oday we will look at a build that is great right now and quite easy to set up that will scale well into the entire expansion.
Premium materials
Getting q3 materials will be a necessity for the entire expansion. WIth the general ability to reach guaranteed max quality with a full build and all max quality reagents this is a big thing. Alloys are needed for a wide variety of crafts that players want including crafted plate armor, profession tools, crafted weapons and weapon stones. All of these items will have demand for a long time as players get new alts and more sparks.
The build
The build is extremely straightforward. You will be slamming points into the Means of Production tree, focusing on the alloy nodes. Currently the price of rank 1 and rank 2 materials is very close, which means the scope for cost optimization is a little small. You can reach skill levels where you can use a good chunk of rank 1 materials and concentrate up to max quality still, but the difference is not huge. Once you can reach quality 3 alloys with concentration and full materials you have a choice between focusing on more skill or adding more other stats.
Everburning forge
Sadly the everburning forge buff for blacksmiths is less valuable than some other specs as the main benefit is only available for 10 minutes at the time. You will get more concentration back through ingenuity, but the multicraft and resourcefulness buffs are less valuable when you can’t spam craft.
Extension
Personally I think the long term potential is very good. You want to grab the skill nodes until you have them all. Then you want to go into everburning forge to massively increase your profit potential when mass crafting.
Best stats
Multicraft is generally the best stat for any craft that can multicraft. Ingenuity only refunds 50% of the concentration when it procs, which makes it significantly worse than multicraft which gives you on average 1.5 times the base yield extra when it procs. Multicraft is currently strictly better for every craft, so you want multicraft on your tool. For the enchant ingenuity is probably better than resourcefulness, but the difference is smaller.
I know this is focused on solely a blacksmithing build, but don’t write off the Everburning Ignition buff! Right now my best gold maker is actually using a fully maxed out Everburning buff to crank out tons of q1 Core Alloys (using a multicraft stat tool) and turn them into the basic blacksmith profession hammers (using a resourcefulness stat tool). I then send those to my Enchanter who’s focused on maxed out disenchanting, mainly for greens.
This shuffle has given me anywhere from 15% to 50% profit on selling dust, depending on the day and time.
I’m actually now putting points into the alloy trees to increase the multicraft as well as pivot into using concentration for some of these higher demand q3 alloys