I read the Ask Blizzard Q&A last night, and the dodge to the skinning question was pretty great. Apparently most the players (and certainly the AH market) know that skinning/LW is busted in Cata, and Blizzard thinks skinning is great because "YOU CAN SKIN WHAT YOU'RE FARMING!" or "just vulture around the crocs after a TB battle" and we're all a bunch of retards who had never thought of this.
I leveled myself up from 0-485 blacksmithing the past few days, what a money pit (despite having dozens of stacks of obsidium and elementium from mining). But hey now I can roll on orbz and have more gem slots?
The best part about that answer is in cataclysm there's no reason to farm beasts for any reason besides skinning.
Oh yeah, definitely. The moment I read that I had a mild brain hemorrhage from the sudden blast of stupid. The entire thing reads like it's from someone who hasn't actually played the game in the last few months.
Edit: I wonder how many JC tokens I'll have by 4.3 or so when epic cut patterns are added. At least this expansion I know to hoard them up and not try to learn every rare gem cut!
I think it was a pretty reasonable answer about skinning.
That logic isn't exactly hard to deduce.
Skinning is very easy to level and the basic constituents of leather items are not hard to accumulate.
The only thing you can do to balance skinning other than contrive up some other profession to utilize it, is to make leatherworking more appealing or make skinning harder.
I'm usually in favor of whatever doesn't just contrive up some token gameplay item to introduce balance.
If I were them, I would just remove skinning from the game and make Leatherworking like Tailoring... Humanoids drop Cloth, Beasts drop Hide.
Then I would come up with a third herbalism-esque profession, probably dealing with elemental stuff, and have it accent the crafting professions. That way not everyone is bottlenecked into either herbs or metal.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited March 2011
It's a terrible answer. Especially considering it completely ignored the question. The question was basically - "Herbalism and Mining both support two professions, skinning supports one. Why?" Their response didn't address this at all.
It's also a shit excuse. You can gather herbs and mines while you are farming mobs too. Sometimes you will even come across a big patch of them that haven't been picked yet! And you don't need to fight guys (necessarily) to get them.
But the original point of the question is my biggest problem with skinning. It's largely worthless. It only benefits Leatherworking, which itself is a pretty worthless profession (outside of the bracer enchants, which is just a perk like every other profession has). Hell, you replace most of the stuff you make with raid gear pretty quick anyways. At least with other professions you are making flying carpets or dragon mounts or bags or other doodads that are useful no matter what (less so Blacksmithing, which kind of has the same problem as LWing where the "perk" is the only thing really useful after you outgear the items you make).
I'm pretty sure he said skinning only supports one because skinning is easier
Which is a reason
and unlike herbalism with skinning you can go into a relatively high level dungeon from a previous expansion at level 85, pull the entire instance, and walk out with numerous stacks of leather in about 10 minutes
LW needs some fancy reins, a fairly cheap consumable that mimics a solo Crusader Aura for an hour. Or does that already exist?
Well, I would like it(when I'm not on my pally or around another one ).
The riding crop. Which they removed from being useful after level 70. And you can only get at level 70.
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Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
Blacksmiths should be able to make shieldswords. So they can attach shields to their swords, and have two shields equipped. And if they can dual wield? Dual shieldswords! Make it a boe item enhancement thing and momma-mia, poppa-pia, baby's got the diarrhe- hey Tim!
You can only skin certain types of mobs, which can be pretty scarce in certain areas. Twilight highlands, for instance, is very heavy on hunanoids and elementals, and rather scarce for beasts, especially beasts that are also required for quests, which is what yet claim is so 'easy' about leveling skinning.
LW needs some fancy reins, a fairly cheap consumable that mimics a solo Crusader Aura for an hour. Or does that already exist?
Well, I would like it(when I'm not on my pally or around another one ).
The riding crop. Which they removed from being useful after level 70. And you can only get at level 70.
Heh, gotta love it. Though a consumable would be slightly more elegant than having to switch out a trinket all of the time. And it helps out those poor LW/skinners, maybe! If the price is right... possibly?
I'm pretty sure he said skinning only supports one because skinning is easier
Which is a reason
and unlike herbalism with skinning you can go into a relatively high level dungeon from a previous expansion at level 85, pull the entire instance, and walk out with numerous stacks of leather in about 10 minutes
Oh shit yeah, I love running AN constantly for borean leather. Huge market for that shit. Just like lichbloom and saronite. People are still finding great use out of old crafting mats!
