Cataclysm profession preview

Blizzard's full announcement after the break.
The highlights:
- Blacksmithing, Leather working, and Tailoring specializations removed.
- Blacksmithing, Leather working, and Tailoring will create their starter sets of PvP gear, which will be upgraded with new recipes every season.
- New elixirs will be about 75% as strong as flasks.
- An enchanter vanity pet is being added.
- Engineering is still being designed, but expect new unpredictable gadgets to use on yourself or enemies.
- Engineering will be able to make powerful bows, crossbows, and guns.
- Scribes will see a "cleaning up" of minor glyphs.
- Three new First Aid bandages.
- Avalanche -- Chance to deal Nature damage on melee hit/spell hit.
- Elemental Slayer -- As expected, this enchantment helps players deal devastating damage to elemental creatures.
- Hurricane -- A stacking haste proc.
- Heartsong -- Mana regeneration through increased Spirit when chain-casting spells.
- Many more maximum-level enchantments are still in progress.
- Hit is now Blue.
- Mastery and dodge are Yellow.
- Intellect is now Red.
WryxianWhile the Cataclysm updates to many of the professions are still deep in development, we wanted to share some of the work that's been going on, as well as a high-level look at any lessons learned or changes to their underlying philosophies during the design process. Please be aware that not all professions have the same extent of information available right now, but each is receiving the same love and attention as the next.
Take heed of these teasers as you look forward to your new rank of Illustrious Grand Master!
Please enjoy!
General
Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Tailoring
Alchemy
Enchanting
New Cataclysm weapon enchantment preview:
Engineering
Inscription
Jewelcrafting
Herbalism, Skinning, and Mining
Cooking
First Aid
Bandage preview:
Fishing
Take heed of these teasers as you look forward to your new rank of Illustrious Grand Master!
Please enjoy!
General
- Perks will continue to exist across all professions, and will upgraded appropriately.
Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Tailoring
- Many of the green (and possibly some blue) items made during the process of leveling these professions will contain random stats. In most examples, two stats on these items will be set, and two will be random. The idea with these items is to mix up the skill leveling items so you're not just, for example, creating 10 pairs of boots that are all exactly the same.
- Superior-quality items that require more materials than other recipes in the same skill range provide multiple skill-ups. For example, if a recipe takes three times the reagents, it will give you three skill-ups.
- We didn't feel like we were getting much flexibility from specializations, so they have been removed for all three of these professions. The intent was to help people diversify their profession to feel different from that of other players, but through other professions we've found systems that work better to this end, such as simply making recipes available that you can earn over time.
- To follow up the previous change, all items that required a specialization are now useable by anyone.
- Tailoring the high-end Cataclysm items will center around a single cloth type that can be crafted through five different recipes -- each with their own material components and a long cooldown.
- All three professions will create their starter sets of PVP gear, which will be upgraded with new recipes every season. In general, these are meant to keep pace as an entry-level PvP set below whatever the current Hero Point set is.
Alchemy
- New elixirs will be about 75% as strong as flasks. So you can get more total stat points with two elixirs, but flasks will still be the best at giving you a single offensive or defensive stat.
- New unique material used by nearly all high-level recipes will be created by alchemists on a one-day cooldown.
- New Mysterious Potion created with common materials restores health and mana in a massively random range, as well as sometimes granting the benefit of another potion. The health and mana range is from 1-20,000 and is able to crit. The minimum amount restored, however, is scaled upwards by the Alchemy skill, making it a great choice for alchemists to keep for themselves.
- All potions and elixirs now use the same basic vial type. Flasks still use a fancy vial.
- New Alchemist Stone.
Enchanting
- In general, material component costs for most recipes are more moderate in how much they require, while the highest-end recipes will still require large quantities. The goal of this change is to make the leveling recipes more consistent and not create unintended roadblocks in getting to the higher skill levels.
- An enchanter vanity pet is being added.
New Cataclysm weapon enchantment preview:
- Avalanche -- Chance to deal Nature damage on melee hit/spell hit.
- Elemental Slayer -- As expected, this enchantment helps players deal devastating damage to elemental creatures.
- Hurricane -- A stacking haste proc.
- Heartsong -- Mana regeneration through increased Spirit when chain-casting spells.
- Many more maximum-level enchantments are still in progress.
Engineering
- Engineering is still being designed, but expect new unpredictable gadgets to use on yourself or enemies. Toys, explosives, and even a new vanity pet or two. Oh, and powerful mechanical bows and crossbows in addition to guns.
- In general, we want Engineering to remain a tradeskill mainly focused on creating fun or useful gadgets for the engineer, but we are exploring options for items that can be sold to other players for profit.
Inscription
- With the large number of class changes coming with Cataclysm, many existing glyphs will see new functionality.
- Minor glyphs are woefully uneven from one class to the next right now, so they're a focus for us to clean them up and try to ensure that everyone has minor glyphs they're excited about.
