A First Look at Mists of Pandaria Professions: Engineering

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I've said it before and I'll say it again -- if you're not having fun while playing World of Warcraft, you're doing it wrong. Sure, raiding is great, and so is having pockets full of gold. But if you don't find either of those fun, then why bother? Find something that is fun.

Fun, of course, is what the engineering profession is all about. It's certainly not about money, after all -- engineers make very few things that non-engineers can use. But while you're struggling to make money in MoP, you'll at least be getting a lot of new perks to enjoy while doing all that struggling. There are cool new pets, new conveniences, new gear, a new world-altering device, and even new mounts -- yes, mounts with an s!

Exciting times are most definitely ahead for engineers. So strap on your goggles and have a robot roll up your sleeves -- we're going to dive right in.

First Jeeves, then a portable mailbox, and now ...

My hands-down, least favorite part about blacksmithing, mining, and engineering has to be walking back and forth to the anvil. Tailors don't need a loom. Leatherworkers don't need a tannery. But blacksmiths, bless their little dwarven hearts, still need a damned anvil.

That really sucks for them, but you're not some lowly blacksmith -- you're a freakin' engineer. You've got a super-portable anvil in your backpack. Or, at least, you will in Mists of Pandaria. Meet the Thermal Anvil, your engineering toy of convenience this expansion. Oh, and as a bonus, it functions as a forge, as well.

Does carrying around an smelter-and-anvil in one as effortlessly as you carry around a Big Bear Organ make any sense at all, logistically? No. But who cares? It's convenient as all hell.

Obviously, this little sucker will be incredibly useful for any of you who are miners -- and I know a lot of engineers are. The only downside is the cooldown: five hours. That really cuts down on the thing's usefulness. One use while farming per day, and you're pretty much done.

Up and at them

In WoW, goggles are pretty synonymous with engineering. There are new goggles in every expansion, and only engineers get to wear them. They make you look smart. And contrary to what Mr. Rainer Wolfcastle asserts, these goggles most definitely do something.

Engineers will get a leg up on the early MoP gearing rush: Like in Cata and Wrath, engineers will be able to craft helmets suitable for level 90 raiding content. There's Lightweight Retinal Armor for clothies, Agile Retinal Armor and Camoflague Retinal Armor for leather wearers, Deadly Retinal Armor and Energized Retinal Armor for mail classes, Reinforced Retinal Armor for hack-and-slash plate wearers, and Specialized Retinal Armor for healing paladins. All of these come with two cogwheel sockets, so you get to pick and choose what secondary stats you want, just like in Cataclysm.

But that's not all. It appears there's a special type of goggles available in MoP, too: Mist-Piercing Goggles. Apparently, there are hidden, engineer-only nodes, herbs, and hides. Walk around with some dumb helmet, and you don't see them. Put on these goggles, and all of a sudden, they appear on your phase. There's no engineer-only limitation on these, but that's likely a temporary oversight.

New mounts!

Engineers have been privy to some pretty cool mounts in the past. The Mechano-hog is absolutely legendary, and it still sells to this very day. Well, get ready to spend some more time in the garage, my engineer friends: There are two new mechanical mounts being added in Mists of Pandaria!

The first of the two mounts is named the Geosynchronous World Spinner. There's no engineer-only restriction on this one, so I'm presuming that you'll be able to sell this sucker on the AH to make some coin. I haven't seen the art for it, but the tooltip seems to evoke a gyroscopic-type craft or some kind of other spinning thingy:

The second of the two mounts is the Depleted-Kyparium Rocket. Like the Geosynchronous World Spinner, there's no requirement that the owner be an engineer. You have to guess this is going to be a palate-shifted version of the soon-to-be-retired X-53 Touring Rocket.

Will each of the two engineering disciplines (gnomish, goblin) get its own mount? That's always a possibility. We'll have to keep our eyes on these for more details. It's also worth noting here that neither of these two mounts seem to be limited to engineers only, so you'll be able to cash in making these two mounts for years.

Meet Blingtron 4000, your new daily cooldown

When you've finally maxed out your engineering, you'll be able to make a new robot friend: Blingtron 4000, who combines the classic sensibilities of a 1950s robot with the dynamic flair of a 1970s street pimp. Check out his tooltip:

That random gift is the Blingtron 4000 Gift Package. We're not quite sure what's going to be inside. My best guess? Something to rival the daily/periodic cooldown bonuses of the other professions -- kind of like the MoP version of Forged Documents, alchemists' daily transmute, or tailors' Dreamcloth.

Meet your engineering-only trinket

Engineers who are at least 550 in skill will be able to use and equip the Ghost Iron Dragonling, an i457 rare-quality trinket. Granted, it doesn't have the perfect itemization for any class -- 801 mastery is kind of teh suck all around, but given how hard trinkets are to get (generally), this should be of some assistance early in your Mists of Pandaria career.

Oh, I forgot to mention the "cool" and "fun" part: You can use the trinket to summon a Ghost Iron Dragonling to fight for you for 1 minute. The ability is on a 5-minute cooldown. If he's anything like the other dragonlings (like the Elementium Dragonling, the i333 Cata trinket), he'll do a small amount of non-trivial damage. Just be careful, these little guys tend to have a large aggro radius and seem to wind up dying a lot.

... but that's far from all ...

It's become tradition for engineers to be able to zip around the world almost instantly with only a low to moderate chance of malfunction. And that tradition continues in MoP with the Wormhole Generator: Pandaria. It takes you to a random location in Pandaria, with a 4-hour cooldown. No word yet if there's a secret wormhole vendor in this expansion like there was in Wrath, but man, wouldn't that be neat?

Engineers also get their usual glove enchant, Synapse Springs. This expansion, the bonus is worth 2,940 points of your primary stat -- how's that for inflation? -- and you can use them for 10 seconds once every minute. The pseudo-enchant requires 550 skill to apply.

There were a few other items picked up in the MMO Champion engineering data mine that are very curious, to say the least. There's a thing called the G91 Landshark, capable of causing over 1,000,000 damage (!). There's a Steam-Filled Balloon which, per the tooltip, "lifts you up where you belong." There are Watergliding Jets, which attach to your belt to let you either walk on water or swim quickly. There's a Goblin Glider, which lets you float for 30 seconds ... or thrust you forward ... or catch fire. There's even a Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling, presumably, an engineer-crafted pet.

Of course, there will be guns and scopes too ... and ... man, I don't know about you guys, but I'm exhausted with all this listing. That's a lot of stuff. A lot of fun, moderately dangerous, occasionally deadly stuff. It just goes to prove that there's a lot of engineering love coming in Mists of Pandaria -- so long as you can resist the temptation to take a more lucrative profession, instead. So, dear readers, how much is fun worth to you?

Maximize your profits with advice from Gold Capped. Want to know the very best ways to earn 10,000 gold? Top gold making strategies for auctioneers? How about how to reach 1 million gold -- or how one player got there and then gave it all away? Fox and Basil are taking your questions at fox@wowinsider.com and basil@wowinsider.com.