Legion profession Q&A liveblog

In just a few short minutes, the Warcraft team will be going live on Twitch with a Legion profession Q&A with Senior Game Designer Paul Kubit. For those of you unable to watch live as it happens, we’ll be liveblogging it right here. Keep in mind, we’ll be paraphrasing the developer’s responses in order to keep up with the Q&A — please don’t take what’s written here as verbatim developer quotes.

1:00 p.m. Soon.

1:05 p.m.

Q: Blood of Sargeras: what use is it to double gatherers? Why not make it BOA so it can be traded?

A: Still soliciting feedback on this. Blood of Sargeras is supposed to be a “measure of how much you’re playing the game.” Not supposed to be just for gatherers, but there’s a misconception it is. On the beta, that’s how it’s been, but beta is beta. Sourcing for Blood of Sargeras was put on herbalism/mining/skinning earlier than its implementation anywhere else. They’re not intending to force you to have gathering. They didn’t communicate that very well.

There’s currently a problem where people who don’t have much of it (don’t have a gathering profession) are struggling to get more. They’ll implement additional ways to get it. On the flipside, gathering might be tuned down to get less so the gap isn’t as large. There will be an enchant at Revered with the Wardens faction that can cause mobs to sometimes drop Blood.

Professions are continuing to be balanced in terms of how much blood they need. Obliterum is the item used for item upgrades in Legion and uses Blood of Sargeras. How much is needed per Obliterum is also currently being balanced in beta. Unbinding the item seems like a “magic bullet” fix. Making it tradeable seems like an easy fix, but they want to avoid that. Blood of Sargeras is a measure of progression — they don’t want people to buy a full set of endgame gear with just gold (or WoW Tokens), given Obliterum levels your gear.

What about Bind on Account? Doesn’t violate the principle of making sure you’re playing to progress, but it’s a philosophical issue: They don’t want you to need to have a full stable of alts to play the game effectively. They love alts, but 12 alts all filtering Blood of Sargeras to your main isn’t something they want. Having alts should be a fun thing rather than risking a sense of necessity.

Q: Why are dual crafters at a disadvantage getting Blood of Sargeras compared to gatherers:

A: Touched on this before — having gathering shouldn’t be mandatory, but a bonus. Depends on point of view. It can be seen as a disadvantage, but it’s more intended to be an advantage for crafting/gathering. Crafters can make the cool stuff, gatherers get the materials more easily.

1:15 p.m.

Q: What about a trade-in vendor like Spirits of Harmony?

A: It’s something they’re talking about. They don’t want to commit to anything yet.

Q: Lots of talk about class fantasy in Legion. What about professions?

A: They’ve been talking about it a lot, they saw opportunities to bring more flavor into professions. Rather than a vendor telling you how to make a cool breastplate, you go to the peak of Highmountain to learn a long lost recipe from a smith of legend. In some of the quests, you need to go fire the ingots, press them, cool them — like you’re participating in that particular profession rather than playing a tink-tink-tink animation. (Paul Kubit actually made the tink-tink-tink noise.)

Q: Is there a chance of Engineering being given a mount to craft? Engineers have nothing to sell, goggles can only be worn by other engineers.

A: There are some things Engineers can craft. Failure Detection Pylon as an example. You’d ideally use it when about to pull a raid boss if you think you’re going to wipe. Die next to the pylon, and when the encounter ends, it’ll rez everyone immediately. It’s an efficiency item rather than a power level item. There are some other toys and efficiency items. Engineering has historically been about making cool things for themselves.

Kubit mentions Reeves, a Fel Reaver version of Jeeves, which can be modified to behave like other Engineering toys — including the Failure Pylon.

1:20 p.m.

Q: Any chance of retired profession recipes finding their way to the Black Market Auction House?

A: Absolutely. They’re always looking for things to add to the BMAH. Most BMAH items will be things iconic to their time — so if there are recipes for a really cool breastplate or whatever from a raid, they might make it there. If it’s just some level 40 whatever item from an old quest, that isn’t likely.

Q: Can the recipe restoration books work for pre-legion recipes? Being forced to drop crafting professions for gathering for Blood of Sargeras, don’t want to lose their recipes.

