BA Shared Topic: Improved professions
This week’s BA Shared Topic comes up with the question asked by Pixelated Executioner: What do you wish your profession could do?
Work work! Me no orc like dat!
The Armorsmithing specialization is equally problematic. In my DPS gear, I am sporting the Bulwark of Ancient Kings. Out of sheer desperation I wore it as and the lower version as tanking chest for a long time, for the use effect and the nutso amount of stamina on it. But it’s clearly a DPS chest. None of the few armorsmith BoPs does anything for tanks. How can this possibly be?
I actually have no idea what plans Blizzard has for the blacksmithing specializations in WotLK, but I would hope that it’s a better implementation than in TBC. In comparison, look at tailors with their specializations. You can pick your specialization on what kind of caster you are (frost/shadow, fire/arcane, healing). I would not have picked armorsmithing and would have gone swordsmithing if I had known about the lack of tanking gear this would provide me with.
Now that I have done my share of griping, the good stuff. Blacksmithing did provide me with decent gear while leveling. The Fel Armor set was amazingly good, same for the Adamantite set, and as I got all Felsteel plans fairly quickly, that set was also great. Sharpening stones are awesome. I want to continue to see great pieces of gear you can make for making leveling easier. I am totally excited about the addition of shields. But I think the biggest step is that we get to add sockets to gear. That is great. This will be something of use even at max-level in the profession. Everyone will eventually upgrade gear and will want extra sockets. Especially one that’s colorless. It provides so much needed utility.
From the other Shared Topic bloggers I have seen the same request, and I am endorsing it as well: let us repair our own gear. That would be a killer feature for tanking blacksmiths. Blacksmiths should be able to repair mail or plate armor, leatherworkers should be able to repair mail and leather, tailors should be able to repair cloth armor. That’s the ideal for me. Come on, I can make fancy armor, but I can’t hammer the bumps out of my plate pieces? You could even do it as a bonus, like half-price repairs. Everyone knows that us folks have huge repair bills, and every little perk would count.
As last request, something with a fun factor would be great. Tailors will get a flying carpet in WotLK, engineers get tons of stuff that just screams fun, it’d be nice to have something like that too. I am fresh out of ideas what could be fun smithing gadget, but surely there could be something.
So as summary: do something to keep blacksmiths busy once they’re at 450, something with utility; make blacksmithing the killer profession for tanks by adding the ability to repair armor; and some fun stuff wouldn’t hurt.
I’ve heard that BS are going to be able to (at the least) add a meta-gem socket to (I think) their chest. That would be a nice bump in stats.
I’m starting to see improvements to engineering in recent beta notes, but its not there yet. Some of the flavor items are appearing, but many great ideas got stolen and turned into loot cards for the card game.
Adding Effects to Belts (and some other, normally enchantable gear) has now been added, but only in the capacity that you save a bag slot by having a spyglass built into it (and one other minor thing I forget). Actual, character improving Belt enchants (like an extra trinket slot?) would make me very happy.
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Blacksmiths are getting a few nice advantages in WotLK – enough that I was actually thinking about levelling that instead of Alchemy.
1) Adding new sockets – Blacksmiths can add a socket to bracers and gloves, self-only. I’d heard about adding the meta socket but I haven’t been able to find any confirmation.
2) Epic armor – Blizz clearly heard the plaintive cries of platewearers looking enviously at the tailors and LWs out there
There are epic boots/helms in three flavours – Brilliant Titansteel (crit, spellpower, mp5 – for healadins), Spiked Titansteel (hit, crit, str, agi – for dps) and Tempered Titansteel (def, str, stam – for tanks)
That said, the epic armor is BoE and has no set bonuses – but then, that’s true of the other professions as well.
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admin Reply:
September 30th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
I knew about the sockets, but not about the armor. This gets rid of my biggest crafting pet peeve ever. Before TBC my main was a warlock and I quit playing her because she felt and still feels completely gimped without Frozen Shadowweave. I am very happy if they change the high end sets. This will make the crafters happy (something to sell) and will make casters who have chosen to be alchemists, scribes or jewelcrafters also happy, if you ask me.
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