Professions

[araisbeck]

I have not started yet, but I will be leveling a Warrior soon. I can't play WoW yet, so I'm just trying to get everything that I'm going to do planned out before I start leveling my character.

My question is about professions. I was originally planning on leveling Mining and Skinning, to gain as much money as possible while leveling, so that I could buy some good tanking gear once I hit 80. Looking over Cider's 540 Defense Guide and Polar's Pre-Naxx guide made me realize that I will need some AH gear, most likely.

I've been looking at some experienced Warriors armories recently, however, and see that the most popular combination of professions for end-game raiding is Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing together. Now I'm wondering if I should level either Blacksmithing or Jewelcrafting while leveling, to get it over with faster. This, however, would severely cut into my savings when I hit 80.

TL;DR:

What is my best choice for professions when leveling up?
Mining/Skinning (for money)
Mining/Blacksmithing (to get a head start)
Mining/Jewelcrafting (to get a head start)

[Martie]

Any choice of two from Blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting and Engineering is ideal for getting the most of your professions.

While the bonuses for most professions are, item points wise, the same, Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting will allow you the most flexible choice of bonuses.
(Mining gives you a flat stamina bonus which is good for tanks, but only for tanks, really. Leatherworking gives you a bonus that isn't too usefull for tanks.)

I added engineering to the list because it has unique bonuses that can be quite good to have, there will forever be debate about this, though.

All gear that you can buy or make will be replaced eventually, and it's quite possible to make money using crafting professions. I'd dump leatherworking first (from what I've seen the market is rather full of the mats, and the bonus is the least usefull) and grab blacksmithing or jewelcrafting. You won't have to buy your stuff from the AH then, you'll be able to craft it yourself, and both work nicely together with mining.

Once you are a bit geared up and have a comfortable amount of money, drop mining as well and pick up one of the professions you don't yet have.

Of course, keeping mining is a perfectly valid choice, and I'd pick up either Jewelcrafting or Blacksmithing to go with it. While Engineering is a valid choice, picking it up would depend on your raid group having an engineer already (the first engineer in a raid group adds a nice amount of utility, the second and third relatively little.) Engineering also isn't as flexible as the other two.

Which one you should pick up I cannot tell you, pick whichever you like better, they are equally strong as far as I know.
Getting the top-end recipes for JC is slow - you will have to do four dailies per recipe or spend a lot of money/titanium ore on it. Getting the top-end recipes for Blacksmithing can be slow - they are raid drops from some of the harder raids.

While levelling your alt, keep all the ore and bars you find. You'll need quite a lot of mats to get your professions up, and from my experiences prices are low when you want to sell stuf, but high when you want to buy stuff.

[araisbeck]

Thanks for all of the information, Martie. I'm still uncertain in a couple of places, however.

First, you said that the ideal way to level is with Mining + BS or JC. As far as I can tell, this will reduce my savings from Mining to 0, considering the funds of ore and money that will be needed to level either crafting profession. Should I still have a sizable chunk of savings at 80, if I spend a limited amount of money while leveling?

I'm thinking of going with Mining + JC, as JC seems to have some great end-game items to look forward to, that are semi-easily obtained. These include the Titanium Earthguard Chain, which I was planning on buying once I hit 80, but could instead craft on my own. My question that comes with this though, if you have any experience with this, is: How hard are the Jewelcrafting quests that reward you with the Dalaran tokens needed to trade in for some of the high-end JC recipes? (I did a small bit of research on wowhead)

Thanks!

[Destruyen]

i would go with mining and skinning until around lvl 60-70 since most of that time you will be fighting alot of beasts to skin. mining will give you a head start on mats for either bs or jc as well as some funds for mount/training. once you hit 60, you should have enough money from dual gathering profs for your flying training and mount.

then you can switch to either bs or jc with some of the already stashed away mats with a decent mining skill to lvl one of them into the 300s.

[araisbeck]

Thanks for the advice Destruyen. That sounds like a good idea. I will wait until 60 to pick up Jewelcrafting. I'll just make a bank alt and stock up on mats until then.

I wish I could mark two answers as the "best answer," since both of your replies helped me out. I'm going to mark Martie's as the best though, as his was the first reply.

