Changes to Professions

There was a time when you needed to level your crafter up to 84 and complete a few introductory quests before you would have access to the highest level of patterns available in Cataclysm for a few of the crafting professions. With patch 4.1 that has changed, and now you can just waltz up to your local trainer and have access to those prized patterns. I don't think this is really a huge deal, and it really won't be affecting my play style at all.

The first thing to remember is that you cannot skill up past 450 until you've reached level 75. (I've hit this wall myself very recently.) So you will still have to level a character to 75 in order to get your skill level high enough to learn these. It's not like the "good old days" when you could have a true low level crafting alt. *drifts into happy memories of the level 1 disenchanting alts* So no matter how much of an auction house player someone wants to be they are going to have to spend time enough to get a character to 75, and really it's not that hard to go from there to 85 if you have half a mind to do it.

There's also the issue of the Chaos Orbs that you need for some recipes. Since Chaos Orbs are bind on pickup, at least for now, you are going to have to get that character up to level 85 and start running heroics. That's going to keep the casual crafter out of those markets.

For me I don't level a character in order to level a profession, I level a profession because I am leveling a character and it seems a waste not to. Since I would have gone through Twilight Highlands on my way to 85 anyway it just doesn't matter a whole lot. I'd say the only real change this has made for me is that I no longer have to take a portal to get to the patterns as I'm ready to buy them.

The change will save us all a few steps, and bring the crafting professions more in line with each other. They are still not equal in how to get your recipes, but this makes it closer. I'd say Inscription and Jewelcrafting are still far more difficult than the other professions when it comes to recipe collection. This is a move in the right direction though. It was kind of silly to penalize 4 of the craft markets with a higher leveling cap than the others.

What do you think? Is the change good or the right thing to do? Will it affect whether you choose to level a certain character to 85 or not?