Patch 5.4 patch notes
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The latest patch 5.4 newsHow to fix professions for Mists of Pandaria: An open letter to Blizzard
by Fox Van Allen 
Mar 12th 2012 at 3:00PM
Ladies and gentlemen who love the economic arts, today's column isn't for you. It's an open letter to Blizzard's game developers, with me begging on bent knee for them to improve our collective professions for Mists of Pandaria. Of course, you're free to read it too. In fact, I hope you do and add to it in the comment section.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't a letter of complaint. Blizzard got an awful lot right this expansion, and I'm not going to be shy giving credit where credit is due. But there's always room for improvement. So let's roll up our sleeves, point out what needs fixing, and then hold the folks at Blizzard responsible for what we get next expansion.
So, you with me? If so, let's begin.
Dear Blizzard,
Tailoring, leatherworking, and blacksmithing
My first profession ever taken was tailoring. Seemed like a natural fit -- I was getting cloth drops all the time, regardless of whether I was looking for them or not. I've learned since that the profession gets a bit more complex, of course. And since then, I've also learned that there are a few things to be desired about the profession.
Now, hey, Blizzard -- just between you and me, let's have a talk. These guys out here who read my column and level tailoring love feeling useful. It's more important than making money. And it's hard to feel useful these days given how you've been treating tailors, leatherworkers, and blacksmiths in Cataclysm.
When this expansion first went live, all was good. You had all sorts of stuff to make on the path to level 85 and 525 skill. There wasn't huge demand for all the wearable greens and blues, but there was some demand. And even if we were only making that gear for ourselves and for guildies, we felt useful, dammit!
Then came patch 4.0.3 and 4.1. You brought out new patterns for tailors, leatherworkers, and blacksmiths to learn, but only hard-core raiders had access to the materials. Sure, we could buy materials on the Auction House, but as I previously established, they're out of reach for the crafting proletariat.
Patch 4.2 had a few epic recipes "for the rest of us." They were welcome additions, but they were just so damn grind-y to get access to. I mean, I like having new dailies, but the way you forced me to have to run them so much to gain access to something so basic bothered the hell out of me. I resented having to run the dailies, and I shouldn't have! Because they were fun. But there's nothing fun about having a gun held to your head.
Patch 4.3 went back to the same ol' of patch 4.1 -- the good stuff was for established raiders only. Even us Raid Finder users got shafted in a way we shouldn't have -- Raid Finder end bosses should be dropping Essence of Destructions, not now-useless Chaos Orbs. Heck, we can't even get the outdated Living Embers with our JP or VP. Why not?
Come on, throw the more casual players a crafting-related bone here. If you're going to put new epics in the game like you did in 4.2, don't make existing players have to jump through so many hoops to get them. The gating mechanism to get the Chaos Orbs and Dreamcloth would have been more than effective at keeping the epic flow limited. And once 4.3 comes out, don't keep access to the old 4.2 epics so limited. We want to craft. Let us craft.
But hey, don't think I'm all complaints, here, Blizzard. The way you handled PvP gear was perfect, constantly updating the ilevel of the previous tier of gear. It kept an old recipe fresh. Maybe you could extend a similar mechanism so that those of us who just dinged 85 (soon 90) will have a lower-priced option for skipping the terrible gear grind?
Inscription
Man, Blizzard. If you did something right with regard to professions this expansion, it was with inscription. Mysterious Fortune Cards were a stroke of genius -- you created something with steady demand. And it wasn't just because MFCs were fun. They were useful ways to get your endgame food buff, too. Let's keep that idea around for next expansion. It's a home run.
It's hard to keep inscription fresh, especially since the real purpose of the profession is backing up the stale glyph end of the game. But that's not to say the glyph business is impossible to rescue. If you're going to keep glyphs around, it's time to go all in. Bring out new minor glyphs -- Glyph of Shadow was a great item for us scribes. Play around with glyph mechanics a little and give interesting new major glyphs. Edit prime glyphs to make the "wrong choices" -- and come on guys, we all know there are glyphs that no one takes -- more interesting.
