f13.net

Engineering currently 360 - I would like to switch from Gnomish to Goblin engineering.

What will I lose by doing this?  Will my skill level in engineering drop?

I believe you have to unlearn engineering and train it back up from 0.

At least that is the way it was for 2 years before I quit playing, and I doubt they have changed it as they want people to not take the specialization track choices lightly.

Thanks.

They changed it, you can switch for 100g at the right trainers and you don't lose skill to do so. I'm not sure where the engineer ones are though.

Double thanks!

I think it's the same as the other professions; at that Soothsaying guy north of Steamwheedle Port in Tanaris.  But then, I thought you had to re-learn it from scratch, too, so I may be out of date.

They just changed all that in the latest patch.  Tailors, Alchemist, Engineers, ect., can all change their specializations now without having to drop and relearn the entire thing over again.

Well that was nice of them. Would have been nice back in the old days.....of course, I never had a tradeskill I wanted to change specializations on.

I looked at the patch note:

"You can now unspecialize in tailoring and alchemy, and then select a new specialization. This is a repeatable choice, but costs gold each time."

Hmm.. no mention of Engineering.

Hmm, I had a look and yeah you can't change specialisations for engineering like that. You can for BS, leatherworking and tailoring, but engy and alchemy can't. I imagine it's something they intend to fix in the future like they did recently for tailoring, so unless you have a burning need to change now I'd hold off for when it (likely) becomes possible.

Sorry about that, I guess that's what I get for assuming they'd have gotten around to them all by now. I should have double-checked but I wanted to reply quickly before you unlearnt anything. :P

Someone currently in charge at Blizz hates Engineers.  We got some of the crappiest new recipes with horrible drop rates, a damned expensive grind to 375, no respec, and only got 'epic crafting' crap after tons of bitching and they're not all that spectacular.  They're definitely below the level of the tailoring stuff.

Epic Engineer head items are the best available epic in the game short of Black Temple.   The Epic gun is the best available item. period.

It's cool mate - I have not changed anything yet.  Looks like I should wait for further changes to game mechanic.

Ah, hadn't checked the engineering myself.  Just figured since everybody else got it, they would too.  However, Alchemy can change its specialization as well now, I've seen the option.  So is it just Engineering now that can't?

Let me see if I am understanding this.  I can go from 300 Alchemy to 300 Enchanting? 

No.

You can unlearn the specializations inside of a certain tradeskill, say armorsmithing to swordsmithing, or dragonscale to elemental leatherworking.

To change to a new skill you have to totally unlearn the other one.

So as a hunter (dwarven), is it worth taking engineering?  I was thinking of it once I hit high enough and make a ton of cash and stock up materials, right now my hunter just runs around mining and skinning, which has made me a ton of cash (just hit 41, I have a purple bow and my mount and about 400 in the bank...but then again all I did was grind mining and skinning and farming grey mobs for low level greens and blues).

Simply put, no. It's mostly for the rich and/or lazy. If you were a gnome caster, you can power level it and get a cloth helm that is significantly better than what you'd be able to find and would last you 10 levels easy (only due to the inate +engineering bonus); you can also get the gnomish death ray which is OK and the teleporter which is really pretty handy (you want the gnomish one to tanaris).

The simple fact is that the amount of money in materials that it costs to get there is simply too high for what you get unless this is a second or third character that you are completely twinking out. If you need money in the slightest, simply stick with the dual gathering professions until you're higher level. Play the AH and use that extra cash to keep your character in the latest and greatest gear. That will help you more than the profession ever could.

Of course, then you won't be able to enlarge the entire world.

Unless they majorly buffed engineering to the point that it is really really useful, or that the crafted guns are engineer use only, there is really no reason other than novelty to be an engineer as a hunter. Gathering skills that will make you bank are the best bet as you can purchase the crafted guns from an engineer. The amount engineers I knew saved on ammo was really negligible at best.

I don't know if they changed it but eng used to be awesome for hunters.

Does feign death still get you out of combat in instances?  IOW, will mobs reset if you fake death and are the only one alive?  If so then I'd say go eng.  Jumper cables only work like 25-35%(ish) but they are still golden when they work.  Back when dire maul actually mattered eng was also nice for blowing open a door when doing a chest run.

Other stuff i like about Eng on my shaman:  Parachute cloak.  I leave it unequipped in my first bag slot, occasionally i want to jump down from high places and i put it on.  I hear they got nerfed in BC (i haven't played my shaman much since its launch), but the reflectors used to be insanely fun.  You may get to know a few AP/POM+Pyro happy mages and poppy a fire reflector in their face during a WSG game is 1 of the most fun things you can do in WoW.

