The Blood of Sargeras Legion Beta Controversy
and why it matters!
[SPOILERS]
What is Blood of Sargeras?
Blood of Sargeras is a Bind on Pickup professions material found in Broken Isles in the Legion expansion.
Where can you get Blood of Sargeras?
In meaningful quantities:
From gathering ore (leystone ore, felslate), skinning (stonehide leather, stormscale, felhide) and from herbalism (foxflower, fjarnskaggl, starlight rose, dreamleaf and aethril).
In negligible quantities:
Fishing – if you have the fishing artifact and have leveled up both your fishing and your fishing artifact, and sacrificed Artifact Power which would be better spent on your main weapon.
Drops from killing mobs – if you have grinded reputation with The Wardens faction to exalted, and bought the shoulder enchant “Boon of the Bloodhunter“. The drop rate, if it is anything like the other shoulder enchant drops, will be very low. In order to grind reputation you need to do some of the rarer world quests, which can award 250 reputation each. It requires 42,000 reputation to go from neutral to exalted. If you do 4 world bosses per day, it will take 42 days to grind. If the Wardens daily quests pop, this can shave off a little time. After 42 days you will be able to start gathering Blood in negligible amounts.
World quest rewards: Hand in an amount of gathered material (again, requires gathering!) or complete a world boss quest kill to receive a tiny number of Blood of Sargeras.
Professions – if you have alchemy and have leveled it to max, and have performed “wild transmutations”, and been lucky enough to learn the blood transmute, and you have the reagents.
Wild transmutes gives you a chance on discovering different Transmutes, one of which is called “Transmute: Blood of Sargeras”. You will need reagents:
- 5 Black Transmutagen
- 4 Viscous Transmutagen
- 3 Oily Transmutagen
Unfortunately, this has a daily cooldown.
UNCONFIRMED: number of Blood of Sargeras received (1-5?)
Worse: as an alchemist, you probably already have herbalism as your second profession, giving you sufficient Blood of Sargeras, and nothing to use it for.
That sounds like a great idea!
“This is great, they are gating professions and high-end crafted items behind items that are hard to get!” you may think to yourself.
Blood of Sargeras are used to craft ilevel 800 epic items.
That sounds like it’s raid gear?
No. It’s not raid gear. It’s pre-dungeon gear.
some world quests offer ilvl 800+ items, normal dungeons award ilvl 810, and heroic dungeons award from ilvl 825+
You will need to gather Blood of Sargeras in order to craft over ilevel 800. For leatherworkers, tailors, blacksmiths this is half of your patterns, the other half having no use except for undergeared, non-questing alts, or for disenchanting into Leylight Shards. It’s also used by engineers, scribes (for relics), enchanters (relics/toy), and jewelcrafters (relics).
Already gated
Most of the professions patterns are already gated behind world quests, dungeons, and potentially behind raid kills. There is no need to also gate the materials.
The Blood of Sargeras Problem
Dual gatherers will have BoP blood that they can’t use.
Dual crafters will have no blood, and be unable to craft.
Tailor/enchanters will have no blood, and be unable to craft.
Alchemists will be confused by a transmute cooldown that provides a BoP item they can’t use.
“So just do without”
This is not like Felblight which you can gather from world bosses and trade to your alts. Nor is it like Motes of Harmony that you can farm from drops. Without a gathering profession, you cannot have a (meaningful) crafting profession.
What are Blizzard going to do about this?
They are looking at buffing the amount of Blood that drops from world bosses.
This is not enough.
Dual gatherers will still be screwed.
Alchemist will still be bemused.
From interview with Wowhead
Where can I complain about this?
You can’t.
Unless you are a beta tester, you cannot comment on the beta professions forum, which is where most of the complaints are taking place.
This fundamental change to professions is something you can neither complain about, or do anything about.
Blizzard has made a decision that affects everyone who wants to craft items over ilevel 800.
The discussion about a fundamental change to professions should be open to all players of Warcraft, not just those on the Beta.
Flight/No Flight
This is like the Flight/No Flight argument, and Blizzard can simply go back on their decision in a future patch.
That will be no use for launch date!
It will also be heartbreaking for players who have had to dump one of their crafting professions along with extremely rare, very expensive, or unobtainable patterns.
Personally I will have to choose between deleting unobtainable recipes, or deleting extremely expensive patterns I may never be able to regain.
Deleted forever.
Even if/when Blizzard change their minds about the BoP status.
It’s worse than the Flight/No Flight arguments between players and developers.
It’s not comparable to being without flight, it’s comparable to being forced to delete your mounts.
Do Blizzard want to reward players or punish them?
“In Legion, professions are geared more towards the players that really love getting invested in professions.”
