Remove "Requires (PROFESSION) to use" restrictions!

[Chronoslicer]

You shouldn't need to be a tailor to know how to put on a fancy robe.
You shouldn't need tobe an engineer to learn how to use a grenade, or operate a death ray.
You shouldn't have to be a blacksmith to know how to put on a certain set of armor, etc!

Remove the restrictions entirely or give an option at each of the trainers that will teach you how to -USE- all of the profession items, for a fee!

*For example, you wouldn't ask an engineering trainer to teach you engineering, but would ask them to teach you how to use items that require engineering knowledge, for a fixed gold rate.*

Either way would give all professions more things to sell, open up the market a bit more, and the feeling of "needing" to level a certain profession to keep up with performance in various content (engi for pvp, as an example) would be greatly diminished!

Let me know what you think!

[Ugoboom]

Totally agree man. I go over this issue more generally in viewtopic.php?t=5619 on how to fix the last few cases of this issue the game has.

[Syrathegreat]

Yeah +1 and +1 to Ugoboom's thread too.

I do like some things being profession exclusive, especially with like engineering gadgets, however this should NEVER be anything player power related.

Things like teleports and cosmetics would be fine though I reckon.

[Karrados]

I never understood why the Team did nothing to change Engineer. Out of all Profession I'd call this one mandatory for anyone that wants to do DPS, Play a Druid (MCP) or even Tank for extra threat.

Not only would it give Engineers a way to make some Gold with their profession but people would actually be free to take other professions as they can buy Grenades and other gadgets.

Another option, and I can see why people would not want that, is to make Engineer a Secondary Profession.

[Rat2156]

This would only shift the balance of power from one end to another.

Currently, double crafters have the advantage as they have twice as many options when it comes to profession locked gear.
Without these restrictions, the balance shifts dramatically towards double gatherers as they can get more mats and more gold than others, as that change would simply mean you can just get everything with gold. Putting that much focus on gold also inevitably gives more power to multiboxers, alt armies, bank characters, and eventually boosters and RMT buyers.

Profession restrictions need to stay unless you want to end up with a profession landscape like retail had for over a decade where 90% of players only gather and never bother with crafting professions, but one thing that could be implemented would be the later solution of also giving player power to gatherers(such as flat stat passives like skinning has, or active abilities like herbalism had). This way, you get power both for your crafting profession and for your gathering one, meaning having one of each isn't actually a loss

[Belphegore]

This would only shift the balance of power from one end to another.

Currently, double crafters have the advantage as they have twice as many options when it comes to profession locked gear.
Without these restrictions, the balance shifts dramatically towards double gatherers as they can get more mats and more gold than others, as that change would simply mean you can just get everything with gold. Putting that much focus on gold also inevitably gives more power to multiboxers, alt armies, bank characters, and eventually boosters and RMT buyers.
(.....)

Fully agree, I think that tailoring and engineering will then just end up not being used as much as now. Especially tailoring will be even more than now a profession which only produces single use items (no reoccurring gold) other than Mooncloth CD. It makes then even more sense to just go double gathering and sell the mats to afford the one time necessary equipment and then afterwards keep making gold with gathering.

[Ugoboom]

Fully agree, I think that tailoring and engineering will then just end up not being used as much as now. Especially tailoring will be even more than now a profession which only produces single use items (no reoccurring gold) other than Mooncloth CD. It makes then even more sense to just go double gathering and sell the mats to afford the one time necessary equipment and then afterwards keep making gold with gathering.

You can't just "Other Than" the mooncloth CD. having 1 good transmute singlehandedly carries Alch, LW, and Tailoring from being not great moneymakers, into being fantastic, even more if you make an army of xmute alts.

Currently, BS is the only crafting profession that doesn't have an xmute, and has very few useful consumes it can create. It's horrible in 1.12 and would remain horrible after this proposed change... Nobody said the professions were balanced in their moneymaking. But yeah, removing the exclusive player power from professions will fix a massive glaring issue that says all PVP players NEED to go engi, and into a much more reasonable "x and y professions both make money but y more slowly", a much much better issue to have.

[Balake]

You can't just "Other Than" the mooncloth CD. having 1 good transmute singlehandedly carries Alch, LW, and Tailoring from being not great moneymakers, into being fantastic, even more if you make an army of xmute alts.