Because I was talking about the value of materials
actually someone mentioned that Herbalism can be just as easy to level because you can find pockets of it
I was illustrating that while that may be true, you don't find 50+ of them in one condensed location
but alright
I didn't want to write a dissertation on leatherworking, but again, I would remove skinning from the game, and I would then add to leatherworking a crafting component element that funneled into the other professions to provide augmentations, particularly to blacksmithing and engineering and would function similarly to Reforging a crafted item.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
I'm pretty sure he said skinning only supports one because skinning is easier
Which is a reason
and unlike herbalism with skinning you can go into a relatively high level dungeon from a previous expansion at level 85, pull the entire instance, and walk out with numerous stacks of leather in about 10 minutes
First off, skinning is not easier. It's easier to level, but that's only because the leveling curve on it is completely ridiculous (especially in Cata - I hit max level in freaking Hyjal in about 15 minutes off lvl 81 mobs). Meanwhile, all that leather I farmed getting skinning to max level barely dented my Leathworking leveling. Every item requires insane numbers of skins to make. It is MUCH easier to fly around watching your minimap for herbs or mines.
Also, why would you go to a low level dungeon to farm leathers? To make what? I mean, there are *tiers* of leather. Unless I'm trying to gear up a leveling alt, which is often way more of a hassle than its worth with current quest itemization (especially considering lower-level LWing gear tends to require weird mats like alchemy potions or elementals), there's no reason to farm low level hides.
Besides, you can just as easily fly around Elwynn or wherever at level 85 and pick Peaceblooms. You'll probably even get a faster return.
If you don't accept that there's a connection between the material cost of a profession and the nature of the gathering profession associated with it, then we're done here.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited March 2011
I have to ask, do you actually skin? I have two level 85s, one is a skinner, one is an herbalist. Herbalism is by far the easier profession to gather mats for - especially low level herbs because there is never competition for those. Keep in mind also, you often get 2-4 herbs per node (along with extra stuff like volatile lifes), as opposed to usually 1 skin per kill (sometimes 2, but only on much harder mobs) and the ridiculously low chance for a bloated stomach (seriously, the drop rate is pathetic).
Herbs also sell way better than skins because they benefit multiple professions - in particular, scribes still have use for low level herbs even at max level (though the ink trader does mitigate some of this). As a side benefit, the Volatile Lifes sell quite well themselves, along with Alchemists being able to transmute them into other Volatiles which may sell even better.
The entire subject of herb value versus leather is what I have been speaking about the whole time.
The bright idea seems to be "skinning sucks, the way to make skinning better is to make it provide in a significant way for a second profession to make skinning more valuable" which to me reads as "make another profession to justify skinning".
Nobody seems to be willing to entertain the idea that skinning in and of itself, or the entire acquisition process of leather to begin with can be fixed in some way. If you read what I have been writing in whole, I am not even remotely defending skinning. I would prefer it be removed, because it's a trite, comical, transient state between NPC's and gear, and that very fact has made leather acquisition intolerable and made leatherworking worse as a result.
All I am saying is that there may be solutions other than another profession, which would be, at some level, fix the things that make skinning dumb and by consequence impact leatherworking negatively. You then fix two problems with one action instead of permeating skinning (which nobody seems to like) by adding another profession that is balanced against it.
But apparently skinning is fine except for when it's not fine, or something, I can't tell what's going on here. Don't remove skinning, but skinning sucks, is the message I'm getting.
All the gathering professions are easy to level. There's no reason for one to be shittier because of a perception of it being easier to level. That's short-sighted beyond belief, when what actually matters is the long-term value/performance/annoyance of a profession. Imagine applying that shitty rationale to classes. "Oh, X class is really easy to level, so it should be worse at the end game."
Shit, if I'm a healer, it's actually easier to herb/mine than it is to power-skin through my own killing.
The bright idea is that people are upset over Blizzard's shitty brush-off answer that doesn't acknowledge that something about skinning->leatherworking needs to be changed. Your very first words on the subject were "I think it was a pretty reasonable answer about skinning" when the "answer" was just a spewing out of trite, shallow shit people were aware of over six years ago that completely ignored the depth of the issue.
