Battle for Azeroth Professions - Overview

Professions in Battle For Azeroth will be significantly different than how they worked in Legion. This page provides an overview of the new items and the professions changes in Battle for Azeroth. I will update this page everytime I find something interesting in the new beta builds.

Table of contents:

Profession skill squish

Professions skills are split between expansions now, you'll have a separate skill bar for each expansion. There are still 950 profession levels in total, just that there is no one single progress bar with 1 to 950 for it anymore. Instead, there are 8 separate progress bars. (The only exception is Archaeology, because it will still have a 1-950 progress bar)

You can take Zandalari Blacksmithing (BfA) for example, and max it out without first having to put any points into the previous 800 levels of the Blacksmithing skills. In fact, you don't even have to take any of the other Blacksmithing subsections at all.

Note: You have to use recipes from the expansion you are trying to max out to level a skill bar. So for example if you want to level Northrend Blacksmithing, you will only gain skill points if you use Northrend recipes. You have to level each one separately if you want to max out all of them.

In Battle For Azeroth this is what a typical Blacksmithing profession will look like:

  • 1 to 300 - Classic Blacksmithing
  • 1 to 75 - Outland Blacksmithing
  • 1 to 75 - Northrend Blacksmithing
  • 1 to 75 - Cataclysm Blacksmithing
  • 1 to 75 - Pandaren Blacksmithing
  • 1 to 100 - Draenor Blacksmithing
  • 1 to 100 - Legion Blacksmithing
  • 1 to 175 - Kul Tiran / Zandalari Blacksmithing

Kul Tiran and Zandalari are the names of new Battle for Azeroth profession tiers. They are named differently for Horde and Alliance, but the name is the only difference between them.

New Crafting Materials

There are 3 new soulbound crafting materials: [Expulsom], [Hydrocore], [Sanguicell]

  • [Expulsom] is obtained primarily from scrapping armors and weapons using the Scrap-o-Matic 1000 (Alliance), or the Shred-Master Mk1 (Horde). These tools work like disenchanting, you can break down any gear obtained that is from the Battle for Azeroth expansion, including dungeon/raid drops, quest rewards, world drops and crafted gear. The Scrapper isn't restricted to specific trade skills. Anyone, even people without a crafting skill can use it. You will mostly get ores, gems, leathers, cloths, and occasionaly you will get one [Expulsom].
  • [Hydrocore] is looted from the last boss in Mythic Dungeons, and from the chest at the end of Mythic+ dungeons.
  • [Sanguicell] drops from raid bosses in Uldir. Currently 1 drops from each LFR wing, 1 drops from a normal boss and 10 from a heroic boss.

Crafted Epic Gear

The new highest ilvl crafted armors are all soulbound. You can't buy them or sell them.

There is a new discovery system for crafting these armors. First you have to craft the base ilvl 355 armor (normal raid ilvl) which requires 110-120 profession skill (depends on which profession). After you craft this armor, you will discover a new recipe, which is ilvl 370 (heroic raid ilvl), and after you craft one from the ilvl 370 armor, you will discover a new recipe for an ilvl 385 armor (mythic raid ilvl).

Leatherworking example:

The ilvl 355 armors will be fairly easy to craft, but you will need to raid a lot to get enough [Sanguicell] for the ilvl 370 version, and the ilvl 385 version requires 250 x [Sanguicell] 

Craftable ilvl 355 armor slots:

  • Leatherworking: Boots, Legs (Mail and Leather)
  • Blacksmithing: Boots, Legs (Plate)
  • Tailoring: Boots, Legs (Cloth)

Recipe ranks and Profession quests

Most recipes still have ranks just like in Legion, but they are a lot easier to get because none of them require Exalted reputation, only Revered or Honored. 

There are no profession quests for crafting profession in BfA, you will learn most recipes from your trainer.

Gathering profession ranks are still obtained from quests, but they are really easy to get since most of the quests are just given you by the trainer, and the quest items that drops from herbs/leathers/ores have a lot higher drop chance than the rank 3 quests in Legion.

Alchemy

Combat potions:

Flasks:

Utility potions:

Transmutes:

Archaeology

[Drust Archaeology Fragment] and [Zandalari Archaeology Fragment] are the two new type of fragments.

Drust rare solves:

Zandalari rare solves:

Blacksmithing

Cooking

No Nomi this time. You can get most rank 3 recipes from World Quests, and you can buy the rest when you reach Revered with the Tortollan Seekers.

Meats:

New foods:

Enchanting

The three new reagents are: [Gloom Dust], [Umbra Shard] and [Veiled Crystal].

Weapon enchants:

There are 5 weapon enchants which grant you 50 of a secondary stat for 30 seconds, stacking up to 5 times. Upon reaching 5 stacks, all stacks are consumed to grant you 400 from that stat for 10 sec. (you get a bit more from Armor)

Engineering

There are new ilvl 340 Engineer-only googles like [AZ3-R1-T3 Synthetic Specs] for every armor type. A nice little bonus is that these helms also increases your Engineering skill by 20.

Devices:

Belt attachments:

Ranged weapon enchants:

Bombs:

Fishing

Herbalism

New herbs: [Anchor Weed], [Akunda's Bite], [Winter's Kiss], [Sea Stalk], [Star Moss], [Siren's Pollen], [Riverbud]

Inscription

New Inks: [Ultramarine Ink], [Crimson Ink], [Viridescent Ink]

Scribers can craft new type of items called contracts. They allows you to gain reputation with a faction every time you complete a world quest on Kul Tiras and Zandalar. One example is [Contract: Tortollan Seekers], but there are contracts for every faction. These are not soulbound, so you can sell them at the Auction House.

[Darkmoon Card of War] is used for crafting the new Darkmoon trinkets: [Darkmoon Deck: Blockades], [Darkmoon Deck: Tides], [Darkmoon Deck: Squalls], [Darkmoon Deck: Fathoms]

Jewelcrafting

Follower equipment: [Kaleidoscopic Lens]

New raw gems: [Kraken's Eye], [Royal Quartz], [Amberblaze], [Tidal Amethyst], [Laribole], [Scarlet Diamond], [Owlseye], [Kyanite], [Viridium], [Kubiline], [Rubellite], [Solstone]

  • Uncommon stat gems are +30 crit, mastery, haste or versatility.
  • Rare stat gems are +40 crit, mastery, haste or versatility.
  • Epic gems are +40 Intellect, Agility or Strength.

Utility gems:

Crafted armors/weapons

Leatherworking

Utility

Mining

New ores: [Platinum Ore], [Monelite Ore], [Storm Silver Ore]

Skinning

Tailoring