[Martie]

All my advise was meant as a "do this once you are 80 and have some cash" thing, sorry if it was unclear.
Just level up using skinning and mining, but try not to spend any money, as getting to level 80 carrying enough gold to get epic flying and some gear is a very nice thing.

If you want better gear, here's a trick I use. Go to Wowhead, and select the gear database for the gear you want. then filter it to only show quest rewards, and set the item level to fifteen to twenty higher then you are.
That should give you relatively short list of available gear, and only a few truly good ones. After selecting the good ones, see what level the quest requires, and if you can do it, try and convince a friend to help you do it, or get a group together for it quickly.
I've personally mostly focused on weapons for it (since for the most part, damage done determines questing speed, and your weapon determines your damage done.)

Note that the heirloom weapon is so good that you probably won't have to worry about anything else for weapons.

Here is an example of the list I'd make if I wanted an armor upgrade at level 40 for a warrior.
Armor - Items - World of Warcraft
I know epics aren't an option, so I decided to select green and blue quality only, and since warriors aren't limited to just plate, I allowed leather and chain as well.

Since I know WoW, I can ignore anything that isn't doable as a quest (instances, or in too high level zones), but there are some nice little gems out there.

I'd finally spot Warforged Chestplate - Item - World of Warcraft in there. It's in the badlands, a place where a level 40 with some help can survive, so I check the quest requirements. Minimum level 40, that's good, so I'd try and get some help in getting that particular item, knowing that it'll serve me well for at least ten levels, probably more.
(Note, Item level 57 means that for a BoE, it would mean you'd need to be level 52 to equip it.)

Just a tip.

Edit: Fixed a typo.

[araisbeck]

Thanks for continuing to give advice Martie, you're a great help. A few questions about your last post, though. I hate to keep asking more and more. ><

1. You said level leatherworking and mining. Did you mean skinning and mining, or is there some money-making potential to leatherworking that I don't know about?

2. Would you suggest waiting all the way until 80 to switch to JC/BS, or rather 60 or 70, like Destruyen suggested?

I played WoW from vanilla until just before Black Temple came out, so I know a thing or two about the game. I quit right before Black Temple, but am now hoping to get back into it. Cataclysm was a great incentive.

I'm not worried about obtaining gear while leveling. I don't plan on spending any money on gear while leveling, as I know it will just be replaced, even if I do get to use it for 10 or so levels. Thanks for the tip on quest gear though. I may use that if I don't think my current gear is suiting me well. I plan on doing some instances along the way though, if only to get used to tanking before 80. I also don't have any "heirloom" items, as I haven't played since BC. I'm still not quite sure how you even obtain heirloom items.

[Martie]

Yes, I meant skinning.
(I make whole-word typos sometimes, whee.)

My advice would be to keep on mining and skinning 'till 80.
In my opinion, any advantage gained from getting crafting professions before 80 isn't worth it.
True, you can make some gear, but it'll generally be worse then quest gear, and any advantage from the gear is short-lived.
If you keep skinning till 80, you should have another 1-2k gold when you hit 80, and that 2k gold will allow you to buy some very nice starting gear, or epic flying.

[araisbeck]

Okay thanks, I will go for money-making up until 80. I'll make sure to save most of my mining mats though, for when I need to level JC and BS. Most of my money will be from quests and skinning, I guess.

[Kurtosis]

Leveling w/ two crafting professions is crazy, unless your realm has a good economy and you're a master Auction House arbitrageur. Here are the general expenses you'll have to fork out for even before you hit 80:

1. Apprentice Riding (Lvl 20 slow riding skill + reg ground mount)
2. Journeyman Riding (Lvl 40 fast riding skill + epic ground mount)
3. Expert Riding (Lvl 60 slowflying skill + reg flying mount)
4. Artisan Riding (Lvl 70 fast flying skill + epic flying mount)
5. Skill training, which gets fairly expensive post 70.

Somewhere b/t 5500 and 6000 gold for all of those.
Apprentice Riding - Spell - World of Warcraft

At 80 you'll need a few hundred at least, more likely a few thousand, for gear (esp w/ crafted ilvl 226+ boe items regularly on AH post 3.2), and for your crafting professions (I find it costs about 3000 gold plus or minus to powerlevel crafting prof's from 1 to 450, so that's 6000g for two professions). So assume that as you level from 1 to 80 you will need to have gathered about 12000g worth in order quickly get your toon up to patch 3.2+ raiding par.

