This is a QQ thread. Stop reading now if you don't want to hear it.

I have just spent the last hour of my time online farming Clefthooves in Nagrand for Thick Clefthoof leather. Currently, the Heavy Clefthoof items are some of the few that will increase my skill, which is at 362.

After an hour of farming, I've collected 4 Thick Clefthoof leather. Additionally, I've collected 9 pieces of Knothide Leather, and 32 pieces of Knothide Leather scraps.

For the items themselves, I need 20 Thick Clefthoof leather for the boots, 30 for the leggings, and 40 for the chestpiece. In addition, I need 4 Primal Earth per item, and either 4 or 6 Heavy Knothide Leather, depending on the piece.

Frankly, this is unbelievable. This would require a minimum of 5 hours killing and skinning Clefthooves to get the required leather for the feet; ten hours for the chest. Then, I'd have to go find some elementals, and grind on them to get the required 40 motes of earth. All of this, and I only get 1 point towards my leatherworking skill.

As it is, I wipe out POPULATIONS of Clefthoof. I spare no one. Yet, I often can't even skin 1 Thick Clefthoof Leather per pack! What makes it worse is that I'd be dumb to use the leather to craft the items! It's so hard to get, that it currently goes for 50g per stack on the AH. There is no way my boots would sell for 50g, or my chest for 100g.

To make it even worse, the disparity between skinning and the other gathering professions is blatantly apparent. My herbalism buddy is rolling in Primal Life, and my mining friend in Primal Earth. I still consistently get Knothide Leather Scraps from level 70+ mobs (particularly, the Clefthooves in Blade's Edge that are inaccessible by foot... and still don't seem to drop Thick Clefthoof Leather at a higher rate...). To make one pieces of Heavy Knothide Leather, I need 25 scraps. That’s 25 mobs for 1 of usually 4-6 necessary Heavy Leather per item.

On this same note, the other path I can take with my leatherworking is to make the Felstalker set, 2 of which are still orange to me. The catch? 4 Primal Air per item-- the hardest of all the elements to farm. Currently, 1 Primal Air goes for 20+g on my server. That’s 80g on the Air alone, which is much more than any of the items are worth.

In addition, Blizzard has apparently removed all skinnable mobs from high level instances. While I see mining nodes and herbs throughout every instance, I'm lucky to skin 5 mobs (again, almost exclusively for scraps). This means that I have to specifically set aside farming time to increase my skill. While I don't mind it (gives me something to do solo), the time investment required is excessive, and apparently much more than is required for the other crafting professions.

In conclusion, I'd like Blizzard to take a look at skinning and Leatherworking. Skinning is, hands down, the worst gather profession, and the drop rate for necessary Leatherworking patterns is terribly, terribly low. Whether they do or not, I felt I should express my disappointment in what has gone from a joy in-game, to a frustrating annoyance.

While I also find getting primarily scraps from mobs even which are 70+, I have not had quite the trouble you have with clefthoof leather. Are you killing the Clefthoof Bulls or just the regular Clefthooves? Killing the Bulls I find i get about 1/3 knothide, 1/3 knothide scraps and 1/3 thick clefthoof leather (aproximate). It only takes me 30 minutes or so get skin a stack of the stuff.

I agree with you 110%. The skinning in outlands is beyond broken.

I also refuse to pay the outragous prices for primals.

I have decided to put my leatherworking skill on the back burner, if I get the mats to make something ,
great, if not, i'm not going to worry about it any more.

I do wish you all the luck in the world with upping your skill though.

and I am 69, not 62, when are these things going to update right, lol.

Agreeing here.

Just plain horrible on the rates. Especially 70 mobs for leather scraps.

Go figure,

60-70+ mobs all drop Knothide Leather Scraps?

60-70+ mobs all give Knothide Leather at a lower rate than scraps, including the 65+ ones

Specialty leather (IE: Clefthoof) has horrible ratings, which, although not impossible, are incredibly irritating.

My largest complaint is that higher level mobs still give leather scraps, or have the same rating for scraps as leather. Mobs higher than 65ish ought to be dropping far more knothide than scraps. And while I agree with the clefthoof problem, I feel that all of skinning/LW is fairly trashed.

As he noted, we receive no bonuses in addition to our time spent skinning/leatherworking as do the other gathering professions (Mining/Herbalism), which, i might add, is rather frustrating.

Would like to inquire as to when a Leatherworking/Skinning review/buff is in order.

/signed. Raising LW is terribly slow when you need to kill 25 mobs for just 1 heavy leather.

I would also like to note that the only reason that I have made it to even 350 Leatheworking (375 skinning of course) is that guildies alts who have only gathering skills toss me the leather they have. I think I should assume that I'm one of the luckier ones at this point, as the majority of our leatherworkers are having trouble getting past 330.

I agree with everything that's been said so far.

And for the love of god, give us our own large bag to hold mats in. Currently, LWing/Skinning is the only profession to not have one.

Gona have to agree here. Would much like to be able to make a 28 slot LW bag as i just made a 28 slot mining bag for my brother the other day...

I've gotten to 335 without grinding, so far. But I skinn everything I can as I do my normal questing. I'm always on the lookout for others' kills that I can skin for leather. Its been a lot of work, but not too horribly bad. I am very concerned about progressing further, though. The stuff I can craft for myself is a sidegrade at best compared to the drops and quest rewards I'm getting. And based on my experience so far in getting motes and clefthoof leather, I can tell its going to become a horrible grind going forward. I wouldn't mind it so much if there were patterns that would be worthwhile, but I don't see a lot of those. Leatherworking seems seriously gimped.

i agree completely....the lvling process is also stupid, i can skin 10-20 orange mobs and not get a single lvl, wtf is that?! if your not gonna give us the lvl for it, then make the skinning level green, not orange.

