The sad state of illustrious grand master enchanting

I haven't been very happy with the state of enchanting going into Cataclysm. Yes, archeology may have it bad, and that's an issue that affects more players than are affected by the problems with enchanting (assumedly), but that's why I wrote about it first, and now its time for my primary profession to take the spotlight.

You see, enchanting is in a rough spot right now. For those with no experience with enchanting other than having others enchant their gear, enchanting is both a gathering profession and a crafting profession. We "gather" materials by disenchanting green-quality or better weapons and armor, which destroys the armor and awards us with the materials we need to do our enchantments. The steadiest supply of green-quality or better armor is quests, and thus the best way to level enchanting is to gather materials by disenchanting weapons and armor awarded by the quests we do as we level up. This applies at all levels, from level 10 to the level range we find ourselves in now.

Now, once upon a time, an enchanter could disenchant any piece of gear, regardless of its ilevel, but in Burning Crusade, most gear was given a minimum enchanting skill that would be required to disenchant the gear. Gear awarded by quests in Vashj'ir, Mount Hyjal, and Deeopholm require 425 enchanting to disenchant (except a few of the rares, which require 500 skill), which is good and all, but upon entering Uldum, we are greeted with an ugly surprise. The quest rewards in Uldum, including the simple greens that we so depend on to obtain our basic mats, require 475 skill to disenchant. This is problematic, because there's no guarantee that an enchanter will reach 475 skill by the time he reaches Uldum. I myself just barely made it to 475 with the materials I obtained by disenchanting quest rewards from Hyjal and Deepholm, and I had a ten skill-point head start with my leftover materials from Wrath of the Lich King. In other words, I was only able to level enchanting 15 to 20 skill points with the materials I obtained from questing in Hyjal and Deepholm, and I was lucky enough to have the 25 skill point head start thanks to advanced Wrath of the Lich King recipes (enchanting becomes very costly to level with Wrath of the Lich King recipes around 425). Someone who didn't get that head start would be even more likely found himself unable to disenchant his quest rewards. He'd probably have to go back to whichever 80-82 zone he hasn't already completed so he can obtain more materials, which I found myself doing, so even that might not be enough to push him to the 475 level. In other words, enchanting has the potential to flat out break for someone trying to level it along side a typical leveling pattern. Enchanting has never been an easy profession to level by any stretch of the imagination, but this is just not acceptable.

How to fix this issue? Well, lowering the minimum required skill to disenchant Cataclysm greens would be a start. The lowest skill required to start learning recipes that use Cataclysm-era materials is 425, so it seems a bit of an unreasonable jump for lowly greens to go from requiring 425 skill to 475 skill, since that's fifty skill points the enchanter could potentially need to earn with only two zones' worth of materials. If that number were lowered to 450, this issue could be solved easily and with minimal effort.

That's the main issue I have with illustrious grand master enchanting as it is, but there is a more minor one that has taken up my thoughts, too: currently, all Cataclysm enchantments are restricted to ilevel-300 gear, and I find that just plain unjustified. The highest ilevel of gear anyone can obtain from Wrath of the Lich King content is 284 (from heroic 25-man Lich King and Ruby Sanctum), and while Hyjal and Vashj'ir quest rewards have a lower ilevel than that, Deepholm's quest rewards don't, and is it that unreasonable for players to want to enchant their Cataclysm gear with Cataclysm enchants? It would be just as easy for Blizzard to restrict the Cataclysm enchants to ilevel 285 and above; it would have the same effect of preventing Cataclysm enchants from being used on Wrath gear, and it would allow enchanters to start using their new and exciting toys earlier.

In fact, why not just lower the minimum ilevel for Cataclysm enchants to 270? 272 is the lowest ilevel of Cataclysm gear, so this minimum would allow enchanters to use their new toys as soon as they entered Cataclysms content. Yes, this cutoff would include some Wrath of the Lich King gear, but it would only include gear obtained from the hardest of raid instances. And though I may be wrong, I was always under the impression that these minimum ilevel restrictions were put in to prevent high-level enchants from being put on low-level gear, so you couldn't add 130 agility to the Alarmbringer's Mace. But now that the era of Wrath of the Lich King is over, the only gear over ilevel 270 that anyone can reasonably expect to get is Cataclysm gear, and considering that Wrath of the Lich King raid gear that is over ilevel 270 is better than Cataclysm quest greens of the same ilevel, I don't imagine that allowing Cataclysm enchantments on such gear would create a stat imbalance at all.

Now, one might say that stat imbalances are exactly why these seemingly-unreasonably high minimums are required. Take at look at the Beakless Polearm, for example. It's a quest reward from Vashj'ir, one of the two lowest-level zones in Cataclysm. If one were to enchant it with the Mighty Agility enchantment, the amount of agility it provides would be almost doubled, and that could be considered an imbalance in terms of how much of an effect enchantments are supposed to have. But it all balances out in the end, because as a green-quality quest reward, the Beakless Polearm won't remain the player's weapon of choice for very long. It will soon be replaced, and a player will go through materials very quickly if he tries to keep all of his replacement weapons enchanted. Thus, though the benefit of applying such a powerful enchantment to such a low-level weapon might be high, the amount of time that the player will use that weapon is comparatively low, and thus the total benefit he gets out of that enchantment will be about the same it would be if he had enchanted a higher-level weapon.

You might be wondering, why is this even an issue? After all, no player in their right mind would enchant gear they plan on replacing soon, so who would put an enchantment on a green-quality weapon? No player who isn't an enchanter, that is. We enchanters are the only ones who would have access to a steady enough stream of materials that we'd be comfortable enchanting green-quality gear, so it's not unheard of for us to do just that. If it weren't for the fact that I have materials to spare due to disenchanting all of my quest rewards, I would never have put 50 haste rating on my Bloodcult Handwraps, yet because I have dusts and essences to spare, I did just that. Of course, given the choice, I would have put that enchantment on my Corecrusher Gloves, too, but they were too low level for me to do so.

Since enchanting is the only profession I have any experience with in the illustrious grand master range (other than herbalism, which is doing just fine, thankfully), I now put out this question to my readers: are other professions suffering similarly? Do you find yourself unable to properly level up your primary professions whilst leveling up normally? Or is enchanting the only profession suffering from these kinds of issues?