Currently, BS is the only crafting profession that doesn't have an xmute, and has very few useful consumes it can create. It's horrible in 1.12 and would remain horrible after this proposed change... Nobody said the professions were balanced in their moneymaking. But yeah, removing the exclusive player power from professions will fix a massive glaring issue that says all PVP players NEED to go engi, and into a much more reasonable "x and y professions both make money but y more slowly", a much much better issue to have.

Unironically, nerfing the mats required for elemental sharpening stones will make blacksmiths better money makers. People have this misconception that gold made by the profession correlates with the expenses of the crafting mats but that's not true. There are big crafts that cost 500g to create but sold at just 5g profit margin, and there are small crafts that are cheap but because of their usefulness and demand the person can sell for a good price.

Change elemental sharpening stone recipe from 2 elemental earths to 1, if the blacksmith was making 1g off one stone, they'll still be making 1g off one stone but each stone will be individually cheaper. Opens the market to more people, he sells more stuff and everybody benefits.

Imo Tailoring and LW are not good money makers, or at least if they were it wouldn't be thanks to the CD. Those cds are frankly very cheap. This server is ancient and a lot of people have armies of crafting alts. Making 6g every 4 days can barely be considered passive income.

[Gantulga]

Elemental sharpening stones are grossly overpriced for what they do.

[Xudo]

You can't just "Other Than" the mooncloth CD. having 1 good transmute singlehandedly carries Alch, LW, and Tailoring from being not great moneymakers, into being fantastic, even more if you make an army of xmute alts.

Ability to earn ~5 gold every 4 days is not even close to good moneymaking. It is 5/4*7=8.75 gold per week if you buy mats from AH. If you farm mats yourself, you can just sell grey stuff and get much better profit than all those CDs.
People spend 100g on consumables each raid.
If you raid once per week (very low frequency), you need 12 alts with cooldowns to provide you enough gold per week.
If you raid 3 times per week with same expenses, you need 36 alts of level 35 with tailoring 250+.
It is much much easier to just go outside and kill stuff, than to assemble production line of mooncloth.
If you actually do this, price on mooncloth would just go down, price on felcloth will rise higher and you end up with less profit because market is finite and you'll get problem selling all this mooncloth.

Same for every other CD.

Best moneymaker is always AoE farming by mage. Second one - herbalism. Third one - mining.
If you are druid or hunter, you get cool boost to your gathering (travel form or Aspect of walking speed).
If you are healer or tank - level yourself a mage.

This would only shift the balance of power from one end to another.

Currently, double crafters have the advantage as they have twice as many options when it comes to profession locked gear.
Without these restrictions, the balance shifts dramatically towards double gatherers as they can get more mats and more gold than others, as that change would simply mean you can just get everything with gold. Putting that much focus on gold also inevitably gives more power to multiboxers, alt armies, bank characters, and eventually boosters and RMT buyers.
(.....)

Fully agree, I think that tailoring and engineering will then just end up not being used as much as now. Especially tailoring will be even more than now a profession which only produces single use items (no reoccurring gold) other than Mooncloth CD. It makes then even more sense to just go double gathering and sell the mats to afford the one time necessary equipment and then afterwards keep making gold with gathering.

@Ugoboom
I told you that removing profession requirement will lead to double gathering meta for everyone. Two additional people are telling you the same. I think you should try some other arguments instead of iterating "professions should only make money" "NEED to be engineer for PvP is an issue". It is not issue, it is design.

If you are not a mage, then best choice would be mining+herbalism because they are needed for consumables. I think that only minority of people will buy or sell grenades on AH. Majority of players will level engineering on alt and will craft stuff themselves.

Though, I fully aggree that being engineer to be viable raid feral is plain stupid. May be MCP effect should be last talent in feral tree instead of Leader of the Pack? Ferals can't use almost 90% of other gadgets but have to level this for MCP.

[Rat2156]

Though, I fully aggree that being engineer to be viable raid feral is plain stupid. May be MCP effect should be last talent in feral tree instead of Leader of the Pack? Ferals can't use almost 90% of other gadgets but have to level this for MCP.

Yeah honestly the crowd pummeler meta for feral has always been some truly degenerate stuff, regardless of which version we're talking about.
A lv 30 weapon being the single viable weapon for a class is a design failure, and so is a class unable to compete without a lv 30 weapon

[Belphegore]

@xudo
It's probably a 'lost in translation ' over the internet thing, but, where do we disagree? I believe I agree with you ("It makes then even more sense to just go double gathering..").