I agree completely. Don't get me wrong, I love being a leatherworker, but skinning in outworld is insane !

Ah yes, I also have another thing to note.

All of you have seen the Weaponsmith/Armorsmith trainers in Shattrah correct?

Did you see that each had 10+ epics available to craft? Of which there were 3-4 per specialty, and were impressively above-normal quality? And thats aside from the many blues available to craft

And we have what? A few blues and 3 epic pieces of armor per specialty (except dragonscale, which must craft for shaman and hunter) with mediocre epic stats at best?

Elemental:
http://www.wowhead.com/?spells=11.165.10658

Tribal:
http://www.wowhead.com/?spells=11.165.10660

Dragonscale:
http://www.wowhead.com/?spells=11.165.10656

I mean, the elemental crafted rogue gear doesn't even give crit chance, its all AP, and very little agility. In fact, I believe my blue Honored reward chest from zangamarsh has better agi stats, even without sockets, than does the primalstrike.

I'd be interested to see what other classes have to say about their epic crafted LW gear. It seems the rogue gear is the worst of it but still would be nice to see.

I can feel for you. Im not a LW/Skinner but as a tailor at 360, it takes 108 netherweave cloth, 8x arcane dust, 2x netherweb spider silk.... per rank. I guess they really wanted to make us grind harder than ever.

/signed.

In addition:

Mining now feeds 3 professions (smithing, engineering, jewelcrafting). High demand for mined goods.

Herbalism feeds alchemy, which creates primarily consumables, so there's a high demand for gathered herbs as well.

Skinning feeds leatherworking, which makes permanent items, most of which are not as good as the random drops that you get while farming the mats to make them. Much lower demand for goods.

The ONLY items I can make that are worth anything at the moment are:

Clefthoof armor patch
Cobrahide armor patch
Riding Crop

Keep in mind that the mats for the cobrahide patch are so absurd that no one will pay for them. QQ for terrible drop rates on cobra scales.

Please revisit both of these professions (LW and skinning), make the drops (a) more worthwhile and (b) in more demand by other professions, and make the LW items more useful to the level of player that is able to farm the mats to craft it.

I saw where this was going when I reached level 63 and stopped skinning and leatherwork and put it on hold while I leveled. Now that I leveled, I'm thinking of dropping leatherworking and skinning and taking up herb/alch or something else.

Skinning is now a royal pain and leatherworking is unprofitable and a total joke.

/signed

these professions suck at the moment. on par with engineering.

The only interesting thing that came out for leatherworkers in BC were the different kind of drums, yet did you realize something? They all have set charges as well as 8 second cast time. Why not instant since they only have 30 charges.

Speed
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=35544

Restoration
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=35539

Panic
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=35538

So they're utterly ineffective and only used for fun or if you have leather to spare (which we dont)

Following this, as stated, we feed no professions aside from our own, and the materials required for the new kinds of armor kits which are actually needed are incredibly off-scale for the first 2, and incredibly unfair for the last. The other gathering classes can get a majority of the Primals from their profession and so can easily give us mats for these, yet we have to pay upwards of 20g in order to make something from our own profession? Are you kidding?

Clefthide
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=35555

Cobrahide
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=35549

Flame
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=35521

Frost
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=35522

Nature
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=35523

Shadow
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=35520

while I agree it's ridiculous to get scraps from level 70+ mobs most of the time, I have a tip for the OP. if you are looking for knothide leather just go to the black morass. the trash mobs there are non elite and since they are instance trash they drop 1-3 scraps/leather per mob and it's at least 50/50 scraps/leather if not better. the spiders drop netherweb silk too. once you're done just zone out and flip the instance. hassle free farming and so easy.

as for clefthoof leather, I found a pretty good droprate from the clefthooves in nagrand. I got like 24 of the things doing the two mastery quests.


I'd like to add that cobra scales are a pain in my ass. farming them just plain sucks, hands down. such an infrequent drop and off a mob that really isn't very common at all. if there's even one other person farming them you're hosed.

I Am totally ticked off at this LW crafting also, I Looked all over the internet (Alakazam, thottbot, ect.)
Every LW Pattern is a total Joke, And Yes I did look at the Weaponsmith/Blacksmith trainers, There is Some VERY Nice Stuff to be crafted.
I Leveled up LW the day before Expansion hoping to get some awsome gear, And I Get Intellect on my gear I Make, Yea real nice, No AP, Very little Agility

AND On top of that I go train In Dragonscale LW, It gives me a pattern for s Shaman that Has to be lvl 70!
WTF About Hunters

OH And Another thing, Miners get Primal Fire from Nodes, Herbalists get Primal Life, Skinners Get SCRAPS! Wow Brilliant

I Would Like to make a suggestion to Blizzard
Weaponcrafters can Make 3 different types of new guns
How about Letting LW's Make A couple bows

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Q u o t e:
In conclusion, I'd like Blizzard to take a look at skinning and Leatherworking. Skinning is, hands down, the worst gather profession, and the drop rate for necessary Leatherworking patterns is terribly, terribly low. Whether they do or not, I felt I should express my disappointment in what has gone from a joy in-game, to a frustrating annoyance.

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I agree. Leather Working and Skinning should both be looked at.

I'm dreading the idea of trying to farm cobra scales.

I'd also like to see some speciality BoE recipes added, as things stand now... there's no reason to be a particular specality unless you can actually use what items you craft. It's fine to have BoP recipes (as long as that means that you can reduce the mats list to more reasonable levels) but give us something we can sell too please.