Ghostcrawler on the Jewelcrafting nerf and design philosophy
by Daniel Whitcomb 
May 25th 2009 at 7:00PM
The Jewelcrafting nerf has been the subject of a lot of hot debate and flaming on the official forums, as might be expected. As people argue whether the nerf was justified, needed, too much, too little, or the wrong way to go about it, the blues have dipped their toes into the pool more than once, and have delivered some interesting insights into the design process in the process.If it was so overpowered, complain some, why did it take so long to nerf it? Ghostcrawler answers in this post.
It's not that they don't notice that something is overpowered, he says, but it does take some time to find a proper fix. Sometimes, it just isn't overpowered until a certain gear level. Sometimes, there may be bug fixes or larger problems that need answering first.Sometimes, they may need to debate over the proper way to fix it. Finally, they may have a more ambitious long-term solution in mind, and may have finally decided they can't delay until that's done.
You can actually sort of see that last one in play on the Hunter Ammo changes in 3.1, where they planned a complete overhaul of the system including phasing out consumable ammo altogether, but instead had to settle for removing the need for quivers and increasing stack size.
Another argument is that they're eliminating unqiueness and min-max potential. To that, Ghostcrawler responds, minmaxers do exist and can exist, but their playstyle should be defined by finding slight differences and little tweaks they can do to get their characters to the next level. When there's a big red arrow pointing at a specific thing, that means something's off and overpowered, and furthermore, takes away from the legitimate challenge of the whole thing.
These insights aren't necessarily new to many MMO veterans, but all the same, they're probably more or less true. It does, in fact, "suck to be nerfed" as Ghostcrawler puts it, but sometimes this type of thing is needful for the health of the game and even for the viability of the min-max playstyle in the long term. It's also interesting to note that he says that if you think something's off, we probably think so too, we just haven't had a chance to deal with it yet. Depending on which way you turn, that could be one more way of saying that they don't give in to the whiners, they just happen to see the same problems they see every once in a while.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Jewelcrafting
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Robert M May 25th 2009 7:16PM
Who the hell cares?
Blizzard has taken every opprotunity to ruin the profession aspect of the game.
I had a shadow tailoringn warlock who just recently, at about level 76 I think, replaced his frozen shadowweave set. It was a set that took weeks to make and I either had to wait out my cooldowns or spend a ton of gold in the AH for mats.
What happened to the days when only people who put time into their professions were rewarded?
They have given all these cute perks to professions now in Lich, but in doing so completly removed the work that it actually takes to level them. I, for one, miss the days where professions meant something, and those that leveled them for the gold dumps they were got rewarded. THe JC nerf sucks, but it's pretty in line with the others now, and I shed a tear thinking about that.
/cry
Arcaria May 25th 2009 9:31PM
The professions in this game have never been good. They're the second worse out of any MMO I've played and that's quite a considerable list. The only game I've played that Blizzard has a better crafting system than is Age of Conan. Blizzard takes so many things from other games, particularly the ones that came before it but still didn't manage to make do a good job at all with tradeskills.
BlackTiger May 26th 2009 3:23AM
Blizzard's dream is "World of... Minesweeper". No, really. For casuality sake!
They want people to play WoW when they're bored (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHY8NKj3RKs).
"Recipe-only" crafting is and always was a dead-end.
Anid Maro May 26th 2009 4:08AM
You want to talk about a rewarding profession? Lets look again at that Frozen Shadoweave set. First of all it's a BC set, so the fact that it lasted you until 76 is pretty good. Secondly check out wowhead comments from back before Wrath.
I raided as a Shadow Priest in BC, I was at one time a Herbalist/Alchemist but ended up dropping that combo in order to pick up Tailoring. Why? Because in BC the FSW set gave about 1.5x the Spellpower it currently gives in the form of pure Shadow/Frost damage. With the huge amount of +Shadow and the way Shadow Priest mechanics were then, it was the best gear I could wear until I started collecting Tier 6.
Re-read that. A set I could craft before entering Kara would last me through Kara, Gruul's, and Mags (the T4 content), through TK and SSC (T5 and where the first potential side grade shows), and into Hyjal and BT (T6).
Talk about a reward! I had my second BiS before I even got my Heroic gear. Hell, the boots were BiS until the Sunwell came out. Of course this was so good that any raiding guild with any sense required it's Shadow Priests to be tailors, hell if you wore cloth you were almost required to be a Tailor... the other sets weren't too shabby either.
Which is why JC is being nerfed. Because if you want the best profession buff you ought to be a JC and then either an Enchanter or a Blacksmith. I remember what it was like to have a profession so overpowering that you had to take it, and it wasn't cool. I happen to be a JC/Enchanter but that's because I like being that and not because I have to be, post nerf I'll still keep happily cutting away at my gems.