One way or another, to state it clearly, I disagree with removing the profession requirements on gear as it reduces the utility (may that be gold or otherwise) of certain professions.

[Xudo]

@xudo
It's probably a 'lost in translation ' over the internet thing, but, where do we disagree? I believe I agree with you ("It makes then even more sense to just go double gathering..").

One way or another, to state it clearly, I disagree with removing the profession requirements on gear as it reduces the utility (may that be gold or otherwise) of certain professions.

Thank you for repeating your point. I mostly arguing with Ugoboom.

[Rat2156]

@xudo
It's probably a 'lost in translation ' over the internet thing, but, where do we disagree? I believe I agree with you ("It makes then even more sense to just go double gathering..").

One way or another, to state it clearly, I disagree with removing the profession requirements on gear as it reduces the utility (may that be gold or otherwise) of certain professions.

He quoted the both of us as an argument to support his point, I believe

[Ugoboom]

I told you that removing profession requirement will lead to double gathering meta for everyone. Two additional people are telling you the same. I think you should try some other arguments instead of iterating "professions should only make money" "NEED to be engineer for PvP is an issue". It is not issue, it is design.

If you are not a mage, then best choice would be mining+herbalism because they are needed for consumables. I think that only minority of people will buy or sell grenades on AH. Majority of players will level engineering on alt and will craft stuff themselves.

Again, like I've said before, and you haven't refuted because this is apparently too hard for you to understand:

People going double gathering for a moneymaking meta >>>>>> People being forced by competition to go engi and tailoring in order to compete.

I never said my proposal fixes everything, but that it is a massive massive improvement to endgame PVP and a serious improvement to PVE.

Though, I fully aggree that being engineer to be viable raid feral is plain stupid. May be MCP effect should be last talent in feral tree instead of Leader of the Pack? Ferals can't use almost 90% of other gadgets but have to level this for MCP.

Exactly, so you do understand how this sucks. What you don't understand is how engi's PVP trinkets and sappers in raids are just as broken if not far worse. You really have no clue how broken it is having rocket boots and a reflector versus not because you didn't take the one broken profession.

[Xudo]

People going double gathering for a moneymaking meta >>>>>> People being forced by competition to go engi and tailoring in order to compete.

You never said WHY double gathering meta is better than forcing engineering. You just state "it is bad". It is not.
This design haven't changed in TBC nor WotLK. I don't know about other expansions.

MCP sucks because it is the only item used by druids from whole profession and it is part of equipment and it makes all other equipment in this slot obsolete. It is not because it requires engineering.
Grenades doesn't make your epic t2.5 weapon from AQ40 obsolete. MCP does.

I believe that blizzard made engineering must-have for endgame solely for purpose of driving economy.
If you are forced to pick two crafting professions, you can't pick gathering. It means that you should farm gold elsewhere and buy mats from AH. 60 in epics have more means to farm gold than green leveler.
Levelers pick gathering professions to collect stuff during their journey. High levels buy this stuff for good price.
When you reach 60 and start to compete, you pick engineering and drop some profession.

How do you think, who would win if top geared players will compete with green levelers for resources in the world?
High level characters can skip the challenge of clearing cave full of NPCs. Low level characters can't do the same.

Right now top tier raiders are forced to farm earth elementals of 40 lvl to get elemental earth for their sharpening stones. If engineering will not be required to use grenades, then this will happen in every location since Iron ore.

[Chronoslicer]

This would only shift the balance of power from one end to another.

Currently, double crafters have the advantage as they have twice as many options when it comes to profession locked gear.
Without these restrictions, the balance shifts dramatically towards double gatherers as they can get more mats and more gold than others, as that change would simply mean you can just get everything with gold. Putting that much focus on gold also inevitably gives more power to multiboxers, alt armies, bank characters, and eventually boosters and RMT buyers.

Profession restrictions need to stay unless you want to end up with a profession landscape like retail had for over a decade where 90% of players only gather and never bother with crafting professions, but one thing that could be implemented would be the later solution of also giving player power to gatherers(such as flat stat passives like skinning has, or active abilities like herbalism had). This way, you get power both for your crafting profession and for your gathering one, meaning having one of each isn't actually a loss

I do agree that it will shift the balance of power, but I will argue that it will shift the balance of power in a direction that offers more player freedom.

