Sunday, May 10, 2009

What professions should I have?

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(Now: edited for more accuracy, re: tailoring!!)

I don't know, but stay away from woodcutting!!!!!!!!

Har har har har!! *bah-dum CHH* Thank you, thank you.

/bow

Ok, no, but seriously. I've been thinking about this a lot, whether I should switch up my professions. Right now I have alchemy and herbalism - a good combination, PLUS, picking herbs in flight form is OP. =P But the bonus from jewelcrafting is amazing, as is the blacksmithing bonus (more sockets ftw!). However, are they worse/the same/better than mixology? Better than being able to fund my own alchemy? How expensive is each profession, and what is the benefit, especially in regards to resto druids?

Let's look at the gathering professions first. Note that I got all my Auction House prices from either my own experiences with the AH, or through wowecon. Hopefully the numbers are somewhat accurate.

Herbalism: Herbalism lets you gather herbs that can be used in Inscription, Alchemy, or to be sold on the AH. Prices of herbs flucuate just like anything else on the AH, but typically a stack of 20 Northrend herbs will sell between 20g and 50g.

Herbalism also gives you Lifeblood, which I rarely used until I macroed it to Barkskin. As a healing class, I find it to be pretty redundant. Why use Lifeblood when I can just put one Lifebloom on myself for pretty much the same amount of healing in the same amount of time? Granted, it doesn't cost any mana, so that's nice. And it's great in arenas when you want every ounce of health you can get.

Skinning: Skinning lets you gather the hides or scales of mobs that you kill. They can be used in Leatherworking, Tailoring, or even some Blacksmithing recipes. Mobs in Northrend drop Borean Leather or Borean Leather Scraps. Five leather scraps can be put together to make one borean leather, and six borean leathers can be put together to make one Heavy Borean Leather. You can sell a stack of 20 Heavy Borean Leather for between 70g and 130g, depending.

Skinning also gives you a passive crit increase with Master of Anatomy, which will give you about a 0.7% crit increase. This makes it a good profession for some classes, but not the best for resto druids.

Mining: Lets you loot mining nodes that can contain ore, precious gems (uncut), etc. These can be used in Blacksmithing, Engineering, and Jewelcrafting. Different ore and gems sell for a wide range of prices on the AH.

Mining also gives you Toughness, which is pretty useless for trees. Tanks might like it, but we have no real use for it.

And now for the professions that will actually cost you money, not just time, to level. Note that I looked at these from an 'increase-your-spellpower' point of view.

Alchemy: Alchemy lets you make potions, flasks, and elixirs. You need herbs and vials to make these. Any and all players who are raiding anything that's not yet on farm should be using flasks or elixirs. At least, that's my opinion. I also happen to be a ridiculous min/maxer.

Alchemy also gives you Mixology, which increases the effect and duration of whatever you chug. Flasks that were one hour long are now two! Also, it increases the effect of flasks and elixirs by about 30%. Personally, I use Flask of the Frost Wyrm in raids, which gives me +125 spell power. With mixology, it gives me +162 spell power. So essentially, mixology is giving me more flasks and +37 spell power.

Inscription: Also uses herbs. You can make scrolls, glyphs, card decks, and a couple neat off-hands. I find that scrolls are pretty useless on 25 man raids, because you can't put most scrolls on top of all the buffs you get. In 5s and 10s, though, they're viable. And glyphs, depending on what kind they are, can sell anywhere from 10g to 100g on some servers - maybe even more. Prices will probably come down after more and more scribes discover more glyphs, though. Rare cards that you make for various decks can potentially sell for thousands of gold.

Scribes also get some great shoulder enchant options: the Master's Inscription of the Crag, or the Master's Inscription of the Storm. Right now I have the Son's of Hodir enchant which is +24 spell power and +6mp5. Changing to Inscription would give me +37 spell power. Interesting: it's the same as mixology.

You can also use Scrolls of Recall. This is a nice perk, but not important to increasing your healing output.