No, a reasonable answer would be admitting that there is a problem here and that it is being looked into. An "all's clear on the western front" is a terrible answer, because we can only assume that this bum deal will continue on for the indefinite future of the game.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
The bright idea is that people are upset over Blizzard's shitty brush-off answer that doesn't acknowledge that something about skinning->leatherworking needs to be changed. Your very first words on the subject were "I think it was a pretty reasonable answer about skinning" when the "answer" was just a spewing out of trite, shallow shit people were aware of over six years ago that completely ignored the depth of the issue.
No, a reasonable answer would be admitting that there is a problem here and that it is being looked into. An "all's clear on the western front" is a terrible answer, because we can only assume that this bum deal will continue on for the indefinite future of the game.
^ this right here
Skinning is not "the worst profession ever OMG!!!" (I don't think anyone was saying that) but it's clearly not as good as other gathering professions. It's more tedious than the others for MUCH less benefit. *Something* needs to change, but Blizzard seems to think everything is just fine so that will probably never happen.
Shit, there are even mobs that you can herb or mine (or engineer) as a BONUS. Meanwhile, you burn a profession slot on skinning, skin one of those 20-million health drake mini-bosses in BWD, and get two savage leather. Hoo boy!
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
Shit, there are even mobs that you can herb or mine (or engineer) as a BONUS. Meanwhile, you burn a profession slot on skinning, skin one of those 20-million health drake mini-bosses in BWD, and get two savage leather. Hoo boy!
I came *this* close to bitching about that It seriously pissed me off when they introduced it in Burning Crusade. Way to remove any uniqueness from skinning entirely!
Skinning mobs(especially larger ones) needs to have a chance to give multiple leather. And skinning elite/instance boss mobs should give some nice stuff the same way mining/herbing does.
You do realize the bonus you get from mining\herbing\engineering an 85 mob is like 20s right? very rare chance for an ore \ volitile but its pretty much notabonus.gif
(this is not in argument that skinning isn't bunk)
I kind of liked mining Ozruk(I think it was him) and getting some gems personally. Seriously though, why don't more mobs give multiple leather when skinned? Why don't big mobs counts as "rich" resource nodes and give extra leather?
The question was basically - "Herbalism and Mining both support two professions, skinning supports one. Why?" Their response didn't address this at all.
The balance is in having LW eat resources equal to two professions.
I'm just wondering what happened to the correct design philosophy that was applied in TBC/WotLK where max mining/skinning let you mine/skin anything. Yet another patented Cataclysm Backwards Step in Design™ to make you need to get a glove enchant or something to be able to mine heroic Ozruk (I'm sure there are other instances as well).
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Edit: I wonder how many JC tokens I'll have by 4.3 or so when epic cut patterns are added. At least this expansion I know to hoard them up and not try to learn every rare gem cut!
That logic isn't exactly hard to deduce.
Skinning is very easy to level and the basic constituents of leather items are not hard to accumulate.
The only thing you can do to balance skinning other than contrive up some other profession to utilize it, is to make leatherworking more appealing or make skinning harder.
I'm usually in favor of whatever doesn't just contrive up some token gameplay item to introduce balance.
If I were them, I would just remove skinning from the game and make Leatherworking like Tailoring... Humanoids drop Cloth, Beasts drop Hide.
Then I would come up with a third herbalism-esque profession, probably dealing with elemental stuff, and have it accent the crafting professions. That way not everyone is bottlenecked into either herbs or metal.
It's also a shit excuse. You can gather herbs and mines while you are farming mobs too. Sometimes you will even come across a big patch of them that haven't been picked yet! And you don't need to fight guys (necessarily) to get them.
But the original point of the question is my biggest problem with skinning. It's largely worthless. It only benefits Leatherworking, which itself is a pretty worthless profession (outside of the bracer enchants, which is just a perk like every other profession has). Hell, you replace most of the stuff you make with raid gear pretty quick anyways. At least with other professions you are making flying carpets or dragon mounts or bags or other doodads that are useful no matter what (less so Blacksmithing, which kind of has the same problem as LWing where the "perk" is the only thing really useful after you outgear the items you make).
Well, I would like it(when I'm not on my pally or around another one
Which is a reason
and unlike herbalism with skinning you can go into a relatively high level dungeon from a previous expansion at level 85, pull the entire instance, and walk out with numerous stacks of leather in about 10 minutes
The riding crop. Which they removed from being useful after level 70. And you can only get at level 70.
