How Professions Should Improve In World of Warcraft: The War Within - Feedback For Developers 

Another huge thanks to Ridge for sponsoring today's video! Visit ridge.com/soul for huge holiday savings that end December 20th! And don't be shy! Share your thoughts and suggestions for professions and let's put a spotlight on our feedback!

Not being able to max out skill points, because so many recipes are RNG drops (and despite playing multiple alts all expac, I've fished up two recipes in bottles, both of them for inscription), killed my interest in crafting early on. While I like that people can sell these recipes, farming the AH isn't fun, and shouldn't be the primary way to learn new recipes.

My wife and I were talking about this the other day. I really like the fundamentals behind the profession changes in DF, but I think they should change their philosophy on the specializations just a bit. Basically, I think they should really decouple progression through skill level from progression through the specialization system. In most professions, you get to a point where you have unlock recipes in the specializations in order to progress your crafting skill level. My hope is that specializations become less about strictly dictating what you can and can't do and instead become about making crafting in that particular area better and easier. Then, add some top level recipes as a "capstone" only - but you can reach (and maybe should) max crafting skill without touching these. I also think leveling a profession should yield knowledge so that by the time you've maxed it out, you have maybe 40% to 50% of the specialization trees done. Currently, maxing your skill is like 20% to 30% of the grind. I'm hoping the design shifts to where when you hit max level profession, you're fully competent in an area of your profession with further knowledge grinding being to round out your crafting.

I feel crafting items for profit is so painful since other players have to provide soulbound materials and there is always 0 crafting orders. One of the most negative things was discovering that even If I have the soulbound material, I can not place a public order for a big ilvl item, I have to find someone and then send them a private order? Really inneficient and annoying. I was big into professions previous xpacs but this is just extremely complicated for no reason.

This is funny that you brought this up now. Was just talking about this with some old podcasting friends and guildies and how professions flopped hard this expansion (and yes, I'm aware this is my opinion, and I'll explain why.) Due to how in depth all the variety of multiple options and different paths, and even when one finally does start to make something, the different ingredient ratings and such just made it strange for someone not knowing how to do it. I made the point "I shouldn't have to go outside of the game to understand how to do basic fundamentals of crafting - such as Herbology." and that's the biggest problem, I have 25 alts and not a single one of them use professions in DF because of the Brandon Sanderson novel you have to read to understand how to get going with the variables and crafting order and spanking parts and whatever. It's too much and no one cares.

Some great ideas! I'm hoping that they can add to the crafting order system such that it's feasible to keep leveling your skill in it even without the help of players. Which is why I love the "brute forcing" idea, along with the NPC work orders they were thinking of adding. Even maybe world quests that help reward you with harder to find materials for yourself if you mine a certain number of nodes or craft a few pieces of NPC gear to start learning how to make it.

Fair play soul, glad your content is influencing a company this big......something to be proud of

I’d like to see a permanent catch-up mechanic for knowledge-similar to how the seasons allow an increasing amount of crests/valor/etc per week. If the systems can show that, for example, I’ve had Blacksmithing for 52 weeks, I ought to be eligible to order 52 treatises… and if I forget or blow it off, but want to jump in, I’m able to do it without feeling like I’m 52 weeks behind. Obviously it would be expensive to order 52 tipped treatises, but that’s between me and my WoW Token, isn’t it? This would obviously not apply to someone who is jumping in on week 26, let’s say, to prevent someone from swapping and quickly maxing professions to follow gearing trends, but would make things a little less punishing for missing a week or 40. Thanks for all you do, brother 🙌

Would be nice if crafters could make some sort of ensemble kit that would let them take, lets say all the pieces of the turtle scale set and turn them into a cosmetic ensemble they could sell on the AH. maybe even allow them to gather greens and if they get all the pieces, craft it into a cosmetic ensemble as well.

Professions woked at an individual level for me. As a casual I leveled the main leatherworking spec and reached max for all the main mail patterns. That has allowed me to craft high level pieces for myself with new patch releases. It totally failed on a social or goldmaking level though, it was impossible to catch a public order and at some point I just stopped doing the weeklys or trying to do anything with it since I had what I “needed” for me.

To me personally, I would rather the whole "quality" levels system to just be gone. It just feels bad to not get a max rank item and it created a resource bloat where you had all those different quality levels on materials you needed to worry about. Just focus on crests for recrafting and focus specializations on saving resources or creating additional items instead of quality based progression.

I would like to see a section on the crafting orders where you can advertise things you are able to make, particularly if they are very resource intensive. This would matter more if older expansions get included. For instance, I tried selling some of the MoP JC mounts on the AH but never got a buyer. In the current expansion its similar with the toys and pets. If people don't know something is available they won't request it crafted.

I agree on the clearer in game tool tips. I didn't understand what I was specing into and ended up regretting it once I knew what I was targeting.

I personally found professions in Dragonflight my worst experience. In fact, apart from the one or few profession specific quests I never got to craft anything nor trade as I maxed out before reaching the last zone where everything seemed to be. I rarely played shadowlands so not sure if the process was the same there. But… in all previous expansions I progressed my professions during the levelling process. I found this impossible to do in Dragonflight as I never found any crafting tables in the zones I was levelling through or accessible via flight path. I used to gather and craft and sell throughout my levelling so that not only was I max level when I finished but my professions were at a reasonable level too. I hope the next expansions work on this some more so that.

