The following is a post that I have been working on regarding blacksmithing (and crafting) in general. I would like to get some feedback from people here as well as solicit ideas for additional suggested changed. I know its long, but please take a look and tell me what you think.

Issues with Trade skills

As TBC has had time to settle in, it has become clear that trade skills are presenting a challenge to the developers and the player base. I believe that many of my points apply to all trade skills (save Alchemy which is a special case dealt with below). However, my experience is mostly with blacksmithing so I will confine most of my discussion to that arena.

Trade skills (and in specific blacksmithing) do not provide enough of a bonus to warrant the time expended to level them. This is especially true with the TBC changes. In general, many of the recipes are no longer viable to make (as they require materials from 60 raid instances). In addition, most items that can be crafted are significantly inferior to easily available drops and quest rewards. This discussion is meant to elucidate the current problems and provide some possible solutions.

Useless Recipes
Wowhead lists about 350 recipes for blacksmithing. While this may seem like a lot, there are many recipes that can no longer be called viable and should be removed from the count. For example, here is a list of just the gems required for all blacksmithing recipes.

The number in front is the number of blacksmithing recipes that use these gems. The items marked with (*) are gems that only drop from Thorium veins. The total number of recipes effected is 60. This number is slightly misleading since some recipes require more than one of these gems, but even accounting for that, there are 40-50 recipes that are going to be much more expensive (either in time spent mining or money in higher Auction prices) to make the attendant recipes.

The same tale is told by the other types of ingredients. The follow is a similar list of items used in blacksmithing. I have left out any items used for less than 5 recipes for the sake of brevity, but the same trend can be seen.

Items marked with an (*) will be either non-existent (from 60 raid instances) or significantly less prevalent (60 instance drops). In total, the number of recipes effected is 63. Again, this number is artificially high, but even correcting for that, a conclusion can be drawn that upwards of 50-75 recipes in blacksmithing are going to be significantly more difficult/expensive to make.

Quality
With TBC, the recipes in the 50-60 range are rendered totally useless. Both from ingredient difficulties (outlined above) and from quality problems. For example, take this old favorite:

This item requires 20 Arcanite, 6 Enchanted Leather and 2 Dense Stones. Now compare it to this item:

This item is significantly better and only requires 12 Fel Iron. Many parallels can be drawn, but the end conclusion is clear. 50-60 level blacksmithing items have material costs that are vastly overblown for their usefulness.

Gaps in Coverage
Blacksmithing has large holes in itemization for certain types of items at certain levels. For example there is only 1 craftable shield and it requires items from AQ, which means it will probably never be used again. The following is a list of the number of craftable weapons.

There seems to be a preponderance of 2 handers, but a noticeable lack of one handers. In addition, daggers look well represented, but only 4 daggers are higher than iLvl 60 and two of those won't be made because one requires large amounts of arcanite and the other requires MC materials.

In addition to type gaps, there are gear and spec gaps. Out of all smithing recipes, there are only 6 Plate pieces with any intellect at all and only 3 weapons.

Resource Competition
Blacksmithing shares a somewhat unique problem with Jewelcrafting and Engineering. All three professions rely on gathering ore through nodes. As nodes were already hotly contested pre-TBC, the addition of another trade skill that uses them has created a situation where it is very difficult to procure ore. A possible solution for this is outlined below.

BoP Recipes
BoP recipes were a wonderful idea that I believe just needs a little bit of tweaking to make perfect. All of the BoP items seem geared towards Hunters, Warriors and Retribution Paladins. While I hope that more recipes will be added, as of now, there is no reason for a Protection or Holy Paladin (or other classes) to craft any of these items.

I believe that great items (like current BoPs) should be sellable. The material/time cost to produce these items is very high and should allow for more than a one time payoff.

1. Difficult to Obtain Materials
2. BoP

Choose one.

If an item is for my use only, then it is not unbalancing to allow the materials for that item to be much easier to obtain. I would suggest something along the lines of 20 bars, a couple gems and some obtainable items from other professions. Keep in mind, that I still have to socket the item once it is created, which will stay expensive for good gems.

If an item requires difficult materials, such as those obtained by raiding or those that required dozens of heroic instance runs, then I should be able to sell these items. Right now, items have very high requirements AND are BoP and are itemized to be useless to me (a protection paladin).

Suggestions
Enough whining, its time for some suggestions.

