Professions advice needed please.

[knopstr]

I finally decided to bite the bullet and level a tank. See below for my last thread about tank creation. What I've decided to do is to level a DK and then create a 6th acct so that I can rotate in all of my shamans rather than leaving one out.

How many people have 2 tanks for 5 shamans?

Presently I have the following professions; I'm not a min/maxer...I just wanted to have all of the profs covered. I have a 400+ lvl 70 lock who is a master transmute alchemist so I can continue with my titansteel factory too.

Toon1 --> Skinning/Herbalism
Toon2 --> Mining/Tailoring
Toon3 --> Inscription/Enchanting
Toon4 --> Mining/Leatherworking
Toon5 --> Alchemy/Jewelcrafting

I need to pick up 2 profs for the DK. I was thinking of Blacksmithing/Jewelcrafting. I figured JC was good for the BOP gems for say dodge and defense trinkets. I'm a little on the fence on Blacksmithing. I could always have someone in my guild create things for me, but...

What are your thoughts on this?

Feel free to post what you think.

Thanks as always.

[Khatovar]

Right now, I would seriously pass on smithing. All the good stuff right now is BOE. You'd get extra sockets out of it, but that's about it. Not really a great payoff for the work and money you put into skilling up blacksmithing, IMO {trust me, I've done it}. I guess you could make cash by DEing the stuff you skill up on, but "needing" smithing on a plate class just doesn't seem to be the case now. Not like it was in BC. Maybe that'll change later, but at this point, it's still throwing away a lot of money.

Your call, though. If you want to get a jump on things in case BS comes out with some nice Bind on Pickup stuff, or you really, really want more sockets to play with, may as well go for it. Nothing wrong with always having 2 extra places to throw in 2 more JC gems.

[knopstr]

My goal is to get the DK sufficiently geared to be able to run heroics for emblem turn-ins for the shamans.

Does that change the equation at all?

Are the quest items for DK's sufficient for entry into heroics?

The main reason I'm considering BS'ing is for the initial gear setup. Steer me away from it if I'm going down the wrong path.

Thanks

[Khatovar]

Well, you'll be able to gear up pretty nicely with the BS crafted gear, but the thing is that it's all Bind on Equip right now. It's really hard to say that the money you'd be spending buying mats or losing not selling the raw mats you'd gather for the grind from 0-425ish would be worth it, since you can just buy the pieces of the AH or gather the mats and have someone make them for you.

Like I said, the extra sockets you can put on your gear as a blacksmith are nothing to sneeze at and I have no idea if we're going to see stuff like the BOP stuff we saw in Sunwell. Right now you just have to ask yourself "are two extra sockets on my gear worth farming/buying the ore I need to level 0-400?" That's all you're going to gain over someone who doesn't have blacksmithing at this point in time.

Just my opinion, though. If you've nothing else that you need to level, it's always nice to have someone to make belt buckles for your whole team.

[puppychow]

All the BS stuff is BOE so anyone can craft it for you. BS's get 2 extra sockets they can self-apply. Its a very, very expensive profession to level, and has minimal profit one capped - really belt enhancers is the thing you will be selling, if anything.

JC is definitely one you want to get your tank, by far and away the best prof for a new tank. The second is debatable - mining is very simple to level, extremely profitable, and has a great bonus (50 stamina) for tanks. LWing is hard to level (esp w/o skinning), not very profitable, and has a good bonus (+67 sta?) for tanks. Inscription is crap imo atm, the shoulder enchant is nice but 2-3k gold and you can "buy" sons of hodir rep. BS is good, just expensive to level. Enchanting is mediocore, very expensive to level and +48 sta (rings).

Most people consider JC/mining or JC/BS the best profs for new tanks, its really up to you. The big changes they are making to classes in 3.1 means professions will probably get a lot of changes too, so keep that in mind (no notes yet on that).

[Stealthy]

Definitely go with JC/BS IMO.

You already have mining covered on another toon, and BS will net you the same benefit with the two sockets it offers if you put +stam gems in them. But it also offers the flexibility to configure differently if you want. While it's true that the BS epics are BoE - its very convenient to be able to craft your own items, without having to wait for guildies or be gouged on pricing from buying on the AH. And if you're already making titansteel, you should have the mats covered as well.

Having a 2nd JC will allow you to cover off different patterns that might take your 1st JC months to acquire...besides the obvious benefit of the prismatic jewels and the figurine trinkets for your tank.

Although both professions are expensive to level, money shouldn't be a problem if you already have a team of 80's. Just grind out dailies - this gave me enough money to furnish 2 teams of 5 with epic flyers each and have both of them at grand master engy on each toon.

Cheers,
S.

