Druid Professions, A poll

[Lenonis]

I started out LW and skinning in vanilla. Gathered a ridiculous amount of patterns and then realized skinning was pointless and when flight form was introduced and you can herb in it I realized I was spending a ton on pots/flasks and not killing anything to skin (resto druid here, did lots of instances).

So I dropped skinning and picked up herbalism. Ended up Leatherworking/Herbalism for most of WOTLK. When Cata hit leveling LW was....painful. But I can't bring myself to drop leatherworking because I have so many patterns!

[noteworthynerd]

My Resto Druid is Herbalism/Inscription... You could also go Alchemy, but my Resto Shaman was already an Alchemist so I made my Druid a Scribe. Herbalism is definitely the gathering profession to go though, since you can gather while in Flight Form =P.

[fishface]

Alchemy/JC. I used to be Alch/Herb but I always forgot to use lifeblood so I decided to swap it out for a passive bonus. The JC gems were key in me hitting 2005 haste too which has been a massive boon to my performance.

Although not being able to farm herbs directly kinda sucks, I make most of my money doing dailies on my palamuffin (who's a miner) and transmuting a few Inferno rubies which offers absurd profits. Also herb's seem to be pretty cheap in comparison to other commodities on my server and I still have 20~ stacks of Twilight Jasmine + Whiptail when some poor fool was selling them for 20g a stack.

[Myrrar]

If you actually want to know what best professions are for your moonkin, the guide is stickied and tells you.....
And how crazy is this? The Bear, Cat, and resto guide ALSO tell you whats best.

9.0 Professions

As of 4.0.6, most Professions have now been normalized to give ~80 INT which makes profession choice a bit less of a min/max decision. I'm not sure if I like that but that does seem to be the trend. That said, there are still three professions that do not fall in that mold as well as small differences in how each profession gets you to that 80 INT all of which I will describe below:

As of 4.0.6, Tailoring gives the best DPS gain.

Tailoring: Lightweave Embroidery has been updated to giv 580 Int for 15 seconds, 20% proc on spellcast, 50 second cooldown. The average benefit is around 155 Int, minus the 50 Int you usually have on your cloak, for an increase of around 105 Int.

Engineering: Synapse Springs gives 480 Int, for 10 seconds out of every 60 (as of 4.0.6 -- was 12 seconds prior), for 80 Int on average.
Leatherworking: Draconic Embossment - Intellect in place of 50 INT to bracer (available in 4.0.6) gives 80 Intellect.
Jewelcrafting: 3 Brilliant Chimera's Eye in place of 3 Brilliant Inferno Ruby gives 81 Intellect.
Blacksmithing: An extra socket each in your wrists and gloves, each with a Brilliant Inferno Ruby, gives 80 Intellect.
Alchemy: Mixology (with your Flask of the Draconic Mind or Flask of Battle) will give you 80 Intellect.
Enchanting: Enchant Ring - Intellect to each ring gives 80 Intellect.
Inscription: Felfire Inscription in place of the Therazane enchant gives 80 Intellect.

The remaining professions increase the secondary stats of Haste and Crit instead of the primary stat Intellect and provide far less benefit as a result:
Herbalism: Gives a haste cooldown via Lifeblood, it averages out to 80 haste.
Skinning[: Master of Anatomy gives 80 crit rating.

[Anathor]

You realise that BS in terms of bonuses gives 80 intellect (or whatever the druid in person wishes to gem, but we will guess they will use 2x 40 int gems) - which is only 1 less than JC and on par with every other profession that increases raw stats?

EDIT: I am also sure that the Tailoring cloak imbue is BiS for moonkins, probably resto druids too if you need the extra spirit/throughput proc

I picked my profs at a time when a lot of the crafts were BoP, meaning both Tailoring and BS were clearly subpar for druids, since we couldn't use any of the crafts. Nowadays unfortunately most of the crafts are BoE and therefore all the professions are normalized even to the point that they don't really provide anything special at all (except, again, Alchemy). Nevertheless there's a druid in my guild who has BS because it was the flavor of the month (or the xpac) back in WOTLK when it apparently was giving higher bonuses than other profs (according to him, I wouldn't know) and he's now very sorry to have such a useless profession overall. And it's not because the situation is this way now that it will stay the same forever, so I'd say Tailoring and BS aren't good long term investments for druids.

