Professions

[araisbeck]

I was mainly choosing my professions for the end-game bonuses, not the items that they can make (other than JC, where the bonus is the JCer-exclusive gems).

[Insahnity]

LW is a VERY good tank bonus, but it has maximum effect for bear druids. Even for warriors, it still provides 63 extra stamina (wrist patch gives 103 stamina instead of standard 40 stam enchant), or you can choose 70 resist to a particular school of magic (no other profession can do this). Leg armor patches are stupidly cheap, which cuts down on upgrade costs.

For tanking, I prefer taking smithing over JC. Sure, JC gives bigger bonuses, but frequently, you need minor tweaks when you upgrade tanking gear, and the two extra gem sockets on hands and wrists are great for that. And yes, levelling mining and smithing together is logical, not only so you don't go broke levelling your smithing, but also you get the stamina bonus along the way. You could go JC and smithing at the end, but your gear upgrades are going to be horrendously expensive, since you have no source of incoming materials aside from grinding dailies, which is mind-numbingly boring. You can do a few dailies and farm ores along the way.

If you wish to maximize stamina bonuses, which is really the generally accepted goal for tanks, it's in JC and LW, they are the only ones that offer 63 stamina bonus (Smithing, Enchanting, Mining, etc. all give 60 stamina only). However, it is an odd combo indeed, and for a measly 6 stamina.

Personally, I look at not only what bonuses it offers, but the cost of maintaining it, as I personally dislike dealing with the AH.

[Thaak]

I personally wouldn't recommend leveling enchanting on your first toon, as it will severely reduce your income while leveling. All those quest items that you would have sold, you now have to DE to get mats to level your profession.

In addition, its hard to "farm" mats to level enchanting. Unlike BS/JC/LW/Eng where you can pick up a gathering profession and just spend a couple hours riding around mindlessly mining/skinning everything in your path, you instead have to hope you get enough from questing/random drops, and if you don't its off to the AH you go.

Tailoring pretty much follows the same rule. All that cloth that you could have sold for money (or turned into bandages to reduce your downtime while grinding/questing, resulting in more progress per hour), just turned into mats to level your profession.

On an unrelated note, I do not believe it has been mentioned yet, but as far as i know, all the "profession bonuses" are available once you get your skill in that profession to 400. So you don't have to worry about that last 50 points in either of the professions if you are just going for the raiding bonuses. Just something to have in mind when planning out the mats/money you'll need to level them.

[Kurtosis]

I was mainly choosing my professions for the end-game bonuses, not the items that they can make (other than JC, where the bonus is the JCer-exclusive gems).

For endgame bonuses, BS+JC is still BiS for tanks. Not quite as much as it was pre-3.2, but it provides a level of stat flexibility no other profession pair can match.

I chose JC/Ench b/c I needed an income stream (BS is def a gold sink, and on my server so is JC w/out Mining). Here's what I learned:

I found that there is a sweet spot where BS really shines for tanks, which is when you're trying to upgrade your gear from H 5man ilvl 200 epics to Naxx+ ilvl 213+ epics and H ToC 5man ilvl 219 epics. During that transition it is damn difficult to maintain 540 defense while getting anywhere near the hit and expertise caps.

Being able to add 2 more gem slots to your bracers and gloves via BS helps immensely there, as do Northrend food and alchemy buffs. Enchanting unfortunately only has 3 ring enchants - Stam, AP, SP. Nothing for hit, expertise, or defense rating, so it's not too useful there.

However, once I got past that point to an average ilvl of around 217 (wow-heroes.com), this wasn't too much of a problem anymore, as my gear has lots more gem slots and almost all the defense, hit, expertise stats I need. Now I just gem for Exp and Stam, and use a food buff to hit the Expertise cap. Enchanting's 30 Stamina ring enchants are useful especially for Blood tank builds at that point.