Enchanting: You can use this to enchant your gear or others' gear. You can also disenchant gear and use or sell the mats that you get. Abyss crystals typically sell for around 100g, and Greater Cosmis Essences sell between 10 and 15g. When leveling enchanting, you can only get mats by disenchanting gear, or buying them on the AH. It's not like you can go farm arcane dust like you can with herbs.

Enchanters get a bonus that lets them enchant their rings. Specifically, they're able to put a +19 spell power enchant on each one (there are other enchants such as stamina or attack power, but those don't apply to us). So this profession is a +38 increase to spell power. Same as inscription and mixology.

Blacksmithing: Blacksmithing is typically used by mail and plater wearers, so I've never really considered going with this profession. You can make some decent gear or weapons and sell it on the Auction House, but it's not like we can make ourselves items to use, due to our leather wearing limitations.

However, blacksmithing does give you the option to socket your gloves and bracers. Let's say you add two Runed Scarlet Rubies to those sockets, and bam, you've got an extra 38 spell power. See a trend here?

Engineering: Engineers can make a wide variety of random crap. They can make jumper cables to help rez the dead, repair bots for raids, random trinkets, and a MOTORCYCLE.

If you want to forgo the typical haste enchant on your cloak, you could opt in for a Springy Arachnoweave and increase your spell power by 18..... and that seems to be it. Am I missing something?

Tailoring: Tailors can make cloth gear and bags. 20+ slot bags can be sold for quite a lot of money on the Auction House. They can make sexy santa outfits, tuxedos and dresses! They can also make spellthread, which is an enchant to legs, giving you +50 spell power and +20 spirit (or +50 spell power and +30 stamina). This can be bought and sold on the AH. PLUS: a magic carpet mount!

The only special ability that tailors get is an embroidery to their cloak. The one we're interested in is the Darkglow Embroidery. It's got some nice mana regen there, but it's not enough to make me want to change my profession to tailoring. Tailors are also able to loot more cloth than usual off of humanoids, but again, this doesn't lead to raiding min/maxing.

EDIT: I forgot about Lightweave Embroidery! Bah! (Thanks Muffnman, for bringing this up!) Looks like this has a 45 second internal cooldown (like most procs) and has a 50% chance to proc once the CD is up. If it procs every 1.75 minutes, you will get an average of +39 spell power, which would make it on par with all the other professions. The question is, DOES it proc every 1.75 minutes? Or does it proc more than that? It should actually proc more than that - if it procs every 105 seconds, that means that after a cool down of 45 seconds, it takes over a MINUTE to proc again - which isn't accurate at all. So this embroidery is actually a bigger boost in spell power than other professions.

Leatherworking: You can use leatherworking to make gear, bags, ammo pouches, and armor kits. Resto druids should never be using leather armor kits, but low level ones are nice when leveling. Leatherworking obviously goes nicely with skinning.

Leatherworking also allows you to use Arctic Fur (looted from mobs by skinning them), which lets you make Fur Linings to 'enchant' your bracers. The enchant resto druids would be looking at would be Fur Lining - Spell Power, which boosts your spell power by a net gain of - you guessed it - 37 (The +67 would be in place of the +30 enchant you should already have).

Jewelcrafting: JCers can cut gems and make rings, necklaces, and trinkets. Once you have your skill maxed out, you can make quite a bit of money selling these items. The mining profession typically pairs well with JCing.

JCers have the benefit of cutting and using more powerful gems than the non-JCer. For instance, they can make Runed Dragon's Eyes, which are +32 spell power, rather than the normal +19 - an increase of +13. As a jewelcrafter, you can use up to 3 dragon eye gems. If you stick to straight spell power gems, this means a net increase of +39 spell power. Whaddya know. The other great thing is that these gems count for ANY color socket - which, as Najtrok nicely pointed out, will take care of your meta socket for you in one fell swoop. It'll also help you get some socket bonuses that you might previously not had.

