We're theorycrafting classes, their builds and damage output, but what's going to be the best way to level Tradeskills come expansion?

People are saying you should hoard some Runecloth, because Netherweave? Bandages do not begin until 330.

What are the cheapest Orange items currently in each tradeskill bar, and how far will they take us?

For Leatherworking, Core Armor Kits look like the cheapest of all of the options, considering they cost 3 Core Leather and 80s, Heavy Scorpid Shoulders look like a decent alternative now, although they cost a Cured Rugged Hide, they otherwise have the cheapest basic requirements otherwise, assuming Core Leather is neither cheap, nor abundant for you. Once either caps out (340), Thick Draenic Breastplate becomes the cheapest Orange item, at 14 Knothide Leather and 3 Rune Thread, at this point, based on current data (read: Thottbot beta info), the last few points become very difficult, and very little information is known about items. Based on this, I could probably hit 360 LWing in one day, with enough stockpiling, assuming I grind Beasts/Skin constantly in Hellfire Penninsula.
Of course, Blizzard could make Azeroth items not Orange anymore!

Anyone have any plans for their tradeskill?

Wicked leather belt is much easier for leatherworking. It requires 300 so it should last a while and all it needs is 14 rugged leather + vendor bought stuff.
For engineering, thorium shells should last a bit also.

Wizardweave robe is nice for tailoring, 8 bolts of runecloth and 2 dream dust + a rune thread. Guess runecloth headband could work as well, 4 bolts and 2 ironweb spider silks.

Thorium Shells go green at 305, trivial at 325. That's pretty much the only cheap item you can make in Engy that would push you well beyond 300. :|

There are plenty of easy new leveling recipes so I wouldn't worry about it.

For example 1 admantium bar = shielding rune.

Correct. Because heavy runecloth bandages are yellow at skill 300 and turn green at some point (don't remember when tho), you'll need at least 100 or so runecloth to get to skill 330. Me, I'll be carrying at least 200 into the expansion, just in case. :P This is the hardest of the three non-primary professions.

Fishing should be trivial, just become master (trivial) and start fishing (not too difficult). I got 4-5 stacks of aquadynamic fish attractors too.

Cooking isn't too hard since there's a quest you can get right off that gives you a very good cooking recipe, and the meat for that recipe drops from level 59-60 mobs around 100 metres from Honor Hold (and not too far from Thrallmar). Nevertheless I might get some materials to make these for easier initial skillup. :)

About the real professions... jewelcrafting will be infinitely easier with Outland-only materials once you reach 300, which I plan to do a few hours after the expansion opens. Other professions I won't worry about yet. ;)

On the smithing side (which I'd contend is the hardest trade in the game to level), elemental sharpening stones are still yellow at 300, which should give you up to 320 if you stock up mats, I have a guide I theorycrafted together for getting smithing from 300-375 as cheap as I can (since my main doesn't mine), I'll post it once I get to my home computer, the big problem atm is that all trades stall somewhere between 340 and 360 due to total lack of reasonable/existant forms, i really hope they add more forms at all levels before things go live.

At the end of the day tho, I have yet to see anything that would indicate trades in BC will really be any more usefull than they are now - all but the epic forms for smithing are beaten by at/below level instance or quest drops, and the epics I think benefit heavily from being max level, unless they give all trades stuff more like enchanting (tailor/lw for pants, smith for belts?, side consumables for all of them?, I dunno), or make tier 4 hinge on them (get xxx drop from boss + yyy smithed item or what have you), and the new green resist gear makes me wonder if we've lost our requirement there (as I simultaneously hope for the death of resist fights).

Arcane Crystals? I'm not sure that recipe is available to non-alpha folks. I personally am stuck at 352 enchanting with everything green...

Hrm, just checked with the enchanter down the hall who says he hasn't found that recipie, he waited until he hit 67 before focusing on 'chanting so missed the alpha recipies- although the enchanter who started leveling skills first in alpha has it. My bad. Hopefully it's not a terribly rare drop.

(If it's any comfort I'm stuck in the same situation with tailoring- I'm stuck at 340 with my only completable recipie requiring *6* primal earths each... and that one is only yellow. Oy. Maybe they'll release more with the extra zones.)

Not for leatherworking there aren't. It's damned near impossible to get to 350 in beta currently, let alone 355 for the blue class armors. The primary culprit is that nothing skins full leather reliably - the best I've gotten is 50/50 scraps/leather.

