Fix Professions... PLEASE

phaadnightsong

I found the old post and was informed that I should start a new one on this subject so here it is.

I have actually put a lot of thought, time and effort in this very subject, not that it will even see any of the follow put into the game, but here it goes. There are some things in here that will work for all of the professions, which I will put on the first one and adjust as I go.

Leadership: Once the only profession worth doing because of the RAD you got from it, is now the worst of them all. Black Ice Shaping ranks faster and you can't even get it until your level 60 or 70 now. It is the only profession that can only have two resources for virtually every task, and the only profession that doesn't naturally improve its own tools; Armor and Swords, and is the slowest to level up, obviously.
To fix this;

• Cut the training time for getting a new person. Seriously. Let's put this back into the parent games terms- who's gonna take 18hrs to hire ONE Merc!? I could see it if you're stuck out in the rural countryside, but even then, there's at least one idiot farm boy who dreams of adventure and he's cheap to hire. In a major city, throw a rock and you'll hit two or three on the bounce and can test their ability at the same time when they come after you. Mercenaries = 6 hours. Guards = 9 hours. Footman = 12 hours. Man-at-Arms from 6-8 footman who tried out = 18 hours.
  
• Add in two more resource slots for more manpower on a task. Having only 2 max persons doing training I can see, but to have that carry over to ALL other tasks is just dumb, plus all other professions have the main plus three assistants/tools, a squad of mercs or greater should be sent for tasks that require protection or assault, things that require stealth or subtlety should only be a two man operation. Adjust the time required slightly and the rewards up a bit for the added bodies.
  
• Add new tasks similar to the ones in other professions such as the deep resource gathering and mass crafting. Some suggestions would be; Tend to horses/saddles, craft training dummies/targets, gather training tools, repair the previous items and the like for a faster leveling and reduce or even remove the XP gain from hiring and training resources.
  
• Care and Maintenance: new for Leadership where the proper care and maintenance of the armor and swords can get you better quality items of that type. Basically, this ensures that the equipment is able to be used for many years to come, even if those using them to start with are not. As with the Man-at-Arms above; Common item gained from 6-8 worn items that have been well cared and maintained and this can take no less than three days to complete. Rare item from 6-8 common ones for no less than five days. Epic item from 6-8 rare ones for no less than a week.
  
• Introduce Artifact and Legendary resources; which could be tide to guild level much the same way masterwork items currently are. With 4 orange resources you could get a tier 3 at 95 or even 100%.
  

Jewelcrafting:Most Idiotic skill progression EVER! When one thinks of a Witch, they think Morgan Le Fey or pointy hats and such as with the garb they wear, which is cloth, mostly. And, when one thinks of a Defender of this genre, they usual bring chainmail to mind as is common. So, how does something made for a witch, a caster mind you, suddenly turn into something for a defender, a melee combatant!? If this were Alchemy, I could possibly see this happening, but this is Jewelcrafting and there should be a fundamental schism in the crafting for better magic channeling and for enhanced martial prowess. I'm gonna use refining here as a reference to explain this profession. Let's say you have a rank 8 dark and you are gonna upgrade it to a Rank 9, you have to have another Rank 8 dark to do it, which makes sense. This profession is the equivalent of using a rank 7 of ANY type to successfully upgrade that Rank 8 dark to a rank 9 dark.
To fix this:

• Witch items only make things up to and including the Reformation and Mage items. The then crafted Reformation item becomes the base item for the Defender pieces and the the new Replenishment items. You still have Witch making Defender, but you have to go through the conversion process first. With the creation of the first Reformation piece, there will be NO Caster pieces ever used to craft a Melee piece. The Reformation line will be used instead.
  
• Mage items plus the corresponding Replenishment items make the Wizard items. This shows increase power magnitude for the new item.
  
• Defender plus Replenishment to make the Warrior items and again showing an increase in the items power by requiring the Reformation item.
  
• Replenishment comes into play to craft the Renewal items.
  
• Wizard is added to Renewal to make Archmage items. These are the new items that one normally has to wait for during those special hours when this item could be crafted and then hope that they have the stuff to make it at the top tier.
  