In my opinion, I believe the system is a 7/10. As far as a catch up system, make the artisans mettle account wide (currently sitting on 9k on my main), also add in an option to trade in some mettle for knowledge points.

Hey man, that's awesome that your voice is being heard to any extent, congratulations. I don't have any input into professions because I just got back into the game, but thank you for advocating for the players. EDIT: I will say, Blizzard should figure out how to get what players need in the UI rather than relying players to download addons because that is a barrier to access.

Player coming back to WoW after 5 years away: He said words I know, but I don't understand what he's saying. Crafting sounds complicated now.

I like the "brute force" idea to quality, but I feel like that could be put on the requester to help with that, too. What if: in order to request 5 star quality, you have to offer highest quality materials. Don't have the highest quality? Then have the ability to put in the extra material to make up for it. Is that a fair ask? How can this be exploited?

I hit a brick wall with professions in Dragonflight. You should be able to learn new recipes at least every 10 levels from a trainer. Grinding rep for recipes or having them drop in dungeons only is severely limiting for the casual player. It takes ridiculous materials to make gear that can't even match what I've gotten from other sources. I used to love crafting back in Cataclysm and Pandaria. Now it seems pretty useless.

Just started playing again a week before 10.2 after finishing at the end of BFA. As a player who has had resonable level tradeskills int he past - not bleeding edge, but good enough to make gear for my own and friends characters and sell a bit of stuff on the AH, I look at the current tradeskill AND crafting orders system and just say "fuck it" - too busy, too complicated, too far behind. I don't want to spend hours researching any of this out of game, when I'd rather spend my limited spare time when I'm not at work or doing stuff with family etc actually playing.

I never used crafting orders. There were never any orders up for me.

Thanks for sharing Ridge with us! I am hoping to get some for Christmas gifts. It is good to hear developers may listen to your input! I always enjoy your take on all thingss WoW.

It's hard to determine what's profitable without addons. I think that's a huge flaw for the game.

one thing that currently is missing in the crafting system, is that if you are building something more complex, you can't enter the recepy of your individual parts (if your profession can craft them). You need to go search for the recepy for that item, etc. If you could enter that one item, then exit it, returning you to your main recepy, well that would be a great improvment ;)

Work orders for legacy items. A rule to provide a certain percentage of the mats or the cost of the mats. A link to the AH within the order screen so you can instantly buy the mats required.

First thing they need to address is the Eve Online problem of people starting later with gathering professions just not being able to catch up in profession knowledge even in principle, due to hard weekly caps. In DF this was particularly egregious since they only put the caps in when some no life people already had a huge lead in knowledge. I cannot even imagine how much bank those gatherers made compared to people who started literally only one week later but 50 knowledge behind (forever) already

I started just ignoring crafting once it became it’s own complex system and will continue to do so unless they go back to how it was before DF

NPC work orders for crafting with skillups as rewards is the best fix.

Returning player here. I couldn't even figure out how to make spiced bread. The level 1 stuff, that should be easy. I'm not googling how to make spiced bread..

Okay Soul - you asked for walls of text - so incoming!!! I utilized professions more in this expansion than any going back to Wrath when my hunter chose Engineering to create their own weapons and ammo. I felt like Blizz made a lot of progress in letting us make gear which was useful at the time we could make it, and the ability to recraft to improve it later felt great. I no longer felt like all my efforts to get better at crafting were ultimately wasted until I could craft the "best of the best" - and even then, hope I still needed it. Disclaimer - I didn't really have much more than a passing interest in work orders - largely due to the lack of available public orders on my server - so I don't really have a dog in that race. I mainly use it so my alts can place orders with each other for the extra knowledge points. What I have been wanting for a while is crafter specific items which cannot be gotten anywhere else. These clearly can't be power based for reasons covered in a number of other places - so that leaves transmog appearances. I would like to see each crafting profession be given items which are unique to the profession and only affect appearance customization. Transmog hunting is the activity which adds more life to the game for me than any other activity post-story content. You can even tie some of this to the current raid and dungeon dynamic by following the current trend of having these recipes drop from several sources including world content, raids, dungeons, etc. 1. Armor crafters could create entire sets of transmog outfits (one piece at a time versus crafting the entire ensemble - that way you can target specific pieces if you're not interested in the whole outfit). 2. Weapon crafters get much of the same with unique weapon model transmogs. 3. Enchanters could continue to craft new, unique visual effects like weapon enchants, shoulder and head effects. Make many glowy parts for armor, weapons and even mount effects! 4. Inscription is a bit of a head scratcher for me as it's the profession I've engaged the least with. However, creating patterns or instructions which are used to apply unique markings to gear or mounts, or alter the dyeable color scheme of gear are a few ideas. 5. Alchemy is a no brainer to introduce a dye system to gear. They create the dyes that can alter basic color schemes of gear and mounts. Combine dyes with special patterns/instructions from Inscription to get even more intricate or custom options. 6. Engineering can definitely lean into creating mount appearances and customizations. Perhaps go as far as creating a "socket" system for mounts so that mount attachments can be added. 7. Jewelcrafting can follow suit with others and create unique gear appearances or mount customizations of a more "blingy" nature. Adding crystal effects or gems to mounts, or a specific set of armor neutral appearances which are more blingy in nature would be a cool way to go too. All of these creations should be easily sellable/tradeable to maximize the economic benefit for the crafters. Just some ideas of where the whole unique, customized transmog for crafters approach could go. I'm sure some of this might take a bit of effort, but we've already seen leaks of the upcoming mount customizations from delves, so this may not be as far off as it seems.