Netherweave drops a lot, and at 300 tailoring you get bolt of netherweave, and netherweave nets (3 nw per net) and they're both orange. It's what i've been using so far. With enchanting you get some relatively cheap enchants at 300 (24 ap to bracers, 15 str to gloves, etc) that only take 5 or 6 arcane dust each; which isn't too bad if you can convince guildies to send you some greens that drop for them. :)

I lied apparently. Sleep dep will do that.

I'm 360 tailoring. Ignore anytime I say 330something becasue I'm totally out of my mind (stuck at 340 jewelcrafting due to lack of gems and that's apparently warped my brain). I only have 3 craftable recipies that have the possibility of giving skillups- Cloak of Eternity (6 primal earth lololol, but it's the only craftable yellow), Neverweave Tunic (green), Soulcloth Gloves (green). I decided it was cost prohibitive to attempt to skill up beyond that and I'm hoping that more tailoring recipies are on unreleased vendors. bleh bleh bleh. Brain fried. I'll probably kill us all repeatedly on thaddius tonight =/

:/

According to this guy in post 3, " No profession has itemization to 350 yet." Maybe we're killing ourselves over nothing :P

This is my general conclusion. Pushing to 375 atm is currently a major feat for the majority of professions- going to 340-345 is fairly easy, but then it gets disgustingly more difficult with each extra 5. I think we're just missing the vendor recipies out of the new zones =/

At 356 blacksmithing I can make Felsteel Whisper Knives (thrown, but the 2 Primal Air and 2 Primal Fire make it ridiculously difficult) and Breastplate of Kings, which is insanely difficult.

The big problem with blacksmithing right now is that going from 300 to 340ish is really difficult because of the mass quantities of Fel Iron needed. Btw, all new smelted metals are 2 ore -> 1 bar, so when something needs 4 Fel Iron Bars, it needs 8 ore. But fel iron veins are only the normal 2-4 ores... and of course engineering, enchanting, and jewelcrafting want them, too. There's tons and tons of adamantite (the next metal up) in Nagrand, but it's worthless till you skill up past Fel Iron.

There are going to be some blood and tears spilt over fel iron the first few weeks, let me tell you - it would be bad enough if every single enchanter didn't need a fel iron rod, too (6 bars, 12 ore)...

I think a better question is what professions are worth keeping? So far tailoring seems a big fat dud, almost nothing new work making. I'd rather replace it with herbalism and have an alt that can make me nice potions.

Same with leatherworking? Blacksmithing at least has some DPS consumables you can use, although none are BOP afaik. Jewelcrafting so far seems pretty weak, the items you can craft are awful. Haven't really investigated what socket jewels can be made yet.

So what are the ideal professions? Main with herb or mining + enchanting or jewelcrafting, alt with alchemy and mining or herbing? This is assuming a person who raids and PVP's, I'm also assuming engineering is not that useful in PVP due to cooldowns/consumables ban.

The nice thing is all the nice recipes and stuff you have now will be deprecated, so no real reason not to dump your craft and pick up new ones.

I hope that Blizz will keep their promise and tailors will get their craftable BoP epics (Robe of Archmage, Mk II). Otherwise its only good for level up period to get 18-20 slot bags and then dump it in favor of enchanting/herbalism/mining

Altra will stay skinning/LW, it seems to be most profitable during levelling periods anyway and I'm sure something will be implemented to make it worthwhile for someone in the guild to keep up. I'm figuring a good stock of rugged leather and silithid bits will help power level with sandstalker/spitfire gear for the first 10-15 (and provide some extra shards for enchanter friends to level on). If I had the Core Armor Kit pattern I would probably just request some of our core leather stockpile for that, but it only ever dropped once for us and went to an officer who left about 6 months ago. That one may be THE early powerlevelling pattern for LWs if you have it.

