"Guild? I AM a guild!" Account profession optimization.

[PsyBomb]

So let's keep this one simple. My goal by the end of MoP is to have one of every class to 90. Thing is, that is not going to take particularly long, given my altitis and the fact that my hours keep me from raiding all that much. Thus my secondary goal: I want to profession-optimize my account.

What do I mean by this? Simple enough. I want more than just every profession maxed, I want the ones with significant benefit to have more than one up there for things like quests, tokens, and specs. Here's the thing, I don't really have experience with that many of the professions at mid to high-end. So I have a couple of questions.

1) Other than Alchemy, are there any professions that show a significant difference between specializations at high-end? I know at least Blacksmithing and Leatherworking HAVE specializations, but the question is if they make a significant difference.
2) Other than Jewelcrafting and Cooking, are there any that you need to farm tokens for? I don't THINK there are, but I'm not sure so I wanted to ask here.
3) Are there any particular class/spec combos that benefit in combat from the gathering professions? Right now I have my Prot Warrior as a miner and I'm going to designate one of my other characters (probably my DK) as Herbalist/Skinner, but if anything can legitimately benefit from them then now is the time to switch it over.

I'm not in this to get rich (I have enough gold already that by the time my characters get up in level, I'll be able to get them all onto 280 mounts), it's all just a personal thing (and to help all those random people who need stuff in trade). Thanks in advance for any help and advice.

-Entero of Aerie's Peak, Horde

[Deleted]

So let's keep this one simple. My goal by the end of MoP is to have one of every class to 90. Thing is, that is not going to take particularly long, given my altitis and the fact that my hours keep me from raiding all that much. Thus my secondary goal: I want to profession-optimize my account.

What do I mean by this? Simple enough. I want more than just every profession maxed, I want the ones with significant benefit to have more than one up there for things like quests, tokens, and specs. Here's the thing, I don't really have experience with that many of the professions at mid to high-end. So I have a couple of questions.

1) Other than Alchemy, are there any professions that show a significant difference between specializations at high-end? I know at least Blacksmithing and Leatherworking HAVE specializations, but the question is if they make a significant difference.
2) Other than Jewelcrafting and Cooking, are there any that you need to farm tokens for? I don't THINK there are, but I'm not sure so I wanted to ask here.
3) Are there any particular class/spec combos that benefit in combat from the gathering professions? Right now I have my Prot Warrior as a miner and I'm going to designate one of my other characters (probably my DK) as Herbalist/Skinner, but if anything can legitimately benefit from them then now is the time to switch it over.

I'm not in this to get rich (I have enough gold already that by the time my characters get up in level, I'll be able to get them all onto 280 mounts), it's all just a personal thing (and to help all those random people who need stuff in trade). Thanks in advance for any help and advice.

-Entero of Aerie's Peak, Horde

Nah, they don't - the lifeblood and crit perk will not be ideal for any class but will probably be best along with their respective production partners.

[Taalyn]

Alchemy is the only profession with a significance on specializations. Come Mists though, Cooking will get some specializations. Inscription has Books of Glyph Mastery though they are world drops so you don't really farm for them. You can however buy them from the Auction House. Taurens get a bonus to herb faster and Worgens get a bonus to skin faster. Druids are especially good at gathering because you can gather while in flight form.

[wynterlyn]

So let's keep this one simple. My goal by the end of MoP is to have one of every class to 90. Thing is, that is not going to take particularly long, given my altitis and the fact that my hours keep me from raiding all that much. Thus my secondary goal: I want to profession-optimize my account.

What do I mean by this? Simple enough. I want more than just every profession maxed, I want the ones with significant benefit to have more than one up there for things like quests, tokens, and specs. Here's the thing, I don't really have experience with that many of the professions at mid to high-end. So I have a couple of questions.

1) Other than Alchemy, are there any professions that show a significant difference between specializations at high-end? I know at least Blacksmithing and Leatherworking HAVE specializations, but the question is if they make a significant difference.
2) Other than Jewelcrafting and Cooking, are there any that you need to farm tokens for? I don't THINK there are, but I'm not sure so I wanted to ask here.
3) Are there any particular class/spec combos that benefit in combat from the gathering professions? Right now I have my Prot Warrior as a miner and I'm going to designate one of my other characters (probably my DK) as Herbalist/Skinner, but if anything can legitimately benefit from them then now is the time to switch it over.

I'm not in this to get rich (I have enough gold already that by the time my characters get up in level, I'll be able to get them all onto 280 mounts), it's all just a personal thing (and to help all those random people who need stuff in trade). Thanks in advance for any help and advice.

