The professions in World of Warcraft become relevant with Dragonflight – and in a significant way. However, the entire system becomes considerably more complicated.
For many years, World of Warcraft has repeatedly emphasized that it wanted to “make the professions relevant again” – but this has never lasted very long in the expansions. With the upcoming expansion Dragonflight, WoW seems to mean it seriously and brings the biggest changes to the professions system that have ever existed. At first glance, the system is quite complex and opaque. We try to bring you closer to the most important innovations and explain what it’s all about.
The most important points at a glance:
- Crafting professions gain massive importance in Dragonflight.
- Players can create equipment that is on par with mythic raid level.
- Quality levels further enhance equipment.
- All professions can specialize in very specific aspects.
- With crafting orders, you can obtain soulbound equipment from other professions.
The introduction of quality
The biggest and (at least at first glance) most complex change is the introduction of quality levels.
For crafted equipment, there are 5 different quality levels, which you can recognize by a small icon on the item.
- Tier 1: Bronze icon
- Tier 2: Silver icon
- Tier 3: Gold icon
- Tier 4: Diamond icon
- Tier 5: Legendary icon
For some crafting materials and consumables like potions, there are only 3 quality levels instead. Materials that can be collected by all players (fabrics, fish, or meat) do not have quality levels at all.
For crafted equipment, quality provides a small boost to item level. Blizzard mentioned, for example, an item that has an item level of 270 at the lowest quality and an item level of 280 at the highest quality.
The core idea behind this is that it should always be worthwhile to strive for a high quality level, but never so powerful that the lower variants are completely worthless.
For consumables, a higher quality means more charges, a longer duration, or a stronger effect – it depends on the specific item.
The “lower quality” potions will likely be sold much cheaper and could become a “budget version” for consumables, so that you can use a potion in dungeons or simpler fights without lamenting a small fortune afterwards.
Specializations for professions return
In earlier versions of World of Warcraft, some professions – such as Alchemy, Leatherworking, or Blacksmithing – had the option to specialize in specific areas of their profession. This was accompanied by special recipes that only these specialists could create.
In Dragonflight, these specializations are making a return, both for crafting and gathering professions.
With specialization, you set yourself apart from other crafters of the same profession and become particularly skilled in a specific area. For this, you can earn and spend specialization points to enhance certain aspects of your profession.
This directly raises the quality of the items you can craft.
How to achieve the best quality?
Reaching the highest quality level for crafted items is supposed to be no easy task. Blizzard wants, literally, that “only the best of the best can craft these items at the highest quality, and only using all the tools available to them.”
All items have a difficulty level in crafting. This difficulty is compared against your profession skill and specialization – if your skill is higher than the difficulty, you craft the item at a high quality level. Optional components can dramatically increase this difficulty.
Success in crafting, however, is rewarded with exquisite items. Those who maximize their profession can craft some armor pieces that are at the quality level of mythic raids – the best that can be earned in the game. However, this entails prerequisites according to Blizzard such as:
- You must specialize specifically in this type of equipment.
- You must use materials of the highest quality, including optional reagents (which can only be produced by experienced gatherers and crafters).
- You must use the best profession equipment you can find.
Professions are supposed to significantly broaden progression and become a foundation for solid equipment. However, to ensure players aren’t solely relying on professions, there will be some restrictions in Dragonflight for the most powerful crafted equipment:
- Players can wear up to 5 crafted items at a time (two-handed weapons count double).
- All these items are at least at the item level of items at normal raid level. With optional reagents and higher quality, the level can rise to heroic or even mythic raid levels.
- All these items are soulbound. You must craft them yourself or receive them through crafting orders.
Crafters get their own stats
It was already mentioned in the announcement of Dragonflight that professions will receive their own equipment that affects their crafting. There are 4 new stats that are exclusively interesting for crafters and have different effects. These are:
- Crafting Speed: Increases the speed at which you craft items. This is especially beneficial for those who often craft large quantities (like potions) to speed up the process.
- Inspiration: This stat is basically a “luck factor” and increases the chance that you craft items with a higher skill than your actual specialization or skill would allow.
- Ingenuity: Your character has a percentage chance to use fewer tradeable reagents while crafting, thus increasing your profit margin.
- Multicrafting: Your character has a percentage chance to craft multiple stackable items (potions, flasks, etc.) at once.
Especially the stat “Inspiration” has already generated criticism in advance, as it introduces a clear “RNG element” into crafting. Blizzard emphasizes here that inspiration is merely an option. If you want to craft the best equipment at the highest quality level, you are never reliant on inspiration (i.e., luck) but can achieve this deliberately – entirely without this stat. Inspiration is simply meant to provide a few lucky moments where you craft higher quality items than actually planned.
Crafting orders – The path to big gold
Also new is the “crafting orders” system. These are pretty ingenious and allow a lot of interaction between players to enable a steady flow of gold.
With a new NPC, you can place crafting orders. You choose which item you want crafted by another player and what you are willing to pay for it. You can even contribute resources yourself – including soulbound ones – and thus lower the price. If resources are lacking, they must still be provided by the actual crafter.
Further settings allow you to specify the minimum quality in which you want to receive the item.
However, keep in mind that you must also offer a fair price. If the crafters do not like your price expectations, the order will remain unfulfilled – in that case, you will receive your invested materials and gold (minus a small fee) back.
The catch is: Through crafting orders, you can also have items crafted from professions that are already soulbound upon pickup. If you are keen on epic boots from a blacksmith, but your warrior is an alchemist and herbalist, you can simply visit the crafting orders NPC and commission the boots there. If the crafting is successful because a master blacksmith is found, you will receive the soulbound boots!
You can also restrict crafting orders. You can either make the orders available for all players, only for members of your guild, or for a specific character.
Anyone who builds such a large customer base, is friendly and specialized in a field, will hardly be able to escape from requests and will receive inquiries repeatedly.
It is therefore worthwhile to regain a reputation as a capable crafter known throughout the realm.
What implications does the new profession system have?
It is difficult to foresee the exact implications of the new system. However, some reasonable speculations can already be made, and both the positive and negative consequences can be estimated.
On one hand, there is no doubt that professions will become significantly more complex. The reintroduction of specializations, four attributes for crafters, quality levels, equipment for professions, and numerous optional crafting components contribute to a complexity that will certainly not make the entry easier. Those who are already overwhelmed by the professions in World of Warcraft will likely have little fun with this aspect of Dragonflight.
At the same time, however, the new system also offers many opportunities to fill gaps in equipment or earn items that are on mythic raid level. If you often have “bad RNG” and never get a weapon from dungeons and raids, you can simply have one crafted at mythic raid level, provided you find the materials and a suitably skilled crafter. This should reduce frustration and ensure that players wear equipment they actually want.
Additionally, crafting orders are a good way to make a name for yourself on your realm again. It will happen more often that people will say: “Bettevere is the best alchemist for intelligence flasks” or “Aoihbheann can craft the strongest leather gloves.” Anyone who establishes market dominance with specialization should be able to maintain a loyal customer base throughout the expansion.
Lastly, the various quality levels are likely to ensure that a wide variety of potions are offered at affordable prices, which can then be used more freely – similarly to how, at the end of Legion, the “Potion of Empowered Prodigy” could be used freely due to its low cost.
Dragonflight will definitely shake up the professions system. Whether it improves the game and makes professions useful again in the long term remains to be seen.
