So I just decided to start reading up on professions in BfA. I’ll go into a very quick overview of how professions look and my initial impressions. We will be going into this in more detail as we approach the launch date, which is just five short weeks away! All of the information here is sourced from WoWhead.

Overall profession systems

The main things to note in BfA are:

• Overhaul to old world professions
• The rank system for crafting recipes from Legion is retained
• 3 different BoP reagents, one that you can produce from scrapping items, one from dungeon bosses and one from raid bosses

We’ll cover my thoughts on these facets of BfA professions in this post and then get into specific professions and crafts in later posts.

 Old world overhaul

Each expansion will now have separate skill levels. To get outland recipes you will need to leve using outland specific recipes to get the maximum outland skill. This is the same for all expansions.

This will potentially have a significant long term impact on old world material prices. Now anyone at max skill level will automatically get all the skill levels for the old expansions, so most active players will not need any materials for this.

But every new character made that wants to craft old expansion stuff will have to level using expansion specific materials. Stocking up on profession materials that are already high in demand can be a great idea. This will primarily be materials used to craft the various mounts. Ghost Iron, Trillium, Living Steel, Pyrium etc. are all great candidates to stock up on.

In addition to the effect on materials it will have an effect on the crafted items. With a higher barrier to entry you will get fewer new entrants into most old world markets. I expect old world crafting will be better in BfA than ever because of this.

Rank System retained

This was one of the major changes to professions in Legion. The main takeaway from this is of course the importance of getting rank 3 recipes as soon as possible. We don’t know how rank 3s are obtained yet, and it will obviously vary from profession to profession.

Being the first to get a rank 3 recipe in a high volume market will be a massive leg up. This will be the best way to exploit the early expansion rush. I haven’t looked at recipes and costs yet, but I expect rank 3s will be most important for darkmoon trinkets, enchants and alchemy.

Targeting a hard to get rank 3 recipe with high expected demand is definitely my best advice for the beginning of BfA!

3 new BoP reagents

This is a change I am very happy with. The main BoP reagent in Legion was Blood of Sargeras and it could only be obtained from going out in the world. I am primarily a gold maker, and I don’t have too much time to play the game so I was starved for Bloods the majority of the expansion.

The 3 new reagents in BfA are:

1. Expulsom, obtained from scrapping items
2. Hydrocore, obtained from mythic dungeon end bosses
3. Sanguicell, obtained from raid bosses

Based on the current information posted on reddit here it looks like the two recipes from dungeons and raid bosses are only used to craft high level BoP gear. This is great as you will most likely be able to craft the BfA equivalent of item level 850 gear using expulsom that can be mass produced.

The entry level crafted gear has been a great seller throughout all of Legion and it looks like you can craft all the required items using only materials you can obtain through pure crafting!

First thoughts

Overall I really like the way professions are looking on the systems level. I think it’s great that blizzard are making old world crafts and materials relevant again as they haven’t been in a while with all the catch-up mechanics.

The rank system is a mixed bag, but overall changes that increase barriers to entry are good as long as you can be bothered passing them.

Assuming the current information on the BoP reagens are correct I am really excited about the armor and weapon crafting professions. I think they will likely be very strong in BfA, barring any changes. And this doesn’t even take into account any of the new utility items that we will be diving into over the next weeks!

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