-Entero of Aerie's Peak, Horde

That is a big goal you have there. I currently have 4 main professions with no gathering proessions and I have a hard time staying on top of them. If you truly want to succeed in the profession game don't bother with gathering professions. In the long run it will not be worth your time and investment. What I suggest is to have 2/3 Alchemists and 2 Jewelcrafters. I purely levelled a second JC this expansion because I thought epic gems would be prospected so I could do the dailies and earn the designs twice as fast. But I was wrong. I wouldn't say it was a bad investment but I probably wouldn't have bothered with it if I knew. However, no one knows what their plan is for epic gems in MoP. I highly recommend also having 2 Enchanters on 2 pretty active characters of yours or 1 on a toon you are levelling. You can make a ton of gold from DEing your gear instead of vendoring them for a few gold. Take Malestorm crystals for example. You would end up throwing/vendoring your 359/378s for 19-30G. You could have DE them and sold them for 200G+ on the AH.

1. Engineering does require you to specialize and if you plan on PVPing can be very beneficial. You have to chose between Gnomish and Goblin Engineering. Think Gnomish are all the cool gadgets while goblin is all about bombs and blowing things up. I don't really think BS and LW have significant specializations. They removed it sometime before Cataclysm.

2. Yeah think JC and cooking are the only 2 professions where you have to farm tokens. No one knows what the future holds. All the professions are getting a major rehaul especially Inscription. They said that they were doing away with the books and will make all glyphs learnt through research. Don't be surprised if they introduce some crappy dailies/token farming for this.

3. Well I normally take professions that complement the class. Like Tailoring goes well with any cloth class and since Enchanting goes really well with tailoring, these 2 go hand in hand. So Priests/Locks/Mages benefit from these professions more so mages with all their burst damage and the Embroidery on your cloak gives you really awesome Burst damage.

LW/Skinning complements hunters very well and is probably the only class which benefits from Skinning since Hunters love crit. You get around +80 crit in Cataclysm.

BS/JC go pretty well together and should be taken on plate wearing classes and are the best for tanks since JC is the only profession in game that can gem/enchant for Mastery which is the tank's best stat.

Alchemy/Inscription is pretty flexible and should be taken on your raider as you get double the duration of all flasks as well as a 40% increased benefit from potions.

Cooking again try and have it on an active toon so you don't keep hopping on too many toons and can be very beneficial on a raiding toon. Fishing complements cooking very well and both should be maxed on the same toon.

Well I think you should be covered. If you have any questions post away.

[PsyBomb]

Thanks for the help, all. My characters all have a gathering profession atm (other than my Priest, a Tailor/Enchanter), so it's just going to be a matter of dropping them and learning the new tradeskill. I should be able to plot out my skills now without too much trouble. Really only going to have one Engineer, my PvP Hunter. No point to having a Goblin one there, his bombs are for stunning and his boots are for running

Fishing/Cooking is going to be the Pandaren monk, for the racial. Got my Priest until then, since he has the Tracking ability (fourth BoST ever and I get it, was trying for months on my Shaman).

[lvlark]

I'm going to designate one of my other characters (probably my DK) as Herbalist/Skinner,

I would suggest rethinking that. There may be valid reasons for that, but I am lvling a 2nd druid (I want to keep enchanting on my first) for the herb/mining combo. Staying in flight while you farm a node (and thus sometimes evading having to kill something you aggro'd) helps.

Also, if you're out there farming herbs, why not pick up ores as well?

[speakpkhq]

all of my characters have a professions at max level, it's not hard to do and is incredibly satisfying if you farm the mats yourself.
mage tailor/ench
rogue herb/ore
pally smith/ore
warr eng/ore
druid alch/herb
dk jc/ore
hunter inscrip/herb
warlock ench/herb

i haven't bought enchanting materials pretty much ever, for any toon, since i run hundreds of 5mans on all my toons greed all drops on the ench then de manually for the guild perk bonus de mats, and greed all boe's on every other toon, send to enchanter to de. i am anal about mining every ore node no matter where i am. if i see one, i land and grab it. same for herbs on my herbing toons. on your miners, carry a glove with Gatherer enchant (or plus mining) to mine bosses that require 530+ mining to mine. loot/mine/herb *everything* no matter where you are.

the only raw materials i've purchased is ore since the prices were suuuuper low due to farmers/bots (20g/stack? rofl thanks!). i have purchased tens of thousands of elementium to use to skill up smithing, engineering and JC, and still come out ahead after selling whatever i don't need. started the xpac with around 80k gold i think, and now 410k. 280+ flying speed on every toon.

you can do it, just focus on one toon at a time imho, and you'll get there. i always like to level up my enchanter first and get him into 5mans asap.

[ZeroEdgeir]

Well, let's see... 11 characters total.

1 Blacksmith
1 Jewelcrafter
1 Leatherworker
1 Tailor
1 Enchanter
1 Scribe
2 Engineers (Goblin/Gnomish, there is at least a companion pet exclusive to each spec, that may have value in MoP)
2+ Alchemists (More transmute cooldowns the better, especially if you aren't raiding, Potion or Elixir Mastery won't be as profitable)
1 Miner
1 Skinner
1 Herbalist

If you stuck each crafting skill on a different toon (in otherwords, no 2 crafting/0 gathering) you'd have 10 toons covered. So, if you only opt for 1 gatherer of each resource, then you can wind up with alot of overlap.

