Don't worry so much about the goggles. The unique functionality of the goggles -- the "use to zoom in" and the "track motes on the map" stuff -- is available to engineers as a belt enchant. So engineers can upgrade to more powerful hats without giving up that stuff. (The idea is that you keep a bunch of equipment, including a pair of binocs, strapped to your "utility belt".)

Does anyone know if that engineering belt enchant can be applied along with the socket added by blacksmithing?

One can safely assume that blacksmith's socket is separate, additional enchant to belt. So it can be applied along engineering enchant.

By the way, what is Hand Mounted Pyro Rocket range ?

Yet i don't know what path to choose in engineering, previously i liked Gnomish Engineering more, but now all those Goblin Explosives in Lake Wintergrasp look a little bit cooler.

According to thottbot the range is 45 yards.

On a more general note: I found it strange that the tracking wasn't given as a baseline ability when creating the mote extractor, I guess the belt enchant is a nice fix for it, but they could just allow us to buy a book somewhere or get it from a quest rather than this (new belt? Go and get the skill again or carry a "junk" item around like you do now with the engineering head if you got ~T5/6ish gear).

Making the cloud detection an ability would limit us from being able to track something else and finding clouds at the same time, I'm starting the expansion with mining/engineering just for that reason.

Which is strange as every other gathering profession is mutually exclusive. Having the head/belt provide for the extra tracking (like the Gahz'ridian Detector in tanaris) would make sense, but for those who only care about tracking the clouds and keeping inventory space a normal tracking ability (like every other gathering profession) would be in order. Also keep in mind that this is a 305 skill item, and to me it seems strange to require a higher level crafted-item to track the resources for it.

Bear in mind that the cloud tracking ability was only added after the fact. Initially the ability allowed you to see the invisible clouds in Netherstorm, which corresponds quite neatly with the 350 skill on the helms.

Just to confirm, you don't need the new goggles or spynoculars to track the Northrend clouds. Once they were added on beta, the NR clouds showed up on my mini-map while i was still wearing my old BC goggles.

Actually I consider Engineering a good for the fact it will deliver the highest dps ammo at release, if it tracks similarly to what happened in TBC it will only be replaced by late reputation grinds though I cannot find any indication that this is so.

I have searched wowhead and followed the wiki links The Saronite Arrow Maker Saronite Arrow Maker - Spell - World of Warcraft and equivalent gun ammo are both trainable at 415. This will introduce the item very early into the game as previously engineers had to rely on a recipe drop from either netherstorm or blade edge mountains. They [Saronite Razorheads] offer 67.5 dps at level 72 which is a very good upgrade from even timeless arrows which were 53 dps.

So while the direct bonuses provided by this profession might not be raid equivalent having one available to the guild or your own account are merited in some cases.

Saronite isn't accessible to either level Engineering, nor make ammo, until S.Basin, meaning this is a poor argument. It is a silver lining on the profession if you play a Hunter, but last I checked, BoE ammo is alt-profession fodder whereas BoP performance-increasing enchants are slightly more important.

I drew the short straw and have the privilege of being the only Engineer in my guild going into Wrath, but I'm already looking at the prospect of swapping professions once some reputation ammo is released. Even if they just threw stats on the tinkers equivalent to an epic gem or enchant with a secondary effect, Engy would be a much more desirable profession because it wouldn't be a sacrifice to have it like it is now.

Saronite is also available from Zul'Drak, although that still is not a good place to go until at least level 74.

Which of the two following proffessions would you guys go with,and why(Wotlk). Alchemy vs Engineering. I have to two chars with one of these professions each,and when I come to think about getting Wotlk I have no idea on what profession to go with. For the ones who have played beta; Will engineering be a pain to level up spending uber cash on it? If that's the case,I already now know that I'll pick alchemy. But if it's not I have no clue:O

You can always check numerous profession leveling guides and calculate materials costs on your server. For me engineering leveling process is just a little bit harder than, for example, alchemy. On my server only mithril and thorium are rare, everything else's rather cheap, i think that same goes for other realms as well.

And, no one will tell what profession is best for you. I only can say that engineering is much more fun than any other profession.

I'm Mining/Engineering, and I've always been happy with that combo, and very, very happy since they made mote clouds trackable. Engineering is a fun profession, a hybrid of a crafting profession, and a gathering profession. As it's craftables generally are more fun than useful, I find the gathering aspect of engineering to more than make up for that, leaving me feeling very fulfilled with engineering. The new glove and belt enchants only make me happier with it.

Until you get normal enchants, that is, because they are better. And you cannot have both enchants and tinkers at once. (You can still keep the belt tinker of cource, but those are mostly flavour and not particulary useful).

Personally I had engineering for a long time in BC but switched to jewelcrafting later (well, technically alchemy, since I was first eng/min, then eng/jc for a good while and then alch/jc, but I totally stopped eng mote harvesting after I got JC). And I can tell you: If you think eng makes "good money" with mote farming then JC makes "utterly insane wtfbbq money" with their crafteables. And, yes, I did mote harvesting with the googles and with an epic flying mount.

For eng vs other professions I would phrase it like this:

Can it be fun? Yes, sure.
Is it competative to other professions in terms of money/time and/or performance bonuses? No. Not even *close*.

Right now blizz aim to make all professions equal is pretty much a "fail".

