You may as well just list the epic BoP patterns for all professions then. The point is that these items will get replaced - whether it is soon like the BlackSmithing items in TBC, or later like the tailoring outfits. The trinkets are still a static, intermediate step that eventually becomes obsolete, not an ongoing perk that you can reapply even when you move to the next tier of items.

They also removed Tinnitus, the debuff that prevented drums rotations.

Either drums are gone from the level 80 game, or they'll be coming back in with a patch with tinnitus. If they do come back, it's because they didn't want to mess up with level 70 raiding and drum rotations.

It might be the idea, but there's no epic BoP profession gear in the game at the moment. Except for Engineering goggles and Inscription off-hands, which are technically BoE but requires skill to use.

Thank you for this thread it has been quite informative.

What i am really concerned about is Engineering. It really seems like it has no lasting bonuses. I would not typically count BOP crafted equipment as a specific bonus because if things are anything like BC a lot of those pieces became outdated by honor and arena gear.

Another problem i see with a lot of the BOP crafted equipment is that the best recipes are often in raid dungeons that are at the cutting edge.

As for unique bonuses it would seem that many of them either replace enchants or in the case of the few belt enchants are no more than flavor.

Has anyone done any calculations that might justify the engineering augmentations?

I'd be really surprised if drums come back for 80. One of the major reasons the Devs have stated for the buff consolidation is to eliminate "We need X buff, so that last raid spot has to go to Y."

If you look at all the professions, LW drums are the ONLY items that provide a group / raid buff (well I suppose there are also the JC necks that provide small group stat buffs, but I don't think anyone actually uses those). Anyway, if drums remain in, even with Tinnitus, having a LW is a concern when planning out who you are going to invite.

We can take Rogue A or we can take Rogue B, well A has better gear and is a better player, but we should really take B because he's a LW and we don't have one.

They wanted to get away from raid selection thoughts like that, they want us to bring "friends" or "geared players" over HAVING to take a specific class / spec / profession? over another just because they provide something vital that can't be gotten from somewhere else.

Having drums available everyone is basically the same situation as chain-chugging potions, aside from three seconds in party chat to set up an order. Everyone has to spam them all the time, and there's no tactical considerations about when or whether to use them. It's fair, and it's probably cheaper than potions (maybe--the change would increase demand), but it's still boring and adds nothing to the game.

Another update on Mixology. Level 70 Warlock doing the testing-

Flask of the Frost Wyrm -- mixology buff: 37 spell power, 29.6%
Flask of Stoneblood -- mixology buff: 349 HP, 53.7%
Elixir of Mighty Strength -- mixology buff: 16 str, 32%
Lesser Flask of Toughness -- mixology buff: 32 res, 64%
Spellpower Elixir -- mixology buff: 19 spell power, 32.7%
Wrath Elixir -- mixology buff: 32 AP, 35.5%

And here's a level 80 character doing the tests-

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Profession Benefit Review

I wouldn't phrase it that way. The BC Engineering goggles (schematics easily buyable from vendors) were good until Archimonde. They were more than good enough for any heroic/kara runs that any casual would want to do. If you're talking about PvP, well, you could always socket them with resilience, or get resilience in another armor slot. Any "lost" resilience is easily made up for by the fact that they're inordinately powerful.

As for the WotLK engineering goggles, I'm not on beta, but everything I've read indicates that they're roughly on par with T7 helms (~superior to Naxx10, ~equivalent to Naxx25 and Ulduar10 gear).

Besides, other crafting professions have their expensive patterns drop in raiding instances too, so this isn't exactly an Engineering-only problem. Enchanters have more of an issue with this, as Mongoose, Soulfrost, and Sunfire enchants all drop in raid instances (much to my warrior's dismay).

I think Blizzard recognizes the basic flaws of Engineering (i.e. can't make the bombs/whatever viable in Arena, otherwise everybody would be an engineer), so they're pushing it into more of a gathering profession with the mote extractor devices.

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A question just popped up while I was writing this: Do the BC engineering goggles "see" the WotLK land mote clouds? Or do we need WotLK engineering goggles to see the mote clouds in WotLK lands? Also, does the mote extractor we have currently extract motes from WotLK mote clouds?

And "scavenging" mechanical corpses, by the way. This is an additional gathering ability that engineers get. And in Borean Tundra there's an area that's positively overrun with hostile mechanicals. An engineer wandering around that area can have the same sort of field day an herbalist does in bog lord areas.

When you figure out which alts are going to which starting zones, you should take this sort of thing into account. My engineer is going to Borean Tundra, since there are so many mechanicals to scavange. My tailor is going to Howling Fjord, since such a high proportion of the quests deal with humanoids (my experience so far is that BT has a larger proportion of quests involving wildlife and dragonkin and such).

I was looking at at the different professions trying to figure out which professions would best benefit my alt in WotLK. I was mostly interested in helping my main (Mage) to gear up so was trying to identify stuff with cooldowns and such that would make things particularly expensive.

It looks like jewelcrafting so you can run the JC daily and get Dalaran Jewelcrafter's Token to trade for the Dragon's Eyes that would be handy for the BoE neck and ring. Jewelcrafters need the tokens to get a lot of the designs so these will initially be very hard to come by.

The other profession I thought of is tailoring as I suspect the Spellweave, Ebonweave and Moonshroud will initially be rather dear as well since they each have 4 day cool downs.

Has anyone else done any thinking along these lines?

People willing to sell their early tailoring cooldowns will stand to make a substantial profit because demand is going to far outstrip supply. Just looking at the few items that are in game now points to a minimum of 4 to 6 of the needed cloth for each individual item. People wanting to gear up quickly, sitting on a large stockpile of gold, stuck with a 4 day cooldown, will be paying quite a premium for others willing to wait, or not making them. In fact if at all possible I would encourage people to level their tailoring alts just high enough to be able to do it. After the first month or two it should balance out, but early on expect quite a premium.

That goes along with any of the other professions as well. Many of them have mechanics like Dragon's Eyes which will have limited supply, and be limited by people getting recipes instead of the reagent. Northern Spices from the cooking quests is another good one, though of course cooking is far more common. As those items are unbound, anyone willing to sacrifice their personal character development stands to be in a good position to make a lot of gold from the people who want to be able to use the items but would prefer to spend their dailies on recipes. Within 2-3 months however I would expect most people to have the recipes they really want and be spending at least a portion on the materials. Of course, by the end of the expansion cycle, those items will be common and essentially completely worthless.

Sorry if this has been covered, I'm not really good with the in-site search engine.

Has anyone seen/heard any information regarding blacksmithing of mail items in WotLK? There seem to be no patterns on any of the usual sites. All of the stuff that's currently known, is plate.