I actually started as Alch/Herba, but back then Herba wasn't providing any bonus at all and the guild needed a JC. Since I was Exalted with Consortium (this was back in t6) it seemed like a good choice... we had only 5-6 JCs active on the whole server and I was the only one with Scale of the Sands rep, so I made a killing as we started putting some epic gems on AH

JC was such a pain to skill up that I never thought of changing. Besides, it's pretty much the same great money maker as Alchemy right now, 150g per day for 2 minutes work. The other professions don't have that.

[Lanthanum]

I went for Herb/Enchanting. My druid was created back in mid-TBC and was my second alt, so I went for the normal gathering/crafting option. I didn't really think about the choice, just went for professions that I didn't have already on my two other characters.

Since then I have leveled every profession to the cap across my nine characters on the realm, even leveling JC twice.

I don't know if I would change either. Druid is far and away the best herber in the game and I definitely wouldn't want to level Enchanting again.

[Ranklune]

Only lasts 2 hours. Still end up having to use 1 or 2 of my own flasks each night.

If you're an alchemist + you have the guildperk, it will last 4 hours, which is, for me, a raid-night!

[Playintrafic]

If you actually want to know what best professions are for your moonkin, the guide is stickied and tells you.....
And how crazy is this? The Bear, Cat, and resto guide ALSO tell you whats best.

I didnt ask what was best... I asked what do you druids have? I could care less that JC Gives +1 over all the other professions that offer a stat boost.

I am only picking up engineering because it is a fun profession, and we don't have one in my raid, so no bots, not mailboxes.

Plus engineering gets a ton of fun and fun/useful stuff. Going to drop hebalism on my druid and engineering on my paladin, and switch the two.

Never herbed on the druid except for leveling/dailys anyways. Herbs are cheaper than flasks/pots on my realm. I make stacks of each a day just for profit. Guild bank is allways stocked full of cauldrons and potions. Moot point.

I was just wanting to see how many druids that use this board are Herb/Alch. It seems a lot are Herb/Alch or Herb/Inscription.

[Caenymh]

I have Alchemy and Jewelcrafting on my druid main. Used to be Alchemy/Herbalism, but I dropped herbing for JC (damn "raid professions"... I miss swooping down in Swift Flight Form and snatching up herbs.).

[Casseille]

Alchemy/Jewelcrafting. Picked them as suitable raiding professions in WOTLK and just kept them around in CATA.

Alchemy trinket is jummy.

[Musra]

I have leatherworking and skinning and the crit is always nice. ^^
Alaso making your own gear is always a plus

[Rioo]

Had leatherworking and skinning for a long time, but in ICC I switched out skinning for JC for the bonus to ArP, and the money I could make from cutting gems bought from emblems and honor.

My warrior alt now has skinning and mining to supply my druid with materials.

[Panost]

What's the actual point of this thread? u wanna know what to pick or just out of curiosity?

[Zmands]

LW/Skinning on my Druid, but guess there is better combos:P

[Duilliath]

LW / Engineering.

Which is a right royal pain in the fuzzy to level at the start of an expansion.

LW to me remains the best 'raid' profession, due to various wrist enchants you can't get elsewhere (+70 resistance in particular).

[Deleted]

I think everyone should be an engineer! Most fun profession ever. Apart from that, I usually pick profs depending on the buffs they give. Although I've always thought Herb/Alch were very Druidic profs, i usually go for LW and Insc. I even have Tailoring and Enchanting on one of my druids. I can never make my mind up sometimes.

[Masques]

Resto/balance Tailor/Leatherworking best spell proc with tailor and 130 int to wrist with LW win/win

[Deleted]

Yeah, guess herb + alche seems very "druidy", class-wise.. But I always choose professions which benefit my character's class the most or if there's a racial for it.. ;d

[warrcry]

Have alch/inscribtion on my main druid though I recently leveled a new druid to be my gathere. Tauren Druid with herb is win

[Deleted]

Herbalism and Mining + 310% Swift flight form = $$

Do I need to say more? =D