- New Darkmoon Cards will be added, with hopes they'll all be as awesome as the Greatness card.
- We'll be adding more major glyphs as well, but in the hopes of making them as balanced as possible, we'll likely wait until after the expansion ships to add any for the new abilities in Cataclysm.
- New and more desirable off-hand and relic recipes will be added.
Jewelcrafting
- Some gem colors have changed! Hit is now blue. Mastery and Dodge are yellow. Intellect is now red. These simple changes have created a much more diverse matrix of gem cuts.
- New Jewelcrafting dailies will be introduced.
- Many cuts are being added to support the new Mastery stat.
- Some new Cataclysm jewelry recipes have completely random properties, and can sometimes create superior and epic versions.
- Jewelcrafters will have some fun new (and potentially lucrative) vanity items, including fist weapons, rhinestone sunglasses, monocles, and stardust (sprinkle on players for entertainment).
Herbalism, Skinning, and Mining
- All Cataclysm herbs have the chance of containing Volatile Life.
- There won't be a new Lotus equivalent in Cataclysm. Alchemists will use the more reliably-found Volatile Life to create the new high level flasks.
- "Heartblossom -- Named for its deep red color, this delicate flower grows close to the ground, and always in pairs. If one blossom is taken, the other flower begins to wilt immediately and dies soon after. It is considered very unlucky to disturb a Heartblossom without blessing it first."
- Savage Leather, the basic Cataclysm leather, can be gathered from most creatures found in the expansion areas and can be converted to Heavy Savage Leather at a 6:1 rate.
- Pristine Hide, the rare Cataclysm hide, can be found when skinning creatures in the expansion areas, or be converted from Heavy Savage Leather.
- Obsidian is the new common mineral found when mining in Cataclysm, and can contain gems, Volatile Fire, and Volatile Shadow.
- Elementium is the new uncommon mineral found when mining in Cataclysm, and can contain gems, Volatile Fire, Volatile Water, or Volatile Earth.
- Pyrite is the new rare mineral found when mining in Cataclysm, and can contain gems and Volatile Fire.
- Previous Elementium Ore and Bar used for classic quests will be renamed to Elementium Ingot and Hardened Elementium Bar.
- We like the gathering perks as they are; not a game-changing bonus but something themed and fun. But as all tradeskills are in the design stages these are still being discussed to a degree.
Cooking
- Cooking is still in the early stages, but we plan on continuing with daily quests, feasts, and some fun new recipes.
- We liked the cooking dailies that had players picking up items that spawned in the world near the quest giver, so most if not all new cooking dailies will work similarly.
First Aid
- Bandages will have a short cast time and put a heal over time effect on the target for 8 seconds. This effect is broken by damage.
- Three new bandages! That's right: THREE!
Bandage preview:
- "Dense Embersilk Bandage" Heals for 34,800 over 8 seconds. Requires 3 Embersilk to create.
Fishing
- Lots of new fish and other fun items to catch! Fish are still used to make premium food.
- New fishing dailies.
Filed under: News items, Cataclysm
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Reader Comments (Page 6 of 8)
Dalhas May 12th 2010 5:33PM
A very long cool down self resurrection power would be lovely!
jtrain May 12th 2010 1:00PM
I thought they were changing the mechanics of fishing quite a bit to make it more fun? Would have liked a little more info on how that was coming along.
nieboh May 12th 2010 1:08PM
Yeah, I thought they were supposed to revamp fishing entirely and somehow make it fun and not a boring snoozefest...but the blue post seems to be saying more of the same with NEW FISH! /sigh
RogueJedi86 May 12th 2010 2:23PM
Mark my words, "fishing changes" will be the new Dance Studios.
Arbolamante May 12th 2010 3:17PM
Yeah, when are getting our goblin engineered ocean-clearing fishing nets?
ThunderMonkey May 12th 2010 1:03PM
What about changing or altering stats on items?
Was that just on the wish list, or will we see it?
Ixui May 12th 2010 1:00PM
WTB some more damm acheivements and a title for First Aid please!
Groth-man May 12th 2010 1:10PM
Three new bandages?!?!?!?!? NOOOOO WAAAAY!!! adding more bandages to an expansion is so exciting...
Jeffro May 12th 2010 1:09PM
Curious here, but IRL isn't Pyrite also known as Fool's Gold? Wonder why Fool's Gold would be the rare mineral.
Cataca May 12th 2010 1:40PM
"Curious here, but IRL isn't Pyrite also known as Fool's Gold? Wonder why Fool's Gold would be the rare mineral."
A few reasons maybe. The value of an ore is entirely dependent on it's rarity. In the real world Pyrite (Fool's Gold) is a very common ore. But in WoW (where Blizz can make up anything they want) it could be rare.
Pyrite can also be used as an explosive (In the real world as in WoW). In a world almost always in conflict the demand for Pyrite could be massive leading to it's rarity.