a change i wanna see to professions is that we begin using old content mats for creating new expancion items. such as maybe ghost iron ore or copper ore. like 1-5 ores from old expancions to give that extra BAM to the gear. old mats dont have to be forgotten :)

Blizzard needs to make a crafters skill panel much more transparent for clients. Clients should be able to verify a crafter's skill level, specialization trees, inspiration percentage on specific items, etc...

I don't usually comment but I wanted to be a part of this conversation, I play casually, and gave always tried to get into crafting, but was never able to bcuz it was either super degen goblin mode, or simply not worth it bcuz every patch crafted gear was way behind i could get even from m0 for cheaper, until DF came! Aand the spec system was based on knowing which random unconnected nodes helped you craft each piece of gear, so i tapped out once again! Until this patch, were i managed enough random points to craft in my hunter a Bow of the Dragon Hunter rank 5, with embellishment, and thd stats i wanted, AND I FEEL SO HAPPY I did it starting the patch, so that will help me farm for quite a while, i wish it was clearer, so i wouldnt be so behind in knowledge points for giving up, requiring 2 sparks for it was ass tho, and needing sparks to craft anything not only means you wont get full crafted gear soon, is this really necessary? Maybe only require it for heroic/mythic raid ilvl? Or having only gear that go in tier pieces slots require them so you can go with crafted wrist, waist, feet, etc. Also, no, the treasures we had in 10.1 and 10.2 with knowledge werent catch up points, they were pity points, nobody caught up with 10 extra points, that's like, a week and a half late into 10.0.

Being a member of a tiny guild, all I’ve been making are xmogs, weekly items for crafting points, and the occasional high-level kit for my VDH and Bear. The RNG/M+ receipt drops are also really off-putting for a filthy casual. I’m not even going to start on what I think about public work orders… SLs was the only time I maxed all professions with my alts and made legendaries they could use before the end.

I leveled up all of the professions and never could get personal work orders. I used trade chat, talked them up with my friends and guild. Not a single one except from my alts. We need some way to advertise like a bulletin board or something. It would also be nice to have crafting tables in more than one location.

Are they even worth doing this late in df if they are going to be replaced in11.0?

I can't really say I'm a returning player because I genuinely try this every year, with every expansion but there comes a point when I lose all interest, but I would say currently there is only one profession in WoW; farmer. I originally created my first alt so I could craft items for my main way back in vanilla. As time progressed, it was nice having multiple alts on which you could level professions without having to spend too much time away from your main. Now to level any profession to even be remotely useful or profitable, you've got to take that character through multiple faction rep grinds and raid level content and I don't know if Blizzard knows this but, not everyone raids anymore. I haven't raided since Cata when my guild dissolved due to deployments, divorces, and faction changes. I did get enjoyment out of being a supplier for raiding guilds. With all my alts crafting I made plenty of gold simply selling items and mats and found a way to enjoy the game again. I had high hopes for this expansions focus on professions. It seems like the ideas are there but the execution is hanging out with Raid: Shadow Legend. Why are the auction house and Artisan's Consortium two different entities? Why can't we place orders on the auction house and omg why can't crafter's post BOP orders? Why are there recipes learnable through rep vendors with mats locked behind raid currency? Years ago I distinctly remember pushback on changes being made with the reasons being they didn't want to make the game harder for many to appease a few. I think I used to be a part of the many and didn't realize it. Because right now, I'm wholely aware I'm part of the few; the few still trying to find fun in this game but am not having much luck. Raid gear is for raid content and should be hard to get. I get that and I've preached that. But my professions?? If I can be honest and blunt for a second; I'm spending money as we speak to move all of my character away from my server group because the level of toxic reached a max YEARS ago. So maybe one day I will raid again. But I should at least be able to keep my characters professions up without having to raid.