Meanwhile, you're so close to a hit idea with your Scroll of Intellect IX and the like. When Mists of Pandaria introduces Scrolls of [Stat Name Here] X, you should make them competitive with what alchemists get with their selection of flasks. They won't be as good because they don't persist through death, and they have shorter duration to boot, but that's OK. They're a different product. They're marketable. The have a lot of untapped promise. Let's make them shine.
Engineering
Blizzard, I do understand what you're trying to do with the profession. You want it to be filled with neat stuff that only engineers have access to. Got it -- it's a decent model, and I say you should keep it.
That said, engineers need at least a little bit of love when patches 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3 hit. Is there any reason you didn't provided new engineer-only head pieces for 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3?
Engineering is a lot of fun -- a good option for those who don't want a profession that's a huge money-maker. But come on, don't make it something that's useful only on day one of a new expansion. Give engineers some love all year long. (And yes, I want you to have Marvin Gaye playing in your head while you read that, baby.)
Miners, skinners, and herbalists
Again, let's talk about what you guys at Blizzard did right for Cataclysm. The basics were solid -- you tinkered a lot with node spawn rates but finally found a decent balance. And you came up with cool bonuses. Being able to transform into a plant was both useful and fun. Being able to find a mining pet was brilliant. Top-notch job with these two.
The only criticism? No doubt you game developers already know what I'm going to say: Kill the phased herbs. It's weird when someone you can't see gets an herb, but it's weirder to see an herb disappear when you get close to it because it's phased. Let's also be careful about nodes placed in mid-air -- that one Twilight Jasmine node in Twilight Highlands frustrated more herbalists than you probably even realize. It tricked us so many times -- even us experts got suckered in to trying to collect it a few times, even after we were pretty convinced it was impossible to get.
Oh, and lastly, I have a really good suggestion for the skinning profession. Could you please finally, finally, finally give skinners a decent bonus for leveling the profession to 600? Critical strike bonus is just ... it's just awful. If you're going to balance and standardize most of the profession bonuses, you really should take the extra step to balance them all.
Jewelcrafting
I'm not going to hit Blizzard hard on jewelcrafting here. There's a lot of good stuff in Cataclysm. It wasn't perfect, but I appreciate your attempt to pace releasing new gems. You upgraded meta gems one patch, gave us epic gems in another.
My critique here: Work on the pacing. If you're going to have blue gems available for 5.0, make your meta gems available in 5.1. Then, in 5.2, make epic gems available for raiders much like you did in 4.3. But for 5.3, you should open that epic gem market up to the public at large. It just feels weird and uncomfortable to still have red gems selling for as much as 3,000 gold each.
We're at the end of an expansion. Those extra 10 intellect, strength, or agility shouldn't be as brutally expensive as they are. I hope that's something we can all agree on -- such a small benefit shouldn't be permanently unaffordable.
Enchanting and alchemy
I'm not exactly sure what to say about the enchanting market. On one hand, I want to say that the profession had trouble with pacing, just like jewelcrafting. But on the other, I think that the enchanting market was pretty smooth throughout Cataclysm. We got all the best weapon enchants early, but it worked. Prices stayed appropriately expensive for the good stuff and appropriately cheap for the not-as-good stuff.
Part of me wants more new enchants as new patches come out, much the same way tailors and blacksmiths get new patterns. But the other part of me didn't really mind not getting them in Cataclysm.
Alchemy, meanwhile, performed similarly to enchanting. We didn't really get new stuff as the expansion progressed, but that was OK. Potion making remained profitable. Transmutes remained worth it. And one final compliment: Refreshing the alchemy specialty quests was a great idea, and I don't think you get enough credit for revisiting stuff like that. Bravo.
... now, your turn to chime in
Listen guys -- and I'm talking to you commenters now -- this is crunch time. This week's press event means that Blizzard is in prime development mode. If we want our voices heard on the economy, now is the time, because they don't tinker with economic matters the way they do with class balance. (Which is sort of a shame, but I digress.)
So, sound off. What did you think Blizzard did right this time around with professions? Are there any mechanics you want to stick around? And on the flip side, what profession needs the most TLC from developers? How would you fix what's wrong?