So let's recap here:

Herbalism: Lifeblood
Mining: +50 stam
Skinning: +32 crit rating

Alchemy: +37 spell power to Flask of the Frost Wyrm
Inscription: +38 spell power to shoulders
Enchanting: +38 spell power to rings
Blacksmithing: adds 2 sockets (so, +38 spell power to bracers/gloves with spell power gems)
Leatherworking: +37 spell power to bracers
Jewelcrafting: +39 spell power (if you go with the spell power gems), easily gained socket bonuses and meta reqs
Engineering: +18 spell power to cloak
Tailoring: chance to proc 300mp5 or chance to proc 250 spell power

So what's the best option here for resto druids?

Well, if you're going to take a gathering profession, I'd say take herbalism. Mining (+stamina) doesn't give you much a bonus to write home about, and skinning (+crit) is nice, but farming herbs in flight form is zomgeasymode, and takes the cake in my opinion. Also, Lifeblood really IS viable in PvP and PvE - you just have to work it in at the right moments.

However, if for some reason you don't want to take herbalism, your next best gathering profession (and a close second!) is skinning. Although restos don't use crit as much as, say, paladins, it's a still a nice stat to have, especially with Nourish being pushed into our repetoire of heals.

If you want to pair up that gathering profession with something else, you can choose any of the following: Alchemy, Inscription, Enchanting, Blacksmithing, or Leatherworking. Essentially, all of these have the *same exact* awesome factor. However, Jewelcrafting and Tailoring probably take the cake as the best non-gathering professions out there for restos. The only one that isn't on the list is engineering, although there are reasons why one might choose that as well (repair bots for the raid, for the win!).

Personally, based on limitations of funds, time, and still wanting to min/max as much as possible, I'd recommend one of these three combinations for resto druids:

Herbalism + Alchemy
Herbalism + Inscription
Skinning + Leatherworking

However, if you've got a ton of money, time, and want to get THE best boost, your best option is to choose jewelcrafting and tailoring. Joining these two will result in the best boost to spell power, provided you use the respective spell power options that each profession has to offer, plus you potentially fulfill more socket bonuses and you don't have to worry about your meta gem. You also loot more cloth off of humanoids! Booyah.

(Note however, that if your gems are already satisfying your meta gem requirement, and you're getting all the socket bonuses out of them, AND they were the exact gems you wanted in the first place, then JCing offers no other benefit over say, alchemy, or enchanting, or any other profession on that list. But typically Blizzard likes to make you choose - do you want to tweak your gems a bit to get the socket bonus? Or do you want to go with straight spell power and forgo the bonus? RARELY does Blizzard just put two red sockets on something, with a +spell power socket bonus. That would be too easy =P)

Readers: what do you all have for professions? Do you like your professions or are you thinking of leveling new ones?

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21 remarks:

Icedragon said...

I've had the same professions since day one - skinning + LWing. It makes a nice profit and being able to sell leg armor kits (75-300g) and frost resist gear (30-70g) is a big perk. Just cruising through Scholazar or Coldarra nets a megaton of leather, and most 5-man dungeons have some form of skinnable creatures so I can pull a nice profit there too.

The 0.7% crit isn't even on my radar, but skinning in Swift Flight form (a bit like a buzzard) is a plus. I'm also one of the major guild suppliers of Leg Kits.

Najtrok said...

Yo,

you missed out the biggest gain in JC: You dont need EVER care about meta! And Socket Bonuses are achieved way easier.

Take your grear. Look what you could swap out with those three prismatics to max the bonuses.

Add that one.

There you go buddy. JC clearly wins this.

BS is second place with those extra sockets, also becuase if adding epic gems its benefit grows.

Inscription is a great moneymaking profession (though it recieved a huge nerf with dual spec in regards of selling glyphs).

So what I did is make money with Inscription and then dropped Herbalism to max out JC. And I can tell thats awesome.

Averna said...

Yo, I'm a little confused. How come I don't need ever care about meta?

I think I might be missing something about JCing here - can someone explain? IS it better?

Averna said...