A: Lore stresses you don’t have to drop your crafting for Blood of Sargeras. Kubit is understanding of this — recipes which come from quests in Legion, you can’t learn them again if you drop the profession and then pick it up again. The Recipe Restoration Books are a solution to that. Older content isn’t likely to be included in these, but it’s possible other solutions will come along. Recipe Restoration Books exist if there’s genuinely no other way to get the recipe back due to how quests work.

Q: Will we see the return of profession buffs? Enchants, gems, etc.

A: “Kind of.” Not every profession has them, they aren’t going to improve the raw throughput of your character, but there are perks for having a certain profession. The engineering items mentioned previously, for example. Leatherworking can make barding for your mount which gives buffs similar to the garrison stable: can’t be dazed while mounted, etc. They’re items which do augment your play, but won’t be mandatory for raiding. Goal is to let you have the profession you want rather than the one you feel forced into.

1:25 p.m.

Q: Will professions be able to create transmog sets? Would be cool to have leatherworkers craft a Warden transmog set.

A: Cool idea. Yes, almost definitely, but not right at launch. There will be plenty of opportunities to seek out transmog gear given the Wardrobe is being implemented in patch 7.0. There will come a time where professions might be able to make transmog gear, but it’s an activity for later.

Q: What’s the long-term goal for professions? Endgame?

A: Professions will be able to make gear equivalent to some of the best gear in the game — at least here at launch. That will become less-true later in the expansion, but professions provide a good groundwork, which has been true in prior expansions, too. Profession gear goes all the way up to ilevel 850. Long-term? They aren’t sure yet. They reassess professions with every expansion, and the content of the expansion determines how professions play out. Obliterum makes sense in Legion because it ties in with the demonic content. What patch 8.0 will look like for professions, they don’t know yet.

Q: Will professions keep up with raid tiers? (In terms of ilevel.)

A: “No. After awhile, they’ll be horrible.” Sarcasm! For now, profession gear can go up to ilevel 850. That may change with future raid tiers — they might gain the ability to be increased even higher to keep up with raiding.

Q: Any catch-up mechanics planned for Fishing and Archaeology, similar to Cooking with Mists?

A: Not really, no plan. They’re already using the Warlords method of being able to do anything at skill level 1. If you’re at skill level 1 with Fishing, you can already start fishing in Legion pools.

Q: Can crafted relics be turned into Obliterum and can Obliterum be used to upgrade crafted relics?

A: Lots of things can be turned into Obliterum. Even flasks, enchants, etc. Obliterum cannot be used to upgrade relics, though, because they operate as gems. They’re still tuning the base numbers on crafted relics, though.

1:35 p.m.

Q: Will Legion have petals or nuggets for low level herbalism or mining?

A: No. They were clutter, and gathering in Legion already scales up better than in previous expansions. You rank up in gathering specific materials. At low level, you’ll get less of a given material and at high level, you’ll get more. There’s no need for the petal/nugget mechanic.

Q: Crafted gear often used to fill in a gap in gearing — protecting against bad luck. Why add the randomness of Warlords, where you can’t choose your stats or get a random item level?

A: Item level will be smoothed out. In Legion, you can’t reroll the random stats anymore, because they want you to be crafting more items rather than rerolling the same one forever. If you get items you don’t want, you can destroy them in the Obliterum forge towards your next item upgrade — use your trash toward upgrading the good one. Everything is useful even when you destroy it.

1:40 p.m.

Q: Will there be weapon enchants in Legion? If not, why do death knights keep runeforging?

A: Runeforging is meant to be a fun Death Knight thing. Not having weapon enchants has no bearing on that, runeforging is just a class feature. Legion will not have weapon enchants because Artifacts already have so much going on — each weapon already effectively has a bunch of enchants. However, some of the enchants we’d typically expect to be on weapons will be on necklaces instead, because necklaces could be way cooler than they are.

Q: Any chance of creating a unified bank for reagents across all characters?

A: They like the idea, but there are not set-in-stone plans for it. Don’t be surprised if we see it happen sometime down the road.

Q: Why not get the Fishing artifact at the start of Legion? It doesn’t make sense to get it later.