I've never been a Blacksmith and am a noob tank, so I don't know if there are additional must-have benefits to BS once you pass avg ilvl of 220 or so. All it would allow me to do at this point is replace my Expertise food buff w/ a Strength or some other food buff, not game changing.

On the flip side, Enchanting is one of the better money-makers in the game. Both Enchanting mats and scrolls require zero deposit costs on the AH, and there is constant demand as people upgrade gear.

They're also not as difficult to farm mats for as BS's crafted gear moneymakers - Spiked Deathdealers, etc. Though if you're on a server with a good economy you might be able to make roughly the same amount selling BS crafted items infrequently as you can selling Enchants frequently, dunno.

Finally, what put Ench over the top for me, is Bliz's announcement that in Cataclysm they will be removing Defense Rating, and replacing it with talent tree abilities that make tanks uncrittable. Hence one of the main reasons to go BS'ing - stat flexibility - is being mitigated in the next expansion. In the next expansion, that 'sweet-spot' b/t heroics and raids where BS currently shines may not exist.

So for me, a reliable way to make money to fund my tanking and JC'ing is worth more than some additional stat flexibility that I find I don't need so much at my current and subsequent gear levels, and a big part of which looks to be going away next expansion.

[nethervoid]

JC - Instead of +30 stam gem, +51 stam gem + I can save 30+ gold on each epic cut = I am not constantly farming gold to keep raid supplies up

Ench - +30 stam to each ring (cost is about 30g in mats I could have sold on AH) + I can DE lv 80 drops and sell them for more gold than just selling them to a vendor (farm reg ToC for abyss shards galore!) + I can mitigate buying ench mats from the AH because I supply my own = I am not constantly farming gold to keep raid supplies up

BS - I get two more gem slots (spend 300-400 gold filling those slots) + The gear I can make won't sell on AH because of low demand + BS items I make for myself are only useful for a very short period in gear life + I could just buy them from some other BS and save gold = Gold sink means I have to farm even MORE to keep raid supplies up

With BS being such a horrible gold sink, you'd think the items you could make with it would be way better than what would be available from drops in your level range (not barely better; WAY better), even if they're BS equippable only. I'm not really sure why bliz makes BS suck so much. lol BS either needs a lot of much better BS only items added to it, or (preferrably) bliz needs to add a bunch of 'must have' raid consumables to it for it to be worth having.

I sound bitter, because IMO bliz has really borked BS. Hate having spent all that money and time on it for it to be so imbalanced with the other professions. =(

[araisbeck]

Now I have people trying to convince me to get Enchanting, hah.

Enchanting sounds like a great profession as well, and much less of a goldsink than Smithing. It also seems like it would be very easy to powerlevel at 80 by just farming some low-level instances for greens to DE. It also does seem to be a great money-making profession at 80.

My problem with Blacksmithing has always been the worthlessness of all of the items you create while leveling Smithing, like you said, nethervoid. However, the extra gem slots seems like a better bonus than +60 Stamina.

Can some people give opinions to sway me to one side?

[Theotherone]

Now I have people trying to convince me to get Enchanting, hah.

Enchanting sounds like a great profession as well, and much less of a goldsink than Smithing. It also seems like it would be very easy to powerlevel at 80 by just farming some low-level instances for greens to DE. It also does seem to be a great money-making profession at 80.

My problem with Blacksmithing has always been the worthlessness of all of the items you create while leveling Smithing, like you said, nethervoid. However, the extra gem slots seems like a better bonus than +60 Stamina.

Can some people give opinions to sway me to one side?

With one toon there's no way to get exactly what you want. I have two that are leveled and a thrid on the way (yes I have no life).

80 Tank = JC (450) and Enchanting (450); and I'm pleased with this combo: stam to rings, Dragon's eye gems and I can make some money on gems and enchants.
80 Hunter = BS (450) and Mining (450);works okay, make some gold on the mining and some of the titansteel goods.
34 Pally = Herbalism and Alchemy (getting there).