Gold already has a sufficient amount of power, and though freeing up engineering consumables and the few set pieces other professions have would put more of a focus on gold, I think it would only add a few more bodies to the dog pile of people already trying to leverage every underhanded strategy imaginable to grow their gold stockpile. At the end of the day, turtle wow staff have the ultimate power of curbing rmt/boosting/multiboxing to maintain server integrity.

I do agree that there will be more people choosing double gathering, but there already is a sufficient amount of people doing that already, and I think any increase would be negligible. At a certain point due to the limited resources found in the world I think players will turn to other ways to make money when they find the herbs/ore/skinnables bottlenecked. Some people enjoy flipping mats into craftables and just manufacturing away in the cities in their downtime, and I'm sure it would grow in popularity as resources begin to become more scarce.

I like the rp and profession of blacksmithing and I like going out into the world and mining while I farm mobs. I am also a big fan of pvp. I would like to give gold to an engineer that I earned by playing the game in a way that I enjoy, to get grenades and other consumables/tools to use in pvp. The same way I give an alchemist gold for potions.

With or without these artificial chains put in place, there will always be schemers trying to exploit the various things you mentioned (boosting, rmt,etc). And it is up to the GMs to make sure people follow the rules and keep the server as clean as possible.

So why not remove the chains from people just trying to relax and enjoy the game?

[Chronoslicer]

People going double gathering for a moneymaking meta >>>>>> People being forced by competition to go engi and tailoring in order to compete.

You never said WHY double gathering meta is better than forcing engineering. You just state "it is bad". It is not.
This design haven't changed in TBC nor WotLK. I don't know about other expansions.

MCP sucks because it is the only item used by druids from whole profession and it is part of equipment and it makes all other equipment in this slot obsolete. It is not because it requires engineering.
Grenades doesn't make your epic t2.5 weapon from AQ40 obsolete. MCP does.

I believe that blizzard made engineering must-have for endgame solely for purpose of driving economy.
If you are forced to pick two crafting professions, you can't pick gathering. It means that you should farm gold elsewhere and buy mats from AH. 60 in epics have more means to farm gold than green leveler.
Levelers pick gathering professions to collect stuff during their journey. High levels buy this stuff for good price.
When you reach 60 and start to compete, you pick engineering and drop some profession.

How do you think, who would win if top geared players will compete with green levelers for resources in the world?
High level characters can skip the challenge of clearing cave full of NPCs. Low level characters can't do the same.

Right now top tier raiders are forced to farm earth elementals of 40 lvl to get elemental earth for their sharpening stones. If engineering will not be required to use grenades, then this will happen in every location since Iron ore.

True, you will see some more 60s getting low level nodes, but you see alot of that already (mostly just to level the gathering professions) and at a point it will always be more time/cost efficient to farm in higher level zones (except in a few cases like below)

Level 40 elementals are an exception, it's just a bad coincidence that they drop something useful at 60 that people pay big money for! The only way to "fix" that is removing the drop from those elementals or lowering the chance, and raising the chance on higher level earth elementals

[Ugoboom]

You never said WHY double gathering meta is better than forcing engineering. You just state "it is bad". It is not.

Oh sorry, i thought that was blindingly obvious, but here:
WIth 1.12 professions, you have 0 choice but to go engi (and for some tailoring for bloodvine) to play your class to its fullest.
With my proposal, while yes double gathering would be the best moneymakers, this is not a competitive task and you are totally okay to just do less efficient moneymaking grinds. Also, a lot of the best moneymaking methods don't even involve professions at all. Professions end up simply as options, and this newfound full player choice is CRUCIAL to how good a game feels to play. This makes turtle a massively more attractive server to play as a lv 60 on, versus unmodded 1.12.

This design haven't changed in TBC nor WotLK. I don't know about other expansions.

Yep and it sucked there. You end up with a strict meta where certain profs are straight up better than others. Blizzard tried and failed to balance these, and in later xpacs went back to removing exclusive power from professions.

MCP sucks because it is the only item used by druids from whole profession and it is part of equipment and it makes all other equipment in this slot obsolete. It is not because it requires engineering.

