Give me mecha-worms or give me death

There are two things you should know about me before we begin: I love fishing and I hate engineering. Unfortunately, my main is an engineer. I don’t remember when I switched away from blacksmithing to engineering, but it was probably sometime around Wrath of the Lich King and I did it for the sweet, sweet stats on craftable goggles. I don’t care about such things anymore, but changing tradeskills again feels like too much of a headache to bother. Even with this expansion’s catchup mechanics, that’s a lot of time and materials. There was always one consolation prize though: craftable fishing bait. Back in the day, Aquadynamic Fish Attractors were every angler’s best friend. Later, in Cataclysm, Heat-Treated Spinning Lures separated the pros from the amateurs. Having the best bait available can be the difference between catching junk or catching the best fish in the sea.

Engineers can’t make high quality fishing bait in Warlords of Draenor.

It can be rough catching what you want in this expansion without the +200 Fishing stat Worm Supremes. For anglers with Nat Pagle in their garrison, that wasn’t too big of a deal prior to patch 6.1. The Cavedwellers you could summon in your garrison initially dropped at least one full stack of Worm Supremes and sometimes more. Patch 6.1 nerfed the droprate on worms significantly. Rather than good luck meaning two stacks of worms from a Cavedweller, good luck can mean just two worms. It’s been speculated that the catchrate of Worm Supremes from the simple act of fishing has been reduced to less than 1%, too.

The developers seemingly want Worm Supremes to be a bonus rather than a reliable resource. But I’m an engineer. Historically, engineers can craft the best bait available. Let me do that again. Let me craft Wiggly Exploding Mecha-Worms or whatever. I don’t even care if they’re expensive to make. Gearspring Parts for fishing bait? Sure, I don’t care. What else am I going to use Gearspring Parts for? The single pair of Engineering-required-to-equip goggles I can make for myself? The rifles that hunters want me to pay them to take off of my hands? Disposable worms would be a step up.