You just don't understand us!

| Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Okay, done with the emo title. This is loosely in three parts. First, an explanation of enchanting as a crafting profession. Second, telling enchanters to fix their message. Finally in the third part I just spam "We're not trying to keep all the shards to ourselves" over and over.

Enchanting is a crafting profession.
I ran into this recently: "From what I understand, Enchanters want disenchanting to be a 100% gathering profession just like Herbing, Skinning, and Mining."

This is not true.
We are crafters. We're a bit like tailors in that we do things in two major stages. We start with a raw material for which we have no major use: unwanted gear or cloth. That is turned into an intermediate product which can be traded and sold more readily. We can then turn the intermediate product into the final: cloth armor, bags, and enchants.

We are not a gathering profession and we don't want to be one. We are crafters.

We don't want all the shards. We don't want your shards. We don't want all the BoPs.

All we want is for our crafting (disenchanting) to be recognized for the value it adds and fairly compensated. Unfortunately the WoW society does not even recognize that we are crafting and adding value and so it gives it no value and no compensation. It is taken for granted.

Is it really so unreasonable to want people to not take our crafting for granted?

Enchanters, stop making stupid comparisons.
As a followup to that, I have a message for enchanters:
Please avoid ridiculous comparisons to mining and skinning. Those create materials from where there was effectively nothing without the profession. Those are gathering professions.

Enchanting, or as we seem to specifically care about, disenchanting, is not a gathering profession. There are no shard nodes or dust herbs.

Disenchanting is a form of crafting. It takes one item (an unwanted piece of gear) and turns it into another, potentially more valuable item (shards and dust). We add value. Maybe a BoP vendors for 5g but can be turned into a 10g shard. We added 5g of value.

This is not much different than tailors turning cloth into bolts which can be sold for more. Both take items off corpses which are of some minimal value at a vendor and turn them into something useful for crafting.

So please, stop comparing disenchanting to gathering. It is crafting. That is why people want to be paid for it, it is a service.

But they're rolling on my stuff!
I keep seeing things like "what other profession has people rolling on its items?" No one is stealing products from enchanters. The shards aren't ours. The BoP that we won the greed roll on is ours. The shard we get from it is ours. The BoPs that other people win greed rolls on are theirs and if we choose to DE them, the shards are theirs as well. If we pool the BoPs and give them to the enchanter and he DEs them, the shards are not his, they are still to be rolled among the group. The enchanter is within his rights to not join the pool and to not DE; as he is within his right to join the pool and to DE. He is free to request compensation for his service, but people will be surprised by it and likely get pissed off and call him greedy, which is ironic.

TL;DR
I don't want all the shards (okay, I admit, I do, but that's not my goal). I only want people to recognize that disenchanting is a crafting skill and to compensate it as they would any other crafting. For some people that means nothing and to that I say "Screw you."

For my own part, I plan to write a macro to say this when I lead groups: "If there is an enchanter in the group, I will pay 5g for every BoP that you DE for the group. I would appreciate it if the rest of the group chipped in to pay for it. If there are too few shards for the gold, I will give the extra to whoever didn't get a shard."

Sorry to keep bringing this back up, but I feel like there's widespread misunderstanding of what is going on and who owns what. 'Soon' I'll have a totally different disenchanting post which will be about an alternative way to DE. It will focus on the profession itself to perhaps make it more interesting and will not be related to the recent discussions/arguments/flame wars about the new rolling option.

7 comments:

Kromus said...

Indeed....

I think Enchanting 100% a crafting - we craft using un-needed materials.

As its reasonable to say Mining an Blacksmith and Herb/Alchemy are seen as Gathering and Crafting Combos, Enchanters often argue that we don't have a Gathering Combo, but we do!

Its called killing stuff and taking the unwanted greens :D

So in a sense, everybody has enchantings Combo-Gatherer.

at least thats my view. What you think, sound about right :)?

Kromus said...

..Oh and to add- I think We have a nice little support role, too.

We DE' anything guild raids don't need and give to gbank...awwwh. Isn't that sweet :)! lmfao.

Fish said...

Enchanting is very interesting in that it is the only profession in wow that is more of a service provider than producer of actual goods. Although DE does produce goods, they are generally of use only to enchanters. I think Blizz came out with scrolls way later than they should have making enchanting a true viable crafting profession.

Hinenuitepo said...

This is an old, very debate seen on the official forums ad nauseum.

I have a max chanter to preface my statement:

Enchanting/DE is fine and I think complaining that you should get compensation for DE is silly, especially in 5-mans. Any and all arguments for and against have been repeated, so it comes down to that.

Poor chanters don't need 1g or w/e per 'crafting' a bop blue into a shard.

Klepsacovic said...

@Kromus: That sounds... socialist!

@Fish: They finally realized how silly it was to have a profession which makes gold in direct proportion to how long it stands around in cities.

@Hinenuitepo: What do you mean by "especially in 5-mans"? Is there another context in which it is less silly to request compensation for services? Besides, it's not about need. My enchanter is not starving in the streets, he's just being cheated by society.

Ngita said...

Hinenuitepo is that comment with knowledge of the 3.3 changes to rolling?

Thats what has made it a hot topic recently. As I have stated previously I disagree with Klepsacovic position on disenchanting for pugs and I am 100% happy greeding to de and then handing over the proceeds to the winners, if they choose to passin my favour then that just a perk of the profession. No second round.

But i intensely dislike this change. Enchanters manually doing the process means it was forced to be fair based on that individual run. A got the epic, B got the orb, C won the mount and D and E (me) got 2 shards each. The change puts it all the hands of /random. A got the epic and all 4 shards, D, E got nothing. This means whoever needs the most upgrades double dips.

The other part of it is the assumption that this change wont affect Enchanting as a crafting profession, that we make gold by standing around and collecting 20 silver tips outside the bank. But many of us work purely on the supply side. I craft, buy greens of the AH and disenchant, I dont sell enchants, I give them away for free to guildies and friends.

Hinenuitepo said...

I understand the 3.3 changes and I don't see the value in them, but I've always felt that people who QQ about not getting paid to DE in ANY content just need to take a chill pill.
DE can make much more money than many professions, in exactly the way that Ngita mentions.
No my DEer is not my main, but I've raided extensively on him. I certainly am aware of the profession >.<
I just don't see this as an important area worth worrying about.

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