1) More work orders. I don't love the idea of NPC work orders, I think giving players more reasons to order from each other is better. If there must be NPC orders, tie them to real effects in the zone, world events etc, Where crafting the thing maybe buffs the guards or helps with some meta-objective to trigger a rare spawn. 2) Keep item ranks for mats, and equipment. Make progressing thru the ranks take LONGER. Ditch item ranks for consumables though, better mats can just give bonus multicraft or some such. 3) Continue knowledge/skill progression through the expansion. I was done progressing in 10.1, 10.2 adds only recipe drops, it feels like the system died. 4) Catch up system is not needed, Just better guide players to one-time knowledge boosters, Do more with the "special trainer" concept, add one shot quests, etc. DF was missing that bit from Legion and older where professions felt like part of the story too. 5) Catalyst via crafter. I'd like to see the catalyst object go away, and for tier conversions to be done via crafting order, at whatever the catalyst charge rate would normally be. 6) New gathering profession, logging. Writhebark is basically being used as wood in recipes already. I think it would just help to spread out the gathering game a bit more, and later they can add a carpentry type crafting profession when they're ready for player housing :)

In my opinion, the option to max everything out should be there for EVERYONE if they want it.. Having to rely on other players in order for you to skill up is crazy, if I want to level a profession to help out my army of alts then I should have the option the max everything out to benefit myself. I don't do profession to make money or help out random people on the server I want then to be for ME so I can get ahead. I want to be able to do it all myself without having to rely on other people, and that option isn't there right now. To be clear professions should first and foremost benefit they player that has the profession and being able to sell stuff should be secondary. So that if I want to level up Leatherworking so I can make gear for my Hunter and I could care less about selling stuff I should be able to do that. As it stands right now you can't even reach max level on your professions without help from other players, to me that is just wrong. Random people in wow are not your friends and they're in the profession game for themselves NOT to help anyone out, and I found ALOT of them can be very toxic. So we need to make professions soloable.

I didn’t like professions this time around. This is the first time I gave up on it.

I play on a smaller EU server without any public works orders, but used to sell tons on the AH in previous expansions. I dont understand the advantage of work orders over AH and don't see artificial NPC orders as a legitimate fix.

5:19 The catchup pain is real. I didn’t play heavily for like 6 months and don’t even wanna attempt to catch up now. It’s kind of a bummer, as I enjoyed it at launch.

As soon as I had the desire to respec my points (that are time gated) and I couldn’t, I just gave up on professions entirely. It’s so dumb.

Great video. As a crafter that quit WoW after being burned by the insane costs of leveling up legendries in SL, I'm trying to get back into DF professions but it's still overly complicated and not worth it IMO. Casual players can more easily just turn in some crests and upgrade gear they already have. Maybe the middle ground would be to make crests a REQUIRED ingredient in crafted items , rather than relying on an NPC to simply trade in crests for gear (which to me has always sounded lame, and a cop-out system). Make crests an ingredient required to craft gear and make crafting great again.

For public orders, on my server, it is more or less 90% scams on crafting market. You can either force providing all components, or you can force a minimum price to buy on market. For example, when you place an order on crafting market, artisan's consortium buy resources for the market price + commission. if the order is cancelled or not fulfilled consortium sell back the reserved resources. The other option is to established a global market to mitigate the scamming. Easier said than done.

Older alchemy and vanilla crafting recipes build on each other. that lvl 5 shirt or boots or potion should be an reagent for the next tier level craft. ie a lvl 5 health potion should require a lvl 4 health potion to craft.. so newer crafts need materials crafted at lower levels keeping those items relevant rather than just making them vendor trash. thoughts?

I only learn crafting recipes for transmog and use on my alts. The current system just feels weird to me for personal use because it takes so long to grind out the points on each crafter to make cool looking things. Because of that, only my main has a profession fleshed out. I hope it will get better with the warband bank. Hopefully then I can at least put reagents and finishing resources that I create myself through professions into my warband bank so I can just add them directly to the recipe as needed.

I think when people talk about profession catch-up, they're talking more about skill points than knowledge. Because knowledge is easy to come by, but after a certain point, skill is not. Legion, BFA and Shadowlands all (eventually) gave us profession WQs that allowed players to catch up and eventually max out their skill. At the moment, the only "catch up" mechanic like this for Dragonflight is the Darkmoon Faire - which only awards 1 point once a month.

I'm hoping they add more fun stuff. Engineering doesn't feel good without ceaftavle mounts and robots, like blingtron

They need to make all the weekly profession knowledge far faster to get (at least the gathering ones... missing out on points because RNG requires you to loot 100 herbs on all your alts sucks). They should also make the Dragon Shard of Knowledge items more common, or let us buy KP at an increasing price of Artisan's Mettle. First point is 5 mettle, and every mettle from that point is 5 mettle higher. That'd mean 10 points is 275 mettle, 20 is 1050 mettle, etc. Realistically you'd only really be able to buy 30 KP this way, and it'd be damn expensive by that point, but it'd help over the course of the expansion with the relative rarity of KP.

On the subject on not providing all the material for a Work Order. In my server the population is so small there are never any work orders available. To be able to complete my weekly quest I need to have my alts generate work orders. To make sure no one else bothers with them I don't provide materials or much gold. The problem isn't people who provide 0 materials and no gold value we all know to ignore that. The issue is people who provide no materials and some gold value. It makes it look like a legitimate order until you realize the want something that is 5k in materials for 1k which you might not know without add-ons to evaluate the value of the materials for the item.

