Legacy Perks Pay Gatherers and Crafters Differently
The profession branch of the Legacy tree is not one decision, it is a sequence of ranks bought in order. Bountiful Harvest is a gatherer's perk and Performance Bonus sits past it, which means some characters pay for ranks that return nothing to them.
The profession branch is a sequence, not a switch
Legacy is a per-character point tree, and the profession branch competes for the same points as everything else on it. The perks in it come in ranks rather than as single switches, so the question is never whether you take a branch but how many points you are willing to sink into it before the next perk opens. That structure punishes a profession character more than a combat one, because the money a trade returns arrives slowly, and a rank bought for the wrong reason keeps costing for the life of the character.
Both our account of what Forever changed about trades and the staged plan in a route from 1 to 60 mention Legacy in a single line, because in both places it is one factor among many. Here it is the whole subject: which perk pays which kind of character, and what the ordering costs you when the two do not match.
What a point is worth before you spend it is a separate arithmetic, worked through in what a Legacy point costs. This page assumes you already have points in hand and are deciding where in the profession branch they go.
Bountiful Harvest pays the person on the route
Bountiful Harvest is the one perk in the branch with a plainly stated effect: 5 ranks, up to 20% more scarce materials from gathering. Read the wording rather than the headline. It is the scarce end of a node that it touches, not the common stacks that fill your bags on the way past, and the scarce end is where the margin on a listing lives. The perk does not make a route faster. It makes the same route heavier at the end that sells.
That makes it a time-based perk. A character who gathers for whole evenings converts those ranks into supply directly; a character who picks the occasional herb between quests converts them into almost nothing. It is worth most to a double gatherer, and nearly as much to a gatherer who feeds a crafting slot of their own, since the materials saved are materials not bought back off a listing at someone else's price.
Our reading: the perk also interacts with how you play rather than only what you picked. Two people walking one loop still split a single ore vein between them, which is the argument set out in gathering together against gathering alone. Extra yield on scarce materials is worth more to the solo farmer with the whole route to themselves than to the fourth member of a party clicking the same nodes.
Performance Bonus and the ranks you pay to walk past
The conflict shows up for the character with 2 crafting trades and no gathering at all. Performance Bonus sits further along the same branch on the crafting side, and the path to it runs through Bountiful Harvest ranks. A double crafter buys their materials from other players; a perk that increases what a node yields returns them exactly nothing. They still pay for the ranks, because that is the only way the branch opens past them.
That is the price of the error, and it is paid in points rather than in gold. Points spent to reach a perk are points not sitting in a combat branch, and nothing has been published about resetting a Legacy tree or what a reset would cost, so treat the spend as permanent until Blizzard says otherwise. The mistake is not taking Bountiful Harvest. The mistake is taking it late, after the points that would have paid for it have already gone elsewhere.
Our reading: the toll changes the case for a hybrid build. If you are going to buy those ranks anyway on the way to the crafting perk, a character carrying one gathering trade collects on them while they level, and a character carrying two crafting trades does not. That is a reason to weigh gathering higher than usual when you are choosing which trade to level, and it only exists because of where the perks sit relative to each other.
What has not been published
We can quote Bountiful Harvest because its ranks and its ceiling were stated. Performance Bonus we can name and place, and no more than that: the size of the effect, whether it scales with ranks the same way, and whether it applies to every crafting trade or a subset of them are not things we have seen written down. We are not going to put a figure next to it to make the page tidier.
The same goes for the surrounding details. Whether Bountiful Harvest covers skinning and fishing as well as mining and herbalism, what counts as a scarce material in the code rather than in the sentence, how many points each rank costs, and whether the branch can be reset are all open. Anything on the beta client can also move before launch, and a perk whose numbers are visible today is still a test build number.
Questions
Is Bountiful Harvest worth taking if I only gather for my own crafting?
Usually yes, because the materials it adds are materials you do not have to buy back off a listing, and the scarce ones are the expensive half of any shopping list. The deciding factor is hours, not intent: if you spend real evenings on a route the ranks pay, and if you pick things up only when they are on the way to a quest objective they mostly do not.
Can a double crafter skip Bountiful Harvest and still reach Performance Bonus?
Not from anything published so far. Performance Bonus sits past Bountiful Harvest in the same branch, and no alternative route to it has been described, so a crafting-only character pays for ranks that return nothing to them. If a second path exists in a later build we will say so here rather than quietly assume it.
Does Bountiful Harvest apply to skinning and fishing?
Unknown. The stated effect is more scarce materials from gathering, and that wording does not tell us which trades the game counts as gathering for this purpose. Mining and herbalism are the obvious cases; skinning and fishing are not confirmed either way, so plan the build around the trades you are sure of.
Can Legacy points be moved later if I pick the wrong branch?
Nothing has been published about resetting a Legacy tree, and respec costs in general are on the list of things Blizzard has not detailed. Until that changes, treat every point as spent for good and order your purchases accordingly: take the perks that pay while you level before the ones that pay only at the top.
Sources
- Blizzard's official World of Warcraft site, where Forever announcements and build notes are posted — World of Warcraft news.
- The official forums, where beta build observations about the Legacy tree are discussed by players — Blizzard WoW forums.
What changed on this page
- 9 Oct 2026First version: Bountiful Harvest, Performance Bonus and the ranks a crafter pays to reach them.