Maximize your profits with advice from Gold Capped. Want to know the very best ways to earn 10,000 gold? Top gold making strategies for auctioneers? How about how to reach 1 million gold -- or how one player got there and then gave it all away? Fox and Basil are taking your questions at fox@wowinsider.com and basil@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped
Reader Comments (Page 11 of 11)
datgrl Mar 13th 2012 6:54AM
Leatherworking in Cata was a waste for me. I had the gather enchant on my gloves and still haven't skinned any Pristine Hides. Compare that to LK, with no gather enchant I was seeing arctic furs during every farming session.
shadowcharly Mar 13th 2012 8:13AM
What about a transmog link with the crafting professions?
A "disenchant-like" spell for crafting professions that enables them to "find the recipe" of a given item, and be able to learn a recipe to produce a "replica" that only retains the model.
You want to learn to make (http://www.wowhead.com/item=3309/barbaric-loincloth) Barbaric Loincloth, you as a tailor, use this spell with a few of them, and learn how to produce a replica.
It would give a sense to the grinding of older instances once again, because you would be able to learn how to make replicas and sell them in the AH, creating another whole new market for the transmogers.
What do you think?
Strawder Mar 13th 2012 8:34AM
This last 15 points of Engineering on my Paladin is killing me.
And christ, don't me started on my motorcycle. It's not exactly easy to just waltz into Ulduar and get the parts, etc.
I did get my mage's Tailoring up to 525, but there's nothing for him to make but PVP gear! I'm busting my ass getting JP for new pants, because even though my tailoring is maxxed out, the best thing I can make is for PVP.
I'm working on LW and BS on two other toons, and while I'm excited for the sub-400 stuff (read: the old, established stuff), I'm sure getting each of those to 525..... well, I think I'd have better luck getting Jaina to quit being such a tart.
Blombomb Mar 13th 2012 9:24AM
Blizzard has the chance to create a nice new market in Mists for all the crafting professions. Transmorg gear. It doesn't even need to have nice/any stats, it just has to have distinctive looks. Maybe have some stuff BoP to help give an instinctive to level that profession. Cool talior shoulders, or even Engineer transmorg gear, cogs and wires, to go with the google look. :D
Just a thought.
Nicholas Mar 13th 2012 9:39AM
I have a few thoughts here.
First, good job on the new aesthetic-only recipes. Now please add more. One or two per expansion is not enough. Let's give collectors something to work on, and everyone a chance to have something new and unique. Toss out 4-5 new dresses per patch, and please give guys something nice to wear for a change. I'm tired of having to role female characters in order to participate in the dress-up side of the game (tuxes were terrible). And I have a number of friends who spend hours shopping the AH for nice looking clothing just for funsies, but are constantly depressed by the limited models available.
For Cata, skinning is a nightmare; 80% of the enemies are minable! Please return to the good-ol' days. Make skinning levelable and usable.
I agree with the appropriateness of pricing for enchants. Expensive ones should be expensive, not available to all. And cheaper alternatives should be available, and they are. And as others have said, high prices are only relevant in relation to your own income, which should also be bumped up as you find an economically viable 'job'. But I'm not sure how you figure flasks, scrolls, or other consumables are 'appropriately' priced. All three servers I've played on show flasks continually less expensive than mat prices. This means that pure crafters can't make money by creating them. And farmers can think they're making money, but only if they have no understanding of opportunity costs. This is a playerbase problem, and I'm not sure there's an effective systematic solution, but you can't just glaze over it and say all is fine like it was in ICC days.
Engineering makes me want to cry. I just spent all kinds of time leveling it to 525. I had it around 250 on a character once before but needed to change it for planned raiding. This new character was to be PvP as well as PvE, and created as an all-round fun toon. I had great memories of land mines, dragonlings, exploding livestock, and the like. I just hit 85 and 525, and have to say that there's hardly a single item I'll end up using. No end game land mines. Head pieces and dragonlings that are useless the week you hit 85. No realistic or useful exploding livestock. It's just...sad. What's a healer to do!?
