A lot of profession changes are now listed in the updated PTR patch notes. Some new/updated (either from this PTR patch or the last) details:

PTR Build 9684 - WotLK Wiki has a lengthy list.

It looks like just about everything that can be crafted by a profession (leg enchants) and the BoE arcanums. And Zandalar Signets, oddly enough. The rep items from TBC/WotLK are not affected.

Presumably this was done to prevent the various exploits that allowed these to be applied to BoA items.

It also prevents twinks from using boe pants with TBC legpatches.

Provisionally, yes: Junk catches give skill-ups. Provisionally because I've only tested it around fishing skill 1.

If correct, this changes the approach to skilling up, because almost no chance of a valuable catch from Northrend waters is still probably a better investment of time than fishing in Goldshire...

I wonder why they chose not to put the new glyphs into the insciption research skill but on worlddrop books. Every longterm scribe has by now researched all there is to research so there should be plenty of sources for these new glyphs.
Any info if the books can only be looted by scribes?

I don't think there's any fish getting away anymore, you'll just catch some junk instead. I was fishing in Crystalsong Forest from skill level 1 and never got any messages about fish getting away. I did get a lot of junk though (and at that low skill surprisingly enough even a Glassfin Minnow from a pool). I also got skill ups from every junk catch the same way every fish caught in Orgrimmar gives skill at that level.

Technically you could level up your fishing in Northrend if you wanted to with this change, although I'd still suggest the Goldshire region since you can work on getting the 15lb rare fish thats one of the fish in the "One that didn't get away" meta needed for the Salty title.

What kind of junk are we talking about? I mean if you are level 80 and start fishing, then most peolpe would indeed consider the fish until Outland at least to be junk anyway. And most greys would also be worth more gold over time (fish at low level are 1 copper each?).

Even with this, there's still one missing - Subtle Scarlet Ruby. Ho hum.

Looking at the wowhead PTR site, the junk you'll fish up are just 18 copper grey items.

Tell me if I have misunderstood this, but this is a way to level 'low' Northrend LW right? Or have I misunderstood the text and it is in effect a nerf to Skinning without LW?

My guess is that they want both, and that doing it as a LW will either require fewer scraps as a perk, or is just designed to give easy skillups.

It requires the same number of scraps (5), I'd assumed it was just an easier way to combine large numbers of them, since you can click create all instead of having to right click every time.

My guess is that it's the equivalent to Marks of the Illidari, implemented in a way that doesn't require Blizzard to constantly invent new vendors / duplicate items and remember to update them each time they change around the basic alchemy flasks.

That was my hope. I am a Skinner/LW but who knows if this might change to Skinner/XX?

No. I, and plenty of others have spent many hours farming for these books. So far, nobody has reported a drop. It is possible that "Northrend monsters" is actually a very specific mob (but unlikely). It is possible the books are intended to be ultra-rare. Or perhaps the patch notes are premature, and this book isn't even in the PTR build yet?

Seems most likely that it will follow the same drop pattern as the [Damaged Necklace]. As such, I would expect market prices to be similar to average boe patterns since the result is unpredictable (as opposed to specific patterns which the in demand ones become high and the others low). It also makes the investment value very difficult to pin down as you could potentially get multiple glyphs for which there is very little demand.

What it means compared to the current discovery system is that anyone willing to sink a large amount of gold into the books early could potentially have all of the patterns, rather than a slower curve over time. It also means that people who haven't done all the current discoveries will have a way to guarantee getting one of the new glyphs added to their repertoire. The one question I have is if anyone knows if these glyphs will also be discoverable via the current discovery system (making the books a supplement) or if they are available exclusively through the books.

I did some herbing while testing out some of the Argent Tournament stuff. From 50 plants I got 2 herbs 27 times and 3 herbs the remaining 23 times. It's not a huge sample size but I think it's enough to surmise that the possibility of only getting a single herb from a plant was removed.

I was really hoping they'd look into some sort of specialization for gathering profs. For example, you can choose from either receiving more herbs from a given node, or you can have a higher chance of receiving 1 or more frost lotus / deadnettle / etc. from a given node. For skinning, have something similar where you get either more leather or more drops like Arctic Fur.

I know it's clunky the way I outlined it, but it would bring some uniqueness to otherwise bland gathering profs. As far as the Herb changes, I think this pretty much brings Herb right in line with mining; especially considering a mining node tap almost always gives ore + gem/stone. It looks like they basically made herb nodes "plant ore" nodes.


Edit: have they detailed any of the Tailoring changes? I'm considering rolling a DK as a bag-making / Ench alt, and if I can powerlevel easier after 3.1 I'm going to wait.

Given that Damaged Necklaces are a supplement to JC recipe gathering and the books for Inscription are apparently going to be the sole source of those new recipes (not to mention the fact that you need 50/3 books to "finish" the profession), I hope to god the drop rate is a bit more significant than the Necklaces. In all my playtime in LK, I've never seen a Damaged Necklace drop, nor has anyone in my guild...given the amount of time we've all put into this game, that points at an extremely low drop rate for those things. Books really should be more common given that they are needed to learn the glyphs and not just a supplement to learning.

Looking at the wowhead drop rates Damaged Necklaces seem to have the same droprate as a world-drop epic. Hopefully the new inscription books will be closer to the world-drop cooking patterns.