[Hachoo]

FWIW I'm not sure why everyone always says if you don't have guildies to make you BoE gear you'll be gouged buying it off the AH. That doesn't make sense at all. I can buy the mats (for the same price I'd buy them for if I had to get a guildy to make me an item) and then pay some random horde in org 10g to make me an epic BS item. So woopdie doo, 10g more to have someone random do it instead of a guild mate.

[Stealthy]

FWIW I'm not sure why everyone always says if you don't have guildies to make you BoE gear you'll be gouged buying it off the AH. That doesn't make sense at all. I can buy the mats (for the same price I'd buy them for if I had to get a guildy to make me an item) and then pay some random horde in org 10g to make me an epic BS item. So woopdie doo, 10g more to have someone random do it instead of a guild mate.

It probably differs from server to server. The Titansteel Guardian for example, still goes for around 1500 gold on Mag (high pop server). The cost of the mats if you buy the Titansteel bars is 1200-1300 gold. You wont get random's doing it for a 10G tip on our server, 50-100G is about the going rate. There's no new recipe's after 440 in BS, so its hard to find someone who will craft it cheaply. JC is even worse - I had to shell out 300G to get 5 Spellshock necklaces made with my mats. I started asking in trade at 100G and went up by 50G per night before on the 4th night I found someone to do it.

Cheers,
S.

[Hachoo]

FWIW I'm not sure why everyone always says if you don't have guildies to make you BoE gear you'll be gouged buying it off the AH. That doesn't make sense at all. I can buy the mats (for the same price I'd buy them for if I had to get a guildy to make me an item) and then pay some random horde in org 10g to make me an epic BS item. So woopdie doo, 10g more to have someone random do it instead of a guild mate.

It probably differs from server to server. The Titansteel Guardian for example, still goes for around 1500 gold on Mag (high pop server). The cost of the mats if you buy the Titansteel bars is 1200-1300 gold. You wont get random's doing it for a 10G tip on our server, 50-100G is about the going rate. There's no new recipe's after 440 in BS, so its hard to find someone who will craft it cheaply. JC is even worse - I had to shell out 300G to get 5 Spellshock necklaces made with my mats. I started asking in trade at 100G and went up by 50G per night before on the 4th night I found someone to do it.

Cheers,
S.

I dunno... you have to buy the mats whether you have BS or not or whether you have a guild or not, unless you make them yourself (which is mining not BS) - I'm pretty sure if you hang around the org anvil you'll find someone very quickly that will do it for you for next to nothing. It will take them 10 seconds and even 10g in 10 seconds is good for a single boxer, since they don't even have to go anywhere to do it (they're already sitting next to the Anvil).

Also aren't the TS weapons 440? Meaning they'll get a skillup doing it for you?

Now, finding a JC to make a chain/ring is definitely tough, but even as a JC I wouldn't make these myself. Spending 6 tokens to get the patterns is a huge waste of potential money. I just searched the AH for an already-built copy, then took down the name, added him to my friends list, and waited until he was online and asked him to make me some with my mats. It cost a bit (I think I paid like 50g each for the necklace/ring for my tank), but being able to sell 12 dragon eye's made up for that 25 fold.

It does vary by server but I don't think theres ever a situation where taking a profession to make a BoE item will ever pay off - especially not one like BS that costs 5000+ gold to level (or takes 20-40 hours of mat gathering).

[puppychow]

Its nice having every profession covered by your team. I have 450 of everything except BS on my guys, and I hardly spent anything leveling them -- just gathered mats as I leveled, and whenever my bags were full of ore/skins/herbs/etc I would powerlevel something until my bags were empty again. I rarely ever sold stuff on the AH, instead anything extra I sent to alts (who had their own guild banks) and stored it all -- I have a herb alt, a ore alt, and a enchant mats alt.

Now I'm leveling a DK, and I'm making him a JC/BS. I haven't bought anything from the AH yet, instead I just had him join my "ore alt" guild and he breaks out of the guild bank whatever he needs to level. I think he's 200 BS and 220 JC right now, and I'm probably going to go need to do a few hours of ore-mining in Ungoro to get him to the next skill level, but I'm in no rush (the DK is only level 62 lol). I have stored away probably 400 stacks of saronite ore so once he does hit 350 it'll be easymode leveling him in both to 450. I do have 30k+ gold so I could easily buy everything I need, but I hate giving other people gold in WoW

imo the most important thing is having a herbalist, skinner, and miner on your team. You don't even need to gather as you level, just when you hit 60, 70, or 80 spend a few hours on each just running around farming/leveling - altho leveling skinning as you level your team is a good, since you don't even need to switch screens to skin -- use macro like /cast [target=focustarget] Skinning