• Make all items made out of a material decomposable. For example, a grey sword drop could be smelted down to get a couple of iron bars. To extend outside of blacksmithing, a cloth headband could be pulled apart to get a couple of mageweave. This suggestion is to mostly handle the scarcity of mining nodes problem, but I think it adds a lot of possibilities to the game. Right now, the only options for BoE drops are disenchanting (if you have an enchanter high enough) or selling the item. BoPs mostly get vendored unless you are an enchanted. This gives every character the ability to decide if getting 5 Arcanite or 10 Fel Iron is worth more than the 10 gp that vendoring an item would give.
  
• Allow us to determine item stats. This might not be possible with the WoW code base, but let blacksmiths (or other crafters) assign the stats (using the existing iLevel formula) to the items we created. Base the requirements off of the level of item (Green, Blue, Purple) and let us determine the stat distribution.
  
• Give us useful consumables. Alchemy is head and shoulders above the other trade skills due to consumable use in raiding (mostly). Give all other trade skills consumables that are equally useful or fulfill the same nitch as a potion or flask. For example, a sharpening stone that has the same effect as a Flask or Oil. {Note: I believe this to be bad for raiders, see below.}
  
• Put in recipes for idols, totems and/or librams. These items are under-represented in game as is. Let the trade skills fill this gap.
  
• Add in quests that give recipes as rewards. Make it beneficial to have a trade skill rather than two gathering skills. This has been done somewhat (certain quests are easier if you have a trade skill). More things like this, or normal quests were you can choose between money and recipes, etc.
  
• Rework 50-60 recipes. If possible rework the requirements for these to be much lower and not require items from 60 raid instances / require less of items that drop from Thorium nodes.
  
• Make gathering possible from horseback. Farming is an unfortunate part of being a crafter, at least make it so we don't have to mount and dismount all the time.
  
• Put in many more recipes for all types of items including shields and polearms. These recipes should cover the range from 1-70 and should cater to different specs. This one is just a given and is just limited by development availability.

Alchemy & Enchanting
Alchemy and Enchanting are the only trade skills that will be guaranteed to make money for the long term. They make most of their money from supporting the raiding population. I will refer to Gurgthock's excellent article on the subject. I am not a raider, so I don't know the best way to remedy this situation, but either the other trade skills have to be given useful consumables or Alchemy & Enchanting have to be toned down or both.

I'm confused at what your point is. You want old items that no one will use anymore to be easier to make, or you want more items put in that no one will use except from in a certain level range?

I find your gem argument completely moot. Even though the drop rate on the gems is low from mining, it's not at all bad when prospecting. If you really need the gems, they aren't that hard to get just by having someone prospect a few stacks of the appropriate ore.

The level 50 to 60 recipes with difficult material requirements aren't meant to be made anymore; they had their day, such as it was, prior to January 16, 2006. As long as you can skill up through that range without needing to make abhorrently expensive items, what's the complaint? Yes they're useless, but level 30 items were just as useless when you were level 60. If you'd like Blizzard to make the leveling curve more shallow so it's easier to get to 300 in a profession, I could agree with you, even if I think it's unlikely to change.

Blacksmithing, Leatherworking and Tailoring all have been significantly changed compared to what they were at level 60; BoP items that are actually good spring to mind. If they're upgraded down the road, that's incentive enough to have the profession, and in the case of Blacksmithing in particular, the weapons are very nice indeed and are upgraded. I've seen a few different BoE crafted items that appear to be quite nice and could be money makers. As many, many posters have elucidated, Alchemy is broken in that potions and flasks and elixirs are required for raiding, and they're required in vast numbers. Blacksmithing shouldn't be like Alchemy; nothing should. There shouldn't be a requirement for massively farmed items of any sort. Instead, each profession should offer rewards that are useful to the crafter personally and to the community at large. It appears to me that this is direction Blizzard has taken with the addition of armor patches and spell threads, so maybe Blacksmithing could use something like those, but adding a few "enchant" items is far from adding a swath of recipes.

We warriors are emotionally connected to arcanite reaper, find another example.

Surely those runes and sharpening stones are the useful lesser items that blacksmiths get to make? It just so happens that they are less useful and less in demand than potions from alchemy, but realistically thats true of every tradeskill around with some suffering more than blacksmithing.

Particularly with the addition of the upgradeable weapons/armour blacksmithing is looking a lot more attractive than it did before, I have to say the 1h sword alone was nearly worth me dumping the lame duck that is engineering.

One good point is definitely about the spread of items, some more caster weapons and especially more shields would add a much needed bit of variety to the profession.

Hmm, well this is really a blacksmithing thread, not a crafting thread, but to continue anyway, in no particular order.

