A lowly alchemist/herbalist's rant on why the proffesions are realy not aimed at small-time people wanting to just make something to enhance their own gameplay rather than make gold

Alchemy always seemed fun, ebcause I could easely make some nice potions, flasks for content, and a nice big pot of soup (cauldron) to bring to the raid twice a week. It always felt fun, and even if I did not aim to chase the market and make what sells, I could still make some decent gold here and there by crafting flasks from self-farmed mats, or making some cooldown-based transmutes. Still, the goal was always to just never have to buy things like health potions, flasks and such from the AH, and instead be the one to provide themt o my groups myself. Even as the changes to proffesions came with Dragonflight, and slills became a more important thing, I couls still reliably make top-rank potions and eventualy cauldrons without needing to rely on random ingenuity procs. Investing into skills and proffesiong ear felt meaningful ebcause I could reach that goal of mostly self-sufficient pots and flaskies at max rank

Then War Within came... and suddenly things changed, and not necesarily for the better for someone like me, who was not profit-oriented but instead just wanted to make things. I invested my knowledge points appropriately, I got all the best proffesion gear that I paid decent gold for... and yet even when I got the highest-possible skill level for everything besides thaumaturgy... I could still not make top-rank products without concentration, and all because of one thing: I needed to have all the skills AND all the mats at max rank... and one of those mats was always a crystal vial, something only jewlcrafters could make... and that was WAAAAAY too expensive to invest into just to have assured top-rank crafts.

Suddenly I realized, no matter all my investment into the skills and equipment, and procuring all my own herbs, I will NEVER be able to make top-rank anything without concentration... and between two weekly cauldrons for raid, my concentration could provide 2, maybe 3 crafts of health potions at max level each week. That was 15 pots, maybe 30 if I was lucky on procs.

And now the situation is the same in Midnight; I did the calculations, I checked the total avaliable skill, and sure enough, the same problem will be present int his expansion as well; even if I invest into ALl the knowledge and ALL the equipment, I will NEVER be able to assure top-rank crafts without either concentration, or buying the damn vials (current prioce cca 700g PER VIAL).

Yes, I know I could use a jewlcrafting alt and provide myself vials that way. Yes, I know I should probably focus my skill on whatever the best way to make gold is atm,t hen use that gold to just buy everything I need at max rank for much cheaper than I could make it anyway. I know that is the seemingly intended way to do things now, to do proffesions to make gold,t hen use said gold to buy what you need. But that is not the point of my post. I know I could do that... But I do not want to

The fact that I will never be able to make even something as meesly as a top-rank Silvermoon Healing Potion without concentration or spending ludicrous amounts on the top-rank vials feels insane, doubly so because the difference in healing is a meesly 50k health (a 25% improvement over the lower-rank). I would be fully on board with some harder recepies, like the cauldrons or some high-end transmutes needing every single skill point and top-rank mat, because sure, you are making master-crafted items of cosmic importance. But a singel, simple healing potion you can learn WITH 1 POINT OF ALCHEMY aparently taking THE SAME AMOUNT OF DEDICATION AND SKILL AND QUALITY AS A GLOWING SPACE STONE MADE THROUGH TRANSMUTING SEVERAL ITEMS INTO ONE? Come on.

So, tl;dr: It really feels like the proffesion system right now is made for people with alt armies and minds on profit, and for them, I can see how this current system works best, especialy for gear-making proffesions. Concentration creates scarcity due to a limited resource, even though most people get arround this by just having a tonn of characters for one proffesion.

And those of us that just want to farm our own mats, and make our own products, without needing to have anything more than our one character, cannot even make a single gold-rank healing pot without thinking about it realy realy hard, or paying the glassblowers their own, material-and-skill inflated due (for they toof ace the issue of having to use concentration or spend 1000g making one vial).

I do not know how to fix it, nor do I wish to propose a way. I just wanted to rant about something that realy realy irks me about my little mixologist. Thank you for reading my rant

/Ermenricht - Silvermoon