There’s a profession change coming in Battle for Azeroth that I am not a fan of – but it makes perfect sense and one of the reasons I’m not fond of it is simply because it’s not how things have been going for the past two expansions. For the past two expansions you could level a profession from 1 to the cap of that tier using materials ONLY from that expansion. Just picking up crafting for the first time in Legion? No longer do you need to go into the vanilla world any more, you can do it all in Legion zones.
In the next expansion this (from what I’ve seen / heard) changes, and instead you will be required to level up through that tier using materials from that expansion. This is how (IMO) it should have worked the entire time. It keeps old content relevant and people who are leveling up actually have a market for their older goods instead of just the top tier being the only viable tier. Still, change is change, and I tend to be leary of it until I see it in action.
That’s why one of my main goals is to get all of my characters as close to 800 in their professions as possible, before BfA comes out. So far I’m at a grand total of ZERO characters being at 800. Not a one. While I have always been able to blow through most leveling adventures, the fact that Legion requires you to quest and do dungeons to unlock recipes has been a huge deterring factor in leveling. I also find skill points rare and far between, relying instead on Darkmoon Faire for easy skill ups (5 a month.. woo). I have 11 characters, and with none of them even close to reaching 800 in their professions this is going to mean a lot of time and work in order to get them up to snuff for BfA. I love crafting in WoW, I just haven’t had any enthusiasm at all with the latest systems. I’m hoping this changes.
We’ll just have to see.
The main difference in BfA is that each tier will become independent of the rest.
Before, to start BC crafting you needed 300 skill in a profession with a 1-800 range of skill, and obtained either through vanilla crafting or the Warlords / Legion content that allowed you to start at skill 1.
After BfA, BC crafting will be it’s own 1-75 skill track that you can start as soon as you reach Outland and will be self contained for that expansion’s content. Instead of a single progression track, your skill levels will look like:
Vanilla: 1-300
BC: 1-75
Wrath: 1-75
Cataclysm: 1-75
Pandaria: 1-75
Warlords: 1-100
Legion: 1-100
BfA: 1-100 ?
Since you can now choose between expansions while leveling it’s a much better system than a single monolithic bar that you can’t level past a point unless you go really out of your way until Warlords.