Breakfast Topic: An alternative to tailoring
by Gregg Reece 
Apr 26th 2010 at 8:00AM
For people who are starting the game and looking at professions for the very first time, some of the professions are fairly obvious in how they should be combined. If you're going to take leatherworking, you'll likely also be taking skinning so that you have some leather to work with. Mining is matched up with blacksmithing, jewelcrafting, and engineering. You've got alchemy and inscription intended to be with herbalism. Lastly, you've got tailoring and enchanting.
All you really need for enchanting is a profession that makes uncommon quality or better equipment. Enchanting doesn't really have to be matched with tailoring, but all of the other crafting professions need a gathering skill, and enchanting works better when you have another profession to disenchant from. The gathering skill for tailoring is just killing humanoids and undead over and over again, and thus it can be matched with any gathering profession just to fill a slot.
If you're anything other than a warlock, priest or mage, then taking tailoring is fairly unintuitive if you want enchanting. You could just combine it with a gathering profession like mining or skinning, but that means you need to obtain your enchant materials via the auction house, get really lucky via the dungeon finder or use alts with other professions.
What the game needs is an alternative, self-contained profession that could be matched with either. Could it be the woodworking profession idea that they announced had pretty much been scrapped during this past year's BlizzCon? How about merging leatherworking and skinning into a single profession? Or do you take a page out of Final Fantasy XI's book and go with bonecrafting (we just finished an expansion heavy on the bone armor theme)? What's your idea for a single slot crafting profession that would be useful to something other than cloth-wearers?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Gamer am I Apr 26th 2010 8:07AM
For the record, I, as an herbalist/enchanter, have done just fine farming mats from BoE greens that drop from enemies and BoP greens from quest rewards. If I need more enchanting reagents, I can sell the herbs to fund buying them off of the auction house, which is really a better alternative these days than crafting gear and disenchanting it, especially considering the gear or the mats used to make it would probably sell for more than the mats themselves, so it's a better alternative to sell the gear or mats and use that money to buy the enchanting mats.
Kal Apr 26th 2010 8:17AM
Same set up I have on my main, especially since when you need mats to level it up, you can get a lot of low level, rather useless green items on the AH by just placing a low bid and waiting for the auction to finish. And since Herbalism gives me the mats I need for flasks and our guild has a few alchemists to help out in making them, there's no need for me to switch to another profession.
kabshiel Apr 26th 2010 10:26AM
Considering how expensive enchanting is to level, I really recommend going for a gathering profession to help fund it.
musicalchan Apr 26th 2010 12:44PM
I leveled enchanting/mining on one of my characters and I never had any problems at all getting the materials for it. You don't have to level up your enchanting the quickest and all of the quests and instances you do will eventually provide you with plenty of materials.
In fact, I think tailoring just slows you down when it comes to leveling professions. Both tailoring and enchanting are pretty time consuming and hard to level at the higher ranks. Tailors often have to spend a long time or a lot of money getting a ton of cloth to make even a few pieces of gear for skill ups. Same for enchanting near the end. You don't end up making enough with Tailoring to supply your enchanting; you HAVE to go to outside sources. In that sense, tailoring needs enchanting more than enchanting needs tailoring.
Zalvi24 Apr 26th 2010 8:07AM
dish washing
Toddrick Apr 26th 2010 10:15AM
Female only profession?
Therar Apr 26th 2010 11:23AM
@Toddrick I'm gonna go ahead and say it: You sexist bastard
swimstarguy Apr 26th 2010 12:05PM
The best combo prof for dish washing would be child raising. That one will help dirty the dishes so you don't need to buy them off the AH.
styopa Apr 26th 2010 12:24PM
@ Toddrick:
I like it. Wimmen-only toon buffs/debuffs.
1) you get to have more alt slots than anyone else, but every slot you get means you accumulate fatigue 25% faster. At 4 extra alts, your main is permanently fatigued.
2) +10 skill bonus to tailoring ("sock darning")
3) +50% rep gain because you can shake that booty-thang, but only between levels 16 and about 35. Under that, booty shakin for money makin is inappropriate, over 35 or so, well, the problem is that it doesn't STOP shakin when you do.
Moanique Apr 26th 2010 1:14PM
Fine then. Combine lawn mowing with car...errrr.....mount washing while the better half does the dish washing.