I like engineering for its utilitarian use of explosives, it's interdimensional travel things for each expansion and places like Tanaris and area 52 ECT. I like the gliders and blingatron who can give instant money to new players who just click and use it to jumpstart them if they are new to the game. Furthermore, I don't want more cosmetics, I want more useful or interesting items that do things not just look pretty. Like the black market AU radio or perhaps an Auction NPC that can be used anywhere named "Transaction Auction Regional Dimensional Integrated Seller"

- One of the pain points for me is when you're ordering a piece you need to have the mats. I don't know what the mats are... It would be good if the crafting system was attached to the auction house so I can hit "buy mats" or something similar. Alternatively it could give you a small shopping list item or something and you take it to the auction house to achieve a similar experience - There also needs to be catch up mechanics for specializations. - There needs to be more information presented to the user.. I want to make a R3 Draconic Vial.. I can't... what is the best course of action? All it would take is a small tooltip or information panel. - You should be able to get the max rank item via a public order without relying on inspiration. The current iteration of public orders may as well not exist outside of none ranked items. You can keep the as-is solution but a crafter should be required to have the requisite skill / inspiration level before they can accept an order. This creates a sense of "fomo" for those who don't have the requisite skill and motivates them to engage with the game whilst also bolstering public order use. - You should be able to create a contact list at the crafting order interface - any public crafter I use is lost to space and time unless I add them to battle net etc. Make this easier by having a tab "favoured crafters". - Create an advert tab on the crafting order interface. Spamming in chat is archaic, make a pretty tile interface similar to the guild recruitment interface - players can click onto the tile and interface with that crafters skill set AND possibly add them to their favored crafters list. - Building on above, you could *maybe* create a incentive to use favored crafters - none power level impacting, maybe reduce mats as you repeat custom.

I like where they were headed with professions, but I think they could be done better. Since they are going in the direction of account wide things I think they should allow us to be able to know all professions on one character (maybe just account wide professions). I hated that I wanted to be a gatherer on my main, but had to do the renown to get the recipes on my priest to do alchemy and jewelcrafting. I would then love if they made it so professions dont reset completely each expansion. I would like if we had to use old gather materials in the new recipes too. Then that would make older items relevant again, and maybe give new players a reason to even want to do professions in old expansions while they level. Bonus if they added player housing, and made a construction profession.

My biggest issue with the way the crafting system works in wow is it is a completely new mechanic with each expansion, and is not consistent across all content.

On the surface region wide crafting orders sounds good, but I could see it just compounding the problem. If it could ensure balance between many crafter servers with many work order servers it would be a home run. Without that though, you risk just raising the numbers. 100 crafters trying to fill 10 work orders is the same as 1000 crafters trying to fill 100 orders.

The system worked for me, if I could ask for something new its to have a board where crafter can post their professions to and potential customers can look up what they want and order it accordingly, that way neither has to spam trade chat Also use the overabundance of knowledge points into fuel a "discovery inspiration" where you're able to get those hard to find recipes

Crafting orders will likely go down this season because of the 250 flight stones requirement to combine the new sparks.

There really needs to be a way to make money with your professions for those of us that don't want to compete with the 'pvp' nature of the auction house and crafting orders. A better npc market that will just buy your wears, a board were we can just fill orders for npcs for gold, or a market that buys our stuff for a percentage of what it goes for on the ah. Just something that doesn't feel like pvp for making money. Would also really love to see the old world skills get the dragonflight treatment as well as cooking and fishing.

What if SOME of DF perks followed ur character and alts? I personally would love to not have to re-farm the same skills in the next expansion , for instance mounted gathering and faster gathering speed. I've also suggested that alts with the same professions should either share some skill-ups or level their gathering points faster. Maybe the new feature of warbands will address this I hope!

I think they need a button to unlearn the talents for professions much like how they got it for talent points that away if anyone makes mistakes they can unlearn it unsure if they have it now or not I haven’t fully used professions yet

I just want crafting to have more cosmetic stuff not tied to player power. It gives me things to target all expansion long instead of just this patch.

My wish is for an easy way to figure out where to put points to reach quality 5 in certain recipes. All these guides and add-ons, yet I still don’t get the results I wanted

I just want to be able to grind professions again. Make knowledge points more accessible or farmable for those that have excess time. 3-6 points for a weekly quest should be closer to 10-20 per week with an increase in requirement or change it to a 3 point daily quest. World knowledge quests would also be a nice bonus to crafters in addition to gear we no longer need or rep we no longer want. Also remove consumables from the AH and make them work orders only. That would be a good way to get people to use the system that just seems barren currently. UI improvements or recommendations on how to max craft an item would be nice as well. Also increase the cap on crafting to above 2 professions. One thing FFXIV does in spades is allow you to craft and gather everything on one character if you put in the time to grind it out. Wow should really catch up to a system like that.

The barking/trade chat needs massive improvement due in part to non-crafters not understanding at all about what crafters can and cant do. Yes on clarity, I understand that all the elements of craftsim can't be implemented in the default UI but some elements need implementing. The work order system is a massive mess even being on a massive server, it still feels bad. An easy catch up would have been the weekly dirt KP being a total cap that increases week by week rather than being something you just fully lose if you didn't do it every single week. A catch up system that requires the player to put in some playtime is imo the way to go rather than the one time pick ups at start of a new patch.

I like gathering. I don't like crafting. I also don't like how slow knowledge is gained.

catchup, catchup, catchup! Professions are good but Catchup is needed greatly, and for there to be instructions on HOW to catchup.

