Engineering's BFG edition

Alex is out loading up his backpacks with all his gear, hopping on his Traveler's Tundra Mammoth and walking across Azeroth for a couple days. So until he's back to us full time I'm going to take a few more days this week of "Da Queue." Be sure to leave us your questions as a comment, or if you want to remain anonymous (because really, besides "Why can't Paladins tank?" there is no such thing as a dumb question) you can send us a tip on our tip line. Enough talk! Let us Queue!

Ava asked...

"Any word on when they're going to make engineers not useless in 3.1..."


Well... I gather the saving grace came today when Blizzard announced the removal of consumable ammunition won't be happening in 3.1. So you have a little longer to make things and sell them for a nice profit.

I think Engineering has always been a niche specialty. Obviously in BC it became a tad over powered with some of the helmets it could make, and of course there was the de-facto tanking gun up until the release of the Sunwell. Now it still has some of those features, but it's not as predominate as it once was.

But this is by design too.

Blizzard doesn't want the professions to be something that are so great they are essentially required for a given class. Remember Leatherworking in BC? Everyone who was a hard core Sunwell raider had to have Leatherworking for drums. It was really really really dumb to have Priests respec to Leatherworking just to get a continuous drum rotation going on. Blizzard knows this, and at BlizzCon last October Ghostcrawler made mention several times that they never want to return to that horror.

And truth be told, Engineering now is at least more useful/fun than it was four years ago.

Nicole asked...

"I've found that the Death Knight class is a fantastic way to explore the other faction and I was just wondering if you this was a popular thing to do?"

I really can't answer for other players, but I can defiantly speak for myself. I've got a 69 Blood Elf Death Knight that I've been having fun with now and then. All my mains are Alliance side (and yes, I've even got an Alliance Death Knight going on my second account), but my Hordie is quite fun to play.

I'm looking forward to running through the Wrath Gate quest line Horde side in a few levels, since I've done the Alliance one so many times now I practically have it memorized. It's also been fun to see the different angles on events as I leveled my way through Outland and into Northrend.