If you level with 2 gathering professions, auctioning everything, and saving every copper (eg, not buying gear from ah, just using quest gear and drops to upgrade as you level) you'll have a steady income stream and easily have all your mounts by the time you hit 70, or low 70s.

After that, you plan what you'll need to powerlevel your Raiding crafting professions, and farm all those before you start powerleveling. Make sure you've got all the mats, the 32 slot mining/bs/herb/ench/whatever bags, etc b/f dropping your gathering profs.

If you level w/ one gathering and one crafting prof, say mine/bs, you use all the mats you gather to level the crafting prof and make no money for the riding skills/mounts and other stuff as you level.

And if you level with two crafting professions, you'll be broke the whole way to 80, broke at 80, and still have two unmaxed crafting skills (the possible exception being tailoring/enchanting, since Tailoring is both crafting and gathering, and enchanting can gather from disenchanting the items you make to level tailoring).

Again, unless you're an AH master arbitrageur/trader, level to 80 w/ two gathering profs, save up everything you need to buy all your mounts, starter gear, and powerlevel two raid-optimal professions, before you drop one or both of the gathering profs. Once you drop those, your income stream dries up unless you've figured out another way to replace it, which depends much more on your realm economy.

[araisbeck]

So Kurtosis, you suggest selling all of my mining mats while leveling for the money, and not saving? Instead, farming for them whenever I come to the point where I want to finally level up my crafting profs?

Also, what are the 32-slot bags you speak of? I haven't played in a long time, I don't know what those are, haha.

[Martie]

He is, and while it's not bad advice, he also suggests powerlevelling your crafting professions, which would probably include buying back the stuff you sold.
Which is the reason why I suggested saving it all.


Bags are as follows now.
Netherweave bag is the 'standard' bag to start out with. They cost a dozen gold or so, depending on your server. 16 slots. I'd say that getting a set of these would be your first goal.
Frostweave bags are, at 20 slots, the ones you upgrade them with. Prices should vary from 60 to 100 gold.
Several professions have special bags for them, as you should know. The biggest version of those are 32slot bags. They should be under 100 gold as well, though there are exceptions.

He also forgot to mention cold weather flying as something needed at 80 (or earlier). That'll set you back another 1k gold.

[araisbeck]

Kurtosis's idea sounds valid, since I will need that money to buy my mount skills and some gear to start with at 80. I can farm for the mats/money needed to powerlevel the professions when I'm ready, and I'll already have all of the basics I need. (epic flyer, etc.)

I do seem to remember the profession-specific bags. If I remember right, though, they can only hold stacks of mats for that profession. Am I correct?

I remember seeing that you need cold-weather flying, and that it costs 1k.

[Kurtosis]

He is, and while it's not bad advice, he also suggests powerlevelling your crafting professions, which would probably include buying back the stuff you sold.

You buy all those mats if you have enough gold left over after buying your epic flying skill and mount and starter tank gear. Or you can spend a weekend re-farming most or all the mats you need to powerlevel two professions b/f dropping your gathering profs. Once you've got an 80 w/ epic land and flying mount, refarming is pretty fast, and like Fishing it's a grind you won't have to do again. OP's choice.

I have one 80, four 70s, and various lower levels (had alt-itis all through BC), and this method is the most reliable way I've found to fund the really expensive necessary things as quickly as possible.

Only exception being mastering trading on the AH (which can be done at any level on a developed enough server economy), but it's risky and on many realms you're competing against gold farmers and full-time gamers who do nothing but scan the AH all day for mis/underpriced stuff and relist, de, mill, prospect, craft and/or resell. Requires alot of addons like Auctioneer, MarketWatcher, ATSW, LilSparky's Workshop, etc. For someone asking this question, going gathering x2 till you have everything you need for end-game that gold can buy is guaranteed to work.

I remember seeing that you need cold-weather flying, and that it costs 1k.

True, forgot about that. Available at 77 for your first character on the account (and at lvl 68 via heirloom item for all subsequent toons). Add 1k to my estimate.