But the whole profession system is broken in my mind. I don't understand how everyone is niggling details while ignoring the gigantic problems. First, 95% of what you can make is meaningless. No one really wants the craftable greens, because every crafter needs to make 50 of them to level, leaving the end product worth 1/50th the mat price. Blues are outpaced by randoms and heroics in no time, keeping them a money-loss. The only usable item in crafting professions are the purples. Yay, I can make one item per week. Non-gear crafters don't get a free ride either. The only sellable things my alchemist can make is Truegold and flasks; elixirs and most early potions remain virtually unsellable, other than healing and mana potions that you must be a potions master to turn a profit on (but then can't break into the flask economy). Engineering had a nice system where items were more expensive and provided five levels per craft, and I'd like to see more of that in the future. Along with more (actually useful) consumables, so professions aren't something I spend 2 minutes/day on as a side item, but rather something deeply integral to the game.
The next problem is that professions are money-printing buttons and nothing more. No matter what you choose you'll get 97% of your usefulness by crafting things to sell for others. Virtually nothing is soulbound, and there's no reason to waste thousands of gold leveling a crafter when I could just buy the mats and tip something 500g to make me an epic: much cheaper and much faster. Or in most cases I can just buy the completed item for 1/5 the mat cost (see above), which is how I get most of my profession-crafted items. Same goes for flasks and gems; my alchemist buys more flasks and potions than he makes! Yes, each profession gets one minor bonus, but it's a sorry attempt to differentiate them. We need more soulbinding. Bind herbs (or herb-extras) that provide some soloing utility bonus as consumables (seeds that spawn vines to slow enemies for instance). Make more stone-statuette type items but for all professions (and that are actually useful and off the GCD for macro use). Add more BoP pets and dresses. Alchemy's tiny self heal, Sandstone Drake, mixology, endless flask, and other bonuses were a great start in Cata. Let's keep it going but for all professions.
And let's see some REAL differentiation, and actual profession intermingling. In reality, we have two professions: 'gather a node' or 'craft an item'. When I was working on my own MMORPG I came up with things like farming; actual farming. I had an API pulling data from a local weather service, I had plots of land sold by adventurers/guilds who specced it out and cleared it of monsters, I had seeds sold by herbalists, I had fertilizing minerals sold by miners, I had farmers able to give quests to keep the area safe. Or how about a 'hunter', using nets and traps to capture and subdue (instead of kill) enemies that could then be used in pit fights for loot, practice, or experience; or maybe trained or mind controlled into acting as short term minions for buyers. As a developer with over a decade of experience I can tell you that yes, these are somewhat complicated, but no...they are not even close to being difficult for a company like Blizzard to pull off.
Eskarel Mar 13th 2012 9:44AM
There are essentially three core problems with professions. They're not exactly new to cataclysm, having been around since wrath, but cataclysm has in a lot of ways made them more pronounced.
1) The crafting and raiding games need to be separated, seriously this is the most important thing they can possibly do. No more raid drop recipes, no more raid drop crafting materials, leave crafting to people who want to do it. I can live with crafted gear not being as good as the current tier raid items, but the current system is just ridiculous.
2) Material spread needs to be better. When you've only got a couple of kinds of materials the only thing you can do for higher level recipes is to increase the amount of those materials required. This has been a problem for most of the expansions, but somehow they manage to not have the problem with herbs, which is why alchemy works so much better. Cata has three kinds of bars plus true gold which was just outrageously expensive.
3) More items need to be useful. No one uses uncommon gems because by the time you get gear with sockets on it it's high enough level to justify rares and the vast majority of the cuts are useless. Enchanting is much the same, no one enchants gear while leveling and you're essentially looking at more than half the recipes producing stuff no one wants.
