I'm currently skilling up blacksmithing and thus, as I looked at the oodles of mats I was going to have to burn, I began to wonder whether it would be better to skill up with an orange recipe that took 5 bars or a yellow one that only took 4...
I searched this site, wowwiki and the web to no avail, and was dismayed to find that I could find no information about crafting skill-up probabilities...
Thus I ask:
Anyone know of the probabilities of skill up for each color of crafting?
E.g. Orange = 100%, Yellow = 80%, Green = 20%?
Also, from my skill-ups, I've noticed that the last few points of Green (right before gray) have a far lower probability of granting a skill-up than the first few points of Green (right after yellow). It's possible that the formula takes into account recipe skill level as well as color.
Anyone know of the formula or want to help provide data to help derive it? Thanks!
While Orange = 100% chance of skillup, I think yellow and green are "bands" of chance to skill up. A recipe that just turns yellow has a very good chance of skilling up compared to one that has been yellow for 5 or more points.
Anyone know of anyone who's been crazy enough to derive the formulas? I was surprised that my searches came up empty, considering WoW has been out for 2 years... then again, once you hit crafting cap, you don't care any more :-/
Yes, it's obviously a range. The easiest way to notice this is something where combines are trivially easy to come by, like skilling up first aid. Try skilling up first aid as far as possible using only a single recipe (like getting from 330 --> 375 with only Netherweave and never making any Heavy Netherweave). Note how the rate of your skillups drops off sharply, until by the end you are making 10 bandages to get one point when going from 370-375, as compared to the ~50% chance of skillups when it first turned green.
Edit: Also bear in mind that the range is going to vary based on the particular combine. Look on Thott, for example -- each combine has 3 values associated with it, which determine the range over which the skillup curve extends. So for example Adamantite Weightstone starts out being yellow at 350, and goes grey by 360. Flamebane Bracers start out orange at 350, yellow by 360, grey by 380. Most combines have a range of 30 skill points between 100% and grey. You can get skill making Sulfuron Hammers, however, from 300 smithing all the way to 350! Clearly the most efficient way to raise your skill.
I think it varies by profession as well. I have leveled in every profession except tailoring and jewelcrafting to at least 300 and while I didn't track hard numbers they seemed to have a very different chance to level on yellows and greens. For gathering profession it's night and day. I would normally fail to level skinning when skinning an orange mob or even a mob I had to switch in plus skinning enchants to skin. Mining I have never failed to skill up on an orange mine and most of the time skill up on yellow taps as well. When leveling enchanting I did mostly yellow and even a green or two enchant and I can count the number of times I failed to level on one hand from 1 to 300. Leatherworking on the other hand I considered doing greens a waste of leather for the skill up and I don't really like making skills that have been yellow for a while because of chace of failure.
I could imagine that the chances vary between gathering and crafting professions, but otherwise my (admittedly anecdotal) sense is that the values are the same across all profs, as far as green/yellow/orange giving a chance to skill up. (I've done every one except jewelcrafting now)
I also feel like the rate of change of this chance to skill up is different depending on the number of datapoints on the curve (which might factor in the differences between gathering/crafting since crafting always has more datapoints). When the "new" orange recipe comes available every 5 skill points they might cause the skill-up chance to fall off faster than say for mining (or first aid), where the "new" orange recipes (or node types) are spaced farther apart.
It's true as stated above that certain recipes have their skill-up ranges widened (i.e. Sulfuron Hammer), and some are very narrow (Adamantite Weightstone). I'm also positive that the color is reflective of the chance, rather than the chance reflective of the color -- you can feel the "smoothness" (or non-step-function-ness, if you like) of the skillup curves as you try different recipes.
Skinning was nerfed probably because it was so easy to skill (lot more beast "nodes" than mining nodes). It was still pretty trivial to hit 375 skinning once you get out of Hellfire and into Zangar and Nagrand, especially because you need to kill SO MANY MOBS to get enough leather for anything anyway (heavy clefthoof appears to be the best way to grind 360-375, and it's almost easier to get the 40 (!!) heavy clefthoof leather for it than to get the 30 knothide. The primals are a joke to farm by comparison.
