So with one month to go now, its a good time to visit professions. Many of the recipes are in the beta, the next patch will likely polish it off. There are master lines in tailoring and alchemy now. I am in the beta and have played around with a few professions, but nothing extensive. Here are my assumptions:

1. current recipes are of little value. all the great enchanting, tailoring, engineering, blacksmithing, etc recipes you have gotten from MC/AQ20/world dragons will be rarely used once you reach higher levels and learn the new recipes. Possible exception is repair bot, anything else you can think of?

2. Many of the new recipes are learned from vendors at appropriate faction levels. Its spread around between many factions, so a lot of rep grinding is involved.

3. as in the current game, there is a high incentive for your main to have professions which require faction-received recipes, and for alts to have gathering professions. While herbalism can give some minor in-game boosts, the effect is marginal.

4. for the first month of TBC, most people will be leveling and not requiring many consumables, so the market will mostly revolve around skilling up professions rather than raiding consumables as it is right now.

Thoughts on specific professions:

Jewelcrafting so far seems to be a fairly questionable profession. Some fun trinkets but all have high cooldowns and the trinkets gotten from 5 mans so far seem better. Haven't seen many gem patterns yet that are BoP.

Blacksmithing is great if you can use the items made (melee classes). Some nice new BoE/BOP epic items, although the mats are going to be very time consuming to gather.

Alchemy and Enchanting have lots of new recipes, very faction-based so good on a main.

leatherworking, engineering seem questionable. Any killer new items in either profession?

Tailoring has some nice stuff like spell threads, but they are BoE so don't really need on main. 20 slot bags require crazy mats, as do the new crafted items. By the time you craft enough cloth to make them, its highly likely you will have gone through the new raid instances enough time to get better items.

What is likely going to be your profession? And are you switching now or waiting till expansion? I'm thinking enchanting and alchemy or jewelcrafting, depending on what kind of patterns we see in raids and whether they are BoE or BoP. Alts for herbalism/mining/skinning/engineering.

Going to drop engineering since it's next to useless in arena and pickup enchanting. Go go gadget ring enchant. I'll be holding onto alchemy because the injectors really are a thing of greatness. That and the new flasks are awesometawesome. If you can, I'd also suggest abusing the gem market on the AH now as it's an all time low. That way when expansion hits, you're well ahead of the game or have an easy source of income.

Probably going to stick with ench/herb, same as right now; I have entirely too many rare enchants and too much money sunk into enchanting to ever drop it, and herbing looks to still be pretty useful. I'm tempted by JC, but I fear my cashflow trying to cover it.

It looks like enchanting is necessary for everyone, since it allows BOP ring enchants, and there are no other ways of getting them that I know of.

I am going JC/Mining for my Shaman personally, I am interested in seeing what other BOPs they come out with.

It's good to see multiple professions have some use now. In vanilla, all professions were completely worthless except engineering had some small utility in PVP with some BOP trinkets. Still, the difference is that enchants are a straight power boost. BOP blacksmithing gear can be replaced by instance gear or arena gear, so it's worthless from a min-maxing perspecitve. Alchemists stone's potion effect is unique, and could make alchemy a useful second profession to take for mana classes, at least until gear scales way beyond the actual stats. Leatherworking is probably the second profession for most though, since the drums also replace nothing.

Basically, enchanting and another profession with a unique BOP effect are the possibilities.

Currently Engineering and Enchanting and will definitely be keeping enchanting for the ring enchants. Engineering I'll probably end up dropping, quite possibly for alchemy though that depends on whether the Alchemist's Stone gets substantially nerfed before I make the change - in its current form it really does strike me as too powerful at least from a mana user's perspective.

Given that the trinket converts chugging Super Mana Potions from from 100 mp5 to 140 mp5, I don't know that I'd expect gear to scale beyond the stats.

+15 to all stats, and 40 mp5 for a healer? Pretty damn nice trinket, if you ask me. Beats the hell out of +24 healing, I'd think.

@#3: I think Engineering allows potion injectors, no, not alchemy?


@#6: The beauty of tonks is that the controller doesn't require skill, and is bind on use. I'm cheerfully turning out stacks for my guild, apps, and anyone who wants to drive a tonk around. (Also, so far they seem to have no aggro radius. This is too good to be true, and I'll be testing more.)


As for me, Engi/mid-200s mining currently, since I haven't been bothered to go past 225ish for a while. Again. I don't see myself switching, as I deeply adore Goblin Engineering, despite the lack of utility, and mining, well, kinda handy when you lack 60 alts. (58, sure, but he's my herb/alchy bot.) Besides. Rocket Launchers sound neat.

The thing is, Blacksmithing weapons scale in that you get the next upgrade when the next Tier level is released. Also, some of the weapons that you would take Blacksmithing for have stats on them that may not be replicated in Arena rewards or instance gear. For example, the Haste proc on the 1h mace, the 4 second Stun (that's a hella long time) on the 2h mace and the 8% Fear resist on the 2h sword. Another way of looking at it, is crafting what is essentially a DEoI (comparing its proc to the Deep Thunder proc), and when Might of Menethil (insert Tier 5 two hander here) starts dropping, you drop a ton of materials and upgrade your DEoI to have increased weapon damage/strength/stamina to match the Might of Menethil. That's a pretty appealing perk, in my opinion.

Also you forgot to mention the perk that Tailorers get (no, not the spell damage leg enchants), the Heavy Netherweave Net. A 35 yard range, 3 second root that works reliably on targets up to level 80. That's a pretty useful ability in itself, especially considering it's instant cast. I can easily imagine someone running around with Nets and a Deep Thunder, or Drums (AE Fear) and Jewelcrafting Trinkets (Golden Hare for WSG! keke). If you look at it from that perspective, +20 spell damage is pretty insignificant.

On a side note, a reason why you might want to keep Engineering is that Arcane Crystals drop commonly now. Which means Arcane Bombs are a lot cheaper to make and use. Think of the possibilities.

Well, I can't see myself giving up Enchanting since getting to 300 was such an investment. The actual rare recipes I have are immaterial, as they'll be replaced. But actually *leveling* enchanting to 300 (runed arcanite rod is expensive too) + the new restrictions on DE'ing make it worth it to me, and that's not even counting the ring enchants, etc.

Currently I have herbalism as my 2nd. No surprise there. I'm tempted to drop it and pick up Jewelcrafting since anything new is usually made very attractive to get.