For jewelcrafting I stockpiled low level ores, bars and gems levelling a new alt and have since engaged in stockpiling from the AH in line with the 0-300 guide in the jewelcrafting thread. My new paladin will take up jewelcrafting. I'm currently regretting all the aquamarines and star rubies I've ever vendored :/

Here's my plan for smithing:

300->320: elemental sharpening stones
320->325: fel iron plate boots (6*5 = 30)
325->330: fel iron chain tunic (5*9 = 45)
330->335: fel iron breastplate (5*10 = 50)
335->340: adamantite dagger (5*7 = 35 ad, 5*2 = 10 knothide)
350->360: adamantite weightstone (~20)
*possibly make your trade-specific item here if you can get the mats (form at 350, yellow at 360), good for 1-2 skills depending on if you make both your items *
360->370: felsteel shield spike (10*4 = 40 primal fire, earth, felsteel = 200 feliron, 80 eternium)
370->375: felsteel helm (form on thott, but not found in-game) (8*5 = 40 fel iron, 8*2 = 16 eternium)

total:
365 fel iron bars
96 eternium
~55 adamantite
10 knothide leather
40 primal fire
40 primal earth

replace elemental sharpening stones with if you don't have the form/don't wanna grind a yellow:
300-320: enchanted thorium blades (20*2 = 40 enchante thorium, 20*6 = 120 thorium, 20 rugged leather)

All forms except the felsteel helm are in the game atm, sources:

elemental sharpening stones: MC drop
enchanted thorium blades: trained from master trainer in thrallmar
fel iron plate boots: trained from master trainer in thrallmar
fel iron chain tunic: trained from master trainer in thrallmar
fel iron plate breastplate: trained from master trainer in thrallmar
adamantite dagger: vends in shattrath city
adamantite weightstone: vends from cenarion refugees in zangarmarsh at honored
felsteel shield spike: vends from thrallmar faction vendor at exalted
felsteel helm: <unknown, presumed to vend in one of the higher level zones>

So even now in beta you could grind out smithing to 370 on oranges, 375 on yellow, but it would require grinding thrallmar to exalted, which I don't think anyone is ambitious enough to do, if you didn't want to in live either, you could make enchanted adamantite belts (20 adamantite bars, 8 arcane dust, 2 large prismatic shards, yellow at 365), or felsteel gloves (6 felsteel bars), both forms are unknown location and I'm just using thott's datamined info on mats/skill lvls, personally I might make a few enchanted belts if I had gotten luckier with adamantite than fel iron, but for spike: vs. gloves, assuming you have access to both forms, primal fire and earth are the most common primals since you get many, many motes of both from mining fel iron.

A final skilling option might be felsteel whisper knives since they have good stats (10 hit, 10 crit, 20 AP thrown @70), the mats are a bit severe to provide yourself (6 felsteel, 2 primal air, 2 primal fire, 1 heavy knothide) but if you have lots of rogue friends you might be able to work out an arrangement, the form is learned at 350 from the thrall trainer, yellow at 360, so probably best for the 360->370 range.

Even better of course would be if you got one of the epic 365-skill forms, could easily ride one of them all the way up to the end and make some good money doing it, and with a good sized guild wouldn't be too unlikely if you're one of the only ones of your chosen specialization and the drop rates in beta reflect live.

For alchemy I would not worry too much about it but you can skill up to 215 on resistance potions or even things like magebloods. More importantly though make absolutely certain that you have atleast 100 mountain silversage, 100 dreamfoil and 100 golden samsam at your disposal. These herbs do drop in outland but there are not many of them and they are used in most of the early recipes.

2 of the first recipes you learn are
Onslaught elixir +60 AP.
And greater Str elixir + 35 Str.

Both of these require 1 silversage and 1 felweed(fairly common) and use imbued vials (@#$@#$). You will be able to farm up 2 stacks of felweed pretty quick and skill like mad to the new mana and heal potions.


So long story short the second you train master alchemy you will have acess to orange recipes that require a total of 2 herbs so do not worry about grinding off of old recipes that often require 4 or 5. Do however make sure that you have as many dreamfoil, samsam and silversage as you can save up. Even when the new recipes grey out they make potions that are invaluable for levelling any melee class.

On Blades Edge, skinners/LWs are in demand simply because there are so few of them. Knothide Armor Kits sell like hotcakes. http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=2670

I couldn't tell you about higher level LW, though.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, the Netherweave set is quite good for PvP and warlocks. The 2pc is very generous, +23dmg, and I've replaced some epics with two pieces of the green set. (Firemaw's Clutch, Black Bark Wristbands)

If you're talking about the items not being soulbound...well...that's always been an issue. Perhaps Aldor/Scryer spellthread will help resolve this issue--if you are into rep grinding.

Mooncloth Bags are Orange too, at 300 Tailoring