Racial profession In this expansion they are way to powerful, a goblin alchemist make gold more easy that any other race with alchemy. So will be better if they take down all racial with +2 or +5, insted make some changes. One option will be (a goblin for example) if you're a goblin and have alchemy, you can pick up an old book next to the trainer (one time) that give you +10 points to your alchemy (you have it in 35/75 will be then 45/75) for old content and give you 5 knoledge power for the current expansion. Or you can have a one time quest per character that allows you to choose your racial profession (you can only change race to receive the quest again). Knowledge points There is only one pick up treasure per zone. But archeology can loot 2 or 4 items BoE that need one especific profression to start a quest (simple quest, like go there and look behind a rock) and gives you 1 up to 5 knowledge points. That gives a more slow start to profession but gives you more chance to catch up if you started late, and archeologist can make gold. Recipes Lets take a profession wich max level is 100. Trainers can give you recipes to level 1 to 40, archeology can loot BoE recipes to level 40 to 60 (common recipes), 60 to 80 (rare recipes) and 80 to 100 (epic recipes), raids can drop a recipe for 90 to 100, and pvp can sell you BoE recipes for 60 to 100. Renow can give you recipes for 60 to 80. Fishing can loot BoE recipes but more for cooking. With this you can make archeology to have a chance to be useful and fishing too. Work orders The base cost to publish is the same 50, and always last 5 days. If you don't have all materials don´t worry, just select wich materials you would like for you order to be make, put your tip for the order and post it. The work order will take the base cost, your tip and the cost for the materials in the current cost of the auction house (will be like an instant sale from the AH, with no need to go to the mail box). In this way you don't need to carry all materials, just have the gold for it, and all work orders will have all materials to work out.

If i ware to start my professions just now, it would take me such a long time to even get to a somewhat decent level. It takes so much time to get all those nodes filled up, even if you focus on the most important ones first. And there really is no notable catch up which honestly sucks to even trying to get into professions late in the expansion

Gathering sucks, take skinning for example: if I kill a rare I want his skin to be worth more than a random mob. Mining: if I go to a hostile elite area, the ores should be worth more, same with herbalism. Basically I want a risk/reward curve for gathering. Both chill farming with a movie on the side aswell as a difficult zone to navigate with goodies behind packs of difficult mobs. Will this lock the best resources behind players with higher gear? Suggestion: profession dungeons! Have a heroic dungeon with gathering nodes everywhere and a big loot pinata at the final boss. Have an NPC at the start that can scale the loot and dungeon difficulty with player's proffession skill, but scales your gear so that players that are only interested in professions dont feel held back by hard-core raiders and mythic+ enjoyers.

the real problem is what do i do with my extra profession skill point thingys... like wtf HALP

What about knowledge points in TWW crafting? Reset to zero, start distributing time-locked KP from the start? Where's the evergreen in this?

I would agree on the region wide work order thing. A couple of weeks ago, before the 10.2 patch. A friend was trying to make one of those Drake token things to make a higher ilv wepon. But. I couldnt help him. Even when he had me on real id. Because he playes on another server. As alliance. I play on horde. So that is something they would need to look into. Personal work orders should be cross realm.. and cross faction. --Another thing is that they would need to make sure that there is an option in the game itself. That you can hide work orders that ask for YOU to supply materials. Or that blizzard has their own special gold calculation thing to grade the price of an item that is being crafted. As some of these people tend to ask for basicly free items. Oh. I want this item made. Here 50 g tip... But the mats cost 4-5k gold. Fuck that shit. An option to hide work orders that expect YOU to supply the mats. Like the addon."No mats, no make". --THen we also have to take into consideration the amount of workd order charges we have. That is something that was a massive mistake on blizzards side to take it from 12 max.. per day.. i think. To 4.. max. Like. Seriously. Are you not wanting people to do work orders? I was making some gold from work orders before that change. Because i was making those 1 knowledge point items from Inscription. Then just.. 4... like realy? 4.. Killing the gold making market. Since now you cant just go in and do as many as you can. --But they should also do something to combat the crafters spamming the chat with stuff. Instead of having people use the crafting table to find them. And also let people decide what ... um.. Rank that item is going to be. BY also making the higher rank cost more to make. As in Bigger tip. Maybe lets say ... Blacksmithing a rank 1 item has a mandatory 1000 tip depending on the item that is being made. Making it range from 1000 to maybe 5000. For rank 1. And then rank 2 is 2000-10000. Because some of the prices are just.. idiotic. 100g for and enchant. or potion, flask and so on. They are paying for the service. Because they themselves dont want to waste time with it. --But... There is 1 major complaint i have with gathering proffessions. Herbalism especialy. The wholle Seed thing. I have right now 50 of some seed. But the problem is that you dont find those dirt piles or whatever they are called to plant them. Not the seeds from the Emerald dream. But the ones you get when you gather herbs. There is no way in lets say Valdraken. Where you can just plant them. And get the materials. I literally spent today 40 minutes. Gathering herbs. Every herb node i came across. I got 4 seeds.. But i didnt find even ONE plot where i can plant them and get the mats from them. Even fi they add a daily cd pot in the capital where you plant a seed and then get the thing after a couple of hours. That would work as well. At least having some use for them. otherwise they just ... take up space. --Another use for the Artisan mettle would also be nice. Like ... Allowing you to purchase knowledge up to half of your highest knowledge character. So it doesnt become. Oh. Your main has 150 knowledge points. And you can buy points up to 150... 75 as a catch up would be best idea. And it would also let your main buy them and send to alts. OR... A token that lets you get double the points like we have wtih the Renown thing. Geting double. Or tripple points up to a certain treshhold. So you can quickly get up to that specificl level of crafting and gathering.