Kaylad Apr 26th 2010 1:40PM
Why why why do people persist in equating level with years? I want to see the 25 octogenarians fighting the Lich King... what sort of stat bonuses do zimmerframes have?
Hunterlicious Apr 26th 2010 3:46PM
@styopa
Love it! I'd like to also propose designers re-examine a few buffs/debuffs and items in order to make them more relevant for World of Mancraft:
http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=1682- Male toons with this title are able to conjure tall tales of conquest for other male party/raid members. Awards the "Irresistible" effect, which increases perception of dps by 1000%. Effect broken by any damage dealt by mobs level 1 and above and/or disparaging trade chat remarks.
http://thottbot.com/i18258- With gut reinforcement. Bind on equip and never comes off. No need to grind for one: happens naturally after level 40 OR after doing over 1000 http://www.wowhead.com/item=33927 stands: whichever happens first.
+60 shrinkage when falling into any body of water. Or sprinting naked across capital cities.
Silence- Male toons are vulnerable to this spell cast by females after unsuccessful pick-up lines in pst, such as "what's your pants' drop rate? Heh heh!"
Good times!...
mattedllama Apr 26th 2010 8:13AM
I have many alts and at least three enchanters. Without exception they had tailoring as their second profession until enchanting was maxed. One of them (my paladin) then went on to drop it and take blacksmithing. -don't ask me why I'm a masochist, i just am-
Recently I realized that jewelcrafting was an acceptable alternative to lvling three professions on a toon but as I already have all the enchanters I will ever want its to late for me.
jealouspirate Apr 26th 2010 8:16AM
This may not meet your criteria, but there's a profession I've wanted for ages and I'm going to say it.
Music! Specifically, the building and playing of musical instruments.
LotRO has a similar system, where you can actually buy and play various instruments, composing your own music by yourself or with others.
It would be like a gathering and crafting profession in one. You could specialize building/playing different types of instruments, such as stringed, brass or percussion. Each race could have a type of instrument they are naturally proficient in. Playing certain predetermined songs could provide small buffs (ie make drums of kings ACTUAL DRUMS YOU PLAY), or they could be only cosmetic (bust out a guitar at your RP/social event).
Imagine you're doing a city raid. Forty people charging on mounts is awesome. Now imagine people are playing war drums, chanting battlecries or sounding horns?
Picture a gnome playing a ukulele. A troll paying a didgeridoo. A Night Elf playing a harp. The possibilities just make me all happy inside. I think it's just one more thing that would make WoW feel more alive.
Chris Apr 26th 2010 9:47AM
I can see it now - a brigade of dwarves marching around Darnassus playing bagpipes under the guise of "cultural exchange"... followed almost immediately by the Night Elves joining the Horde
David King Apr 26th 2010 9:50AM
I would love an instrument to play. I did a lotro trial before trying out and ultimately choosing wow. The instrument was hands down my favorite part of the game. The fact that you could actually play real notes and create real music with them was the best part. You had access to at least one full octave of notes that were set in a scale(I think just the standard major scale I don't remember exactly). The fact that it only gave about 7 notes in the scale may sound restrictive to fellow musicians out there, but it provided a great way to allow non-musicians to still play their hearts out and hit random notes without it ever sounding too bad.(all notes in a scale inherently sound decent enough with any other note in it).
Bring on the instruments!
Gren Apr 26th 2010 9:55AM
@chris
I lolled so hard reading your comment...
Now what would they say if the gnomes came marching on.....
icepyro Apr 26th 2010 2:50PM
And just for ridiculousness, as everyone gathers around a fish feast, someone pulls out a grand piano. It's not much bigger than most of the stuff in my bags anyways.
Michael Martine Apr 26th 2010 3:50PM
Why not? Are there not already items which make people dance? How about rousing battle music to buff the party and debuff the enemy? It would make for some interesting AoE fun.
Music is magic.
MusedMoose Apr 26th 2010 7:46PM
I am totally and completely with you on this. As long as there's bagpipes. All my characters would learn bagpipes. Even the draenei. Just because.
What would be even better is if various pets could join in. I would actually respec my DK to Unholy if my summoned ghoul could play backup. Or don a kilt and tartan hat for the aforementioned bagpipes.
@ icepyro - dude! That's the frosting on the cake of this particular awesome idea. And you *know* the one who came up with the idea of the collapsible grand piano was a gnome.
...the goblin version is a rocket-shooting pipe organ. Just for the record.