What profession do you think needs the most help?

[HardBeatZ 39]

So with MoP coming what profession do you think Blizzard needs to provide the most attention to and seems to be the most "under valued." Talking purely crafting and not gathering professions, curious to see what people's take is on it.

I am one that doesn't have every profession at max cap, although I do have quite a few the ones I'm missing being Engineering and Inscription. Both professions from what I can tell (outside looking in) provide little to no value to group success. I know engineers are more about the little things they can do to help the group, but I've never been in a guild and been thinking awesome we have an engineer!

As for inscriptionist, the glyph system got reworked in Cata and while the glyphs themselves increased in value (drastically in some cases) the inscriptionist lost value as they were not having to do glyphs for people as often. Now with MoP coming and another rework in glyphs it looks like players will lose one of the glyph types again devaluing the inscriptionist again.

The Engineer has always been more of a self benefit than a group benefit so I'm more ok with it staying the way it is than the Inscriptionist losing more value and to me, as it would appear becoming devalued, therefore I think Blizzard needs to show them some love!

[Peelyon 416]

I think its clear that engineering needs a decent boost. I always found the repair bots where really useful in raids, but with the likes of Firelands and Dragon Soul theyve placed loads of vendors inside and you can just mount on a traveller's tundra mount if youve mass ressed the group anyway.

Same goes for the mailbox. We used to use it quite a bit if anyone needed to quickly log over and buy an extra flask they didnt need to portal back. They would just relog, buy it on an alt and mail it, log back over, pop the mailbox and it was done. But even that doesnt get used as much as we just have spares of everything in the guild bank and you can just pop that instead.

I think they plan inscriptionists making shoulder enchants all round, so having one in your guild will probably be a bonus, but if its anything like belt buckles etc then its hardly going to be a massive expense on the AH anyway, so not going to be a massive deal.

Personally I've always found the crafting professions to be the ones lagging behind. Compared to other professions I feel they cost the most to level up and the personal reward for the crafter seems pretty minimal. I feel that more professions should have BoP gear that you can craft that is marginally worse than the current raiding tier gear, but an upgrade on the previous available stuff.

I've always found the fact that they rarely update craftable items as a problem as well. Take Cataclysm for example, you could craft 359 gear straight away which is great. But then came the 365 weapons which were already obsolete if you were running heroic content. Then 378 recipes where only from Firelands trash mobs, and then came Dragon Soul again with trash drops. Why not add a recipe or two that are BoP at the vendors with each patch? So when Firelands hit maybe a few 372 ilvl craftables that were obviously worse than the current tier, but a nice little upgrade if you couldnt progress through heroic content in 4.0 / 4.1.

Not to mention engineering too much again but the goggles are another prime example. A 359 item that you could make and equip early, yet again great. But then no upgrade on any patch after that. I understand that giving a new 378 @ 4.2 and 397 @ 4.3 would be a little bit over-powered, but lets face it with all the VP gear that they just gave away I dont think it would have been that bad to add in extra craftables.

Argh rant over!

[Alierya 94]

I understand that giving a new 378 @ 4.2 and 397 @ 4.3 would be a little bit over-powered, but lets face it with all the VP gear that they just gave away I dont think it would have been that bad to add in extra craftables.

I agree - to make crafting professions more viable there should always be some decent gear... It would have been nice if they had decided to pop in some new pvp craftables at some stage.

At the moment I would think that inscription is quite lacking since you only need to learn a glyph once - I'm not sure why they did that really - unless you were a drood that changed off spec on a regular basis or something it isn't like you need to change glyphs constantly and I think it took the money out of the proff.

Eng obviously need an update.

I think Alch is probably the best crafting proff at the moment since people run through flasks and potions like water... you can't raid without them.

[Astropolix 10]

Well crafting professions are the ONLY viable ones in my honest opinion. They are the only ones giving you the best bonuses. Be it 2 sockets (=100 primary stat=strongest one at the moment) or be it 3 BoP gems (=51 primary stat=weakest at the moment) or the "normal" 80 of alchemy etc. Your gathering profession only grants you secondary stats like crit, haste,... which are less of a DPS increase. In case of blacksmithing and jewelcrafting you can even CHOOSE the stat you need. Stuck at 102% CTC? No problem, just pop a masterygem in there --> done.

While I know that this is not a really HUGE bonus it is still a bonus that cannot possibly be acquired thus making it quite valuable. Unless the BoP gear your demanding would be BiS it would thus be worthless once you get that BiS piece. The way it is now you get sth. for the trouble of skilling the profession that lasts you forever.

Apart from that I think there is a lot of money to be made with crafting professions if you know how to play the AH. Buying raw Queens Garnets for 400g and then selling them cut in the AH for ~1000g is quite a nice profit (was a lot higher a few months back).

Comparing the times needed:

Fly around for an hour with herbalism or sth. would net you about 4 stacks of flowers (unless you farm in real off peak hours) which net you about 800g --> 800g/hour

Buy some gems from the AH and clicking "cut" and setting them back in there nets you 600g profit per gem. Let's say you cut 1 of each of the reds (3x600 = 1800g/~3min)

I would agree that engineering needs something to sell apart from ranged-weapon-enchants... but engi has always been a little funny profession with some nice to haves. (actually for the ragnaros hc firstkill I think 3 rogues trained engi specifically for those speedbuffthing)

[Damien 1,514]

Inscription is going to need quite a push, seeing as glyphs will now play a much less important part in the game.

Engineering has always been a fun profession and they didn't really add anything fun in Cataclysm, so I'm hoping for new perks in Mists of Pandaria.

[meukow 15]

All of the professions except Engineering need more FUN/USEFUL items added asap.

Professions are way too 'I'll just level it to get a boost and never use it again' imo.