Disenchant option 3.3 a bad thing for enchanters?Follow

They are actually EXTREMELY different from the DE option.

A. Mining and Prospecting

Prospecting's purpose is to increase the amount of gems in the market, so as to keep prices lower. If it did not exist, the price for an uncut gem would be immense, and the cut version ridiculously so. Prospecting ore itself is not a lucrative business (and you need a high level enchanter and alchemist to even make a decent return from it reliably). 20 Saronite can easily come out to be worth less post Prospecting.

Furthermore, gems are already available outside of Prosp. If you mine a Saronite node in an instance, you can get any gem that Prospecting the ore can give you. The latter sacrifices the ore for a guaranteed gem, yes. But the fact remains that the gems are readably available without the profession, even if much more annoying to obtain. Prosp. is meant to supply the JC with gems to use their crafting profession, not to be used as the primary skill.

Most importantly, unless the JC has quite a bit of money flowing in from another source, they NEED to take the Mining sub skill. So, if you are in an instance with another miner, you are already rolling (or letting them have the node) for whoever has the right to it. That miner could just as easily have said "Hey, how about you mine it and we roll for the gems?"

But here we come to the biggest road block--Prospecting requires 5 ore. It isn't a "per item" system like enchanting is. Do you just not have the option if you mine 4 ore? That means anything but a pure node won't offer the possibility. Do you let them prospect lower amounts of ore? Then that is giving an ADVANTAGE to non-JCers in regards to prospecting. You get to do it for smaller amounts than I do.

Also important is the fact that this is a privilege being given ONLY to the miner, where DE is a group option. So now you are giving one specific person the subskill from another profession without them having to take it (when the JC in question DOES need to take mining). But, the only way to make it fair would be for groups to roll on any ore and gems that are mined. But the whole point of that profession is to harvest items, which means you are completely breaking it in a group. And I'd love to see the Miner's reaction when they lose the roll on a TTS node to a non-miner in a Chillmaw group.

2. Herbalism is similar but still different.

A. Inscription is able to produce good glyphs at many skill levels, from a variety of herbs. And many of these glyphs will be used at cap. So prices don't soar like Enchanting prices did, when only top-level gear gives the mats you need.

B. Like Prospecting, it requires a gathering profession. If I want to make pigments, I either have to buy herbs or use a second profession to get the mats in order to make them. That means I cannot take up a second profession unless I have income from another source.

C. Like Prospecting, we have the same problem of it requiring 5 herbs and only being specific to one additional person. Except we have an even bigger problem. I believe herbs cap at 3. So either we just don't offer it for herbalism, or you have to open up the herb rolls to the group. Which, again, destroys the purpose of the profession.

D. Why would you want the pigments instead? They sell super slowly. And the glyphs aren't expensive to begin with.

So, when it comes down to it, if we open up the group-loot option on Milling and Prospecting, we'd still get a huge imbalance in favor of Enchanting. Enchanting doesn't rely on a second profession to produce mats like the others do. Furthermore, they DO regularly get mats for the sub skill where the others do not. Unlike Prospecting, they are the sole source for the mats. Unlike both, they only take one item to use. Unlike Milling, they produce items that are expensive and fast selling.

Really, enchanting was very imbalanced. And it still is, just not as badly as before.

Look at it like this:

Before now, I could get gems in a variety of ways not using players, and just pay the JC to cut it. I can buy them with emblems, with honor buy an Icy Prism CD, or get some from Obyxia. And that's just if I DIDN'T have mining.

With Inscription, I couldn't get Pigments on my own, no. But because it wasn't a huge profit and time difference to mill, it wasn't hard (if you wanted to) to bring them the herbs and have them mill it for mats (usually keeping the remainder). Because none of the items were BoP, and the profit margin was lower to begin with.

Enchanters, on the other hand, used mats that were only obtainable from the AH or from Purple items you could trade them for in a short window of time. This meant that you needed to receive the item whilst with one in your group, and have them be willing to DE it. You couldn't buy the raw materials and have them DE it.

Well, you could, but it was ludicrously more expensive to do so (the price of BoE purples is generally astronomical compared to an Abyss Crystal. And they are few in number).

That meant that Enchanters *completely* owned the mat market, which wasn't the case with the other two.

It's pointless to ask the question and then limit the response. The problems with enchanting weren't so direct as "we are doing x to solve y." It is more like "We are doing x, and will later do y and z, in order to fix a, b, c and d." It's the same thing as arguing against a class nerf by saying it will lower your DpS. That's all well and good, but you need to take everything into account to evaluate a change.

[EDIT] And, as to disabling it, then you aren't solving the problem. Enchanters had 100% domination over the mat market before 3.3. That was not the case with any other profession. Or, if it was, the market was designed so as to be low profit at best, and only of interest to those with the profession. [/EDIT]



Because that would be WAY too imbalanced. The problem wasn't that enchanters had an upper hand in the mat market--that was fine. Just like skinners, herbalists, JCs, etc. have an upper hand in their markets (only exceptions I can think of are Frost Lotus, Arctic Furs and pigments, but those are generally much smaller percentages of profit).

The point is to make mats available outside of enchanting, so that non-enchanters aren't completely ruled by them. It isn't to completely make the sub-skill useless within groups.



A. "It's not like..." is the same argument used against giving certain skills to other classes, like Mortal Strike and such. Sometimes, balance requires something not be 100% unique. It's a fact we have to live with.

B. Not wanting to level enchanting is irrelevant. I'd bet there are more enchanters than BSs.

C. No, it isn't. Blizzard never said "You will always have 100% access to this subskill." They aren't giving away what defines the class. Players chose to focus on DEing at the expense of selling enchants. That's their problem. The skill has alaways been called "Enchanting." And there's a reason DE has a low skill-up cap. If you only want one small portion of the whole, you have to accept that there's a chance that portion may not always be unique.

