I spent way too much time in WoW this weekend, it was great! I have been mostly focused on my disc priest main for the expansion, but I had a little time to branch out into alts and their professions too. As it stands now I have a mini stable of alts in the new content:
Horde:
Disc Priest 120, Tailoring maxed, Alchemy ~100
Feral Druid 113, Herbalism maxed, Enchanting ~70
Frost Mage 111, Mining ~30, Jewelcrafting ~50
Afflic. Warlock 110, Inscription ~110, Alchemy 1
Alliance:
WW Monk 110, Mining ~10, JC 1
I want to talk about professions in BfA, because I’m quite frustrated with them already. First the good, though: most of the quest and dungeon gating that existed in Legion is gone. I could level my tailoring all the way to max without having to jump through any extra hoops. I also really like the way they restructured professions, with each expansion having its own separate leveling range. It makes everything really clear.
Unfortunately that is all the good I really have to say about professions. Now on to the bad. Gathering profs still have quest and dungeon gating. I actually enjoyed the quests and thought it was working really well right up until I hit the one for anchorweed. For the uninitiated, anchorweed is the rare herb necessary for crafting all the flasks in BfA. Rank 1 of anchorweed gathering can be bought as normal from the trainer. Rank 2 is already gated not just by a quest, but by a dungeon quest. Not only that, but the dungeon you have to run is an alliance leveling dungeon, which means there is no way to get past rank 1 as a horde character until you hit 120 and unlock the alliance-side dungeons. I’m not sure if the alliance quest is in the same dungeon, or if theirs is gated in a horde dungeon. I still haven’t hit 120 on my herbalist, so I have no idea what rank 3 of anchorweed requires. I have an unsettling suspicion it is going to send me to a mythic dungeon, let’s hope I’m wrong!
Speaking of mythics, that’s another concern I have about professions. Almost all of the higher level gear and items that can be crafted require hydrocores. The mouseover text says they can be obtained in Zandalar and Kul Tiras dungeons, but that is a lie. They can only be earned through mythics, and they are bind on pickup. That means to craft the fancy epic pants I can make with my tailor, I need to first run mythic dungeons, which drop gear the same level or higher than the item I am trying to craft. Once again this renders crafted items useless for the people who enjoy crafting with alts. We were warned about this but it didn’t sink in until I started actually getting around to crafting in-game, only to be disappointed. While I hope to do a few mythics, maybe, on my main, I absolutely do not ever want to do them on my crafting alts.
This leads into another annoyance with crafting in BfA. Right now, crafting is the only way to get follower equipment for your war campaign followers. I think this is a really cool idea, in theory. My tailor can craft equipment that lets followers bring back extra cloth. Or she could craft it, if she had run mythics to get hydrocores. Yup, almost all follower equipment for this expansion is dependent on crafters running mythics. Until sunday evening I did a scan of the AH a couple times a day, and on my server there were 0 follower items listed. Last night there were 2, if you wanted to spend 900,000 gold. This was a really neat idea that could have given every profession something relevant to sell, but the implementation feels awful. Sure the prices will come down, but a huge reason I have crafting alts is to make things like this for myself, only I can’t because it requires mythic dungeons. I am going to hope that Blizz eventually adds hydrocores to world quests or missions to help alleviate this issue, but I am not going to hold my breath.
I was really hoping that after the terrible state of professions in Legion that BfA would feel much better. Instead I am going to be mostly ignoring them for yet another expansion.
Moonshine Mansion 
Have you seen all the recipes locked behind the rep vendors? I’m gonna have a big bill once I get exalteds
Yeah I’ve already spent a ton of gold on some of them. At least they are the rank 2-3 recipes, not the initial unlock. My poor crafters are going to have a long wait to get their reputations up.
The balance between effort and pay-off isn’t there.
They need to fix things and fix them fast before we all give up on the notion of professions! Imagine the effort to make a cauldron for a raid and it gives only 238 in a primary stat while you are up at 5000 now, before the first raid — the interest will fade as we get stronger and the flasks seem trivial.
Design-wise, it seems that they want to flatten the encounters without the big ups and downs of our damage output from hero lining up with potions and cooldowns on the pull and then again on a burn phase. So, we get wimpy potions!
Clearly, I am very frustrated with Blizzard right now and I haven’t raided yet.
3 posts in my Wordreader over the last couple of hours; all expanding on why BfA professions are in a horrible place right now. It’s very discouraging, and I cannot imagine why they have become this way. I have not focused much on mine – I long for when you more or less could level your professions when you levelled your character. Now the cloth that drops is way way too little for me to level tailoring while I level my character, and the gear is outdated by the time I can make it then!
I started out really excited because there didn’t seem to be dungeon quests and I was getting a reasonable amount of cloth as I was leveling. But then I trained the last few skills and realized that there’s no way to make useful level 120 stuff without running mythics 😦
I understand what you mean. It is a tad odd. I mean, can we even max our the professions without running Mythics, or? I’m soon 115, so I can’t check or know. Professions should be a vital part to ones character, so I’d love it, if one could do it on the way while levelling, or when pursuing it, wouldn’t have to do Mythics. I can’t recall, if this is how it used to be. I mean, some recipes did drop in Dungeons, but were not exactly “vital” to level up.
I was definitely able to max out my tailoring without running any mythics. I just can’t craft the best items without those stupid hydrocores.
Ooh, alright thank you for clarifying 🙂 Ah ok, I see. Are those a guaranteed drop at least or? Just from last boss? Shoot.
I think they are guaranteed from the last boss. And some of those recipes need a minimum of 15. You’ll have to run mythics for a couple weeks to get enough 😦
My goodness. 15!? Okay then…Good to know!
Also, gosh, what AH prices! Get rid of the WoW token, Blizzard, please!
I sometimes pay for my game time with gold so I don’t want them to get rid of it exactly, but I agree it has caused the AH to get totally out of control!
I’ve seen 350 pieces on my server for over 600,000g
Oh, yes, I am sorry, I should have clarified way more. That’s a good thing about the token for sure.!
It’s the other way around I dislike. I get why Blizzard made it, it’s nothing short of genius (goodbye gold sellers?), but I just think there is something fundamentally wrong, with being able to buy in game gold with real money.
I think there is a huge bunch of players who cause AH prices to go sky high because they just buy a few tokens to get that pet they want. So the prices are kept up there.
I can’t imagine a new player arriving to the time, with little game time, and little gold thinks about the AH these days.
But the whole Blizzard balance – buy subscription with your in game time is fine; I have several friends who maintain their gaming this way.
The WoW Token is a great tool for those who choose to pay the game with gold. I know several friends who do this.
It also helps those with zero gold to get some easily. And the problem here is not the token, which hasnt had any major fluctuation in price. Because the more tokens being bought from Blizzard, the less gold they’ll be worth (if you anticipate a rise in their gold value- like Blizzcon weekend- your token will sell for around 100k more than the token being sold by someone who put it up for sale much later).
Instead of blaming the token, blame those who are willing to shell out 900 000 for a piece of gear. It’s basic supply and demand. A lot of people want the rewards without the trouble, a few are selling the items they want, so the price is gigantic.
Also, what broke the economy wasnt the token, it was those damn gold missions from the class halls. I myself was getting 5k-7k a day on each 110 character. And since everyone knew those would be nerfed, the last months of Legion were spent getting all those missions done (easily done with 200% success).
And all those mythic and antorus carries being sold for well over 350k. Those brought more gold to the game than the token ever did.
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I completely agree. The crafting system feels well broken and nearly pointless and the gating mechanics they have chosen to keep are very off-puting to the entire system.