Farming vs processing goods, at what GPH is it worth it to you?

[GodTier]

Plain and simple... You have 10,000 gold to start and two professions of your choice. At what point do you farm materials and not process them (how much gold average per hour).

Example:
You can process goods for approximately 2500-3k gold per hour and play the AH and not really have to move/pay attention other than undercutting, or you can farm 4-6k gold per hour in materials.

Would you farm? Or would you process? What number would it take to get you to farm instead of process?

[wynterlyn]

Plain and simple... You have 10,000 gold to start and two professions of your choice. At what point do you farm materials and not process them (how much gold average per hour).

Example:
You can process goods for approximately 2500-3k gold per hour and play the AH and not really have to move/pay attention other than undercutting, or you can farm 4-6k gold per hour in materials.

Would you farm? Or would you process? What number would it take to get you to farm instead of process?

Well I hate this statement but I do agree to it most times, "it really depends on each realm". This expansion because I actually got into raiding at level 85 and did more raids than I ever did during WTLK my main income was selling BoEs. I made a ton of gold selling BoEs and VP BoEs than I did levelling professions. Why does this matter? Well because for example, on Kel'Thuzad most of the BoEs were probably selling for 1/3rd the price it was selling on my current realm after I transferred. 359/378 BoEs were selling for less than 10K when they were relevant and the rings were selling for as low as 2K. However, after immediately transferring the same ring where people were only willing pay me 1-2K for, was sold immediately for 20K after transferring.

So I used this invested and levelled most of my professions. Before this I only had mining and herbalism. I proceeded to level Alchemy and JC. Most of the mats I had already farmed but the rest were bough from the AH. I am currently levelling Tailoring and I levelled it purely from the AH. I look at it this way. If you go out of your way to actually farm the mats you ain't really saving on anything cause you would have otherwise made a profit on it if you had listed it on the AH instead of using it. I don't want to spend hours to farm a few stacks.

I don't even play the AH. I don't even aim to hit the gold cap. For example last week had a Leather BoE bracer listed with a starting bid of 20G. I got it for 28G and sold it the next for 3K. That was a pure profit for me which I invested in levelling Enchanting on a 2nd toon. It is really hard to farm 4-6K in 1 hour. Considering this late in the expansion. I don't really look that deep into it. I look at it simply from a "time" point of view and how much time am I going to be investing farming that. I don't want to spend my in game time farming mats. Would I rather spend 1 hour farming 6-10 stacks of frostweave cloth or buy 6-10 for 30G each, craft bags and sell them on the AH for 250G each?

But what I do recommend for people levelling professions like Blacksmithing and Leathworking is to levelling mining/herbalism and skinning first with another profession and then drop mining for Blacksmithing/Leathwerworking. The reason I suggest this method is because unless you are really lucky you will not find that amount of mats on any given day on the AH especially the WTLK ones like Cobalt and Saronite. You can use the ores that you have gathered and buy whatever excess you need.

But to simply answer your question if I had 10K, I would start levelling tailoring and enchanting together. Even at 480 skill level in Tailoring I've made quite a lot of gold already selling bags, transmorg gear and tailoring enchants. You can simply DE most of your tailoring greens and buy the rest of the mats from the AH for Enchanting.

[kosong]

There is no number that would get me to farm instead of process. I can process in small batches, or AFK process on my second account while I do stuff with friends on the first account. Farming would necessitate me to choose to make gold instead or playing with friends, rather than while I play with them.

[Haruk]

Do you mean farm to level your professions or farm instead of processing in general (once you have maxed your profession)?

It seems unrealistic that anyone could ever earn the same per hour amount farming as they could processing. In order to do so, mats would have to be very easy to acquire and yet highly priced. Supply and demand laws dictate this would never be so. If mats are easy to come by, they sell for cheap, if they are expensive, they are hard to find.

If I could "theoretically" earn at the same rate I would be indifferent. An hour flying around mindlessly is painfully boring but so is an hour spend clicking crafting buttons and posting in the AH.

Per the above comments however, automation tools are available for processing, but not (legal) ones for gathering. So that would tilt the board towards processing if it wasn't already tilted by the fact crafting always earns more per hour than gathering.