Since you said you don't raid (LFR is about it for you I take it), optimizing profession combos isn't AS needed for you (which alot of people will suggest, like Blacksmithing/Jewelcrafting, etc), because you aren't in the need to min/max.

Tailoring/Enchanting is definitely an easy combo, as is Tailoring paired with Skinning sometimes (The crit is kinda nice for Fire Mages) since you seem to aim to keep things tied to ideal class matching.

Now, I doubt you need 4 miners (BS/JC/2x Eng), though it would keep you in excess ore for smashing with your JC. Similarily for having 3+ Herbalists (Insc/Alch x2+), though Scribes will burn through ALOT of Ink, and if there is new Darkmoon Decks to craft, well, we know those carry their value well into an early expansion tier or two. Also, as per the datamining, the new MoP Alchemist Stone is a Str/Agi/Int proc, based on highest of those 3 stats, so the trinket for your Alchemists is gonna be pretty nice (Passive Mastery as well as the Healing/Mana potion bonus).

There is generally no right or wrong way. You could have 2-3 farming toons (Mining/Herb, Mining/Skinning, Herb/Skinning), and the rest just stacked with crafting skills.

[medievalman1]

I personally have a gathering profession on every pure dps class since they always have the longest queues for anything I do. That way, while I'm waiting, I can gather. After that I have 1 blacksmith/leatherworker/scribe/engineer/tailor/enchanter. I do have 2 jewelcrafters to double up on the rate of acquiring patterns and any other empty profession slot I've filled in with alchemy-its incredibly cheap to powerlevel. I have one of each alchemy spec and the remaining empty profession slots I've fill with transmutation masters, 'cause everyone could use another x-mute cd.

[Bigbamboozal]

Nah, they don't - the lifeblood and crit perk will not be ideal for any class but will probably be best along with their respective production partners.

If you are going to do herbing, do it on a druid. If you do herbing on any other class when you have all classes....you are doing it wrong.
Why? b/c you can herb without ever popping out of form.
nelf druids are MADE for herbing, who else can farm herbs without ever popping out of flight form, and if caught on ground can hammer a macro to shadowmeld and flightform? anyone?

[Deleted]

It's actualy pretty useless to have more then 1 of anything that's not an Alchemist and maybe to lesser extent a JC.

JC as mentioned for the tokens, Alchemists can spec into 3 specialisations (gotta love x-mute!!)

Other then that most specialisations that were there have lost their uniqueness in TBC.

I have a druid miner/herb and it's quite nice, but i don't like farming so that doesnt realy work.

In the end, 2 crafting proffesions is best for any played char, Enchanting being one of them due to DEing quest rewards/Old gear/DEing in dungeons

[PsyBomb]

Wow, lots of extra discussion.

Ok, the Druid is already a designated Leatherworker and has a lot of skilling already in him. Tryana and medeivalman also make good points. Hrm. Given that (due to a lack of computer budget and the aforementioned availability times) I am not likely to ever need to go full-optimize, my chars are not going to NEED the double-crafting for bonus. At the levels I play at the odd 300 to a stat is negligible next to skill differences. Probably will end up with a lot more of the gatherers than previously planned, just going to double-craft on a couple of my mains. 3 Alchemists for specs/cooldowns and two JCs for tokens is all the redundancy that is actually going to be needed, after research.

[Deleted]

Heya, just wanted to share my character / profession combinations here, and the reason for them ^^

I've got my main, who's a priest, which I would never stop playing, only reason I have alts is if it's needed on special fights / if it's the FOTM.
As a lot of people have said, Alchemy is great for easy income, simply because of transmute.
Well, back to my list of combination.

Priest (Main) - Jewelcrafting / Enchanting (Since it's my main, I simply want 2 professions that give me a great bonus, and easy money)
Druid - Herb / Mining (Obvious reason, also I'm playing horde and therefor it's a tauren for even faster herbing.)
Hunter - Leatherworking and skinning (Simply put these together since I wanted my only skinner to be combined with LW)
Mage - Tailoring / Alchemy (Tailoring since it's a mage and it's awesome for them ^^ And Alchemy for the easy money)
Paladin - Inscription / Alchemy
Warrior - Blacksmithing / Alchmy
Rogue - Engineering / Alchemy
Warlock - Nothing / Alchemy
Shaman - Nothing / Alchemy
Death knight - Nothing / Alchemy

Right now, not all of these are max level yet, in professions and actual lvl, but working on it. As you can see, Alchemy is going to be the main income when not shuffling ore / leather / enchants / glyphs / cookies / whatever else you can make, come MoP