Yeah agreed MCP sucks regardless and immediately needs a trashcanning to lv 30 power level, and a rework to how druids are intended to prog their weapons in a far more sensible manner.

Grenades doesn't make your epic t2.5 weapon from AQ40 obsolete. MCP does.

Grenades and all other PVP gadgets make not having engi obsolete. It's the same thing. You MUST go engi to attain full power. This sucks.

I believe that blizzard made engineering must-have for endgame solely for purpose of driving economy.
If you are forced to pick two crafting professions, you can't pick gathering. It means that you should farm gold elsewhere and buy mats from AH. 60 in epics have more means to farm gold than green leveler.

And like i said here and before, professions aren't even always the best moneymakers. This doesn't make any sense then and now.

Levelers pick gathering professions to collect stuff during their journey. High levels buy this stuff for good price.
When you reach 60 and start to compete, you pick engineering and drop some profession.

For example, A flowerpilled resto druid should NEVER be forced into picking engineering in order to compete. People don't wanna be engi. Many resist this meta because of it, like me, and just take the loss. It feels HORRENDOUS.

How do you think, who would win if top geared players will compete with green levelers for resources in the world?
High level characters can skip the challenge of clearing cave full of NPCs. Low level characters can't do the same.

This is irrelevant? People already go Engi/gathering and do this right now.

Right now top tier raiders are forced to farm earth elementals of 40 lvl to get elemental earth for their sharpening stones. If engineering will not be required to use grenades, then this will happen in every location since Iron ore.

??? lmao no, by allowing people able to be fully empowered to go double gathering, you will not see an increase in world farming. There is really not much more demand for materials, the pros that would actually remember to use sappers and grenades, already go engi to make these. There's no increase in demand and therefore no financial incentive to farm further.

Even if it did, this is still a WAYYY better situation than the current problem. This is really undisputable, how many people see lv 60 and go "What? I need to go engi to join this raid team? What? That warrior ranged-interrupted me with a grenade and I can't do the same without dropping a 300 profession to go engi? This is lame. Quits.

Also herb/mining competition is a separate topic better discussed in a thread about dynamic spawns etc. This is irrelevant.


Chronoslicer understands, he's wording my point better. "So why not remove the chains from people just trying to relax and enjoy the game?"

[Xudo]

You never said WHY double gathering meta is better than forcing engineering. You just state "it is bad". It is not.

Oh sorry, i thought that was blindingly obvious, but here:
WIth 1.12 professions, you have 0 choice but to go engi (and for some tailoring for bloodvine) to play your class to its fullest.

It still don't explains why it is wrong.
If you are doing minmaxing, you always have only one option to play your class to its fullest.
If you change rules and remove this option, you will have to use other One Option.
If you are not doing minmaxing, you don't care and level whatever you want to level.

Chronoslicer understands, he's wording my point better. "So why not remove the chains from people just trying to relax and enjoy the game?"

Then go and relax. Those chains exist only in your head.

[Sylveria]

Though i'm not deep in that whole topic, especially when it comes to balancing, but i read a lot about "having no choice" or "it's the only choice"..

I'd say: you always have a choice. You don't need to succumb to the MinMax-Meta.
Or as Xudo said:

Those chains exist only in your head.

Though i can understand from a certain point of view, why people want grenades and stuff to be available for everyone, I am slightly concerned, since it feels like the "Every Class has to be able to do everything" discussion, which turned WoW to what it has become over the course of years (especially from Cataclysm onward), when every class just felt the same.

[Rat2156]

Though i'm not deep in that whole topic, especially when it comes to balancing, but i read a lot about "having no choice" or "it's the only choice"..

I'd say: you always have a choice. You don't need to succumb to the MinMax-Meta.
Or as Xudo said:

Those chains exist only in your head.

Though i can understand from a certain point of view, why people want grenades and stuff to be available for everyone, I am slightly concerned, since it feels like the "Every Class has to be able to do everything" discussion, which turned WoW to what it has become over the course of years (especially from Cataclysm onward), when every class just felt the same.

Yeah exactly. Same with other discussions such as "Every AP buff should give ranged AP" or "Paladins should get a warrior taunt" or "druids shouldn't be able to be so good against CC".

