WoW Dragonflight Professions: Breaking down the new Profession system


Blizzard Entertainment has revealed more information pertaining to World of Warcraft: Dragonflight's upcoming profession changes.

From the new Crafting Orders and Profession Specializations to Crafting and Gathering with quality, the new system looks to give more power to professions, giving players who actively utilize them more individuality and overall need in the process.

With that in mind, here's the WoW Dragonflight professions system explained.

UPDATED - WoW Dragonflight launches in less than a week!

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight launches in less than a week!

In just a couple of days, World of Warcraft's dragon-themed expansion will be live. Players will be available to play through tons of new content and experience several new features.

This means that players will get to experience the new profession system soon.

Dragonflight introduces a new and updated profession system to WoW

Now that Dragonflight's development in full swing, Blizzard decided to give players an in-depth preview of the new and updated profession system arriving in WoW.

According to the post on the official WoW website, the system update is "designed to provide greater depth and engagement" to professions, giving them a chance to differentiate themselves.

This is done with the introduction of Crafting Orders, Profession Specializations, and Crafting and Gathering quality.

Crafting Orders

As the first major update to the profession system, Crafting Orders allows players to get items they need from specific professions much easier. So instead of having to post on Tradechat or constantly browsing the Auction House, players can just place a Crafting Order to get their item.

Nearly free of charge, players can place a Crafting Order for almost any Dragon Isles crafting recipe using an Auction House-like interface.

WoW Dragonflight Professions System Explained - WoW Crafting Order
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Credit: Blizzard Entertainment
BRAND-NEW: Crafting Orders will use a Auction House-like interface

When placing an order, there are three options that players can set for professions who can fulfill it: available to anyone, guild-members only, or a specific individual. Additionally, tradeable reagents can be provided by either players or the crafter while special ones can only be provided by one or the other. Soulbound reagents will mostly be provided by players when placing an order for a Soulbound item.

There will be extra customization options when placing an order utilizing "Optional Reagents" which depend on the recipe and will dictate what players want to be crafted. An example of this would be how Missives dictate players' secondary stats for Legendaries in Shadowlands.

Once players have finished customizing their order, they will be able to offer a commission to the crafter which will be topped off by a small posting fee from the Auction House.

Crafters, on the other hand, will be able to view these orders, fill in any missing reagents if need be, craft the item, and collect the pay with a small cut. The finished item will be delivered to the player by mail.

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Profession Specializations

Adding to the uniqueness that is coming with the new professions update, on top of being able to place or fulfill Crafting Orders, players will be able to specialize within their own professions.

With Profession Specializations, players will be able to specialize their primary crafting and gathering professions once they've reached a high enough skill level. This will allow them to improve certain areas of their profession permanently.

It will be the main way players can differentiate themselves from one another, as there will be many areas to specialize in with each profession.

Crafting with Quality

Coming new in Dragonflight is the idea of crafting quality for both crafted items and many of the reagents required for them.

Quality and its Effects

Crafting quality will affect both crafted equipment such as armor and weapons and crafted items such as potions and ores. The quality of each of the crafted equipment or item is determined by tiers.

Crafted equipment

Crafted equipment will have five levels of possible quality when being crafted and will be determined by tiers starting at tier 1 and finishing at tier 5.

WoW Dragonflight Professions System Explained - WoW Dragonflight Profession Quality Tiers
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Credit: Blizzard Entertainment
LEVELS: Tiers will represent the quality of crafted equipment and items

Quality will mainly modify item level, with each tier upgrading it by a small amount. An example of this would be a piece of crafted leveling gear starting out at 270 item level, but being upgradeable all the way to 280 with two item level increments each time.

Crafted items

On the other hand, crafted and gathered items such as potions, ores, herbs, and more, will have three levels of quality.

When it comes to consumables, the effects of the quality vary a bit. For the most part, a higher quality consumable will result in a more powerful effect, but in some cases, it might deviate coming in the forms of longer durations, more charges, etc.

For reagents, their quality will have a major role when crafting an item. Crafting with higher quality basic reagents will directly provide bonus skills when crafting it. Additionally, quality will also affect a newly added, "Finishing Reagents" which can be used to improve aspects of the crafting process—think skill increase or crafting stats.

It's also worth noting that not all gathered reagents will have quality. These will be mainly reagents such as meat, cloth, fish, and elements that can be gathered by everyone.

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Determining Quality via the Crafting Process

When players go to craft an item, two important aspects stand out: Recipe Difficulty and Optional Reagents.

The Recipe Difficulty determines how hard it is to craft a recipe of higher quality, it will also change when you throw Optional Reagents into the mix. Optional Reagents can modify it up or down depending on their effects and quality.

WoW Dragonflight Professions System Explained - WoW Dragonflight Profession Quality UI
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Credit: Blizzard Entertainment
DETERMINE THE QUALITY: The new Profession UI will make it easy to showcase the items quality

Crafting Skill is determined by players' base skill in their profession but can be modified by a myriad of factors, these include quality of reagents, Finishing Reagents, profession gear with skill bonuses, various bonuses provided by consumables, and profession specialization.

As players craft their items, a small amount of randomness is added to their skill roll. In addition, if players have any Inspiration—a new crafting stat—they will get "inspired" which will make it so they gain significant amount of bonus skill during the craft.

In the end, Crafting Skill will be crucial when it comes to tackling a Recipe Difficulty. The higher the skill the better. Players looking to craft items at maximum quality will greatly benefit from having their Crafting Skill be higher than the Recipe Difficulty.

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Newly Added Crafting Stats

To go alongside players' primary Crafting Skill, there are several newly added secondary crafting stats that can affect crafting of new Dragon Isles recipes, and which you can specialize and gear towards.

These are the new stats:

  • Inspiration - You have a x% chance to be inspired, crafting this recipe with extra skill.
    • Inspiration is for those of you who love rolling the dice and getting lucky on some bonus quality. It’s also a way to craft items at a higher quality than your natural skill with a bit of luck involved.
  • Resourcefulness - You have a x% chance to use fewer tradable reagents such as ore.
    • If you are trying to squeeze every drop of profit out of your crafts, then this is the stat for you.
  • Multicraft - You have a x% chance to craft additional items. Only works on recipes for stackable items.
    • We have long loved the feeling of crafting extra items from various abilities like Potion Master in Burning Crusade. Multicraft cements this as a permanent crafting stat for those of you who love that moment of crafting a bit extra!
  • Crafting Speed - Crafting is x% faster.
    • For those of you who mass produce crafts for the Auction House, or just want to save a few seconds now and then, crafting speed is a stat to help you create those items a bit faster.

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