Benthic was good when it came out. Again, yeah, they can go up to 425+, but it seems those people that are all for benthic in 8.3 don't play on 4+ characters. It would take huge amounts of time to farm those pearls past ilvl 410, as others have said. Of the things players hates in the game is 'wasting' time on some past stuff. Do you know the meaning of 'catch-up gear'? Boom, you level a fresh alt and can have a full stock of BoA 415 tokens ready for him to equip. With benthic, he would start at 385 (not 425 as you ppl are seeming to mean, as it was so easy to get). With around 415+ on that fresh toon, he can hop faster into 8.3 content, get even better gear doing other stuff than farming pearls, to upgrade EACH and EVERY slot. Now multiply that to all alts you would want to do that.Benthic could be good, if Blizz 'increased' the base and max ilvl of them, so people already with them would increase ilvl, and fresh alts would still get the benefits. But I see why Blizzard (and some people), fortunately knew why it wasn't a good way. Last history patch of the expansion, there will be a lot of new things to do, the least appealing is 'farming pearls to gear your alts'.
So. blacksmithing will continue to be a worthless professions. Guess I'm switching all my alts to alchemy.