More answers / clarifications, thanks for asking!
Halite:
Drough: Getting better gear for your profession - through higher skill and/or other profession stats on the gear. What kind of sources can we expect for profession gear? Do they drop from the same kind of sources as you would otherwise improve your profession, can you craft them, do they drop from dungeons, raids, pvp, et cetera?
Sorry, being a bit vague here since it’s not all designed yet. You will certainly be able to craft gear, with lots of cross profession crafting where it’s natural. Blacksmiths’ crafting mining picks and needles for tailoring for instance.We’re excited for this kind of cross profession interaction, particularly because it means someone could choose to be more of a supporter within their profession, specializing in crafting gear for various professions, reagents for others of their profession, etc. (depending on the profession)
Halite:
Drough: If you choose to specialize or gear towards Inspiration So you also gain these stats passively alongside your gear, then? I thought it was only going to be part of your gear, much like how things like crit and haste work, but you’re able to upgrade these stats through specialisation?
Gear will definitely be a big source of these stats. Certain choices within your profession specialization will also allow you to gain some of these profession stats.There will likely be other sources as well…enchants, consumables, etc.
Letholas:
Drough: One of these is Inspiration. The more inspiration you have, the better chance to be Inspired while crafting, gaining some bonus skill to be applied to the outcomeIs there a deterministic way to gain inspiration or is it RNG based when crafting? Being inspired (and gaining the bonus skill) is RNG based on your Inspiration stat. More Inspiration = higher chance it occurs, similar to more Crit = higher chancing of critting. But as mentioned above, there are lots of ways to opt into gaining the Inspiration stat if you want it.
Letholas:
Drough: Conversely, if you choose to use an optional reagent that, for instance, lowers the item level of the item you are crafting, it will actually lower the difficulty of the recipe and make it easier to craft at a high quality.What is the benefit to crafting a lower ilvl item at a higher quality? Are there going to be times where this would be a better system than just crafting a higher ilvl item? Or is this intended to use the higher quality craft to gain more proficiency? Sorry, in general I just wanted to note that optional reagents can raise or lower difficulty, depending on their effect on the recipe.The example I mentioned above would be if we made an optional reagent like the Novice Crafter’s Mark from Shadowlands, which lowers the required level from 60 to 50, and lowers the item level from 151 to 87.Just to be clear though, the introduction of quality along with profession stats is for Dragonflight recipes specifically, I’m just using Novice Crafter’s Mark to illustrate an example of the type of optional reagent that might lower difficulty.