Just because something isn't overpowered doesn't mean it's worthless. GC is right, for the sake of min/maxing this is actually a very good move. With JC you're not minimizing anything, just maxing... you're giving up nothing for an obvious benefit and choosing your profession shouldn't be so clear cut.
K May 26th 2009 11:27AM
This.
JC wasn't really OP, comparing it's numbers to the other professions.
But Blizz decided to screw with the sockets, giving every class like a single socket that was the best color for them per tier set and threw in a ton of shitty ones (see blue sockets for melee DPS).
Supposed to add variety to the customization, when in reality, the socket bonuses are laughable and nobody gives a shit about them anyways, so this really can't be taken as a nerf....Prismatics may have allowed you to get the extra, i don't know, 6 crit rating? Thats hardly a reason to call in the nerfmobile.
raplover_1 May 25th 2009 7:21PM
Ok i have 3 chars 1 is a hunter (miner/engineer) retadin (miner/armorsmith) and my dk that i just started like 3 days ago(that is a /jeweler/skinner) and from my noob point of view they are takin away the cool things about those profesions im talkin about jeweler and bs. i mean bs is so damn hard to level up includin those torioum and mitril quest and at the end it doesnt give u cool things blizz is wrong
SaintStryfe May 25th 2009 7:22PM
It doesn't make much sense to me from a lore prospective - JCs are masters of gems. They're the most meticulous craftsmen of all of WoW's crafters. Being able to channel energy through a gem to any color shouldn't be a challenge to them.
I guess crafting was just more fun in Vanilla and in TBC for me.
To be blunt, I'm kind of considering dropping both my JC and my alchemy for simple gathering professions - Herbalism and Skinning, the crit and the heal would help a lot. But then again, the Alchemy doesn't suck - yet.
It sucks that no single profession can be exceptional, they all have to be mediocre.
Arcaria May 25th 2009 9:33PM
Jewelcrafting wasn't around in vanilla WoW. That comment of yours makes me wonder if you were...
Arcaria May 25th 2009 9:36PM
Sorry Saint, I reread your comment. The first time I read it my eyes tricked me and I thought you said that JC was more fun in Vanilla.
blackbert May 25th 2009 7:23PM
They had other intentions, they where going to give the prof BOPs. They changed their minds cause they see no problems with Fury Warriors being Tailors.
Hal May 25th 2009 7:28PM
Working to equalize professions is not a bad thing. You can imagine an overzealous guild that demands its raiders take enchanting/jewelcrafting or hit the skids. And when PvP is as competitive as it is, why should the winners in a given match be the group that had the most money to blow leveling two specific professions over all the others?
Robert M May 25th 2009 9:49PM
If a guild requires you to take 2 professions for progression, and you don't wish to have them, then you find another guild. HOLY F-ING S&*^, that was so hard.
Now if there are arena teams that are willing to level professions for the upper hand, they have earned it. Why does everything in this game have to be handed out to every douche in the name of fairness? Classes aren't balanced, and no matter what Kool Aid GC and the development team want to feed you, they never will be. Certain classes compliment each other better, and others don't. If you, or Blizzard, was really that concerned with balanced arena, they would limit competitiion to class groups because thats the only way for real balance, but you and I know that's a completely stupid expectation.
Hal May 26th 2009 11:03AM
Hey, thanks for making a polite reply. Really gives strength to your arguments.
Why is it so wrong for Blizzard to want to limit the gap between min/maxers and the rest of the world? I suspect PvP is where this difference was really being noticed, and the entire idea is generally supposed to be "Better players will win." Picking the "correct" professions is not the mark of a better player, it's the mark of someone who managed to farm (or buy) a bunch of gold.
What if there was one class that dominated PvP? Would you say that it's stupid to more "equalize" the classes and bring that one class back down to earth? Or is that just the QQ of a douche who wants everything handed to him and can't be bothered to make the "right" decisions at the character select screen?
Mortalcoil May 25th 2009 7:35PM
the only reason i sea for this is each profession is meant to add some amount of stats to increase an items ilvl relative to its stats (there is no actual increase its just best way ive seen it) but with the dragons eye gems you could gain up to 3 socket bonuses from socketing raw power gems (stam, spell power, str, agi) which would normally not be attainable. (using stam as an example as im a tank) many pieces of tank gear at naxx level or higher sockets seem to be either red or yellow where as i prefer to see no yellow ones as at this ilvl items have enough defense to grant me my crit immune without defense gems especially with a SSG enchant. so any yellow socket a JC could socket with pure stam and still reap the benefits while non JCs would miss the socket bonus if they went with pure stam.
also JCs can get they meta bonuses without having to gem odd or unused gem colours for their chosen spec
SaintStryfe May 25th 2009 7:55PM
I actually proposed a solution to this on the main boards which got some nice feedback. I'd give you the full post but the Community Boards are down right now.