One of the big points of vanilla is that streamlining isn't really a thing. Various classes and professions are better at various things and worse at others, the last thing we want is to make everything equal and only end up differentiating between classes by how much % of the DPS of the top class they do

[Sylveria]

Though i'm not deep in that whole topic, especially when it comes to balancing, but i read a lot about "having no choice" or "it's the only choice"..

I'd say: you always have a choice. You don't need to succumb to the MinMax-Meta.
Or as Xudo said:

Those chains exist only in your head.

Though i can understand from a certain point of view, why people want grenades and stuff to be available for everyone, I am slightly concerned, since it feels like the "Every Class has to be able to do everything" discussion, which turned WoW to what it has become over the course of years (especially from Cataclysm onward), when every class just felt the same.

Yeah exactly. Same with other discussions such as "Every AP buff should give ranged AP" or "Paladins should get a warrior taunt" or "druids shouldn't be able to be so good against CC".

One of the big points of vanilla is that streamlining isn't really a thing. Various classes and professions are better at various things and worse at others, the last thing we want is to make everything equal and only end up differentiating between classes by how much % of the DPS of the top class they do

..though it doesn't mean, that some things don't need some fine tuning of course. for example the Paladin Taunt. I'm fine with it, that it's a bit more complicated than the warrior/druid taunt, but that it overwrites judgements, needs a little change. But that's another topic. :D
I just think some people have forgotten how to "play" the game. Instead it became like a big competition. :P

[Chronoslicer]

You never said WHY double gathering meta is better than forcing engineering. You just state "it is bad". It is not.

Oh sorry, i thought that was blindingly obvious, but here:
WIth 1.12 professions, you have 0 choice but to go engi (and for some tailoring for bloodvine) to play your class to its fullest.

It still don't explains why it is wrong.
If you are doing minmaxing, you always have only one option to play your class to its fullest.
If you change rules and remove this option, you will have to use other One Option.
If you are not doing minmaxing, you don't care and level whatever you want to level.

Chronoslicer understands, he's wording my point better. "So why not remove the chains from people just trying to relax and enjoy the game?"

Then go and relax. Those chains exist only in your head.

Would your twink not suffer in performance if you didn't pick up engineering? These chains do not just exist in our heads, if you took 2 pvp players of equal skill and one of them leveled engineering, the pvp player without engineering would lose the vast majority of the time. The player might not like engineering. The player might enjoy other professions, but the reality is if the player wants to be more competitive in pvp, they need to level engineering whether they like it or not, and that is unneeded friction when you could play the game how you like and buy engineering consumables instead.

You say vanilla isn't meant to be streamlined, but if engineering is the only advantageous pvp profession to learn, what does that say?

[Xudo]

Would your twink not suffer in performance if you didn't pick up engineering?

He will.
If you want to be good, then you are minmaxing and should choose best option available.
But if you want to relax, you can completely skip it. You don't need to win every fight to relax.

Why is it wrong to have engineering to be good?

You will never remove "best option" when you minmaxing. Now it is engineering. If you remove it, then other profession will be "best option". Rules might change, but minmaxing players will always find "best option" and will use only it.
Guys like you will complain about it.

This conversation looks like this
you: Engineering is imbalanced compared to other professions. It should not be must have.
developer: I know, I did that intentionaly.
you: but I have to pick it always to win
developer: I know, I have reasons to make it like this.
you: but this is wrong!
developer: No. It is my design.

I am not a developer. But engineering is made with clear intention to be must-have for competitive play. And you repeat this rule and pretend it is argument to change things. It is not an argument, it is the goal of this design.

[Chronoslicer]

Would your twink not suffer in performance if you didn't pick up engineering?

He will.
If you want to be good, then you are minmaxing and should choose best option available.
But if you want to relax, you can completely skip it. You don't need to win every fight to relax.

Why is it wrong to have engineering to be good?

You will never remove "best option" when you minmaxing. Now it is engineering. If you remove it, then other profession will be "best option". Rules might change, but minmaxing players will always find "best option" and will use only it.
Guys like you will complain about it.

This conversation looks like this
you: Engineering is imbalanced compared to other professions. It should not be must have.
developer: I know, I did that intentionaly.
you: but I have to pick it always to win
developer: I know, I have reasons to make it like this.
you: but this is wrong!
developer: No. It is my design.

I am not a developer. But engineering is made with clear intention to be must-have for competitive play. And you repeat this rule and pretend it is argument to change things. It is not an argument, it is the goal of this design.

