Leveling tailoring past 300 is really not that bad. You can get to 340 just buy making bolts of netherweave and imbued bolts of netherweave, and then use the things you just created for most of the rest of your skillups.

I do agree that the balance of crafted items vs raid drops is terrible. I had been enchanting/herbing for months, and 2 days ago took a long look at the tailored items and decided I pretty much needed them. So, here I am at 375 tailoring now, having dropped herbalism. Total gold spent- maybe 700g total to get to 375. I have my frozen shadoweave shoulders, will get my boots tomorrow, and vest this weekend hopefully.

3 piece Shadoweave, 2 piece Spellstrike, and Girdle of Ruination are a combined ~175 or so more +damage than I could get with the best raid drops currently known. Kinda sad how necessary the tradeskill has become.

so I spent some time on Armory, browsing Nihilum priests just to realise most of them are not tailors (they went alchemy). I find it quite funny, given how good tailoring seems at current gear level.

After trying it for a while I must say the healing items are very nice and balanced. I was initially afraid about low stamina values, but then I just got myself additional set which is focused mostly on stamina which solved all my problems. The only concern is, after getting my robe in two days there will be nothing else I can look forward to but hopefully some review will solve it.

The mooncloth set was pretty messed up for not including much stamina. For the hard fights where all the mp5/healing bonuses would help, like Aran/Prince/Nightbane/Gruul, you simply don't have enough stamina to survive.

I can see why they all went herb/alchemy though, they may wear the alch stone for the mana pot buff, and you can flask/pot yourself up to way above mooncloth. 1-2 hours farming a day will usually provide the mats for that nights raid.

What the hell do you need stamina for on Prince? Also, I wear my mooncloth belt for every fight PvE fight. It's somewhat situational but that doesn't change the fact that the healing stats on it are amazing.

While that's good for now.... what about in 6 months when everyones raiding Black Temple/Hyjal and wearing T6? Suddenly the tailoring pieces start becoming worthless again because they don't have upgrades like Blacksmithing does....

I do not see how that is a valid point. Any item will, at some moment in time, "become worthless", even the upgradeable Blacksmithing ones. However, at this particular time, most of the DPS casters will have tailoring as one of their primary professions. The crafted sets, and random epic patterns such as Spellfire are just THAT good.

The advantage of that set for day 1 raiders was a sizeable boost to DPS when they first walked into new content when everyone else was behind.

The cost vs effort is/was a very nice ratio for that set especially if you were 300 tailoring on day 1 of TBC. Personally, i'm shooting myself in the foot for not doing it earlier. Now, it might be a bit too late to enjoy the full potential of that perk....

6 months from now you could have a bucket load of gold/materials and just change professions again. ~700G to have access to some of the best items in the game currently is a small price to pay. It is even more worth it since you aren't counting on a RNG to give you love.

The other thing is who is to say that new tailoring recipes wont drop, new faction rewards, and so on. Also I'm pretty comfortable with T6 being better than the current tailoring pieces, considering the effort to get T6 will be a lot more. I will enjoy the benefits of my tailoring for quite a while until then so it's definitely not wasted at all -- and in that meantime you can also make a fair amount of coin on the side from continued crafting of specialty cloth every 4 days.

small in relation to the massive upgrade provided by the pants

The Alchemist's Stone is fantastic raiding trinket. Especially if you have the time to farm pot or the money. I know the math has probably been posted other places but I'll quickly post it just to reiterate it.

Assuming chain chugging I will start at Fel Mana, go to Super Mana, then lastly to Unstable Mana (which I use quite regularly).

Fel Mana = 3200 *1.40 = 4480 thus the alchem stone is a boost of 1280 mana. Chain chugging results in a gain of 53.3 extra mp5.

Super Mana (using avg.) = 2400 *1.40 = 3360 thus the alchem stone is a boost of 960 mana. Chain chugging results in a gain of 40 extra mp5.

Unstable Mana (using av.) = 1800 *1.40 = 2520 thus the alchem stone is a boost of 720 mana. Chain chugging results in a gain of 30 extra mp5.