Oh, wait, I get it. You're saying that because they count for ANY socket, it'll take care of your meta gem without any fuss or muss. And then you can also get the socket bonuses on some gear that you might not have had previously.

Ok, post edited.

Thanks for the heads up =)

Joyce Ann Martin said...

Clari is Herbalism/Inscription, which I chose mainly for the sake of convenience, a.k.a. not having to farm rep with the Sons of Hobag, and because I'm perpetually out of money from my pet habit. :)

I've been thinking of levelling alchemy (and replacing herbalism), but it seems like quite a long and expensive road...not to mention the agony of losing the ability to fund my own professions. I suppose that a second toon would help make that decision easier. :)

Natuu - Kor'Gall EU said...

Nice write up! :D

I have Herbalism/Inscription as well. I traded it out for skinning/LW, when 3.0.2 hit us. Back then I had no need for BoP ep0x, either worse or to expensive for that they provided, and it seemed nice to have at least 1 scribe in the guild, so the change seemed logical.

I haven't regret it one bit, since Wotlk killed the BoP crafts...

Minor note 1: Tailors can, like scribes can on their shoulder and LW'ers can on their legs, make VERY CHEAP leg-armors for themselves. 2 eternal thread for the epic stats equivalent they can sell to the rest of us. ^^ No extra weight for min/maxing, just cheaper.

Minor note 2: you state that Leatherworking allows for looting Arctic furs. This is not the case, it's just regular skinning. The use for them on the bracers is of course LW like you said :D

Caldazar said...

Personally I use herbing and skinning.
I never used any crafting professions for money making, and I can easily get all items that I need from guildies.

For bonuses, lifeblood is really handy, it is macrod together with barksin for me, and has saved me countless times. The extra all stance, no GCD health never hurts. Skinning because, well, I am lazy :p And arctic furs do make good money as an incidental bonus.


As a sidenote: JC wins hands down as best crafting proff, negative side: it costs a truckload of gold and time to level :(

Maraetha said...

I think nothings wrong with alch herb. You know, the grass always looks greener on the other side! I had this conversation a day or 2 ago as well. About my enchanting and tailoring choice. I'm thinking of dropping enchanting for gemcutting. But we need enchanters and ok... +19spx2 isn't that impressive imo for all the time and gold and effort you put into it! (goodbye 10k gold! 0-450) Never regretted Tailoring, eventhough we "only" get an nice enchant out of it... But I'll keep them, because in the end... I'm not sure of those small changes with extra gems etc will make that big of a difference to spend 5k gold on. (Or it's me just being greedy)

Averna said...

@Joyce: Bahahahahaha! Sons of Hobag. SRSLY.

@Natuu: Bah, thanks for the heads up. Didn't mean to put 'looting arctic fur' under leatherworking.

@Sanek: I, too, have my Lifeblood macro-ed to Barkskin (along with some fel blossom ^^). It's a great oh shit button.

@SP: Agreed. Honestly, I don't (and will not) have the funds to change any of my professions any time soon.

As of right now, I'm pretty pleased with my alchemy + herbalism choice. Looking at all the professions and seeing that most of the offer the same level of benefit helps put my mind at ease.

Xeonio said...

Another thing to note about JC is that if you go with stat gems instead of say spell power you will gain an even larger benefit. I'm not sure if Resto druids have it but priests can get an extra 15% of intellect plus in a raid situation you will have Kings for even more benefit from raw stats.

Corgii said...

I almost always pick Alchemy/Herbalism. I'm so lazy, and that profession combination is always so easy to level! XD

After reading this, though, I might actually reconsider picking up JC/Tailoring... if I get off my lazy, furry rump and do some dailies that is...

Dan said...

Speaking as a Pally at least, don't discount the benefits of Herbalism and Alchemy.

In terms of PVE and PVP alike, the lifeblood heal can be a lifesaver (semi-pun semi-intended?), as it's usable when silenced. I used it 2-3 times last Auriaya when the damn cat silenced me. 2000 health is living-vs-dying in arena, as well.