• Warrior is added to Renewal is needed to craft the Knight pieces which are actually on the same par as the Wizard items in terms of stats and crafting level. Knight pieces should then be added to Renewal items of the same type to make the new Marshal pieces that would be the equal of the Archmage items. This could be a good spot to put the New Restoration items that would be made from the Renewal.
  
• Aberrant and Adamant items require the Archmage items for the stats they improve and the Marshal for the stats they enhance. This means you would have to have Archmage plus Restoration to make the Aberrant or Adamant piece and same for Marshal.
  
• Personalized items: these require the appropriate stat match item so we would have an Archmage, Adamant or Aberrant and Restoration to upgrade our Archmage, Adamant or Aberrant piece, of the same type, much the same way higher refinements are made. This is the same for upgrading the Marshal items.
  
• The Hourly bonus items will be the ones with the + to them which still require the materials much the same way refinements are done, i.e. +1 and another +1 to craft the +2, +2 with another +2 for the +3 and so on. But, you will have to wait for the +4, +5 and +6 to come up in that hour bonus time when you can craft the really good stuff. Higher level items may require more of the Restoration item pieces to make. The quality of the item being used in the process WILL Improve the chance of the quality being at least as good or better in the new item and will never negatively impact the results.
  

Leatherworking, Mailsmithing, Platesmithing, Tailoring, and Weaponsmithing all have the process done right. They use the exact same item to make a new upgrade, but for some reason, Jewecrafting didn't get the memo or something. These will see changes in the way those specialty hour only type pieces come up, as will all professions that depend on the +1- +6 bonus to the item. 1 -3 can be crafted without waiting, on the same 1+ and +1 to get +2 and so on. +4,+5, and +6 will still need to be caught during the special hour, when they can.

Artificing: This one only has the common flaw in that the things you really need to make can only be found during that one hour window, if ever, and you're lucky if you catch it. So it will be able to craft +1 -+3 without a problem, but will have to catch those +4 - +6's when they can.

Lastly we come to the fastest leveling profession coin and AD can buy and that is none other than Alchemy!
If you have the cash and diamonds to do it, this one can will max out pretty quick. The other thing is to stockpile all those low level potions on the character that will be doing the Alchemy, so you don't have to buy so many from the auction later. save the potion for the profession. The one other BIG thing about this one is the research. You Only get ONE person and One resource to work on the Research and it can only be done once for that really long time.
This makes sense, to a degree, but I would think that adding more of the Resources from lab would allow for a shorter time requirement AND limit what the rest of the lab could be doing while the research is going on, add in the requirement for a higher tier resource the higher up you go and you really limit the rest of the lab's efforts, because you could buy this one pretty easily, if you catch the items at the right price point as the offset.

Let me know what you think about this if anything is unclear I will do my best to clear up the confusion.

scathias

The only thing wrong with leadership IMO is that it takes too darn long to level. Way too long. They could cut the leveling time by 70% and still be longer than other professions. The return is worth it though, leadership is the most consistent return for the least effort in the game. You don't get big gains every day, but you do get very consistent gains without having to micro manage or pay additional AD for resources or tools/assets.

If you have noticed, AD and labor (gained from leadership) are the only things that people are drowning in now. Surplus equipment, and gems (made from the other professions) have a pretty complicated recipe to build and offer nothing like the return of the AD/labor tasks in leadership.

What I am very surprised at is that you think that the other professions besides leadership and jewelcrafting are actually ok. Reward wise those are all absolutely horrible. No one needs that stuff end game for weaponsmithing/artificing, and while leveling they are not necessary either, in fact by the time you can craft a weapon for your level you have leveled past it. the armor professions make shirt/pants and those are good, but that is all, no competitive armors, nothing you would even want to search out and use as a new lv 70. And those are made entirely by other people if you buy them on the AH, it is much cheaper to do that then spend the effort and resources leveling your own armor profession for to make a shirt and pants. But jewelcrafting gives personalized rings, which are not BIS for everyone anymore, but at least give a pretty good bit of customization. Personalized Necks and belts really are not worth it, and never were because of artifact gear unfortunately, but the rings are a cool thing.

Basically, you are arguing over form and structure and semantics when the whole reason for doing professions (the rewards at the end) are so flawed.

phaadnightsong

scathias said:

The only thing wrong with leadership IMO is that it takes too darn long to level. Way too long. They could cut the leveling time by 70% and still be longer than other professions. The return is worth it though, leadership is the most consistent return for the least effort in the game. You don't get big gains every day, but you do get very consistent gains without having to micro manage or pay additional AD for resources or tools/assets.

