Thursday, April 02, 2020

Jewelcrafting in Battle For Azeroth

My paladin is a Jewelcrafter. This expansion was very weird for that profession.

On the demand-side, sockets became part of titan-forging. There's a small chance that any piece of gear drops with a socket on it. But it's pretty rare. I think I have one piece (other than my crafted ring) with a socket at the moment. So not very many people were buying gems this expansion.

On the supply-side, jewelcrafters were flooded with gems. The number of raw materials gained per unit of ore was very high, much higher than in previous expansions. I think I have over 100 of each rare gem in my inventory, just left over from crafting the rings.

That combination of low demand and high supply drove gem prices very low, and made the profession very disappointing.

For solutions, on the demand-side, I would have liked to see a socket be the "first level" of titan-forging. If a piece of gear titan-forges, it always gets a socket. It may get additional bonuses after, but it starts with a socket. This would make the demand for gems higher and more consistent. In addition, it would also smooth out the power of titan-forging. Socketed pieces were generally considered better than 10-15 extra item levels.

Another idea is to allow jewelcrafters (or maybe blacksmiths) to make an item which adds a socket to a weapon. Like Ramaladni's Gift from Diablo 3. This would also make it a little easier to use the main stat gems for hybrid classes, as weapons don't often share primary stats in endgame.

On the supply-side, simply produce less raw materials per ore. Also instead of having special colors that weren't used for stat gems, have those recipes use two or more regular gems.

Jewelcrafting in Battle For Azeroth was a disappointing profession. Let's hope that Shadowlands makes it more useful.

2 comments:

  1. Talk about disappointing profession, I have one of each (I have lots of alts), but my main used to be JC/Engineering. I've already level Engineering twice during vanilla (drop it to pickup herbalist for the AQ farming) so I'm not doing that again. For BoA, I did mining and Engineering. The amount of toys I got from this expansion isn't anything to write home about. My warrior drop her Blacksmith and pickup the JC slot, mainly to craft gems for everyone else.

    Right now the only profession that I'm getting full use out of are Tailoring (to make WoD bags that still sells well) and Alchemy to make weekly pets.

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    1. Yeah, if I had alts, I'd probably put JC on a lesser-used one and take Alchemy. JC is just useful enough that it's not quite worth dropping. I occasionally make gems for guild members because I'm the only main character in the raid with JC.

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