefit to leveling players. The recipes of the old world are not very much use to new players, and its not till the expansion that any of the recipes are worth wearing or selling. WotLK has brought some cool new things such as the flying carpet for tailors, and adding sockets for Blacksmiths. But is it enough?
Leatherworking, Blacksmithing, and Tailoring specifically are the 3 most broken professions in the game (I know some of you would argue Engineering too, but you engineers get that cool flying copter and lots of good PVP gear). If you don’t raid, then there’s little reason to take up one of these professions once you reach 70.
Blizzard has tried to boost these struggling professions in the Burning Crusade by adding new recipes to the game that require things like Heart of Darkness or Sunmotes which drop from T6 and higher raids. The problem with this is that 90% of the player base will never see this content and thus will never see these items. BC also added the ability to specialize in a particular brand of these professions in order to make epic BoP gear for your character. These boosted the professions enough to make them viable enough for those wanting to begin raiding, but it really isn’t enough. They still don’t provide enough income to offset the cost of training these professions to 375, or to deal with the rampant inflation that is happening on every realm with the advent of all the new daily quests. Also if you PVP and don’t raid, there’s very little reason to take them.
So what can be done to fix these professions? I have an idea for you… adding arena gear recipes.
With the beginning of Season 4, Season 1 arena gear is no longer purchasable with honor or marks, and Season 2 gear is purchasable with honor. So why not boost these struggling professions some more and allow them to craft these items? The weapons and mail/plate armor can go to Blacksmithing. All the Leather items can go to Leatherworking, and of course all the cloth items can go to Tailoring. This will give PVP players a reason to finally take up these professions. It’ll also allow people to jump into Battlegrounds and arenas a little more easily. Hardcore PVPers will probably have a problem with this idea, but leveling the playing field in battlegrounds a little more is needed in my opinion. A group with S4 arena gear should not be allowed to compete against an opposing faction group with mostly greens or reputation reward blues.
Giving season arena gear to crafting professions won’t fix the problem with old world recipes, but Blizzard has gone back and added sub-300 level recipes to the game since the Burning Crusade. So why not add some more? Why not give Tailors the ability to craft kits that will allow you to repair cloth armor? How about adding some sub-70 level PVP gear for twinks and leveling players? Why not allow Tailors to add sockets to cloth items? Make this a low level ability in Tailoring and you’d boost the viability of taking tailoring while leveling your character. This could be done similarly with Leatherworking, and of course its already being done with Blacksmithing.
Either way, I’m lukewarm so far on what i’ve seen added for WotLK. It seems to be just more of the same for Tailors, Blacksmiths, and Leatherworkers. Each profession gets their respective BoP epic set, and a couple profession specific abilities like socket adding, embroidery spells, and of course the cool new mounts. But not any new mechanics for adding new receipes that can be sold for profit. I hope we see some more changes before the expansion hits. I know i’ll be watching closely.
If you have any suggestions for boosting professions, let us hear them in the comments.
Something I’ve always been ‘wanting’ mainly because it makes sense. Is the ability to repair gear of your profession.
I’m a master tailor but apparently I can’t fix holes in my robe to save my life. This would give material a direction to go and save some gold in terms of repair for anyone traveling.
I agree… it makes too much sense not to have this ability. But what is truly lacking are some money making recipes to make these professions on the par of alchemy, enchanting, and the gathering professions.
I think that Engineering is actually a good professions. Sure it costs a lot to level but it pays back in spades.
1. Mote Extractor. Easily can farm motes for money. 15min in Zanga combined with mining gets me at least 100g. Better than doing boring dailies every day. Never short on any primal except fire.
2. Helms. My goggles rock. Ok. Sure there are better ones. I like these though.
3. Invisibility trinket. Woot! Haha. Ok this is just a pet favorite. I like having that extra out when that rogue ganks me out in the wild. It is nice to turn the tables on them with an instant invisible.
Anyway I do think getting bigger and better stuff is fun but I like Engineering in Outland.
This was going to be my response as well. I’ve always wondered why I (a 375 tailor) can’t repair my own gear but a level 20 Blacksmithing Accessories vendor can. Giving me the ability to repair my own gear would be a huge reason to take tailoring as a clothie or Blacksmithing as a tank.
Here is my idea..
As a Tailor, give me the ability to craft “armor repair kits” of different levels to repair gear up a certain quality (uncommon, rare, epic) that takes cloth and maybe even enchanting mats to make. Have one kit work for one piece of gear so that way it doesn’t repair weapons (leave that to blacksmiths and moreso weaponsmiths). Once you max tailoring, give us the ability to repair all cloth armor with one kit that requires a reasonable amount of materials.
Lots of Blacksmiths complained about being left out of the PVE game in TBC (especially Armorsmiths) so giving armorsmiths the ability to repair armor and weaponsmiths the ability to repair weapons makes everyone happy they just spent an insane amount time and materials to max their professions.
First off, I really, really like this idea. I personally would never use S1 right now having better gear. I can see a ton of people that would be able to take advantage of this.
However…
“A group with S4 arena gear should not be allowed to compete against an opposing faction group with mostly greens or reputation reward blues.”
This probably wasn’t the point of your article, but seriously? Do you believe that people with X level gear should never be able to be in the same BG with people with X-1 level gear (or X-2 or X-3 or whatever)?
The whole point of gearing up for pvp in an MMO is to have better gear than your opponents. What’s the point of getting the gear if you can’t do that?
Maybe that was a bit exaggerated… but I do think a season 4 premade against a bunch of folks in greens and blues is a mismatch. Should it be allowed? Well thats for Blizzard to figure out.
I agree… I liked engineering alot. Thats why my leveling Rogue will have that profession.
Well we all know the crafting profs are broken, esp in vanilla wow. Why don’t they go back and fix them? I am talking about, for example, the need for LW at 260 or so to go out and farm 500 rugged leather, to make 40 or so greens that are made for level 45 chars. At that point you are certainly at 55 or 60. This whole attitude is just stupid. And there is no vendor trained recipe at 265, you have to go out to plaguelands or Silithus to get it, and its a rare drop. I spent hours camping in Plaguelands when I should be in outlands waiting for the one specific recipe to drop (and its not on AH). Anyway if they wanted to fix the profs they would make more armor kits and have a larger skillup range for them.