In a world where war is life, would you pay more for shinny real gold or something that looks like gold and can also kill your enemy?
I'll take the Pyrite please :-)
Al May 12th 2010 2:34PM
We just spent this expansion farming Old God poop, so Fool's Gold can't be worse.
iceveiled May 12th 2010 1:12PM
I don't see a single bad thing here. I absolutely love everything I just read. Man I cannot wait for Cata!
Hoggersbud May 12th 2010 1:18PM
Some of these changes are good news, some are excellent, some are just ho-hum though.
>Take heed of these teasers as you look forward to your new rank of Illustrious Grand Master!<
ah the perils of a level cap increasing without a system in place. They had to come up with some distinction and they picked...this.
* Perks will continue to exist across all professions, and will upgraded appropriately.
Obvious.
Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Tailoring
* Many of the green (and possibly some blue) items made during the process of leveling these professions will contain random stats. In most examples, two stats on these items will be set, and two will be random. The idea with these items is to mix up the skill leveling items so you're not just, for example, creating 10 pairs of boots that are all exactly the same.
Ok...at least something like the rare JC rings that do it. I guess it's better than nothing, but chances are I'll still end up with useless crap stats.
* Superior-quality items that require more materials than other recipes in the same skill range provide multiple skill-ups. For example, if a recipe takes three times the reagents, it will give you three skill-ups.
Yay! A good idea.
* We didn't feel like we were getting much flexibility from specializations, so they have been removed for all three of these professions. The intent was to help people diversify their profession to feel different from that of other players, but through other professions we've found systems that work better to this end, such as simply making recipes available that you can earn over time.
Probably for the best. They just didn't do specialization well. It didn't give a good choice. It gave for many, if not most people, a pigeon-holing. Before dual-specs maybe it didn't matter so much that to be a Shadow Priest I wanted the Frozen Shadow weave, but to heal the...whatever it was called. But with dual-specs, maybe I want to heal and dps sometimes, but...tailoring...pigeon-holed for one or the other. Probably why they ignored such specialty sets in Wrath.
* All three professions will create their starter sets of PVP gear, which will be upgraded with new recipes every season. In general, these are meant to keep pace as an entry-level PvP set below whatever the current Hero Point set is.
Good idea. Provides a means to catch up.
* New Alchemist Stone.
WTB more than one new stone. Wrath just has one blue.
Boo.
* Some gem colors have changed! Hit is now blue. Mastery and Dodge are yellow. Intellect is now red. These simple changes have created a much more diverse matrix of gem cuts.
An improvement. Blue needed a more general purpose DPS stat. Too bad they picked Hit to be it. Hit is one of those stats I don't like, because it's got a threshold, and it's not performance related, but I guess it's an improvement.
I wish they'd get rid of hit though.
GerardthePriest May 12th 2010 1:45PM
They've said that the way hit works is going to be changed in Cataclysm, I believe, to make hit more desirable and less cappable.
Boobah May 12th 2010 1:53PM
Hit is also moving to blue because boomkin, elemental shaman, and possibly shadow priests are all going to have spirit -> hit conversion talents.
And yeah, there's also the whole higher tiers require more hit/expertise/avoidance thing they've promised.
cocoboom May 12th 2010 1:50PM
I'd hope that the alchemist stone gets a pvp equivalent which is being upgraded, just like the craftable armor sets. Oh and something other than a selfheal for herbalism would be neat, I can healing-wave myself just fine, so that perk is mostly useless.
Hob May 12th 2010 4:41PM
I'm happy with lifebloom; aside from being useful for non-healing classes, it's also very nice for moonkin. Personally, I think it could be more like cannabalism, where instead of healing for a pre-set value of health, it heals for a percentage of your total health. The percentage could be decreased if the profession rank and (previous) minimum level to train are not equal.
Let's say the cap is 35% health healed.
A level 80 with 450 herbalism and a level 4 with 75 herbalism could both use lifebloom to heal 35% of their base health.
However, a level 80 with 75 herbalism should only be able to heal, say 5% base health. Incentive to level a gathering skill without being game-breaking. And since the cap is 35%, a level 4 with 450 herbalism would still be capped at healing 35% of their base health. (I know that you don't gain the added ranks of lifebloom, master of anatomy, etc. until you're level appropriate ~ however, in this case, you're already capped, so you wouldn't be "adding" ranks as much as "not losing" ranks.)
Valt May 12th 2010 1:25PM
Flasks should go back to
http://www.wowhead.com/item=22851
or atleast use them bit flavor. Next SP should be named http://www.wowhead.com/item=32767 version 2.0
RetPallyJil May 12th 2010 1:27PM
SInce I despise PvP and seriously doubt that Blizzard will pro-rate and refund the gold I spent learning Armorsmithing ...
I'd say I just got screwed. Thanks, Blizz!!
Portals May 12th 2010 5:00PM
Or...you could think of it as opening up more stuff to craft thus improving your current BS profession? just a thought >.o