Maybe ok public rank orders but its like if rank goal is filled you get this extra tip

I think you have some good ideas here. My issue with the current system is so daunting that it discouraged a part of the game I used to enjoy. I liked being able to place bulk orders and "brute forcing" a high level in my desired profession. I would say I liked the WOD system where you could craft components to learn the recipes you wanted daily. The current systems I don't fully "get." They seem more weekly and sporadic. Maybe I would be ok if you could learn at least two new high tier recipes a week.

From a crafters/gold makers perspective, the current system is WAY too grindy. If you go all the way on one character to get a good amount of skillpoints and recipes, you've used months to get everything. And now imagine you want to try play an alt, and also want to catch up your crafting on that character. Now you have to use months to get everything set up. Is it doable? Yes. Is it fun? No. Or, atleast not for me. I was pretty excited for this new crafting system, and put alot of time into setting it up, but now I'm burned out. Just the thought of getting my crafters up to speed dreads me. Also, the regionwide auction house thing has also made things worse where you have to camp the AH way more than before to get things sold. And on the other side as a buyer, you have to spam click just to buy something. And from a raiders/M+'ers perspective, I do find it nice to fill out gear slots that I am missing. Although, the system is kinda hard to understand if you just want to craft gear for yourself and/or friends/guildies. And I would assume non crafters find it very confusing with the reagent ranks, and their value, based on the amount they are tipping (not including scammers and cheapskates). So all in all, I went from using the crafting system and AH alot, to now just barely doing anything.

The multipule crafting levels of materials etc has hosed professions completely it's the shits to spend forever working to level all the crap

the no mats orders have got to be the most obnoxious thing they have added i legit had to get an addon to have it not show orders with missing mats cus 99% of the time its an order with no mats for like 10 gold. And while I do want catch up for skill points I'd rather have more ways to earn levels in my profession aside from crafting spark gear after a certain point because per week you can get like 9 or a bit more profession points from the quests and like treasures/mob kills. And unless you have an alt army to waste sparks to craft gear it's very difficult to level these professions. Skill point catch up will happen if you are consistent with doing all the skill point activities per week because at some point a lot of crafters once they get to the point they are satisfied with will only do 1 or 2 skill point activity and the gap will close.

I so agree on your point on "cheap asses" posting orders with little to no mats with a very modest commissions. Seen orders where the missing mats can total 15k and the commission is 500g. All mats should be in the order. Also the Altar of Decay have to go!! Every1 and their mother wants Slimy Expulsion Boots and Toxic Boots

Hope you do a video on why most rares in DF have failed too, mate

I wonder if for The War Within, they will add a new type of Work Order; A Warband work order? Guild work orders are nice, but a Warband work order would be better for your alts.

Can we have Tiered payout system for WOs? It should have 3 to 5 Tiers the highest payout giving the player highest quality. I'm also for a system that gives multiple crafters a chance to make an item and whichever produces the best quality "Wins" the WO payout and the ones who don't "Win" get back their reagents. either system is FBM but both in my mind are fair. It really comes down to execution and difficulty to implement for the Devs. The Tiered system seem the least complex in my mind.

Make weekly repeatable if you missed it previous week. I think this should be for every other weekly

We need the ability to clear our profession points and respend them. Choosing the wrong paths can severely impact your ability to make gold

Blizz needs to require all mats on public orders. Not requiring mats has just resulted in scammers spamming the work order system. I would like to see Public Orders not require a daily charge if the order has been up for more than an hour.

Get rid of rank system entirely and reduce number of different materials AND rank system of materials

Have yet to see one public order…. Professional influencers and folks who can who play all day got them….. how about getting rid of orders all together? We could just get on auction house and buy and if the cost too high, we could go to trade chat, now a crafter has to sit and spam trade chat to try and get customers instead of just putting stuff on AH… how is this fun? I used to have an alt army to cover all professions, now the time sync is so great, I have yet to max out my LW…

The spec prof thing is needed bad, but 10 every 7 will be lacking. By the time you realize, oh shit I threw these points into the wrong node/s it might months down the road. So you could have decked out a whole tree just to find that tree sucks and you have 120 points invested in it. It's not an instant oopsie type of thing. Plus, touching on LW and BS if and only if you wanted to be proficient at crafting had to have 2 different toon for each to a weaponsmith and armorsmith, mail worker and leatherworker focused. The point investment to special in both takes you most of the xpac if you wanted to do them. I get the concept of "specializing," but I shouldn't have to have one toon grind out to be an armorsmith and then a different toon grind out weaponsmith.