I break the stats into two types - "Capped" and "uncapped". "Capped" stats are ones where EP values go down over time - for instance, a Draenei ENH Shaman nees 341 Hit to spell hit cap. After 341, it returns much less to put any more points into +Hit. Same with expertise. For that same Shaman, it's 140 Expertise rating. After that, you get no more benefit. "Uncapped" stats - AP, SP, STR, AGL, the stats we use to get up on those damage/healing meters.
Right now, the most well-liked uncapped are all in one gem type: Red. This leads to us wanting to socket more red gems, runs up the price on those gems and generally means we want them more then anything else.
The problem comes with gear with off-color stats, or meta requirements. That ENH Shaman, let's say, is in full T7.5 - she has 4 red, 1 yellow and 2 blue sockets. The yellow is ok - but those blue slots there is nothing. Blue gems have INT, SPR, MP5 and STA. Not one useful stat for an ENH shaman. She has to go into multi-color gems like prismatics, which generally are simply less useful in her DPS.
So my solution is simple: realign the types fo bonuses each gem gets, so no one gem has so many "uncapped" stats, and no one type of gem has so many "uncapped" stats - I think I moved AP and hit onto blue, STR into yellow, ect, just so they're more balanced in terms of gems.
I also had some ideas about how to implement it fairly. When I can I'll post the whole thing.
jimbo May 25th 2009 7:40PM
As an alchemist/herbalist, (have been since I made my char) I would to see more BoPs for alchemy along the lines of min/maxing. If they made Alchemist Stones with percentage based stats, it would scale nicely with gear and not become too OP with high level or low level gear. For example having it grant 5-10% SP for casters and 5-10% strength or agil for melee, could even make one for stam for tanks and such, which would work great for all three tank classes. I think there is a much more creative solution than just nerfing some professions. Instead, improve others. This just shows that one profession is out in front of the profession pack, which I guess is easier to bring back to the fold than give the others the same benefits.
emptyrepublic May 25th 2009 7:49PM
As usual when a change occurs that curbs the benefits that a player finds in the game they (rightly or wrongly) complain. If there is any constant in Warcraft it is this.
Titusx May 25th 2009 8:01PM
I understand what the nerf is all about. What I dont seem to understand is how is this so overpowered. The benefit of those gems will become even smaller when epic gems are released any way, so I dont see how having 3 really good gems is so overpowering.
But that doesnt have to do with the solution, cause they just switched them to colored gems... now thats the part I dont get... at most what JCs get is 3 easy socket bonuses and a defacto meta gem bonus. Now, the last time I checked, socket bonuses arent such a huge... maybe I say that cause my T7 enhancement shaman socket bonuses where like +0.1 to stamina and other classes had like the most amazing bonuses... but hey, still, its 3 easy bonuses AT MOST.
Like I said, I dont get it. So can someone explain it to me, cause I am totally missing the point here. I allways thought that one of the percs of being a JC was that leg up on the gem bonuses... looks like I was wrong.
Sparcrypt May 26th 2009 1:20AM
It's actually not that big a nerf. Well not to me.
For a start, you can use an enchanted tear to get your meta bonus as a rogue. At the moment I only have 2 blue gem slots, one has the tear in it, the other has a red gem and I lose.. wait for it... 6 agility.
Blizzard has nerfer me by 6 agility. Oh no.
My main issue is that instead of nerfing the one well designed profession they should be buffing the rest.
See the key is not 'this is too powerful' or 'that is too powerful' - it's 'this needs to be BALANCED'. How do we achieve balance? Make everything equal in power, and make that power nice and high for professions so everyone feels they're getting something useful out of it.
havitech May 25th 2009 8:08PM
Blizzard really dropped the ball with professions in WotLK by going to far to fix the problem of overpowered BoP gear.
In BC, tailors could make themselves great gear with a few weeks of work. This gear would last them well into T5.
In WotLK, tailors can make mediocre gear that can easily be replaced by a heroic run or Naxx pug. Furthermore, most of the gear is BoE.
I once posted an idea on the Suggestion forums that Blizzard give professions gear recipes that require items from bosses. Similiar to Runed/Frozen Orbs, but only people with the profession would see and be able to loot the item. For example, engineers could get trinket recipes that require looting some gizmo from Mimiron's body.