yeah, good one tony. I said bad, not some emo QQ'ing like you like to think. skinning and leatherworking as a combination have already been hotfix nerfed, and nerfed since cata was released - it's already hard enough to get a pristine hide - which is needed by most recipes - to drop from a skinned mob as it is. To put some context around that, our small 10man raiding guild has two skinners. Between us, since cata's release we've skinned around 5000 mobs. Collectively, we've seen two pristine hides drop - both AFTER the nerf which meant they dropped significantly less often. So, as a leatherworker i have one option. Buy pristine hides for 10 heavy savage leather - or 50 savage leather. For a craftable item that requires 3 pristine hides that means 200 savage leather to be farmed (the pattern also costs 10 HSL). the skinning and looting time alone for that is around 8m20s, assuming we have a pile of bodies that 100% drop 1 savage leather.

Now, i'm going to assume i've been voted down because people think i'm some mass market control freak, or heaven forbid, a gold farmer, or worse, an elitest. ZOMG! Actually, I'm neither. I, like many of you, am someone that's trying to hold down a job, personal life, guild heroic runs, and raiding.. so obviously anything to keep profession progression time to a minimum is a good thing. I already have my skinning and leartherworking to full, and am now full time trying to make leg armour, and epic gear for my guildmates. that is all.

I guess, this wouldn't be so bad if the very same mobs weren't also the easiest place to farm toughened flesh (a third of the mats required to make goblin BBQs... the lower level raid food). Or the ravager humanoid mobs - which travel in large packs in exactly the same area, can be nuked down in about 5seconds, and respawn quickly - weren't one of the best places to farm embersilk cloth.

to be totally fair, they could have just dropped the spawn timer on the bats, and let skinners fight it out for themselves on the mobs, and everyone would have been happy, or maybe even lowered the drop rate on the leather so it no longer became viable. However to remove the ability to skin is just a blatant fuck you in the face of skinners and leatherworkers.

as it stands, i skilled up skinning and leatherworking here, and got most of the patterns, so it doesn't even affect me. or our guild.

pity the lower level guys