Next up on my previews of Dragonflight professions is the last armor crafting profession: tailoring.
Recipe types
The main item type you craft with tailoring is unsurprisingly cloth armor. Since there’s only one armor type the cloth crafting tree is divided into three recipe classes for knowledge. This is similar to Blacksmithing, whereas leatherworking makes do with two nodes per armor type.
The specializations
There’s 4 specializations, Tailoring mastery, which gives generic bonuses, Textiles for profesion goods and materials, Draconic Needlework for the special effects armors Azureweave and Chronocloth and Garmentcrafting for the basic armors.
Overall I favor Garmentcrafting and Draconic Needlework, with the exact balance depending on which bonus effect turns out to be strongest. Textiles is best left to a pure cloth crafting alt, where you stack inspiration.
Azureweave and Chronocloth
Dragonflight sees the return of cooldown based tailoring materials. Both Azureweave and Chronocloth are limited by charges. You get 10 charges baseline, and can unlock more. It looks the charges reset with the daily reset, but not sure if you get them all or they recharge 1 by 1. Specializing in Draconic needlework can decrease the cooldown, increase the skill for q3 and gives you significant multicraft bonuses. Like most intermediate materials I have tested it is impossible to guarantee q3, and you will rely on inspiration and procs to get you there.
Knowledge break points
The break points we aim for are all very similar to what we’ve seen with blacksmithing and Leatherworking. You can reach Q5 of the first basic recipe at knowledge 43, then 68 for a q5 embellished, 90 for a quality 5 imythic infused basic recipe and 110 for a q5 infused/(embellished recipe. Even with knowledge maxed out you will fall barely short of the required skill for a mythic infused Azureweave or Chronocloth recipe, so these will have to be recrafted with inspiration to reach the highest possible item level.
Optimal knowledge points strategy
I think there’s a very strong case for having at least two tailors. That way one can focus on inspiration and the material nodes, including chronocloth and azureweaving. The other one will focus on garmentcrafting and draconic needlework and use the materials to actually craft. Hopefully you can get enough knowledge to get to q3 of the intermediate materials without leveling to max, as otherwise the market will be very limited.
Material build
For the material crafter you’ll want to max out Draconic Needlework, then put 15 points each into Azureweaving Tailoring and Chronocloth Tailoring before maxing the end-nodes Azureweaving and Timeweaving. You’ll then head over to tailoring mastery where you will want to put 10 points into tailoring mastery, then 30 points into Shrewd Stitchery for inspiration, before coming back for the last 20 points of tailoring mastery, or putting points into Textiles and Weaving.
Armor build
The armor build is a lot more straighforward. You will beeline for the end-node of the armor slot you focus one and max out the final node. If the best embellished effect is from Azureweaving of chronoweaving you will then want to head into the relevant specialization to unlock the recipe.
Notable recipes
Below is a list of the recipes that most excite me, alongside some quick notes on how you would go about profiting from them, as well as their source. This includes recipes from all sources. There’s no huge surprise that armor is in general my favorite item type for these professions. Stackable items like the spellthread enchants can still be good, but you are competing in a much larger pool, and lower deposit costs mean the economy for cancel scans is better.
Recipe acquisition
The most important reputations to focus on for tailoring is the Valdrakken Accord and Dragonscale expedition. In particular the Valdrakken Accord gives you access to certain draconic needlework recipes, as well as powerfull profession gear. As with Leatherworking there’s a slew of recipes that can be traded on the auction house, so keep an eye out for those.