The problem is that Engineering has no PVE use other than the glove enchant. Most people will start getting equivalent helms in the first or second timer of Wotlk. To compare it to BC, it's like leveling a profession for a piece of Prince loot. By far, Engineering is the worst profession for raiding (with the information we know).

If you compare it to other professions, it's actually the best by far. All the other armor crafting professions (Tailoring, LWing, and Blacksmithing) only offer BoE gear, and some gear enhancements (fur linings, extra gem slots, etc). While there are rumors of crafting patterns dropping from raid instances, it really doesn't matter because once in a raid instance, you should be able to get regular raid gear drops.

The only craftable armor that is profession limited, so far, are the Engineering helms. The helms are BOE, but they require Engineering 400, so only engineers can wear them. T7 helms drop from KT, so the helms will probably have a decently long shelf life. Plus, your raid can gear up others with the helm tokens (or you can save up DKP/whatever for other items). And I wouldn't be surprised if Ulduar drops some upgrade schematics to turn t7-level engineering helms to t8-level.

Engineering is looking like a very solid choice for PvE. IMO, Blizzard got burned by the whole Tailoring set fiasco (they tried to nerf the tailoring sets, QQ ensued, Blizzard rolled back the nerf but buffed all the other raid gear). I doubt we'll see any craftable armor patterns that are better than equivalent raid gear drops. Blizzard seems to be moving professions towards buffing your current gear, and all crafting professions seem to have pretty decent buffing options.

Therefore, I don't believe that the crafting profession a person chooses will adversely affect them. All professions have good options to improve your gear.

Leatherworking and Blacksmithing offer a permanent bonus that can never be taken away and will always enhance the character forever and ever.

Engineering gives a helm that gets replaced by the new Prince.


Except for Engineering, Tailoring, and the gathering professions.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Will there be a makeable Stormherald like wep


I guess that answers the question on possible BoP epic gear for professions.

The point I was trying to make was that all professions offer something, it almost doesn't matter what profession you take. If you want to talk about permanent bonuses, we can talk about the engineering haste "enchant" to glove, rocket boot ability to boots, slow fall ability to cape, etc.

Plus there will most likely be upgrade schematics for the engineering helm. The engineering helms in BC were good until Illidan, it's no coincidence that Sunwell introduced new patterns to replace them. If the engineering helms in LK are only equal to KT drops, then I would expect upgrade helm schematics to drop from Ulduar.

The tailoring gear is BoE too (and pretty badly itemised anyway). I believe the Leatherworking gear is also BoE, although I haven't checked recently.

The only benefit from a given crafting profession is its BoP "stat boost" (extra sockets/shoulder inscriptions/cloak embroidery etc.)

On a different note, the seemingly random item budgets given to enchants is kind of annoying. This isn't a new phenomenon by any means (e.g. +12 intellect/defense rating enchant to bracer has the same item budget as a 18 stamina enchant, but the stamina enchant is only +12 like the others), but it's really getting out of control. For the interests of simplicity I'll only mention enchants that boost a single stat or rating, but there now exist wrist enchants with item budgets of 15 (expertise), 16 (intellect), 18 (spirit), 19 (AP), 19.8 (SP), 25 (greater AP), and 25.8 (greater SP).

I suppose you could make an argument that enchants that require a higher skill should have a greater item budget but that unfairly penalises low level enchants like expertise that don't (currently) have a "greater" counterpart, and really just leads to unnecessary doubling up (did we really need two types of AP/SP enchants to wrist?)

Compare this to the strict adherence of Jewelcrafting to item budgets and it is doubly baffling.

This. I was astoundingly disappointed in the Moonshroud set. I admit PMC was maybe too good for its placement but NO sockets?

Maybe Tailoring is one of the things set for buffs in the inevitable soon-after-release patch, the way PMC was buffed to add spirit to it.

Also, I'd imagine that the tailoring dailies if/when they come out will have some nice stuff, on par with the jewelcrafting dailies.

So does that make Malchezaar the artist formely known as?

Ahem.
I'm still skilling up Jewelcrafting, I think for the entrepeuner the most cash from the first week or two lies in the chokehold that the Darlaran Jewelcrafting tokens place on the profession. At this point I've been thinking I'll try and rush a Meta gem as they cost the most tokens so are harder for someone to casually pick up, especially if people are buying the common gem cuts (stam, pure reds) and dragon eye patterns first. The only concern I have is what sort of problems requiring Alchemists to transmute is going to cause on it. I also think one of the mixed colour gem cuts could sell well early, something like agi/hit or sp/hit.

Not too sure on the epic craftables though as it seems you replace most of them with Nax gear.

That earned my undying respect. Well done Sir, well done.

On topic; do any of the scribes here feel like herbalism is going to be totally useless after you've maxed out Inscribing? I mean sure, it can be used to make a little cash, but that's it. Mining is generally a better profession for that. I just don't see the point of herbing the little herbs I'll need at 80 after I have the glyphs I want. The "bonus" from herbalism is rather ridiculous as well. Herbs for researching glyphs can be bought from the AH, and even if they'd cost 40g / stack that'd just make it roughly a 10g/day expense, easily covered for by a single quest.

I reckon I'll be dropping it for something to support raiding, or even engineering for the little PvP sweets it comes with.

You want Spells -> Professions, not Items -> Recipes. Recipes are drops, Spells show all trainable ones too.

Yes, in fact I remember training something to the tune of 65 new JC designs at the first trainer when I set foot into the beta with 375 JC. Among those new designs were a lot of green gem cuts with new stats/stat combinations.

Neither wowhead nor thottbot seems to currently know where the Skyflare or Earthsiege transmutes are learned. From reading other threads it seems they were available in beta, does anyone know where they came from? Trainer, rep, drop?