Somewhere along the way Professions in World of Warcraft went horribly wrong. Once almost required for any player hoping to advance in end game, Professions in Warlords are a mere shadow of what once was. In fact, it can be argued that Professions in the current expansion are hardly worthwhile at all. That all stands to change in Legion, the next WoW expansion. With a plethora of updates and new features, developers are working hard to turn the dismal state of Professions around.

Legion Profession Overview

The idea in Legion for Professions is to give us much more stuff to do. If you want to log in and spend some time doing something worthwhile with your Professions, you should be able to do that. Professions should feel useful, fun, and something that players want to spend their limited in game time on. Here are some of the ways Professions will be changing in Legion to achieve these goals:

Profession Recipes

No longer will your Profession Trainer be the sole source of recipes for your Profession. Let's face it, clicking a bunch of times and spending some gold to know every single recipe just is not fun. Instead, players will now be sent out into the world to find recipes via quests. These quests will immerse your character in the story, letting you meet epic characters, further your knowledge of the world, and learn some really cool recipes along the way.

Also coming to Profession recipes in Legion are Recipe Ranks. No longer will your journey end once you have learned a recipe. Instead, each recipe will have three ranks that players can go out into the world and try to achieve. Each rank will allow you to make that item more efficiently and better than before.

Gathering Nodes

If you have any of the gathering Professions, you know how frustrating the process can be. You swoop down to pick an herb only to have someone click it seconds before you did. Even worse, you are fighting a mob in front of ore. All you have to do is defeat it and you can mine away. Just as you kill your foe, another player takes your node without a second though. You are filled with rage and loathing.

Legion stands to bring that rage into check. No longer will nodes be stolen from any player. Instead, each node will be shared. Every player that sees a node to collect will be able to harvest it. Hallelujah.

Improved UI

With tons of new recipes and recipe ranks being added into the mix, the Profession UI was starting to look a bit cluttered. Legion will give us a new and improved UI that will make managing our Professions easier than ever before. With a bigger viewable list of recipes a space for recipe details and a cleaner feel in general, the new UI looks glorious. Also notable in the new UI are a newly added Favorites list designed to hold your most used recipes for easy access and separate Learned and Unlearned recipe tabs that will allow you to keep track of what recipes you still need and where to find them.

Special Crafted Gear

One of the major ideas behind crafting professions in Legion is that the gear you create should feel special. If we are honest, most gear we create doesn't really feel that unique, even though they are specially crafted. Examples of some crafted items that now feel super special include the Semi-Automagic Cranial Cannon that is made from gun parts and allows you to shoot bullets from your head and the Bloodthirsty Furystone Gorget; a Neck with a class specific buff that increases your run speed while worn. The idea is to make crafted pieces worth making and worth wearing.

Obliterum

Finally, coming in Legion is a new material called Obliterum. Obliterum it is essential to almost every crafting Profession. This demonic ash can be used to make your crafted items more powerful. To obtain Obliterum players will need to break down other crafted items at a special forge that will eventually be unlocked in Dalaran. This opens up a whole other avenue of use for old gear apart from the standard selling and disenchanting of the past.

Other Profession Changes

Primary Professions

Not many details have been released about specific changes coming to Primary Professions. However, we got a glimpse at the future of Inscription at BlizzCon 2015 and here is what we know so far:

• Major glyphs are gone.
• Glyph as many spells as you want.
• New consumable: Vantus Rune. Calls out particular boss.

Secondary Professions

Like Primary Professions, there are likely big changes coming to each Secondary Profession in Legion. Here is what we know so far:

Archaeology

• Be taken on expansion length campaign.
• Particular focus on collecting things you can use/equip.

Cooking

• Discover new recipes using Sous Chef.
• Bacon.

Fishing

• Feel more like an adventure.
• More exciting.

First Aid

• Exciting bandage-related content!
• 2 More bandages.

A great video not only explaining, but showing much of the above.