Having now leveled every profession except Engineering through the functional end of WotLK (425+) I have some basic complaints about the endgame LW in WotLK that weren’t present in any of the previous incarnations of the game; things I would like to see not happen again in Cataclysm.
The first one is mats. None of the professions require you to initiate a sequence 100 times in order for you to make one item of ‘epic’ quality, other than LW. Heavy Borean Leather, which is manufactured at a rate of 6 to 1 from Borean Leather (twice as much as Heavy Knothide Leather, and there is no classic equivalent to this process that I know of) the skinner/Leatherworker if they want to make level 78 to 80 items, takes Borean Leather skinning drops and combine them to make Heavy Borean leather, which does not drop. One item for about a stack of 20 Heavy Borean Leather. Crafted epic items which are promptly replaced as soon as Heroic dungeon level gear is available because that gear is superior. This bottleneck of mats has literally caused me to abandon the practice of making gear for my alts, in favor of simply repetitavely running dungeons in order to obtain badges and points for gear that is far superior, and cheaper from a time/gold spent perspective.
The other issue is patterns. There aren’t enough of them, especially at endgame. Full sets of mail, leather (and plate for BS) should be available every 10 levels or so (and they should be able to be worn at vaguely the same time, unlike the patterns in BC) When new content is added to endgame, trainer patterns for the gear that drops there (or similar to that) should be made available. Doing this would actually stimulate profession usage, and gameplay at endgame levels, broadening the already tending to narrow focus of endgame play.
I’d really like to see a blue post that addresses my concerns here. I see this as a serious flaw in game design, that the profs are left out of the endgame play, other than vanity items like engineering choppers and the like. Please, please make Blacksmithing and Leatherworking(and tailoring! tailoring at least has bags to make. Leveled a mage to 80 just farming mats and making bags for my other alts) relevant at endgame. Reduce the boredom repetitive dungeoning brings. Please.
New World of Warcraft forum location http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum the post above can be found here.
I’m working through Cataclysm Leatherworking profession now, and I just hit the leather roadblock again. 50 kills to make one item? Bloodied Wyrmhide Shoulders, just as an example. Not to mention the rare as all hell volatile water? 10 of them? For shoulders that will be replaced as soon as you get a heroic drop?
Did you people think about drop rates and relative work to create items before you programmed it? Or just pull numbers out of a convenient orifice? Because if point systems are structured as they were in Wrath of the Lich King, I’m once again going to be (borrrriiiinnnnnng!) endlessly repeating dungeons in order to gear toons rather than doing the even more (borrrriiiinnnng!) lengthy work of farming leather for gear. Ya’ll are making me think I need to find another game.
If a pattern of a particular level requires a particular weight of leather, then skinnables of that level should drop that item. Basic rule of thumb in game design. It’s strange that I need to remind the programmers at Blizzard about this.
FIX THIS!! It’s a simple thing to change the skinning drops, so change them!
I still obsess about them, but I frequently wonder why these days.