• More consumables for BS I disagree. Alchemy has more consumables because that is the nature of Alchemy - potion brewing. Blacksmithing has always been the "biggest" contruction wise of the professions, it has had the most expensive items and I think that fits well from a fantasy POV. When you tell a non-player you spent ages working towards creating the bestest ever sword, they nod.
  
• Alter old recipes I disagree again. Blizz has X man hours per year. Would you rather see them create new cool stuff, both content wise and profession wise, or would you rather they dick around with obsolete recipes against a market that may change anyway.
  
• Gathering from horseback . Nah... doesn't fit.
  
• Custom made items . Actually some element of this would be nice, but no where near the level you suggest. Blizz were working towards this with the Threads in tailoring but kinda didn't finish what they had planned. Something like this might be quite cool, though obviously there is cross-over with Enchanting and Socketting and must be careful not to steal others areas.
  
• prospecting greys . No, because then they would have different values to different players, and suddenly greys become tradable and not really grey. Grey = same value to all = vendor. Simple.
  
• more recipes and more coverage. This is the one thing I agree with, but I suspect Blizz have it planned in their profession updates.

The runes are terrible. Can't be used in combat makes them totally pointless. I wouldn't use them as a tank on incoming because I need that initial rage.

Sharpening stones, ironically, aren't REALLY any better than elemental sharpening stones, an MC recipe. 28 crit rating versus 12 damage 14 crit rating, and honestly I don't want to waste motes of earth on them in favor of comparatively more useful items (like making them into primal earths for Ironshield potions).

While the epic recipes right now are nice, its mostly because continually drops the ball on raid itemization, and its ass to try to make cash from things with nether since most people call it overpriced unless its 20 gold. A jewelcrafter in my guild has made over 14000 gold (possibly more actually) from selling gems, cut and uncut from 30-80g. Enchanting has similar viability, and so does alchemy. The common thread is REUSEABILITY. People pay for that. They don't pay for crafted items which are either terrible, or debateably worse than a raid drop, or only slightly better than a Karazhan drop.

As far as the BOP items go, I didn't pick blacksmithing to not be able to make money. However at this point I'm only keeping smithing to be able to make the resist gear, maybe I'll drop it in the future as I don't care at all about the bop weapons, or the bp, which thankfully there isn't a good tanking equivalent. To me its a sad day when I envy leatherworkers, and I do. They have things worth buying.

I would like to see Miners be able to smelt Armor and Weapons for a small return on ore. And as someone mentioned above, Prospecting makes finding those gems very very easy.

I tend to just DE stuff I crafted while levelling (and now spare fel iron turns into dust/essences).

It actually would be nice if Blacksmiths got some skill like "Salvage" which worked exactly like Disenchanting/Prospecting does now. Using Salvage on an item(must be one of three things: plate armor, mail armor, or a weapon with metal properties) would return scraps appropriate to the level of the item. For example, level 6 metal items would give Copper Scraps; level 28 items would give Iron Scraps. Then these scraps could be smelted into bars of ore.

Humbaba:

The point I was trying to make is that a large percentage of our recipes are useless and will forever be useless. Reworking 50-60 could be a waste of time (if they work on other stuff) but I think making those recipes useful is a worthy goal. The gem issue is that while people are leveling a lot of alts/jewelcrafters, this will not always be the case. Any item that requires materials that are only available from lower level stuff will be more expensive. Case in point: Mageweave is selling for 4.5gp a stack on my server, runecloth and nethterweave are significantly less expensive.

As to consumables, as I mentioned, I don't believe that giving Blacksmithing good consumables is the best answer, but unless they change Alchemy/Enchanting, it is the only answer.

The BoPs are a cool idea as I said, but my point is that they are great but only for a specific number of classes and builds. Leveling any trade skill takes a lot of time and money (especially BS) and if they only thing I have to look forward to is some BoP that suck for me and I can't sell, then whats the point?

Magunsson
Fit with what? Who cares what someone outside the gaming world thinks? If the devs are insistent that you will never be able to gather the materials you need in the normal course of leveling (thus necessitating farming) then I am suggesting they make it easier to do that task. Its a minor complaint, but I think it would be a nice touch.

I think custom made items are the only way to go in the long term. Socketing is a hack. At the end of the day, it is impossible to satisfy every class/playstyle/spec with appropriate gear. Allowing people to chose their own stats (like a talent tree for items) is the only way to permanently end this debate. There is already an item formula, why spend all the dev time to create new weapons and such when it could be done by the player base. That time could be better spent on encounters, art, more unique experiences in game.