It is not wrong for engineering to be good, it can be good without needing to have engineering to USE its consumables, because engineering is the only profession that can craft those consumables, naturally. And I will use alchemy as an example

Just like you can buy free action potions, swiftness pots, LIPs, Health pots/Mana pots, invisibility pots, etc. from an alchemist without needing to level alchemy .....you should be able to buy grenades/sappers/bombs and other engineering consumables from an engineer....without needing engineering to use them.

That being said, let me ask you this : If those various potions that offer significant player power in pvp were locked to alchemy, would that be a good change to the game?

I am looking at two paths here for a PvPer :
Need engineering consumables > forced to level engineering whether you like it or not > pick one branch of engineering only to drop it to switch to another, if necessary > farm/buy mats to craft consumables / buy consumables from other engineers with gold > PVP

Or

Need engineering consumables > play game how you like to earn gold to buy consumables > buy consumables from engineer > PVP

In my opinion, the second option is more attractive. Now, some may go and point out the secret third option - just don't level engineering, but for the average player and non masochist, being at a serious disadvantage amplified by design flaws is by no means enjoyable.

You are right that it is the developer's design, but noone is immune to mistakes, or being subject to what is hopefully constructive criticism.

[Xudo]

Ok. Lets try another way.
Why you don't propose allowing third profession? This will be effectively the same.

[Balake]

Ok. Lets try another way.
Why you don't propose allowing third profession? This will be effectively the same.

Because people will still be forced to have engineering as one of those professions, that won't fix anything.

[Sylveria]

Lets try it another way: Remove all professions, remove all classes, skills and talents, auto-attack only. Balancing issues solved. :'D

[Sylveria]

Because people will still be forced to have engineering as one of those professions, that won't fix anything.

Who's forcing anyone? Is there some dude with a gun pointed at your head who's sayin': "TAKE ENGINEERING!" or something like that?
If you're MinMaxing, there's pretty much always just "One Way" in almost every game out there, cause people will find ways of drenching every little bit of power out of anything, the devs may have never considered during development.

[Ziggyw]

Because people will still be forced to have engineering as one of those professions, that won't fix anything.

one side of the story - forced ? nobody force you to take it, it's simple free choice - like to win, easiest option is to use engi, keep in mind not everyone is doing pvp btw. also involving profitability and gold earning is pointless, unless you want to have just one char able to earn gold, be "easy win" in pvp, be great in pve ... then easiest way will be play retail :)

other side of the story - two factors
1. if you need to be skilled engi to use grenades or shield - why don't you have to be skilled alchemist to use potions ? (just an example)
2. just for example, warrior can use "normal" shield, with "magic" effects or not - but just to use that one BIS shield - have to be engineer ? warrior shouldn't have to understand how it works, he's just using it

there are always pros and cons, and discussion about it is easiest way to get things changed - so +1 for topic

[Balake]

Free choice is an illusion. People don't understand minmaxing and think there are only two states of existence, either you min max or you don't. That's not true.

There are many tiers to the sacrifices people make, and engineering sadly is something too strong to pass on for many playstyles. You can minmax one thing and not minmax another, slippery slope is a fallacy.

A hardcore leveler might feel that they have to take engineering cause those nets and dynamites and taunting dummies WILL save his life.

A raider might feel that they have to take engineering cause sapper charges do pretty good aoe.

A PVPer might feel that they have to take engineering cause as mentioned above they have a lot of powerful gadgets.

Even some guy playing for fun might feel like they have to take engineering because they want to amass an army of guardian npcs, and engineering has many of them that he can't pass on.

So please, turtle wow community don't be against making a good change just because it will help people do an activity you dislike. Just cause you don't like raiding or pvp doesn't mean no good changes to them must be made.

[Sylveria]

Free choice is an illusion.

From this point onward i stopped reading, since you disqualified yourself with this killer argument. :D
After all, you chose to write here. You could also walk away. There's always another choice.

[Balake]

From this point onward i stopped reading, since you disqualified yourself with this killer argument. :D
After all, you chose to write here. You could also walk away. There's always another choice.

fun fact: you added nothing to the conversation

[Rat2156]

Because people will still be forced to have engineering as one of those professions, that won't fix anything.

If you genuinely think you're "forced" to take engineering just to get a small edge in a casual MMORPG, you have genuine issues and should try to get help