Wait... what? What just happened?
You can only skin certain types of mobs, which can be pretty scarce in certain areas. Twilight highlands, for instance, is very heavy on hunanoids and elementals, and rather scarce for beasts, especially beasts that are also required for quests, which is what yet claim is so 'easy' about leveling skinning.
Awesomeness.
Oh shit yeah, I love running AN constantly for borean leather. Huge market for that shit. Just like lichbloom and saronite. People are still finding great use out of old crafting mats!
actually someone mentioned that Herbalism can be just as easy to level because you can find pockets of it
I was illustrating that while that may be true, you don't find 50+ of them in one condensed location
but alright
I didn't want to write a dissertation on leatherworking, but again, I would remove skinning from the game, and I would then add to leatherworking a crafting component element that funneled into the other professions to provide augmentations, particularly to blacksmithing and engineering and would function similarly to Reforging a crafted item.
First off, skinning is not easier. It's easier to level, but that's only because the leveling curve on it is completely ridiculous (especially in Cata - I hit max level in freaking Hyjal in about 15 minutes off lvl 81 mobs). Meanwhile, all that leather I farmed getting skinning to max level barely dented my Leathworking leveling. Every item requires insane numbers of skins to make. It is MUCH easier to fly around watching your minimap for herbs or mines.
Also, why would you go to a low level dungeon to farm leathers? To make what? I mean, there are *tiers* of leather. Unless I'm trying to gear up a leveling alt, which is often way more of a hassle than its worth with current quest itemization (especially considering lower-level LWing gear tends to require weird mats like alchemy potions or elementals), there's no reason to farm low level hides.
Besides, you can just as easily fly around Elwynn or wherever at level 85 and pick Peaceblooms. You'll probably even get a faster return.
The high material requirements are a direct result of skinning being easy
If you don't accept that there's a connection between the material cost of a profession and the nature of the gathering profession associated with it, then we're done here.
Herbs also sell way better than skins because they benefit multiple professions - in particular, scribes still have use for low level herbs even at max level (though the ink trader does mitigate some of this). As a side benefit, the Volatile Lifes sell quite well themselves, along with Alchemists being able to transmute them into other Volatiles which may sell even better.
The bright idea seems to be "skinning sucks, the way to make skinning better is to make it provide in a significant way for a second profession to make skinning more valuable" which to me reads as "make another profession to justify skinning".
Nobody seems to be willing to entertain the idea that skinning in and of itself, or the entire acquisition process of leather to begin with can be fixed in some way. If you read what I have been writing in whole, I am not even remotely defending skinning. I would prefer it be removed, because it's a trite, comical, transient state between NPC's and gear, and that very fact has made leather acquisition intolerable and made leatherworking worse as a result.
All I am saying is that there may be solutions other than another profession, which would be, at some level, fix the things that make skinning dumb and by consequence impact leatherworking negatively. You then fix two problems with one action instead of permeating skinning (which nobody seems to like) by adding another profession that is balanced against it.
But apparently skinning is fine except for when it's not fine, or something, I can't tell what's going on here. Don't remove skinning, but skinning sucks, is the message I'm getting.
Shit, if I'm a healer, it's actually easier to herb/mine than it is to power-skin through my own killing.
I'm not really sure how you would "fix the things that make skinning dumb," assuming you don't want to go hunting for skin nodes.
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No, a reasonable answer would be admitting that there is a problem here and that it is being looked into. An "all's clear on the western front" is a terrible answer, because we can only assume that this bum deal will continue on for the indefinite future of the game.
^ this right here
Skinning is not "the worst profession ever OMG!!!" (I don't think anyone was saying that) but it's clearly not as good as other gathering professions. It's more tedious than the others for MUCH less benefit. *Something* needs to change, but Blizzard seems to think everything is just fine so that will probably never happen.
I came *this* close to bitching about that
Then I realized that it was 100% garbage. 10k G later I am an Engineer.
(this is not in argument that skinning isn't bunk)
Finkle's Skinner + Zulian Slicer FTW! (not that it's EVER worth skinning those guys)
Oh, I could ninja skins from other skinners after they looted a mob. That was pretty cool.
Go the extra mile and add magic skills.
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