I've liked a lot of things about cataclysm, and I liked a lot of things about Wrath, but crafting in both expansions has been fairly awful. Material costs are too high, most of the stuff is D/E fodder, and unless you raid you're cut out of the best parts of your profession. The old random drop routine was tedious, but at least anyone could participate.
locke_sr Mar 13th 2012 10:08AM
I want to see blizzard give the professions more flavor. I'm a blacksmith on my main, a ret pally since vanilla. Yeah, I'm a masochist. That said, I adored the specializations. I loved having to choose between making the best weapons or making the best armor. Specializations could be added to every profession. Give leatherworkers better leather or better mail, such as a bit more stats or more gem slots on whichever they specialize in. It's not game-breaking, it's just a little edge. Enchanters should be able to make wands or staffs or something of the sort. Or maybe they can become arcane specialists and their enchants can be a slight bit better or cost less or some such. Jewelcrafters, same deal, slightly better gems for more than their own use, or making even better rings and necklaces. You see where I'm going with this. I'm all for adding flavor wherever possible; I'll refrain from going into too much QQ about how hunter ammo should have been enhanced, (perhaps through engineering...mind=blown....) to have fire damage or poison, or armor piercing. The opportunities here are endless. It's not complexity, its depth. If someone doesnt' understand the differences, its not mandatory. BUT it gives us craftier crafters something to work on for the entire expansion.
eel5pe Mar 13th 2012 10:15AM
The crafted items for other profession are BoE and can be used by anyone regardless of profession. The Engineer goggles can only be used by the engineer, and can be customized with regards to secondary stats. Make sense now?
Chaos Mar 13th 2012 11:57AM
Bravo! Great article. I have all professions maxed and your article was right on point. So many recipes learned for nothing. I haven't read all the comments (more than 9 pages !!!) but I think many of us longtime Wow players feel the same way. I really hope some Blizz devs take note of this!
Good work!
aarongax1234 Mar 13th 2012 12:26PM
Hi I have been a engineer since vanilla and have always noticed you don't get much as an engineer. Not many things to sell and not many patterns for crafted items that are very useful. This expansion we got the helmet and the cog gems and it was great but then it seemed like the idea was abandoned and they were not really useful anymore. One idea i have is to let us engineers put our tinkering to use to make our other professions more efficient. For example let us create an item that makes it easier to find relics in archeology, a scanner that tells u where the thing is so you don't have to survey 4 times before you find it. Or Graduated lab equipment for alchemy that reduces the mats needed or that increase the procs of your specialty. It just seems that blizzard does not want to make engineering that profitable, then let it help make the other profession that we have be more profitable for engineers.
ersiusp Mar 13th 2012 1:19PM
Get rid of ink in inscription. It's a time-wasting step, nothing more. Just make all recipes require the appropriate number of pigments instead.
Remove primary stats from gems. No more int/str/agi. Mix the colors up so that people will actually want to use more than one color gem, and have larger primary-stat socket bonuses to further encourage people to use multiple colors. This will even out the demand of colors so we're not stuck vendoring gems because we can't use them at all, or paying 5 times the value of the next cheapest color for whichever is most in demand.
Pay careful attention to the mats in enchanting recipes. If dusts are supposed to be the most common mat, don't make essences the mat we need the most of.
Aodhan Mar 13th 2012 6:09PM
Perhaps Blizzard could extend the idea of crafting profession perks to the lower levels? I believe Mixology works for lowbie alchemists, but how about scaled-down embroideries or spellthreads for tailors, or minor shoulder inscriptions for scribes? Something on a par with the perks you gain from gathering professions at low levels.
I would like it if Blizzard completely reworked low-level professions to make them more useful for a levelling character. Back in Vanilla, my first character was a tailor and crafted himself a Robe of Power as soon as he could wear it. It lasted him all the way to the late 40s and would have lasted longer if I'd not been extremely lucky and seen Robes of Insight drop. Back then, something like that was really worth having. No dungeon finder, no blues from just doing normal quests. It was a powerful item and well worth being a tailor so I could have it. These days, even if you don't have heirlooms it's relatively simple to pick up robes that are just as good.
I don't want 'free gear', I would like to be able to pick a crafting profession on an alt and think, yeah, it's nice to be able to make myself a couple of useful items. It seems a terrible shame that crafting professions are something you only power-level at 85 nowadays.