Prospecting or Salvaging grays could be dropped, but the point remains. It would be nice to salvage items to get parts back for reuse instead of just vendoring the 100th DPS plate reward that I don't need.

frmorrison:
You are correct, but only if you are one of a couple of classes with specific specs. They are not that great for a lot of people.

I would have to agree, their is a fair bit in the OP's thread that is mainly grass is greener, and the last thing I personally want is more consumables.

The bops are good enough that they are worth leveling Blacksmithing for them alone if they meet your needs!, unfortunately they dont cover enough specs and classes

More recipes, more bop recipes. Make up their minds are sheilds engineering or are they blacksmithing and either way add a dozen sheild recipes to one of them from 100-375 skill levels.

My paladin has been a Blacksmith since day 1 (365 now) and the last item i made for my paladin was a imperial plate chest back when it was brand new.

I would certainly finish engineering up if they implemented BOP guns ala Blacksmithing.

(even though adamantite shells cost a ton more than cenarion arrows *grumble grumble*)

Floria - I'd strongly recommend Automaton (wowace.com/files) - it'll automatically dismount you if you get "you can't do that while mounted!" (or whateverthehell that error is) among other things.

With the advent of flying mounts, doesn't that make this add-on mighty dangerous? Is it smart enough to detect height, or if you accidentally tap the wrong key, will you find yourself plummeting to your doom, having just enough time to curse the human paladin who steered you wrong?

Well, if you click on a node while flying, doesn't it steer you over to it *then* error out?

I certainly haven't had any problems with it dismounting me in midair ... I have more problems with the damn aldor elevator. >.> (non-mod-related, it's PEBCAK)

The other points you make are somehow disputable (though I do not agree), BUT this one

is plain wrong.

Alchemy does not make money. Herbalism does.
All the potions you can sell on the AH as an alchemist come down to the raw material costs. (notable exceptions are the few lucky ones having some recipes first ... but this applies to the other crafting professions as well, particuliarly blacksmithing e.g.)

I should know. I am an alchemist and was a herbalist for 2 years.
If you want money get gathering professions (skinning, herbalism, mining).
If you want some nice items to use which are strictly BoP, go the crafting route.

I switched from herbalism to blacksmithing a few days ago. The last few points are difficult to skill, but it was not that difficult as people make it out to be.

Now i have still to decide if to go for the sword or the chest

EDIT: spelling

Herbalism making money is dependent on the existence of Alchemy as it is though; while the herbs do sell best (Because they offer a wider variety of possible end results), if there was no Alchemy, no one would want herbs.

So while Herbalism is the money maker of the two, it only is because of the existence of Alchemy. And thus the only way to reduce the income of Herbalism compared to other professions would be through either toning down Alchemy, or toning up all the other professions.

How is this any different for mining, skinning, or (the old) disenchanting ?

It isn't, I was mostly correcting the (in my opinion) wrong statement that the issue lies with Herbalism instead of Alchemy.

I think the point was you don't need Alchemy as a trade skill to make money. Herbalism, like every gathering skill, is the source of income. Crafting professions rarely make money (Alchemy included) unless you have some sort of monopoly over a pattern.

I think that this is part of the issue that I was trying to address. Right now, it seems that unless you get lucky and the BoP plans are good for your class/spec, there is absolutely no reason to have any crafting profession (except maybe enchanting and alchemy). I believe that instead of encouraging people to take two gathering professions, there should be a bonus for the work/time/effort it takes to stay current with a crafting profession, since it is significantly more difficult that just leveling a gathering profession.

That's what the BoP plans *are* - a bonus and a reason for you to take crafting.

It's simple economics: the marginal effort expended to craft an item is minimal, all the effort is in the resource gathering. Hence the value added by the crafter over the cost of teh raw materials is essentially nil.

Unless they artificially restrict crafting - e.g. put a cooldown like the transmute cooldown on making any item, so the marginal effort of making an item becomes significant - there is no way any crafting profession will ever make money, except as a result of monopolies or other market inefficiencies (e.g. you can make an item and disenchant it into stuff that's more expensive than the starting materials - this only works until the prices react: and they will).

So, the only option is the BoP stuff. You're right in that a lot of the BoP stuff isn't useful to most people. A mage has no reason to level leatherworking, a warrior has no reason to be a tailor. The solution is more and better BoP stuff - forget anything BoE because in the long run they can never make any money for anyone except the first one or two people with the recipe.