Slight derail: are there any good elite solo skinning areas in Outland like burning steppes and winterspring dragons were in Azeroth? The only one I know is Black Morass, where the trash isn't elite but skins like it is (shhh!), but that's an annoyingly long way to go if you aren't actually running the instance, and if I have an hour between runs to farm some leather it's not viable to spend half of it in transit.
Definitely concur that chance to skill off yellows and greens fall away as you get closer to "downgrading" them, in a similar way to the way the chance to skill weapons or defence skill falls away the closer you get to capping them out. It wouldn't even surprise me if it was the same algorithm.
Oh, and if you want to see narrow skill ranges, go see leatherworking. Half the stuff we got in the expansion seems to be yellow at birth, and if not then it goes yellow after 5 points and green after another 10. With the difficulty of acquiring leather (since skinning as profession is very unpopular, at least where I come from) trying to skill off yellow recipes and seeing multiple failed skill-ups in a row was kind of frustrating. There's multiple smiths on the server with epic BoP weapons going, but I don't know any LW yet with their BoP gear.
Oh, and if you want to see narrow skill ranges, go see leatherworking. Half the stuff we got in the expansion seems to be yellow at birth, and if not then it goes yellow after 5 points and green after another 10. With the difficulty of acquiring leather (since skinning as profession is very unpopular, at least where I come from) trying to skill off yellow recipes and seeing multiple failed skill-ups in a row was kind of frustrating. There's multiple smiths on the server with epic BoP weapons going, but I don't know any LW yet with their BoP gear.
The epic smithing weapons start at 350, the LW at 375, no? I pushed hard to 350 smithing for this reason, and still sit at 357 smithing even now. Given how long it will take to get the primal nethers to upgrade to the next tier, I think I have time before I get the last 18 points.
I always guessed that yellow and lower recipes provided fractional skill points based on how hard they were. I read somewhere in some leveling guide that you could predictably get skill points for a certain number of combines at a certain skill level, which wouldn't happen with a random chance.
"Puns are inherently evil, in the "must do evil!" sort of way."
I've got experience with most professions and the first 10 yellow are almost always worth doing before getting to 350-360 (and the 290-300 bracket), usually get the first 4 (or 7-9) at 1 skill up per and the rest at 2 (or even 2 skill ups per 1 combine when the one before gave 0).
Obviously this is just going on "my feel" rather than hard evidence. Also, fuck you 365+ [your profession here].
I always guessed that yellow and lower recipes provided fractional skill points based on how hard they were. I read somewhere in some leveling guide that you could predictably get skill points for a certain number of combines at a certain skill level, which wouldn't happen with a random chance.
Nah. Sit around on a new alt with a nice large pile of linen or wool and watch as you'll make 10 green bandages without any points, then get 3 skillups in a row, then 4 without points, then another skill up, then 5 more without points etc etc.
I've got experience with most professions and the first 10 yellow are almost always worth doing before getting to 350-360 (and the 290-300 bracket), usually get the first 4 (or 7-9) at 1 skill up per and the rest at 2 (or even 2 skill ups per 1 combine when the one before gave 0).
Obviously this is just going on "my feel" rather than hard evidence. Also, fuck you 365+ [your profession here].
