The Future of Warcraft Announcements -- Professions Update

#1 - April 19, 2022, 5:03 p.m.

What do you think of the deep dive into the update to professions and related items coming in Dragonflight?

#38 - May 4, 2022, 7:52 p.m.

Hey Everyone,

Sorry for taking so long to start responding to this thread. We’ve been super busy building out the professions system and content we have been discussing. I’m going to try to slowly work through this and address some of the bigger points and questions here as I have time.

Professions is actively being worked, on so your responses and feedback are super helpful, so please keep them coming!

For my first response, I want to address some of the confusion around how you improve at your profession, and thus craft/gather things at higher quality. You do not directly get better at a recipe via crafting it multiple times, as you do with legendary recipes in Shadowlands. That is an interesting system, but ultimately requires a huge amount of gold investment and can get repetitive. This means only players with lots of gold can easily engage with it, and has also resulted in the cost of legendaries being extremely high in many cases.

For the profession revamp, there are many different ways to improve at your profession (I’ll talk more about those soon), and thus craft/gather items at higher quality. The goal is that the pursuit of profession progression is through compelling and fun activities over spending lots of gold though. Gold will of course still have its place. You may still want to buy reagents or make orders for high end crafting gear for instance, but it should not be a gate to your ability to dive into and have lots of success with your chosen professions.

#39 - May 4, 2022, 8:03 p.m.

It is absolutely the case that we plan on having crafted gear be able to compete with top end gear from other sources, and in some cases even be best in slot. One of the most important goals to the work order system is enabling crafted gear to be much more relevant to the game - across all activities. Just remember, in order to have that powerful gear crafted for yourself, you’ll need to go out and earn special (soulbound) reagents to provide to the crafter in order to have that item you’ve had your eye on crafted!

#41 - May 4, 2022, 9:05 p.m.

Gladly.

I don’t want to go into a lot of detail on the planned system for Dragonflight yet, but the intent is that this is not generally grindy when aiming to earn gear appropriate to your activity.

That is, if you are a normal raider for instance, your normal raid provides enough reagents to allow you to to craft a limited amount of ~normal raid item level gear without needing to go do a bunch of other stuff. But if say, you wanted to craft heroic raid tier gear as a normal raider, you could choose to go do other activities such as m+, pvp, or challenging outdoor activities to supplement the reagents required and get better gear sooner.

In general we’d like crafted gear to feel like something you are earning at a satisfying rate along side your other gear sources. Say you had bad luck and got no drops while raiding, you’ll still be making progress towards some high end crafted gear…and say you just can’t get legs to drop for you, you may choose to have legs crafted to fill in that particular slot with a larger upgrade.

For some crafted gear, you might also need to seek out a special rare drop off a certain mob in the world, a dungeon, or a raid as well. Earning crafted gear should feel like a bonus, an adventure, and a social experience.

#44 - May 5, 2022, 12:23 a.m.

Hi Letholas,

Yes, this is definitely a valid concern and one we are discussing how to address!

#49 - May 5, 2022, 4:24 p.m.

We definitely have world PvP in mind with our crafting plans, both with interesting recipes, and with regards to gathering reagents, but nothing we are ready to talk about in detail yet!

#50 - May 5, 2022, 4:39 p.m.

One thing I want to talk about that we haven’t mentioned yet is the concept of recrafting. It’s still in the works so is likely to change some, but the basic idea is as follows:

Recrafting will allow you to take any piece of Dragonflight crafted gear and bring it back into the crafting screen as a crafter. You can then spend a special reagent, plus a small subset of the original reagents from the recipe to “recraft the item”.

During this process, you can completely change out optional reagents if you want. The new quality of the item will be determined based on the new setup of reagents, plus your current skill. This means you can have an item crafted at a low quality, then later recraft it when you are higher skill to a higher quality.

For non-crafters, we are planning to support recrafting orders as well. In this case, you can send you item to get recrafted to have its optional reagents changed out, or to potentially have its quality increased.

All of this should help players feel comfortable having a high end item crafted early, when it might not be at max quality, secure in the knowledge that they can always have it recrafted to be better later.

#53 - May 5, 2022, 9:40 p.m.

Not specifically right now, but we think you’ll be excited to see some of the new stuff we have in store for you.

#54 - May 5, 2022, 10:01 p.m.

A few answers Letholas, thanks for asking!

We definitely think it is valuable to be able to adjust stats on some crafted gear - customization is one of the coolest aspects of crafting!

