If they joined them together then I guess skinning sucking the way it does wouldn't really matter as much anymore. Though I'd have to find a new proff to go with my enchanting. Not sure I would actually keep skinning unless there are some other good things they didn't show.

The LWing changes make me want to strangle a kitten. The change to skinning is nice but doesn't address the main problem with gathering materials for LWing...the goddamn primals. You have to farm SO MANY primals and spend so much time to get your LWing to 375...and then all you get is poorly-itemized sets that will be obsolete in a few months with absolutely NO prospects for further advancement. Just a one-shot deal. The Dragonscale LWing sets are okay on their own (let's ignore the fact that there is exactly ONE kind of dragonscale that you can possibly get in Outland). But they're still underbudget and there's some totally asinine mistakes that suggest Blizzard didn't even double-check the itemization. +Agi for the socket bonuses on the ELEMENTAL SHAMAN set? You kidding? The only 2 items I regularly craft are Drums of Battle (recipe requires exalted Sha'tar) and Drums of Restoration...AMAZING consumable, really shows the potential of the profession, but as mentioned not farmable. I was just lucky enough to have a guildmate's alt stumble upon the recipe in HFP.

It's the worst issue, but even after fixing that Skinning is still by far the worst gathering profession. You can't just fly, drop, skin, mount, and fly away. There's no motes to speak of. There's probably more mobs to herb than to skin in all the instances. There's no little bonus like gems, or quirks like herb gathering buffs.

Also, unlike Herbalism or Mining, Skinning cannot stand on its own. The tiers of Knothide force you into at least having a friend in Leatherworking to make it so that one stack is actually worth anything.

Actually bringing Skinning into Leatherworking is the first idea I've heard that would make me not think it's strictly inferior to the other gathering skills. It might need tweaking to balance the extra profession space people would gain, but, hell, tailoring is incredibly powerful right now without requiring any gathering profession/ability whatsoever.

It would be a great idea, Doing that would make LW at least a bit attractive right now. They did it with tailoring (you need to kill mobs for cloth, just like you need to kill mobs for skins), it wouldn't be such a bad gesture to lw, which is undoubtedly the second worst profession.
I'd rather have them implement upgradable armour though, or at the very least decent 375 skill sets.

Well, the alchemy changes so far are indeed pretty underwhelming. I presently use Adept's + Major Firepower (which I hate farming with a passion) + Flask of Supreme Power (don't get me started) and the occasional Major Mageblood and the very occasional Greater Arcane and Mastery. Oh and an oil; Brilliant if I've been farming LBSs lately. Under the changes so far, that goes to MFP + FoSP and that frankly doesn't change my farming routine very much at all. The net effect is only that I can't run the Mageblood for when I'm stuck without a shadow priest.

I guess now we wait for the other shoe to drop but the alchemy changes are smaller is scope than I expected. At least they are so far.

You are a genius. That would really help solve the problem with all the primals needed by LW. I just with there was a use for having 400skinning. I the +skinn enchant, UBRS dagger, and ZG sword and in BC they have no use what so ever.

As a LWer and a Skinner I've been personally ticked off to get that one damn scrap so many times I can't even remember. However, some people have been pointing out that skinning is unlike all other gathering professions in that you actually have to kill stuff to farm it. This, in and of itself, makes skinning a much more time intensive gathering profession and, as has been mentioned, doesn't grant any of the other perks like gems, motes, random buffs, etc. However, the one thing that I've comfortmed myself with is the other random crap that drops of mobs that I skin. Especially in outland the stacks of teeth, tufts of fur, ocassional random drops, etc all have a fairly good vendor price per stack. The other thing I like is the fact that I've coupled Cooking nicely with Skinning so that I can pretty much bring a stack of stat food per person to any given raid.

While this is in no way an arguement to keep skinning as it is, perhaps these are the "balancing factors" that Blizzard uses to rationalize the skinning profession. I mean, at least there is SOME exterior benefit to actually having to kill mobs in order to gather from them.

Not withstanding, I'd love to see skinning incorporated into LWing and thus freeing up a second profession slot for something else.

Skinning was also the only profession to be ignored on the pre-TBC "profession upgrades" preview page. Go figure. I think rolling it into leatherworking would be a really good move at this point, unless they plan on going back and fleshing it out a *lot* more.

You cant really skin primals in theory though, perhaps motes... but anyway forcing skinning in with LW would probly be the only way to 'fix' skinning, its just too poor by itself.
It would be like needing a seperate profession slot for 'Disenchanting', granted they are not completly equal comparisons but I feel its not that far off.
Theres just never really been much justification to be a skinner unless you were a LW'er, herbing or mining is alot more useful & profitable, heck even fishing is more valuable imo.

Regarding flasks vs elixirs, I would definitely take Tigole's post into consideration. He deliberately states flasks and elixirs as two separate entities and goes on to state that BOTH will be changed. The listed changes really only change elixirs and have no mention of flasks, therefore I think we can logically conclude that there are upcoming changes for flasks, we just don't know about them yet.

2 Elixirs max is a nice change, although I do see many elixirs never being used again. Still, it will be much better than carrying around 20 stacks of elixirs to a raid and chain chugging them all night. Granted I wouldn't use this amount of consumables on anything but first kill fights, there were just so many different elixirs you could use it was ridiculous... defense, mastery, strength, onslaught, fortitude, agility...

So now that the relative power, dps, survivability , etc of a raider has decreased with the elixir change, flasks would become even more powerful and desireable than before. I think this really has to lead to a pretty significant change to flasks. Seems to me that they will have to lower the bonuses that flasks give if they want to ballance things out properly, but we'll see how things play out.

Sure so if you are not DW your are doomed