wow Blizzard on Forms of Progression, Sources of Profession Gear in Dragonflight

[Staff 949]

Blizzard answered more questions about Professions in Dragonflight, including forms of progression, sources of Profession gear, and more, in the latest round of blue posts!

(Source)

Has it been clarified yet how one will become more adept at crafting? Something about a quest line or other activity is ringing a bell, apologies if this has already been answered.

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!

What kind of sources can we expect for profession gear? Do they drop from the same kind of sources as you would otherwise improve your profession, can you craft them, do they drop from dungeons, raids, pvp, et cetera?

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)

So you also gain these stats passively alongside your gear, then? I thought it was only going to be part of your gear, much like how things like crit and haste work, but you’re able to upgrade these stats through specialisation?

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.

Is there a deterministic way to gain inspiration or is it RNG based when crafting?

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.

What is the benefit to crafting a lower ilvl item at a higher quality? Are there going to be times where this would be a better system than just crafting a higher ilvl item? Or is this intended to use the higher quality craft to gain more proficiency?

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.

[Nym85 72]

All this sounds good but the question remains, to whom is the system targeted at. If it is for people who enjoy world content the most, then it needs to not be dependent on instanced content drops to get you good results.

[VictorVakaras 69]

11 hours ago, Nym85 said:

All this sounds good but the question remains, to whom is the system targeted at. If it is for people who enjoy world content the most, then it needs to not be dependent on instanced content drops to get you good results.

It's very likely you'll need to run raids etc to get the mats, it is Blizzard after all. 

[Rammbone 0]

Very poor attempt to copy the amazing crafting system of FF14. This system is going to bust harder than Enron paper shredders!

[Znifler 58]

On 5/8/2022 at 7:01 AM, VictorVakaras said:

It's very likely you'll need to run raids etc to get the mats, it is Blizzard after all. 

It is kinda the core of the game.

Don't like that, try New World. I think they have more focus on dungeons to get max gear.

[Liquidsoul7 9]

On 5/8/2022 at 3:43 AM, Rammbone said:

Very poor attempt to copy the amazing crafting system of FF14. This system is going to bust harder than Enron paper shredders!

Very poor attempt to slam the idea of a system that isn't even fully implemented yet. Maybe let's wait until it's playable before making blanket statements with no specific or useful feedback. For one, Blizzard's whole MO is taking ideas from other places and iterating on them to try and make them better in some way. A lot of the time it's worked to some degree. We'll see if they're able to do it again successfully when it comes out.