They didn't REMOVE it. Enchanters are still the only ones that can DE outside of groups. It is fairly unique still. They just made it so that things weren't so skewed. The only other options were to add enchanting mats to vendor lists and possibly loot tables. And enchanters probably would have been more pissed about that, because then MORE would have entered the market, and they would be readily available.

And, for comparison's sake:

"Thanks for leveling your skill. We're now going to give part of it to everyone else for free."
"Thanks for leveling your hunter. We're now going to give pets to Mages, Priests, Death Knights, Shaman and Druids."

But the fact remains that Hunter pets are superior to Death Knight ones. We just both have some kind of access to them.

Edited, Jan 7th 2010 3:27pm by idiggory

When Disenchanting becomes a skill that requires effort to level on its own and independently of Enchanting, you might have an argument.



The idea isn't to balance the economy with respect to mats. The idea is to reduce the risk of someone volunteering to D/E everything and then dropping group at the end of the run with bags full of materials.



They were already doing that in dungeon runs for as long as I've been playing the game. The only thing that has changed is that now it's more convenient and enchanters don't have the option to be greedy little dorks and refuse to D/E under some naive assumption that their refusal would help preserve their market.

Possibly on some servers, but the prices have barely dropped on my server. Less than 20% for all of them. And the market still fluctuated PLENTY when only enchanters could create the mats.

"Crashed into the ground" is a vast exaggeration. If that's the case on your server, it is by far not the norm. Because demand for mats was high enough that the increased number entering the market barely changed the price. Excessive drops in price just mean you run with tons of idiots, or PvE above heroics is nearly nonexistant on your server.

But, regardless, a drop in profit for Enchanters is really irrelevant. You were the outlier in craft balance and needed to be reigned in. And, guess what, you still have one of the higher profit potentials of all the crafts post 3.3.

Working as intended.

How much of the extra mats on the market are as the result of people spamming heroics in vast numbers? My first WoW character was an enchanter. My first level capped character in TBC was that character. I've never vendored a BoE green. If it wasn't your average Joe flooding the market with mats gained from a D/E roll in a dungeon, it would be enchanters themselves undercutting the hell out of one another just to move their product.

That's a side of it I didn't even think of Wondrous... I'm the type that buys epic gems and the best enchants as soon as I get a new piece, so the players that are now buying enchants that wouldn't before didn't even enter my mind.

I don't think this is happening on my server, since enchant prices have gone up, not down, and shouts in trade are virtually non-existant unless the prices on the AH are actually ludicrous (Blade Ward shout the other day, and I checked the AH. 1 up for over 1K. LOL no). So I imagine people aren't really getting them on my server, because they are cheaper.

But I'm sure this is a change on SOME servers.

Enchanters on my realm must be smart. Knowing that they are the only ones that can control the enchant market, they rarely do anything just for tips. And it seems the prices they charge in addition to your mats tend to keep people using the AH unless they absolutely need it for that night's progression run. Enchanters stay rich, but there are more options available at least.

It's the enchanters that are willing to ***** themselves out that are at risk of ruining markets. Because, in the end, players are going to be buying the goods within acceptable limits if they have to.

Also, why do you think that this is only because 3.3 and how they handle disenchanting? I would put money that the major reason the enchanting market has gone down is because more people are running more instances. Before 3.3 I might hit one or two instances a week per toon, and that depended on what the random daily was. Now I will hit one a day per toon. That is 2-3 times more runs. My stockpile of dusts and essences have gone up and not because of the de change, I have a chanter I send all my boe's to, but because I run more instances.

If you look at the total instances run the weeks before 3.3, and the weeks after 3.3, I would bet they have at least doubled. And this would at least double the amount of enchanting mats available. In all, with other enchanters in the group, all this has done for me is save on mailing. I now get to mail stacks of dust and essence to my enchanter, not the 4+ items that the stack was made from.

Enchanting is NOT 2 profesions in one. It is one crafting profession, just like all the others.

Gathering Professions - These professions create/gather items from special nodes. Only people with the specific profession can gather from those nodes. They are basically creating the items at the time of gathering for zero cost, other that time it takes to gather. Miners gather from mine nodes, Herbalists gather from herb nodes, Skinners gather from dead animals that are considered nodes.

Crafting professions - Transform items into other items. A blacksmith turns bars into armor/weapons. Alchemists turn herbs in flasks/potions. Scribes turn herbs into inks then into Glyphs. Basically crafting profession take items of intrinsic value and transform them into other items. at the basic level.

Does an enchanter gather? No. The don't have special access to greens, blues, or purples that other non-enchanters can't get. Random loot drops happens to everyone no matter thier profession. They transform green, blues, purples into enchanting mats. Same way a JC transforms ore into gems or scribes transfor herbs into inks.

Is enchanting a crafting profession? Yes! No one would argue that they transform items(mats) into other items (enchants/scrolls). The problem comes in when they need to do the first step, creating mats. Are these mats free to the enchanter? NO! The enchanting mats are TRANSFORMED from greens, blues, purples that have an instrinsic value. Very similiar to transforming inks/gems.
Just because there is no gathering profession closely tied to enchanting doesn't make it 2 professions in 1. Just like tailoring, enchanting does not need a gathering profesion to produce their mats. They are both forced to have antoher profession create mats or buy the mats from the AH. Tailors need dusts to make high level clothes and enchanter need greens or better items to transform in needed mats. Smart enchanters use a 2nd crafting profession to make their own green, blues, purples, usually tailoring (see the dust tie in?)