As far as recrafting changing those stats, the intent would be something like this would continue to be done through optional reagents, so in a case like that, yes, you could use recrafting to swap out those optional reagents and thus change the secondary stats.

The recrafting system described is very specific to crafted gear only.

The recrafting system shouldn’t be thought of as an upgrade system. It is just a way to take something that has been crafted in the past and recraft it with changed optional reagents and possibly a different quality. So to give a more concrete example using your numbers:

A crafted recipe might make a helm at between item level 325 and 335 depending on quality. It could require 100 dragonscales as it’s main reagent.

A skilled crafted might be able to make it straight up at quality 5, item level 335, while a new crafter might only make it at quality 1, or item level 325. In both cases, the reagent cost is the same.

Now, say you got your piece crafted by that unskilled crafter at quality 1 / item level 325. Maybe he’s a friend and says, hey Letholas, I’ve been working on my blacksmithing and I can now make that piece at quality 5! Send it to me via a recrafting order to me and I’ll hook you up. You do so.

Your friend then recrafts your helm using the old helm, 20 dragon scales, and one of a special reagent he earned, to recraft it. The result is it is now quality 5 and item level 335.

Hopefully that helps clarify.

#56 - May 6, 2022, 9:22 p.m.

Excellent question! This is something we will definitely be heavily testing for feel, but here some of the ways we imagine you can grow adept at crafting.

“Permanent” forms of improvement / progression

• Improving your overall profession skill. If you’ve maxed out your blacksmithing skill for instance, you will craft everything better than if you are only halfway leveled through your profession. (Leveling / skilling up in your profession will mechanically work the same as it always has).

• Getting better gear for your profession - through higher skill and/or other profession stats on the gear.

• Specialization in your profession - This is the largest source of improvement. The more you specialize in ways that help a given recipe, the larger bonus skill you will get towards that recipe, and thus the higher quality you will be able to make it at. (There is a lot to this system that we’ll discuss later!) There are lots of ways to earn specialization points, and doing so will be necessary to excel in your profession. Some of these sources can only be done once, while others will be repeatable.

  • Some one-time sources for specialization points are likely to be: making recipes for the first time, certain discoveries in the world (an old book on a bookshelf about alchemy, an old buried tablet, a hermit scribe in a cave, etc.), special quests, completing certain profession achievements such as crafting your first max quality item
  • Some repeatable sources for specialization points are likely to be: helping various factions and NPC’s in the world (through quests), finding treasures out in the world, fulfilling crafting orders for others.

Ways to become more adept and have a better outcome each time you craft

• Using higher quality reagents in your recipe.

• Using a new type of consumable reagent that we are calling Finishing Reagents. These reagents give you bonuses while crafting the recipe, and some of them can directly improve your skill, and thus quality, when used. An example might be a blacksmith using a special quenching oil, or a jewelcrafter using a special polishing cloth while cutting gems.

• Some crafting stats can improve the resulting quality crafted. One of these is Inspiration. The more inspiration you have, the better chance to be Inspired while crafting, gaining some bonus skill to be applied to the outcome. Basically a crafting “crit”. While we want the system to be largely about long term progression and opt in bonuses, inspiration provides a form of opt-in randomness. If you choose to specialize or gear towards Inspiration, you may be able to craft something at a higher quality than your current level of progression would otherwise allow (when you become inspired). The idea is this adds some additional excitement to the crafting process through variable outcomes, but that it is never required to be able to craft things at the highest level of quality.

• Optional reagents - Using most optional reagents will actually increase the difficulty of the recipe, and thus require a higher skill to craft it at a high quality. Conversely, if you choose to use an optional reagent that, for instance, lowers the item level of the item you are crafting, it will actually lower the difficulty of the recipe and make it easier to craft at a high quality.

Hopefully that answers your question!

#59 - May 6, 2022, 11:21 p.m.

More answers / clarifications, thanks for asking!

Sorry, being a bit vague here since it’s not all designed yet. You will certainly be able to craft gear, with lots of cross profession crafting where it’s natural. Blacksmiths’ crafting mining picks and needles for tailoring for instance.

We’re excited for this kind of cross profession interaction, particularly because it means someone could choose to be more of a supporter within their profession, specializing in crafting gear for various professions, reagents for others of their profession, etc. (depending on the profession)

Gear will definitely be a big source of these stats. Certain choices within your profession specialization will also allow you to gain some of these profession stats.

There will likely be other sources as well…enchants, consumables, etc.