Engineering is a far greater money maker than tailoring, blacksmithing or leatherworking, assuming you actually use the mote extractor to far out-gather motes than you can in any other method.

Stats bonus? Eye of the beholder I guess. Tailoring is particularly terrible it appears, in Wrath. Maybe it will get it stripes later. Having a helm that's available sooner rather than later seems less terrible.

I tested this theory out once. I flew around Nagrand on an epic mount, gathering Motes until I had a Primal Air. I then went to SMV and ground elementals until I had a Primal Air. Not only did I get the Primal faster by killing mobs, I also got 2g+ worth of vendor drops.

Don't get me wrong, the Mote Extractor is nice - it's more than made its money back for me even though my Engi is an alt - but it's just a perk, extra money while you're running around doing what you do normally. Don't pretend it's a moneymaker. Especially do not say it's a greater moneymaker than Leatherworking when my lifetime profit from mote gathering was exceeded by that from my one sale of Nethercobra Leg Armour.

Then you probably hit nagrand after someone else farmed the clouds, or are unaware where the clouds usually are. It's like mining nodes, you can have good or bad luck, but a quick round is usually worth it. Alternatively, you could have gotten lucky on air drops from the elementals. Mote farming is not a "I need it right now" farm-method like grinding mobs, but more "check every once in a while and get lots in a short period".

Oh, and combining it with the SSO daily (and cooking/fishing when applicable) quest was usually a good idea.

Not saying it was a great moneymaker, but making proper use of it had it's benefits. Personally I dislike grinding and found myself just doing a round maybe once a day or 2 days, grabbing 5 to 15 motes every time around. Of course, more or less dominating a certain leg armor type at the start was worth way more than this (with nethers being BOP even more so).

More general: I feel that currently engineering is really missing a unique benefit. Even tailoring comes out better imo because of the BOP flying carpets (really why are the engineering ones BoE?) and leg armor BoE's which are sellable to everyone, more or less sustainable.

That's an extremely biased way to test this. One of many things could have happened for you. The stuff that Ingmar mentioned but also you didn't have to wait for respawns of mobs because you weren't there long enough. You have to do this over the course of a longer period of time, say 2 hours of each. I've done both and found the goggles to be much superior. Getting lucky on mobs I could get a primal after about 15 mobs or maybe 15 minutes. Getting lucky on clouds I could get 3 primals in one circle of Nagrand or maybe 5 minutes. RNG perhaps but overall clouds were much better for primal gathering.

I've only hit one mote cloud so far in Northrend (near the airport in Borean Tundra) but it gave me 3 Crystalized Water and 4 Crystalized Fire. Now either I was extremely lucky or thats a hell of a lot more than the BC clouds (and an interesting variety too).

There are several north-east of Camp Winterhoof (on the frozen lake/mini water fall) - they drop mixed crystals as well (water and air). The general droprate seemed to be a little lower than what I normally got in tbc - 12 crystals in 4 spawns as opposed to 4 or 5 motes per cloud in the outlands. I obviously need to do some more extraction though.

I managed to get to 300/300 Blacksmithing and Inscription on my DK in just under 3hrs by following my BS guide that I posted a few parts back.

Few caveats I found:

Blacksmithing:
*Always buy more Stone than you think you'll need. I ran out a few times on Heavy stone due to RNG hating me and it cost me
*Skip mithril spurs around 260 and make thorium bracers. The skill up for them made it worth while
*Get your steel made as you'll need it, don't try to be tricky and buy iron bars and then try to get it converted over. Buy/make steel you'll need.

Made it to 300 in about an hour and a half and that's because I had to ship 200+ iron bars to my miner to make them into steel.

Inscription:
It's a messy awful wretched profession to level. Why? I'll tell you why.

You mill herbs to make pigments, you take pigments to make ink. You take Ink+parchment to make Glyphs. Easy?
Now when mass leveling you can only make 5 of each type of Glyph as it goes from Orange to Yellow. Head back to the trainer and get your next batch of 5 for skillup. Rinse and repeat.

*Mill all your herbs if you are sitting on them. Grind them all down, all of them. They take up less space in your bag than all those herbs do. Don't worry about space for now. Trust me, I spent more time running around getting what I thought I needed than anything else.
*Bring all your pigments to Trainer, level stuff up as 5, doesn't matter which ones, and then pick next allotment of 5
*if you get Rare pigments and can get ANY skillups off them make their ink. I turned on "Only materials I have" checkbox and it caught a few things that I had sitting around
*Darkmooon faire cards are a good way to level if you got the inks
*Be prepared to pay out the nose for mats right now. I spent 20G/stack of Kingsblood. Insane I know but hey I ran out, so I had to stuck it up and pay.
*Only make orange recipes, don't do yellow, avoid recipes that do Ink/2 and try to stick with Ink/1 with more parchment. Parchment is cheap.

Overall I guestimate that by mining and herbing most of my stuff and purchasing I spent about 1k in materials for both. I had more stuff than what I thought and everything I made I shipped off to my DE alt to melt it down and sell. I sold everything I had at the AH this morning and probably have close to 2k of crap on the AH with all the herbs/bars I had left over that I gathered extra and didn't use.


Life Lesson: Gather more stones than you need, Mid level milling has a gap where you won't get much skillup so plan accordingly, have an alt that can DE everything. Welcome to 300/300.