I really like the access to epic gem cuts and enchants for all my toon.

[Kurtosis]

Now I have people trying to convince me to get Enchanting, hah.
...
Can some people give opinions to sway me to one side?

Oh, I forgot to mention, that difficult transition spot b/t Heroics and Raids doesn't really exist anymore, since 5man Heroics now give Conquest Emblems (Ulduar lvl gear). Farm those for you ilvl 226 (and some 213) gear, and doing the H daily (2x Triumph emblems) will get you T9.1 shoulders and wrists in 30 days (30 emblems per).

Eg, a new toon just hitting 80 now will completely skip the point where Blacksmithing shines for tanks. Combine that with Defense being removed as a stat in Cataclysm (the next foreseeable time we could incur that sweet spot again). Bliz may make some changes to the profession then, but at this point its special utility for tanks appears to be fading.

[nethervoid]

Well the way I look at it:

+60 stam from enchanted rings
+60 stam from 2 more stam gems

Same benefit, but the cost of 2x+30 stam enchants is about 60-80g whereas the 2x+30 stam gems are about 300-400g plus 60 or so gold to create the extra sockets in the first place. Now add to that the ability of a chanter to make money at 80 vs a BS. Chanting wins easily. I make additional money every time I run a 5 man and shard a drop! All I have to do is list it on the AH (the AH list fee is tiny compared to plate).

I'm also basing this on not switching out gems a lot. Once I epic gem a slot, it's staying gemmed that way. lol

I want to like BS (cause I love making armor and weapons!), but it's so crappy I just can't keep it. Once I get the gold for artisan flying (which I would have had sooner if I leveled JC instead of BS) I'm dropping BS.

[araisbeck]

With the combination of JC/BS isn't it actually +102 stamina from the 2 extra slots? Because you can make the JCer-only +51 gems?

[nethervoid]

No because you can put those gems anywhere. The JC bonus and BS bonus are not related to each other. You get +42 stam for being JC (diff between 2x+30 gems and 2x+51) and +60 stam from 2 extra gem slots from BS.

In my case I'm Ench/BS, so I get +60 stam from ring chants and +60 from 2 extra gem slots (if the gems I had in place were epic). So total for my professions is +120. If I drop one or the other, the bonus from the prof I did not drop is not affected.

[Kurtosis]

Post 3.2 all the profession bonuses were equalized in degree. Eg, you get roughly the same stam bonus from BS, JC, Ench, Mining, etc. The difference is that sometimes tanks need something other than stam, like Expertise, Hit, Defense, that Enchanting and the other professions can't provide. BS and JC can, and that extra flexibility was why BS/JC has been considered BiS for tanks.

I just don't know if it's really BiS anymore, since Conquest gear has so many gem slots already, and Cataclysm will remove the single major tanking stat.

[araisbeck]

Thanks everyone. This is how I am looking at going now: I will level to 80 with Mining/Skinning. At 80, I'll drop Skinning for JC, and powerlevel it with the help of my Mining. Then, once JC is at 450, I will drop Mining for Enchanting, and powerlevel that.

Sound good?

[Kurtosis]

Yup. Or you can just keep Mining, since it provides the same stat benefit to tanks as Ench does (+60 stamina).

You'll have to figure out which is more profitable based on your realm economy. Mining is free mats, and Titansteel still sells very well. But once you finish questing and dailies and spend most of your time instancing and raiding, you'll collect less ore.

There are few to zero nodes in most instances, which is why I eventually dropped Mine for Ench - had finished questing and dailies and wanted a second profession that could make me money running 5mans and raids.

Ench mats you either have to buy on the AH (either the mats or the greens and blues to de), or run alot of instances and Greed on everything hoping to collect some stuff to DE.

Tradeoffs, tradeoffs.

[nethervoid]

lol This is exactly what I did too. Dropped mining for enchanting once I capped in BC.