Being inspired (and gaining the bonus skill) is RNG based on your Inspiration stat. More Inspiration = higher chance it occurs, similar to more Crit = higher chancing of critting. But as mentioned above, there are lots of ways to opt into gaining the Inspiration stat if you want it.

Sorry, in general I just wanted to note that optional reagents can raise or lower difficulty, depending on their effect on the recipe.

The example I mentioned above would be if we made an optional reagent like the Novice Crafter’s Mark from Shadowlands, which lowers the required level from 60 to 50, and lowers the item level from 151 to 87.

Just to be clear though, the introduction of quality along with profession stats is for Dragonflight recipes specifically, I’m just using Novice Crafter’s Mark to illustrate an example of the type of optional reagent that might lower difficulty.

#67 - May 9, 2022, 9:49 p.m.

I hope you all had a great weekend! Here are some more specific answers to questions since my last post:

Philosophically, we like how optional reagents give lots of different ways to customize crafted gear. We will be trying out various types of optional reagents to see how they feel, so nothing set in stone yet, but I will say we like the way the 9.2 optional reagents let you do something a little more custom with your gear than just set their stats or modify item level.

Just to confirm, Halite is correct. Profession stats are not part of regular gear, but exist on profession gear and in other areas of the profession system. To clarify further, we’ve been thinking of your profession “skill” (e.g. blacksmithing skill) as your profession “primary stat” and these other stats, such as inspiration, as your profession “secondary stats”.

We recognize that lots of people see value in increasing the number of professions learned by a single player, and it’s something we have definitely discussed. Currently we have no plans to expand this number though. For Dragonflight we are adding significant amounts of new depth and gameplay to professions, so also increasing the number of professions that you can learn on a character at the same time could be a recipe for potentially being overwhelming.

We’d like to see how it feels with these deeper professions. After Dragonflight we all (developers and players alike) might feel very different about multiple professions, as this is going to be an all new experience!

Very cool idea! We’re definitely looking at older sources of skill, skill points, and other profession interactions to figure out how we might want to update them in Dragonflight. The main focus is definitely on Dragonflight professions, but something like updating that DMF quest could go very well with the overall update!

Thank you for your questions Mirasol. This is a tricky needle to thread (insert tailoring joke here) as we want to reward players for doing group content. Instances are a major part of the game, and professions are meant to span pretty much every part of it. We also recognize that, as you say, professions are a great place for those less interested in group content to find a lot of gameplay.

Given that, one of our general goals for professions is that a player can be very successful without needing to set foot in an instance. We recognize that just because you want to craft the dragon head into an epic helmet, you don’t necessarily want to be the one to slay that dragon. Those are two very distinct fantasies and splitting those activities has a great deal of value. This is particularly because we want you to be able to think of yourself first and foremost as a scribe, a leatheworker, or any other profession. For some players ideally, their professions should be able to be the most important part of their identity, and where they can choose to spend the majority of their energy!

Given that, we are discussing how to achieve both the goals of having group content being rewarding to a player with professions, and avoiding it being required to be successful in your profession.

You will absolutely be able to max your professions’ skills, and very successfully specialize without setting foot in an instance in Dragonflight. The vast majority of recipes will continue to be acquirable through outside play as well. It is possible though, that some recipes will come from dungeons or raid. These are great places thematically to acquire some recipes, and become a cool reward for doing that content. That said, we are currently thinking that perhaps many, if not all of these recipes will not be soulbound, so you could ask someone to go into an instance to get them for you, or buy them off the AH.

Will guilds have dedicated crafters that don’t even raid with them, but are there fulfilling the fantasy and role of crafting awesome gear for their guild? We don’t know, but that would certainly be neat!

Anyway, I hope that answers your question in a way that is satisfactory!

#73 - May 10, 2022, 4:20 a.m.

And a few more answers…

This is TBD. There is definitely value to giving access to many of the older recipes through crafting orders, but given that this is a brand new system, we are likely going to want to work out the kinks for Dragonflight recipes before expanding too much into the massive amount of old content!

We are definitely aware that inventory space is an issue and are currently looking into what we can do here!

This isn’t in our current plans for professions as we are concentrating on other aspects of the profession system for the moment, sorry.

Glad to be part of the conversation. We are all players too, but hearing what the wider audience thinks is incredibly valuable to making a great game, so thanks for reading and responding, both on this forum and elsewhere!

We haven’t discussed the details of gathering as much with you all yet, but I will note that we are adding quite a bit of depth to gathering as well, so we are not currently considering making the gathering professions secondary.