Comments on: Impressively professional

By: Intravax

Intravax — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 16:01:42 +0000

My one complaint on the professions is for my tailor who doesn’t really get any benefit from the cloth drops. As you know you have to get cloth to make into bolts and multiple bolts per item amounts to quite a bit of cloth. Add in some of the insame amount of “volatile ***” requirements on some of the items and the rarity of cloth drops makes it insanely slow to level. The only other use in most cases for cloth is for the bandages so why did they make tailors have only a 25% chance to get an extra 2-4 cloth from mobs? I’m glad its up to 50% with this next patch but with the rarity of cloth selling for literally hundreds of gold for a stack of 20 compared to a modest 10-20g for frostweave in Wrath and I think its a big difference in the way those raw materials become available.

By: bigbearbutt

bigbearbutt — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 14:00:23 +0000

I DO fel your pain Calli, because I’ve been playing my Shaman the last few days trying to level Enchanting, which was at 440 pre-Cataclysm.

After completing 1/3rd of Vashj’ir and 100% of Hyjal, D/Eing every drop I couldn’t personally use including boe, I’m at… 474. The Agility enchant rod requirement pisses me off too, but more than that I’m irritated that I can’t D/E level 300+ gear until I hit 500 Enchanting. So much for d/eing Deepholme drops. I’m going to HAVE to complete Vashj’ir just to level Enchanting. Grrr. Ah well, it’s not like they’re making me do it, as you pointed out… I could wait.

By: Calli

Calli — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 10:03:31 +0000

Don’t get me started about the professions. My main is unfortunate enough to be a tailor/enchanter. The cost of a single dust, not stack, just one dust, was around 70g when Cata went live. Stacks of cloth were fetching anything from 200g to 400g per stack. If you wanted to be able to make anything worth actually wearing while leveling and have it enchanted… Well, let me just say it cost me over 20,000g to level my professions to max. Of course I would have been better off selling my mats and levelling the professions later, or even levelling my alts first and farming mats for my main that way, but she’s my main for a reason.

As for the multiple skill point levellups within professions, enchanters got completely hosed on that one, too. There certainly were recipes that we could use to get up to five skill points from. The major agility on a 2h weapon enchant leaps to mind, which I believe we could make from skill level 475. The fly in the ointment was that in order to be able to make these enchants we needed a runed elementium rod, a bop recipe we had to spend shards in order to buy, and which we couldn’t actually learn until skill level 515, at which point, you guessed it, the multi-skill enchants were grey and worthless. So. Hosed.

By: Ngita

Ngita — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 22:11:27 +0000

I have been chipping away, My double gatherer hit 525 in both pretty easily just keeping my family of alts fed, One of my alchemists is 525 but whiptail is super annoying and oh so needed. I finallly dinged 525 on my main enchanter last night but could have pushed it a week ago. Blacksmithing on my main I have to say I am fairly disappointed. Useful things from actually leveling, comes down to Elementium rod.belt buckle and 3 epics, one for a slot which I picked up a rep epic 3-4 days after 85.

By: Perdissa

Perdissa — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 03:44:02 +0000

OMG. I’m glad I came back. That is such a simple, yet ingenious macro.

By: bigbearbutt

bigbearbutt — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:59:22 +0000

I’ve always picked up gathering and crafting professions starting out, but I usually level the gathering one as I go, and feed the crafting one from one of my other maxed out alts. It’s been a long time since I tried to level honestly without the help of a bigger alt.

When I started alts on a new server, I tried to play it straight… but the temptation of making a Death knight was too strong. :)

By: bigbearbutt

bigbearbutt — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:55:35 +0000

If you’re using the Loot A Rang, make sure you check out the comments for the item on Wowhead, there are a lot of great user macros listed there for getting more ‘one click’ functionality out of it, since the item as it currently stands requires you to target after using. Some of the macros are set up to target last mob targeted before using, the idea being that whatever you had just killed was what you wanted to loot, that kind of thing.

I understand you can also use it to loot ore/herbs at a distance, haven’t tried that yet.

By: Tsudrats

Tsudrats — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 11:13:25 +0000

I agree, a lot of the crafting items are dubiously useful – why, for instance make more than one of the flying carpets in tailoring when only other tailors capable of making it are able to use it? I tend to use profs such as tailoring and leather work to feed my enchanter with de gear and focus my attention on either gathering professions or on alchemy, enchanting or to a lesser extent inscriptions where the crafted items are effectively consumables.

By: Tesh

Tesh — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 07:01:26 +0000

Er, a clarification, I’m trying to level Skinning and Leatherworking as I level that Druid, not picking them up as a medium level character. I’m seeing if it makes sense to do a gathering/crafting pair as part of the character’s progression. So far, it doesn’t, as I’ve either needed to grind out leather or go back and muck around in lower level areas just for the materials. Bleh.

By: Tesh

Tesh — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 06:58:22 +0000

From down here in the lower and middle levels (20 to 50 or so), the crafting professions are suffering a bit. The old recipes seem to be keyed around a lot of grinding (based on the old pace, perhaps), and the accelerated leveling pace means gatherers outlevel the areas they can gather level-relevant craftables. I’ve had a heck of a time collecting the stuff to level Leatherworking from scratch on my Tishtoshtesh druid. I’ve spent more money than I’d like on stuff that I’d outleveled. Even then, Medium Hides in particular and other Hides drop infrequently enough that I had to go tinker around in the Arathi Highlands as a level 43 Druid looking for the missing links in my crafting leveling curve.

I dunno, maybe grinding is the point of crafting/gathering professions, but I can’t make myself like it.

Tangentially, the LFD gear also far outstrips craftable gear of a comparable level. Crafted Best in Slot stuff and even most marginally useful stuff seems to be clustered in the endgame, but there, the crafted stuff is Bind on Pickup, so it’s not even helpful for the economy *or* guilds. There’s a sense that *someday* crafting will be useful, but only with a LOT of work and time. I’m not really convinced that it’s worth it. I’m considering dropping Leatherworking for Mining or Herbology just so it’s at least monetarily productive.

I love the idea of self-sufficiency, especially across a stable of alts that I’ve carefully plotted out to get the most out of the whole matrix… but as much as I like the mental puzzle of making it all work and building a crafting empire, well, my efforts to dabble in such have been considerably frustrating.