Grenades.  Ok i heard from a friend that they nerfed grenades HARD, but their are still high-level grenades you can make i assume?  Grenades are one of the best things ever if you love world pvp or bg's.  Especially for a hunter, if someone worms into your dead zone, tossing one into their eye is alot of fun, i can't tell you how many times Frost mages would FN my shaman in place, blink out of earth shock range, and wind up a frostbolt just to catch a thorium grenade in the eye.  So you can kinda think of grenades for a hunter as a second scattershot on a separate cooldown.

Bombs.  The only 2 places i used my bombs (The Big One bombs where somewhat annoying  to make but i loved them) was in WSG, mostly when the enemy team is all grouped up around the flag runner, if you time it right you basically incapacitate like 8-10 people at once, and The Big One's had a huge radius and lasted 5 seconds.  The other place was Nef stage 3 which obviously doesn't matter anymore.  But anytime you are in an instance and a mage needs to do difficult/risky aoe, or you have a loc SoC'ing up a bunch of mobs, bombs are pretty good for buying either one some time.

Teleporters... 4 hour cooldown so not that great imo.  Also i dont know what the drawback of the gnomish one is (my shaman went goblin for RP reasons) but the goblin one can set you on fire.  No big deal i you can heal but i imagine it would really suck for other classes.

If i rolled a hunter i can pretty much guarantee I'd go mining/eng... unless things have changed that much.

EDIT:  spelling

I used to have 300 engineering on my hunter, and chose Goblin because at one time the two flavors of jumper cable were on separate cool downs - so Goblin engineers had two chances to save the wipe rather than one. When they put both cables on the one timer, Goblin engineering became largely worthless.

FD no longer gets you out of combat, and bombs are OK but again engineering is only good if you have money to burn. If you're leveling your first char or are fairly tight on cash, put that cash into more up to date gear on your character before dumping it into the engineering money hole. If you DO decide you want to go engineering (the teleporter is really the only reason to do it these days, outside of hardcore PvP) than make sure you go gnomish.

As a tank I find engineering indispensible.  The new goggles are great - but the pre-patch resistance trinkets were very useful and will be again when resistances are needed in the game (shadow, frost, fire).

Say wha?  News to me since it got me out of combat plenty last night.


For some classes, it very well might be.  For hunters, not so much.  It's about equal to the Demonstalker, bu you lose a lot of good raid stats like mana and MP/5.   The gun is definitely not the best available item.

Oh sorry, I'm thinking of bosses. I'm used to the old raiding style where the only time you die is during boss battle.

Worked on bosses, too.

You've just got guildies who do evil things like drag the AOE-ing bosses over top of you.

Either can use cables fwiw. Just have to be goblin to make them.

I rerolled on a new server and my miner/goblin eng. rogue currently has 1.4k gold; no epic flying mount yet because I have a problem with shiny AH purchases (and I work full-time)

I do have my goggles and a bunch of happy toys though. goblin rocket launcher is the best way to end arena matches, nothing like getting hit in the chest with an exploding projectile the size of a thermos

engineering is FUN!

Your pet needs to stop attacking now, so deal with that and it will work fine.

He may also be refering to the combat pulses that boss mobs have, which put everyone in the instance into combat. No more mid-fight rezzes with this as was common before the change. Didn't they add combat pulses to BC instances as well as raids?

Its been awhile but i dont remember eng being expensive to level.  Even though my shaman was my 3rd character i bought her no twinkage, and in fact on every character i have leveled i have interacted with the ah on an extremely limited basis, everything you need can be gotten from quests and instances.  Never been the sort of player to buy gear from other people.

Having said that, their is nothing else for me to do with the ore i mine except level eng and make grenades & bombs.  Their is little reason to my way of thinking to buy or sell anything in WoW, except for raw mats that drop from a type of mob you might not be so good at killing (nature immunes for shaman, etc).  The economic independence the game grants is one of the things i find most endearing about it.  I'd always rather farm my own shit then buy it from anyone, unless chinafarmers have flooded the market for a particular commodity (e.g. major mana pots when dire maul was exploitable).

One of the hunters in our guild has stubbornly stuck with engineering, and after making himself the uber hunter goggles, it doesn't seem to be too bad of a choice. Those goggles are arguably as good as or better than Tier 5.