The Fundamental Problem with Dodge

[bonemage]

Major tangent here, but it is based on the principle of costs of attributes/stats that don't do what you want, taking up those valuable points so you don't get what you want.

Since the costs of certain attributes on items are set, wouldn't it be nice to tie the crafting system into that more dynamically, and actually let the crafters craft? They would be closer to artisans, and should have more work. Right now, crafters have a few good recipes cranking out carbon copy items.

Let me clarify with an example, the numbers and quanities don't matter, this is for discussion purposes only:

You are a leatherworker, and want to craft a mail chest piece. The rules of crafting a leather chest piece of a item level of 60 require 24 rugged leather, 32 blue dragonscale, 8 black dragonscale, 8 runecloth, and the chest piece will have X points that can be spent, the number of points matching Blizzard's rules of costs per stats/attributes. The rest of the reagents detemine what stats/attributes are on the finishedl piece, limited by the available total points. You want +1% crit? Add 20 Wicked Claws. You want +2% chance to hit? Add 180 Khadgar's Whiskers. Want FR? Add Fiery Cores. (Please note, the 20 Wicked Claws was my best example, based on Lionheart's 2% crit chance and 40 needed Wicked Claws.) The idea should be clear. There are a few reasons why this would be good. You could get what you want. You could look at your gear and think, I really need more of THIS, and round up reagents and mats and find an appropriate crafter to make that one piece of gear that really completes what you wanted from your gear. Really high level crafters could make some really nice pieces of gear, opening up some good gear that might not be available to smaller guilds, more casual players. You could have a complete matching set of gear (all based on the same base type of item) that is more useful than for show. There could be identical recipes that the base item only varies in appearance, so there isn't just ONE "best" of a class (i.e. the highest item level mail chest piece). Gear and talents are the only way to distinguish your toon from another of the same level/class (OK, how you play goes in here too, but your gear and talents should match your play) and this will give you more options for gear. The artists could go "crazy-go-nuts" on appearance of different models, and give the crafters a lot of appearance options, without having to put in a lot of extra thought of being sure they don't just duplicate other items, or having to be specific on where the items drop.

Random thoughts on this (my mind is in vomit mode currently):

Recipes: Recipes are of two kinds, named better than what I am calling them now, Base, and Attributes. A crafter gets the base item (basically set the base armor level, the item level, and therefore the available points) recipes, and must also learn how to work in different stats. The basic ones come from trainers, others are high end raid guild drops. So the above crappy example (still works to illustrate the point) leatherworker needs a recipe for the base mail chest piece of an item level of 60. They would also need to have learned the Attributes recipes on how to work with Wicked Claws to make +crit, etc.

Balance issues/Potential pitfalls: Potential for some variant player design based on gear choices is higher, with potential balance issues. Is a 3100 Hit point tank with 40% dodge viable? Too powerful? (Those are retorical questions, but you get the idea). You would hope that a well designed, balanced toon would be best, but it could make everyone into one trick ponies. Farmers unite! Lots of farming for said reagents/mats, and perhaps lots of gear bought with real world cash by players. Would everyone be stone lumps or glass cannons? For balance reasons, certain stats/attributes could be restricted on certain items.

Item levels and BoP: I think that the maximum allowed crafted items still have lower item levels than the top drop BoP items that top end guilds raid for, otherwise crafted items would really be all you need. So, if AQ40 is dropping items with an item level of 81, the very top crafted item level whose recipes drop in AQ40 would be 66 or 71. If everyone started wearing only crafted items, then Blizzard would know that their design was lacking, with the higher item levels of the top raid drops should make them superior. If they're not, there must be unwanted attributes.