Or 340+ for leatherworking, which is more because of:
a) lack of trained/vendor recipes (it's a really good laugh that our last trainable recipe, the drums of war, starts yellow just to make sure LW above 340 is permanently starved of orange recipes)
b) skinning knothide scraps all the way to 70 and beyond. For those not in the know, it takes 5 scraps to make 1 knothide.
c) Sheer volume of mats need combined with slow acquisition due to b) above. It takes 50 knothide to make a relatively "cheap" recipe which is yellow at 360 (fel leather boots), plus primals and fel hides. The best orange recipe at 365 (heavy clefthoof vest) only takes 30 knothide... oh, and it takes 40 clefthoof leather, 25% or so skin from clefthoofs... you could depopulate nagrand without having enough making that one. It also needs primal earths, but those are the easy bits.
d) lack of skinners to buy from, because most of them realised ages ago that herbalism or mining is more useful and also provides some buffs and goodies or primals and gems, whereas skinners have nothing.
e) By the time you get to the point you can make the stuff you stuck around for (375), you can't actually gain skill from it.
f) LW in raids is basically for drums. There is one trainer drum pattern. There are two drum patterns from rep, but both need exalted (sha'tar and keepers of time, no cenarion or thrallmar easymode exalted!). The other two known drum patterns are world drops which cannot be farmed.
Just venting really, but seriously LW needs a major overhaul. Probably too late to get the levelling process fixed, but if we can get a higher leather skin rate and some new, good, recipes... oh, and a buff for skinning a la mining, with a chance to "skin" various primals (mana and water maybe, since fire earth and life are already done elsewhere and air makes no sense).
I always guessed that yellow and lower recipes provided fractional skill points based on how hard they were. I read somewhere in some leveling guide that you could predictably get skill points for a certain number of combines at a certain skill level, which wouldn't happen with a random chance.
Nah. Sit around on a new alt with a nice large pile of linen or wool and watch as you'll make 10 green bandages without any points, then get 3 skillups in a row, then 4 without points, then another skill up, then 5 more without points etc etc.
I agree. I've leveled FA, Enchanting and now Jewelcrafting while sitting next to someone at the same level, making the same stuff. Sometimes she'll get 5 skillpoints for making the same number of things it takes me to get 3 on a yellow recipe.
I think with skinning there is some sort of "partial point", but I agree with the above poster it is very random and you often get clumps (due to the bad RNG) otherwise.
Generally I work on going about 5 points in to yellow, as the skillup chance is still near 100% unless the yellow range is really small. Normally 6 or 7 yellow combines after something turns yellow will get you 5 skillups.
I have a working theory just from experience in that skillup chance is something like (When grey) - (current skill) / [ (When grey) - (when yellow) + 1 ]
I.e. if you have 100 skill and something has just turned yellow, the item goes grey at 150 then you have 150-100 / 150 - 100 +1 = 50/51 i.e. 98% skillup chance. As you skillup at 125 the recipe goes green, and you have 25/51 = 49% chance of skillup. When you skillup to 140 you have 10/51 chance of skill up i.e. about 20%, and at 149, just before it goes grey you have about a 2% chance of skillup.
I have 8 chars lvl 60 or above, and all of them have a trade skill of 300 or over (with only 3 gathering skills between them), so I have spent a lot of time leveling all tradeskills. The formula may not be exactly right but it is not far out I think.
Semi-anecdotal, based on levelling enchanting 5 times to 300 in the last year and once to 375, and then raising 5 tailors to 300, followed by 4 of them to 350 and one to 375:
- Tailor skillups come a lot less reliably on yellow/green than do enchanting
- There is something going on, post-300, within a 5-band of a yellow, at least in tailoring. Previously I could count on the next 5 points being 1-2 combines per point, and probably 1. I noticed, extremely consistently, skillups 1-3 coming in 1-2 points (probably 1), skillup 4 being a tad harder, and skillup #5 actually being closer to an average of 3-4 combines (my highest was 8.) Two friends who levelled up leatherworking also saw the same pattern of that point #5 on a yellow combine.
For my last tailor (and for 360-375, after I noticed this pattern, on my primary tailor), I did orange combines for the last points of a set of 5 yellows and it was far more effective.
Fishing skillups appear to be very deterministic. It seems as though you need (CurrentLevel / 30) Successful fishes to get the next skill, but also that your skill is recorded fractionally. So when you're at 9.5 fishes needed per level, it will go 9, 10, 9, 10, etc.
02/15/07, 12:57 PM
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