My Preferred Goal for Professions
I believe in the model that says you should get more from a Flashpoint than you’d get solo for the same effort. And you’d get more from an 8 man than you’d get from a Flashpoint. For 8 vs 16 the jury’s still out. However, I’d still like to see professions more useful in endgame than they appear to be, and more the what they were in WoW.
My View of the Current State
I haven’t had a lot of exposure to the Ops environment, so is post is partly a ‘from the outside looking in’, so if my basis is wrong feel free to point it out in the comments.
Looking at SWTOR professions, only one, Biochem, provides a continuing stream of crafting past reaching 50 and making the best pieces. In WoW there were a number of ‘improvement’ skills that modified new gear (Jewelcrafting, Enchanting, Blacksmithing/Tailoring/Leatherworking to a lesser degree), as well as the ‘consumable’ profession, Alchemy. SWTOR’s Slicing and Cybertech appear to be able to do that at first glance with mods and augments, but the reality is that Augment Slots only appear on crafted gear, and both Augments and mods can be removed, at a cost, from existing gear. This means that even if there’s a way to make customized gear even to Ops gear, changing base pieces doesn’t require crafting.