Legion, the Journey to 800 LW and Skinning Rants

(Spoilers abound for Legion, especially around Leatherworking. You have been warned.)

I’m quite enjoying Legion, but there are a couple of issues I have with professions. Don’t get me wrong, this is probably the best expansion since Wrath, I just have some… questions and comments regarding professions.

First of all, everything Gravenscale and Dreadleather for a Leatherworker goes grey at 780, assuming you don’t have any rank 3 recipes. By itself, this is fine, in my opinion. I knew we’d have a challenging expansion in terms of professions when I had to hurl myself off various cliffs and waterfalls, chasing a moose. (That’s a whole other story!)

The problem here is the acquisition of the various Rank 3 recipes. Let’s look at Gravenscale stuff:

• Armbands: From elite Skrog Tidestompers/Wavecrashers at a ridiculously low rate
• Grips: Drop from Advisor Melandrus in Court of Stars (Mythic only dungeon)
• Hauberk: Drop from Latosius in Black Rook Hold only on Mythic
• Treads: Drop from Cordana Felsong in Vault of the Wardens
• Spaulders: ???
• Girdle: Strap Bucklebolt in the Underbelly in Dalaran for 1500g and 500 Sightless Eyes
• Leggings & Helm: Exalted with Valarjar

Of these items, the cheapest to make are the Armbands, which require no Bloods of Sargeras, though 110 Stormscale. The Treads, Girdle and Spaulders (who even knows where that recipe drops?!) all require 12 Stormscale and 2 Bloods of Sargeras, which is at least somewhat better than the Leggings, Helm and Hauberk, all of which require Felhide. (Though, interestingly, the Hauberk does not require Bloods…)

Of all of those items that drop in dungeons, none are a 100% drop rate.

It seemed to me that getting the Rank 3 belts for Dreadleather and Gravenscale were my best option. It took me a couple of hours, but I got all the crap I needed in the Underbelly and got my recipes (both Rank 2 and Rank 3, btw).

I was able to get to 790 pretty quickly, as my new hobby is farming basilisks for scales and Bloods of Sargeras, and then, disaster — the recipes turned green. Still, it wasn’t intolerable. I was able to get to 795 with a bit of effort and then 796 and finally, 797.

Ladies and gentlemen, getting from 797 to 798 required that I make nearly 40 belts. (I think the official count was 38, as best as I can tell.) That is 456 Stormscales (not a problem) and 76 Bloods of Sargeras. That’s where the problem was. Look, make it take 10, even 15 crafts to level up on a green recipe, but 38?! THIRTY-EIGHT. With two BOP items for each?! Ridiculous.

I guess RNG worked out for me though because I got from 798 to 799 on 13 belts and then, hilariously, I got from 799 to 800 with one single belt.

I hit 800 Leatherworking last night, before the Darkmoon Faire arrived, which was my goal. I don’t think that waiting for a monthly event should be your best chance of getting those last five skill points. I mean, it was good to know it was happening and, had I been stuck under 800 before the Faire left, I certainly would have taken advantage of it, but I don’t think it should almost be a requirement. I managed to get to 800 LW the old-fashioned way and I’m pretty pleased with myself, but the journey to 800 was difficult and I have spent way too much time killing way too many basilisks. (Current count is somewhere over 3000.)

And now, now we turn to Skinning, because there are some Issues.

First, I should note that miners and herbalists have it good, these days. No one can steal your node. Nodes exist for everyone and deplete for people individually. This is a great change. As someone with at least two herbalists and one miner, I can appreciate this. (I don’t want to talk about the quests related to these yet, though. More on that when I’ve maxed out those professions.)

Skinners, however, get screwed.

In this expansion, they got rid of mob tagging. On the whole, a great change. If you tag the mob, other people can tag it and you can all loot after you defeat the thing. (Well, same-faction tagging, anyway.)

Skinners, though, have the problem in that they need to have everything off of the corpse before we can skin. So if I’ve looted the body but my brother, Fog, who killed it with me, has not, then I cannot skin the corpse until my brother has looted the body too.

This is problematic for a couple of reasons:

• Some people just don’t loot their mobs (which I do NOT understand at all! Looting is practically the whole point of the game!)
• Other skinners will purposely tag all your mobs, let you do all the work and then deliberately will not loot, waiting for you to leave before they loot and then can skin.

The fact that when you loot, you loot ALL nearby bodies makes things even more difficult, because you can start skinning a couple of mobs and then other skinners can come running up and skin the rest. This used to be mitigated by not looting a corpse until you were ready to skin it, but that hasn’t worked since before AOE loot was introduced. This not only is still a problem, but is exacerbating the problem of other skinners purposely tagging your mobs, because if you loot one of them, you loot them all, giving them the ability to loot and start skinning when they feel like it.

That said, I’m pretty good at dealing with this nonsense, personally. If someone tags my mobs, I will go forth and tag ALL THE MOBS and just sit back and wait until they take off. I will feign if needed, I will get my pet to feign, and they may end up dead due to pulling all of the mobs. The lesson here is that if you’re a jerk to me, I will do whatever I can do to kill you in-game. Don’t mess with me, I farmed Elemental Plateau in Burning Crusade!

But we shouldn’t have to do that. If I have tagged a mob initially, you should not be able to prevent me from skinning it. Period. That’s where the problem lies.

Additionally, skinning in Suramar is a nightmare if you have a small cap on your Ancient Mana, because if there’s Ancient Mana on the mob that you cannot pick up, surprise! You can’t skin the corpse. That needs to be remedied ASAP and is, honestly, one of the main reasons I haven’t done a lot in Suramar yet.

Finally, Felhide. This is only acquired by skinning the Felhide Gargantuan when it shows up as a World Quest. This severely limits the number of Felhides that exist at any given time. On the one hand, that’s fine, because it means Felhides are valuable, but on the other, the demand and supply rise and fall with the RNG of the World Quests. I’d rather they be an extremely rare skin, even rarer than the Bloods of Sargeras, to be honest. There were two Felhide World Quests today and the price of Felhide is currently hovering around 300g apiece. Last Sunday, it was around 800g apiece. Do miners and herbalists have this RNG-World-Quest nonsense for any of their items? Honestly, I’d love to know.

Anyways. I’m enjoying the expansion overall. Kurn is 110 and I’ve still got a lot of quests to do in various zones. My shaman is 101 due entirely to mining and herbing and I’ve got Madrana halfway to 101 after opening up her class hall. (Loved the Dalaran Crater bit, check out this screenshot. We’re twins! Lightforge Armor and the Stormpike tabard FTW!)

Oh, and I’ve finally hit more than a million gold. Yay! How’s Legion treating you?