Alchemy also brings some arena benefit, in the form of the endless healing/mana pots. Mostly I use the healing one, like lifebloom, to survive bad silences. Though the mana one CAN be a great unexpected way to grab juuuust enough mana back in a pinch.

Averna said...

@Dan: Good call. Totally forgot about the endless mana/healing pots. Honestly, stuff like Lifeblood and the endless pots in arena might sway me into keeping alchemy (I was considering tailoring). We'll see!

Anonymous said...

Im currently herb/alc but Im seriously considering changing herb for JC. On Bloodhoof(EU) the herb prices has gone through the floor (often stacks sell for less then 15g) only good thing is that I could gather my own frost lotuses, but with the decreased drop rate I find farming the lotuses simply takes too much time.

Alchemy is for sure a keeper - I love being able to turn cheap herbs into elixir and flasks for a nice profit (elixir master ftw)

So Im most likely going to be JC/alc soon - those prismatic gems are just too good with the new SP socket bonuses in most gear

Tiroq - resto druid on Bloodhoof

Viiryen said...

Currently I'm Alchemy/Enchanting. I'm in love with Alchemy due to Endless Healling Potions(wonderful in Arena) and the flexibility to get either Spellpower or MP5 bonus whenever I need it by simply switching flasks(I carry both in raids). It's also a money-saver.

If I had to do it all over again, I'd take Alchemy/Jewelcrafting. Not worrying about gem requirements makes it a bit ahead of the others in my book, but as it stands I spent a lot of time and effort on my Enchanting and have many patterns my guild uses, so switching isn't really an option. Plus, after I spent so much money leveling my enchanting I have a hard time justifying 1 more Spellpower and free meta requirements for thousands of gold.

The only concern I have with Jewelcrafting is when Epic gems are released unless additional Dragon's Eye cuts are released as well Jewelcrafting will have less benefit than any other profession except Engineering. Interestingly enough, epic gems would have the exact opposite effect on Blacksmithing...

Anonymous said...

Want to add something : alchemy also buff you with Crazy alchemists potions , which regen your mana , hp and give 1 random effect (+505 haste raing for example). That's why i'll never change alc)

Unknown said...

Aren't they nerfing JC though?

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17345044964&sid=1&pageNo=1


removing the prismatic quality of the jewelcrafter-only Dragon’s Eye gems. Like other gems, they will have to match the socket color to receive a socket bonus.

So, with that nerf coming how will do you guys think it will affect JC's gain over other professions?

Anonymous said...

Im currently lvling my resto druid and planning on doing some serious pvp when i hit 80. So Ive been thinking about what professions to go for/pvp base instead of pve. Tailoring (300 mana back on cast enchant) stuck out to me, but not sure what the 2nd profession should be. While lvling I'm doing leatherworking/skinning. Thinking about maybe getting the +sp enchant to bracers and just switch skinning to tailoring at 80. What you guys think? Btw, not to mention if i do go leatherworking/tailoring, they wouldnt be to mad for pve either.

Misslime said...

With enginering,

mana injector, gives extra mana if used if you are an engineer.

and when i have spare time i bomb away

Métamørph of Wildhammer Us said...

I have Jcing, and mining.

Between my man and I we both currently have all the professions, and can/have/are make/made/making a ton of gold this way...

Although, I would like to drop mining on my druid to pick up something more beneficial.. I'm worried that our only other miner being one of his characters, that I will no longer have the ore to prospect, or smelt for gold/gem mats, which is our main source of income.

Right now I'm thinking of the easiest one to level.. my lock having tailoring/skinning, I could farm mats to level tailoring for my druid before I actually unlearn the ability to mine, then drop skinning on my lock to pick up mining, max that (easy enough), then pick up tailoring on my druid and already have the mats to at least hit 440.

Nice post.. read up a lot on your stuff, great stuff you got here.

Anonymous said...

Engeneering so on par with the others now, as the enchants to gloves, belt, and boots are all BIS for most classes