Blizzard say they want professions to be rewarding. Enforcing professions choices, enforcing profession deletion, this is a punishment.
How you can help
[bctt tweet=”@warcraftdevs make Blood of Sargeras BoA. Don’t punish crafters in Legion! ” via=”no”]
You could try getting into the beta so that you can comment on the beta forums. You can try commenting on the professions forum and hope someone reads. You can try raising awareness.
What does this mean for you?
Should you change your professions?
Possibly, but not yet.
Blizzard said during the Legion Summit that they will not change Blood of Sargeras before Legion launch. They also said no flying in Warlords of Draenor.
Wow are professions in Legion bad?
No, they’re great. Gathering is improved, fishing is amazing, crafting is a bit lacklustre, but some of the engineering and alchemy items are exciting.
My Legion Gold Making Guide will go into every profession in depth, and disclose which ones are best, which ones work well together, and how they fit in with the new world quests, reputations, class order halls, and dungeons.
What professions should I have for Legion?
If you have a gathering and a crafting profession, keep these.
but:
If you have dual gathering, drop one today and add a crafting profession. There are plentiful cheap mats available now, at the end of the Warlords of Draenor expansion, that will allow you to level up a crafting profession quickly.
If you have enchanting and tailoring, or dual crafting professions please consider very carefully before you drop a profession.
If you have an alchemist, you should consider dropping herbalism and taking a crafting profession instead of herbalism, otherwise you will be transmuting Blood of Sargeras, and have no use for them.
If you don’t have fishing, you need to get fishing to max now. Including on all your alts.
Blizzard wants to increase involvement with the world. They want you to go out and farm. Farming has now become Blizard’s preferred way of making gold, over crafting. It’s not just legendaries that drop world-wide, but world boss quests can give over 1,000g. This will make it mandatory for all of your alts to be out killing bosses at least once a week. Now would be a great time to get all your characters to level 100 in preparation. Take them to LFR to practice their rotations and learn their spells and abilities. Unlike dungeons, LFR is not locked by proving grounds.
Possible Solutions to the Blood of Sargeras Problem
The best solution: Make Blood of Sargeras into a Bind on Account – BoA item.
This sounds good, you will be able to trade from your gatherer to your crafter. However, it could mean players going to slow small servers with low populations and low economies in order to gather the items, and then mailing Blood of Sargeras across to their mains on higher population servers with faster economies in order to get more gold than on the small server. This could bleed the small server in a detrimental way.
There is no need for alchemists to have a transmute for a BoP Blood of Sargeras that they can not use. Removing the Bind on Pickup, making in Bind on Account, will reinstate its purposefulness.
Alternatively, Blizzard could make the patterns account-wide, same as heirlooms, mounts, pets, and now appearances (transmog wardrobe). This is unlikely before the next expansion.
Alternatively, create a Blood of Sargeras trader NPC that allows you to trade your non-soulbound items, or some currency that you can get from dungeons/raids.
Alternatively, make Blood of Sargeras a reward from significant world quests, dungeons or raids.
My prefered solution is that Blizzard had employed a competent economist with understanding of the legitimate trading and crafting and gold making in World of Warcraft, and this item should never have been Bind on Pickup.
This should never have been an issue.
About the Author
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 11 garrisons, 17k+ achievements, 1593 days played, and over 39 million gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling, snatch lists, and farming gold making. Want more updates on Warcraft Legion? Catch me on Twitch or support my Patreon for exclusive pre-release Legion Gold Guides.
(Please note, I don’t have Beta access so this is information I’ve gleaned from research/watching streamers. This is not first hand experience)
One system you have missed that I think makes up the shortfall is the Obliterum System.
Now I’m not exactly sure how it works (it was late when I was watching Towelliee do it, so memory is not 100%) but it looks like you gain Obliterum Ash from destroying crafting items. 100 Ash + 1 Blood = 1 Obliterum.
Obliterum will increase the ilvl of crafted gear by 5, so since the crafted epics are ilvl 800, then 10 Obliterum (and thus 10 bloods) will push it to 850 putting it on par with early raid gear.
You also don’t need to necessarily destroy epics. I’ve seen streamers destroy Blue items to gain ash, although significantly less ash.
I agree that I think the system is designed to push people into the Crafting/Gathering combo of profs and that it disadvantages Enchanters/Tailors
I think Scribes might be ok given they can destroy those blue generic items they make. Alchemists I think might end up screwed given the only item they can craft and destroy (that I’ve seen, I might be wrong) are their alchemist stones which require 3 Bloods anyway. Unless those give a metric ton of dust, Alchemists are going to be needing a steady influx of items from alts to be able to utilise their Bloods or spend a lot on the AH.