[Kurtosis]

I do seem to remember the profession-specific bags. If I remember right, though, they can only hold stacks of mats for that profession. Am I correct?

True, though I've never needed them while actually leveling. Just fill up your character screen with your main and 9 bank alts, and mail everything to your bank alts when your main's bags fill up. Then either auction from your bank alts, or return to your main and auction from your main.

[araisbeck]

Wow, 9 bank alts, haha. Thanks for all of the tips Kurtosis. I will be sure to follow all of your tips. I'm typing everything I learn from TankSpot into a Word document so that I can remember them all when I finally get to start playing again.

[Phathead 009]

I STRONLGY suggest you level mining and blacksmithing together instead of mining/jewelcrafting. I say this from experience. My main (and first) WoW character is a warrior who had herbalism and mining when leveling. I dumped herbalism at endgame to do BS, then later dumped mining to get JC. I say keep mining and do BS first because there are some points leveling BS where you need tons of mithril and later thorium ore, and at least on my server these ores were even more expensive than cobalt or saronite (more than titanium pre 3.2). Being able to mine your own mats, while tedious, will save you tons of money when leveling BS. I would suggest the following path:

1-80 - BS + Mining - Use the mats you get from mining to level BS, and farm extra when needed. Save all the jewels you find.
80+ - Once you hit 80, spend a week or so mining all the saronite and titanium you think you will need, then ditch mining and powerlevel JC with your saved mats, buying bits and pieces from the AH when needed.

I cannot stress enough how much better it was to have mining and BS at my disposal when leveling. Being able to craft your own stuff and not having to pay for the mats makes life so much easier.

[araisbeck]

Back in my days in vanilla, I had a Warrior whose professions were Mining/Blacksmithing. I leveled both all the way to 300, and found that the items I could craft with Blacksmithing were never worthwhile for my character, plus I was almost always broke, even with farming my own mats.

I think I'll take Kurtosis' advice and go with two gathering professions on my way to 80, so that I can get my necessary flying mount and some beginning tanking gear. I will definitely be farming my own mats for powerleveling BS and JC before I drop Mining though.

[Kurtosis]

Wow, 9 bank alts, haha.

Heh, yeah at least they're free. Profession bags, especially the Wrath 32 slot Mine/JC/Ench/Herb/Inscr bags all cost several hundred worth in mats. A luxury when you can just mail stuff to bank alts instead.

Thanks for all of the tips Kurtosis. I will be sure to follow all of your tips. I'm typing everything I learn from TankSpot into a Word document so that I can remember them all when I finally get to start playing again.

Np, and I don't think these threads get deleted for a long time, so you can come back to it later. You can find it in Control Panel (top of this page) -> List Subscriptions (left menu, near bottom). I still have a post in my list back in January 09, which is about when I started learning tanking and frequenting Tankspot.

[nethervoid]

IMO Jewelcrafting and Enchanting are the best, as you save the most cash at lv 80 with these two professions. With JC you can just buy raw gems and cut them. With Enchanting you can DE the stuff that drops for either your own chant mats or to sell on the AH for more moolah.

With ench you get +30 (stam) per ring, so you still get the HP bonus. Blacksmithing is a gold sink. I have it, and hate it. It's not that useful past making a couple pieces you could just buy off the AH for dirt cheap anyway. Sure you can make titansteel pieces and sell them, but you'll have to spam trade as each piece will suck your gold dry via AH fees as the pieces don't move fast. Hell even the saronite blue tank pieces are worthless on the AH. They take 2-3 gold to list, and don't seem to sell for 10 days or more per piece. Not a lot of demand for them. At 20-30 gold list just to sell the item, you just LOST about 10g making that crap.

JC gems you can list for a few pennies and make gads of cash off of them, as demand for gems is very high, not to mention tips as there is always someone looking for a JC to cut a raw gem (saves them 30+ gold).

So, mining and skinning to 80, then switch to JC and Enchanting, IMO. Smithing is a gold sink, and doesn't really provide many better items than you can just get through drops or badges. Worthless. Let someone else make that stuff. I'm about to switch from BS to JC after I FINALLY get artisan riding - If I was a JC I would have had it by now.

TLR - Pick the professions with the most consumables with the highest turn over rate. All other professions suck.