A: “Who told you about the Fishing artifact?” Giggle at datamining. They made the decision to obfuscate where to get it, how to get it, or if it’s even possible. “Don’t believe everything you datamine.” The Wish Fulfiller (fishing in Dalaran fountain) achievement is not, in fact, the way to get the Fishing artifact. They want a delay between the acquisition of your primary combat artifact and a side-activity like a fishing pole.

Q: Are there any plans to make Archaeology less tedious? Specifically, finding rare solves from old content.

A: Talking about Legion Archaeology first: The core gameplay is mostly the same: surveying, digging, etc. However, you now get feedback when you’re standing on top of your item, eliminating the constant green light telescope. Once you get a green light, the best thing to do is to hoof it until the dig shows up. There will be fewer finds per race, which means finding all of the Pristines will be less irritating, purely due to a smaller pool of items. Rare items from Archaeology will come from a weekly quest chain rather than discovery RNG.

As for rare solves from older content, there are no changes coming for it right now. They don’t want to trivialize the work people put into finding those old rares, but they aren’t in complete opposition to a change.

Q: “Gem Chips” are used in only one recipe, but are a side product from prospecting ore. Any plan for more uses?

A: Using them for crafting is just a flavor thing — creating a very opulent recipe for people in Suramar. Otherwise, mostly vendor trash. However, they do give hints for future prospects — if you’re getting green gem chips, you have a green gem coming. You can prospect cheap ore until you start getting the colored chips you want, then switch to expensive ore and get a better gem of that color/more gems of that color.

Q: Do humanoids drop cloth again? Warlords Tailoring was tedious with no barn.

A: Yes. Humanoids (and humanoid demons) will drop cloth again.

Q: Why no bigger bags being added to Tailoring this expansion?

A: Deliberate choice. They want to see how else they can reward tailors. Should bags be the only cool thing you can make? There is a 24-slot cheap-to-make catchup bag which can be mass produced for alts who aren’t already min/maxed on bags, but no larger bags. There may be bigger bags in the future, but they want to try other cool stuff this time.

Q: Why are skinners left at a disadvantage with multi-tap enemies, while miners and herbalists don’t have this problem? Multiple people can mine the same ore node, but multiple people can’t skin the same wolf.

A: Skinners have a different dynamic in that they can create an endless supply of their own gathering nodes by going and killing some animals. Or stumbling across corpses someone else left behind. However, Skinning might see changes to bring it in line with herbalism and mining depending on how Legion plays out.

1:55 p.m.

Q: Any plans for more experienced crafters to craft better stuff than noviced crafters? Higher chance at Warforged, ability to choose stats, etc?

A: You level up individual recipes. Sometimes a recipe will require fewer materials or have reduced crafting restrictions (no longer need a special forge), but there are no plans to let experienced crafters create baseline better items. Being more experienced as a crafter makes crafting more efficient, but not better.

Q: Will Jewelcrafting be relevant again in Legion? How many sockets can we expect in gear?

A: Data shows gems were still being sold in Warlords even with fewer sockets. Legion will have roughly the same number of sockets in gear, maybe a little more. Necks and rings in particular have sockets — which Jewelcrafters also make.

Q: Will they make gathering professions secondary?

A: They think about this a lot, but it isn’t happening in Legion. In Legion, they want to focus on the profession fantasy, and some people see value in gathering. If they make everyone an herbalist, it erodes herbalism.

Q: In future Legion patches, will there be new profession quests and patterns added?

A: Yes, absolutely. Something about cool stuff. (Sorry.)

2:00 p.m.

Q: Will there be new professions in the future?

A: It’s possible. Logging from garrisons sort of touched on it in Warlords. They’re always assessing what the game needs and he’s interested in hearing what people want.

Q: With the removal of the glyph system, what do you see as the purpose for Scribes?

A: Glyphs still exist, but there are no longer glyphs which give you player power. They’re consumables now rather than learned skills. In theory, scribes will be selling more glyphs due to them being consumables. Runes for raids as well as the tomes for changing talents will be in demand. And when looking at profession fantasy … Steamy Romance Novels.

And the Q&A is complete! Next week’s live Q&A will be a PVP Q&A with Brian Holinka.