Adding in something similar to the mass or deep aspects from the other professions- where they get the lions share of their XP gains- and removing it from the hire and manpower upgrades would allow it to level more on par with the others.

scathias said:

If you have noticed, AD and labor (gained from leadership) are the only things that people are drowning in now. Surplus equipment, and gems (made from the other professions) have a pretty complicated recipe to build and offer nothing like the return of the AD/labor tasks in leadership.

Am I correct in the meaning of this to be the crates for guild donations? As for the other professions, I have more than a few at level 25, without having the stronghold bonuses to make higher level stuff and they have little to no effort to make crates.

scathias said:

What I am very surprised at is that you think that the other professions besides leadership and jewelcrafting are actually ok. Reward wise those are all absolutely horrible. No one needs that stuff end game for weaponsmithing/artificing, and while leveling they are not necessary either, in fact by the time you can craft a weapon for your level you have leveled past it. the armor professions make shirt/pants and those are good, but that is all, no competitive armors, nothing you would even want to search out and use as a new lv 70. And those are made entirely by other people if you buy them on the AH, it is much cheaper to do that then spend the effort and resources leveling your own armor profession for to make a shirt and pants. But jewelcrafting gives personalized rings, which are not BIS for everyone anymore, but at least give a pretty good bit of customization. Personalized Necks and belts really are not worth it, and never were because of artifact gear unfortunately, but the rings are a cool thing.

The idea behind almost every profession in every game I have ever played it all the same. You are not building the things that you can build for your personal use, you're building them for others to buy out of the AH. That's the planning that goes into those types of professions. As for the personalized items, I am never on when the items to actually get them made so I can actually personalize anything.

scathias said:

Basically, you are arguing over form and structure and semantics when the whole reason for doing professions (the rewards at the end) are so flawed.

It all boils down to the fact that professions are rarely, if ever, for those who are doing them. And, when it gets to a certain point they are only marginally good for an extremely limited items, which at never even throughout all of the professions.

The changes I proposed were make sense of Jewelcrafting- it's a mess, and to get Leadership on par with the rest of the professions for gaining levels better. Obviously they all need tweaking for the end game, which would be a very good idea for another thread- Fix END GAME Profession, Please.

scathias

Ok, but except for shirts and pants none of the professions (excluding alchemy and jewelcrafting) have anything worth selling. No armors, no weapons, none of that is worth buying.

The crates for SH donations is what i meant yes, and the ones that make gems and surplus require 10 hours of crafting time for materials using basic gather/refine (which is the fastest over time) and then 6 hours for the crate task itself. Contrast that to leadership where you get AD or labor every 6 hours and the difference is immense. If you use deep gathering then crafting time for the materials is increased because deep gathering/refining is less efficient.

You talk about leveling professions via gathering/deep gathering and saying that is where people get their XP for leveling from... that is wrong. If you level a profession in the shortest amount of time you are gathering as little as possible and making items whenever you can. No one makes Mercs and footmen for the leadership XP, that is a ridiculous waste of time. To craft a full set of 9 footmen (lv 3) it takes 2592 hours, and all of that can be done concurrently, so assuming 9 slots you spend 288 hours per slot crafting 9 footmen. That is 12 days, which seems like a lot, but then you recall you never ever have to touch those tasks again... and I have not. So that is not where the XP comes from. Or, you can buy the footmen on the AH for like 3.5k a piece as of 5 minutes ago.

The strength of leadership is that it is a set and forget profession that benefits you the player. You say that professions are rarely, if ever, for those who are doing them. Well leadership is for the player. Leadership requires none of the micro management of the other professions, you do a task you get a reward. If you add gathering/refining to leadership you remove all that benefit of being able to do leadership once or twice a day once it is leveled and bring it back to being as tedious a profession as it is while you are leveling it.

Leveling leadership sucks, and it can definitely use some work, but most of that work can be done simply by changing the XP required per level on the way to lv 20. from lv 21 on leadership is a great thing to level, you get rewards and XP at the same and progression feels natural and significant. lv 16-21 is terribly slow though and does not have good rewards at all.