It would be a good idea to close the gap a bit between the heirloom players and those without. I think professions are a good way to do that, without somehow cheapening the whole thing. How about some decent weapons? I can't remember the last time my warrior crafted a weapon and it's not just because he has the heirloom sword. How about being able to craft a nice set of greens - perhaps with a blue item - early on, without needing to feed your alt with mats from a main character? We might see more people tanking and healing early on if you did that - they might be less hesitant to get started if they're not going to get torn to shreds by groups for not having heirlooms. We might see more decent tanks and healers later on because of it. How about some high stamina/PvP-oriented gear so those asshats who heirloom twink to 'pwn noobs' learn a few lessons?
And another thing! Levelling tailoring currently sucks. I saved all the cloth all of my new characters gathered when I rerolled to another server and gave it to my level 50 priestling. A pile of gold was still required to get his tailoring to a useful level. And the items he could craft weren't that good next to the items he already had from quests and dungeons. I don't mind spending gold on levelling a profession, but I seriously think tailoring needs a tweak now that it's so much quicker to level a character and you can so easily outlevel mobs that drop the cloth you need. Don't anyone mention frostweave cloth. No, really. Don't. That made sense when 80 was endgame. It doesn't make sense now.
And ANOTHER thing! Enchanting rods. I'm so glad they changed them so that you didn't need to sigh and go to the bank to fetch the right rod for the right enchantment, but they still need some work. Sure, it made sense for your arcanite rod to cost a mint to craft back when you only needed it to do high-level enchants for the 60 raiders, but ponying up a silly amount of cash, only to do the same to make a fel iron rod right after? No. What can Blizzard do here to improve things? Well, I'd suggest removing the need to make the old rods of Awesome Endgame Enchanting now that those Awesome Endgame enchants...aren't. I worked out that for my enchanter to craft her adamantite rod would set her back a couple of thousand gold. Just to level past 375. Pardon the crude turn of phrase, but fuck that. Enchanting will still be expensive to level if you take out some of the damn rods.
(While we're at it, please Do Something about the crafting interface for enchanters so that I don't have to spend hours of my life clicking and clicking, when in any other prof I can leave my character crafting away and go fetch a drink or something.)
Wheeoooo. Wall of text. My apologies.
Katherine Mar 14th 2012 1:05AM
Enchanting: We still need all the same enchants at this stage of the expansion as we did at the beginning, but the supply of materials has dropped a TON since noone is doing dungeons for their JP/VP anymore but raiding. There are NO current Essences on the AH most of the time, and I'm not on a dying server either. I have current Crystals coming out my EARS (and hence Shards too, Shatter was a VERY welcome change when it hit). There aren't even any reasonably cheap-to-craft green-quality weapons that I can find, to try to get Essences from.
I also felt kinda useless in that I had access to the materials for the best enchants and tailoring patterns, and had the professions maxed on my main, but my raid never saw any of the patterns drop. What's the point in having and levelling a profession if I have to get someone else with the same profession to make me the things I need?
Yark Mar 14th 2012 10:32AM
If blizzard wants to see tradeskills done right all they have to do is look at SWTOR.
All items you make are useful to someone. No items are throwaway. You can rank up any item to superior and epic quality.
To top it off, every skill can disenchant the items they make to reclaim mats. This in turn stops the AH from being flooded with items people made to skill up with.
Pure genius on every level.
Snuffey Mar 14th 2012 1:54PM
LW with skinning is just brutal. I leveled every profession to 525 and leather working was by far the most time consuming and annoying profession to level if your skinning the mats yourself. I have 3 alchemists simply because alchemy and herbs are the easiest to level. Please give us skinners an xp bonus like miners and herbalists get does not need to be as high but something please. I know "but you get xp cause you have to kill the add 1st"....... that's right we have to kill the add 1st then we have to loot the add before we can skin the add all for 1 skin not multiples like miners and herbalists ONE!!!!!!! Hell just make so I can skin the dumb add without having to loot.
Bat Mar 27th 2012 9:41AM
Also, the need to get tokens from dailies in order to buy Jewelcrafting designs is something awful. Other crafting professions can buy their designs at the cost of profession-related materials and we jewelcrafters must wait several days in order to get that one design that is being asked for in Trade Channel at this very moment.