Obviously the current situation with crafting forces people who arent the "guild armorsmith," or "guild enchanter" etc. with rare recipes into at least herbalism and often mining too, at the cost of smithing, leatherworking, and all. But making BoP epics and self-only enchants just seems to go way too far in the opposite direction. I mean if I can get +8 all stats from enchanting and a 120 DPS epic sword from 375 Swordsmithing upon dinging 70, then I'm going to drop both Herbalism and Mining and end up making an alt for the "collecting" since I need my profession slots on my main for min-maxing BoP stuff. It seems like a poorly planned knee-jerk reaction to me, if it is indeed true.

The other big reason that almost everyone has dropped the professions they leveled with in favor of herbalism is just the insane numbers of herbs needed for all the consumables for raiding bleeding edge content. Given that they're introducing new flasks, and these idol things, etc, I don't see that trend reversing either.

Looks like it's time for all raiders to level your herbalism/mining alt.

I hope that crafting professions will cover slots like Bracers, Belts and such primarily, especially if a lot of "sets" are 5 pieces. Especially things like PvP sets and Zandalarian sets, which generally cover a select few slots.

Consummables, basically, suck. But that being said, Blizzard can prevent having herbalism/mining alts by having the materials for crafting BoP and available only inside your raid instance. It would be colossally lame but par for the course. Then again, they changed Black Lotus so it wasn't BoP, so maybe they want people to have gatherer alts.

Currently-

Gathering - Makes money.
Engineering - A lot of toys. A few items that are very good in PvP and useful in PvE (Reflectors, Chicken, etc).
Everything else- Only good if the player has rare recipes to sell crafts with. The guild crafter will be able to handle all the requirements for the player base.


After expansion-

Herbalism/Skinning/Mining- Making money.
Engineering, Jewelcrafting- A lot of toys. A few items that are good in PvP/PvE
Leatherworking/Tailoring/Blacksmithing- Provides a raid-level item for the person that takes it.
Enchanting- Ring enchants
Alchemy- Probably needs something to make it at the level of all the other skills.


The main purpose of these skills is for the casual player. The hardcore raider is probably going to go jewelcrafting or engineering plus enchanting. I know I'd rather spend DKP and have more options available to me than a ton of gold and lose out on a choice. The casual player will have that item or two that they can obtain to keep up with raiders. The secondary purpose is to make crafting professions a viable option to take up one of those valuable skill slots.

I certainly hope Blizzard doesn't make that presumption again. A crafter-only pattern that required a gatherer-only component would be a bit much. Moreover, wouldn't be fair; tailoring doesn't have a corresponding gathering profession. If

Not saying that a BoP component would be going too far. But make it like Blood of Heroes for the Gurubashi Mojo Madness potion - BoP, but no gathering skill required.