profs really only needed to do two things. The first is allow crafters to make relevant pieces of gear and items and the second is allow players to get a relatively decent amount of gold for the time they put in. They mostly succeded on the first point as pre 10.2 the actual gear crafting system is exactly what everyone wanted. My only point of feedback would be to go back to SL leggo system where you allow crafters to make the base item and then customers buy it from the AH and add in their crest, the craft orders system was good in theory but in practice no one ever uses it becuase they cant guarantee their item will be crafted to the quality they need also its really evidently not clear to customers which items can be crafted to max level without using an illustrious insight. On the gold making front however its been a complete failure. This expansion has to have 10x gold concentration, truly you really could only make gold if you where super early, put in a god awful amount of time into degenerative grinds or just had a shit ton of gold to get recipes asap. All these attributes and prof talents while some are cool, only enabled higher speced crafters to out compete the lower ones and essentially canabalise other players. I think allowing different types of resources as you go further into a spec is fine but straight up allowing one player to craft an item with less resources or another to simply gather more per node was an awful idea. And another point *the clarity was awful* . You could max out plate gloves for example and then find that you cant make max rank plate gloves, becuase you need to put points into the base tree first. Or even just AH'ing stuff, i legit need craft sim or i dont know what is and isn't profitable becuase the stats like multicraft and inspiration are just not clear.

I've been messing with professions since i came back to the game back in Legion and was really excited with the update DF brought... but the lack of clarity and super rare recipe drops really pushed me away from it. And the trading chat (either spam for sales or to buy) isn't for me also. I really wish i could just put a work order and get my rank 5, but i can only get rank 4 if i'm really lucky. Also, i really liked the skill rank recipes (and gathering) we got in BfA and Legion. Wish we could get it back, at least for gathering. Not a fan of the quality of ores, herbs and leathers/scales

Instead of your brute force option, recrafting should be allowed instead of pumping base resources to boost inspiration.

No rng. A way to find/advertise crafter's recipes: trade chat works only work if you are playing at the same time AND have time to spare instead of playing (I focused on AH retailing and we need more such recipes vs crafted ones). Lack of work orders. Only orders were scammers: mat cost not covered. No boe recipes locked behind specific content: those interested in a content aren't necessary crafters and vice versa. I don't do pvp but I sell on ah every pvp crafted item. Never used overload. Catch up heavy but only if you are under a certain level or what was the point to spend time on that profession if someone arrives later and maxed out in a day what took you 3 months. More variety in prof weekly quests. Same tree across various prof vs each prof has a totally different way to max out hats. Add former expansion orders even for AH sellable item: ability to order a transmorg made. I used my prof only for what could be sold on AH or for alts. I play odd hours so trade chat is either not an option or my only prime time for group content. I cannot find the right crafter and buyers don't know I have maxed out several crafts. No crafting requiring dungeons or out of the way: let the buyer do the legwork because their 1 silver tip doesn't pay for it. It was far too complex for many (elderly, disabled, casuals, new to game) so most abandoned crafting or never ordered anything as loot is better even for my alts with maxed out profession! Add the ability to make bundles: add a free enchant or sell a full set. This system isn't designed for low servers, casuals, newbies, shift workers. As everything is made more friendly gaming, prof went the opposite way: you need a degree in crafting!

I still don't like how the customer cannot control the quality for public orders (only the random crafter with their tools and inspiration, who might scoff at the tip that's 1k too low, so they craft without any bonuses to force a low yield) but you mention some good improvements otherwise.

Im curious if anyone deep enough into the game to understand any of this finds crafted items useful? Also why can't items just be crafted and sold on ah and buyers just slot in the boe portions of the item?

I really just found the whole system confusing and obtuse. Never thought I'd be too casual for crafting but here we are lol

A talent tree would be better than the knowledge system atm. Every talent makes you notably more powerful. I cannot see the benefit a knowledge point gives me. Give us 1 crafting talent every 5 crafting levels and limit respeccing to maybe twice a season or something and BOOM. Youve got an engaging system where choices matter without overcomplicating it or wasting too much of your players' time :P.

The absolute fundamental issue with crafting in wow - in every expansion - is the mismatch between supply and demand. More people want to make or at least save gold by crafting than the other players can possibly have the demand to absorb that supply. One of the devs suggested that NPC work orders may be an option in TWW and that's the only real way I can see the current profession system working going forward. Also, any system that requires or even just encourages players to spam trade chat to find a crafter or to advertise their crafting services is a fundamentally flawed system. It's an unnecessary point of friction that puts many players off interacting with professions at all and concentrates gold making potential into a very select number of players instead of spreading that potential out more evenly.

I think not having all the mattes is fine but just let crafters filter work orders better.

I don't understand your treasure catch up system, since main crafters can pick them up as well in your scenario. Meaning it's not actually catching up, but a mandatory activity.

I messed up royally at the start. I got so behind just putting points in stuff I never really researched it just killed any interest in it. I was holding out hope there would be like a one time reset or season reset but nope. So I just gave up sadly. My own fault for not really paying attention THAT much but at the same time it shouldn't punish you so much for a mistake with no way to correct it.