If you have a constant toon, then what trade skills should they have?

I'm currently leveing up my pally tank. Although I have a 74 warrior, I don't really see myself taking a different tank than the pally which makes him a "constant" toon. As such, I have decided that I should make sure the pally has enchanting for d/e. Since other toons may be swapped in/out, the pally will always be part of my 5-box team (in the forseable future) and therefore should be the one with that skill.

Which two skills would you choose for your "constant" toon?

Mining - I'm debating getting mining on my pally since often there are nodes inside the instances.
Skinning - many times there are skinnable creatures in the instance but I'm not sure that type of leather ever sells for much
Herbalism - could be very good, though I'm not sure if it would be better than mining
Blacksmithing - this could be good for the tanks gear, but it has no use for the rest of the group
Jewelcrafting - the JC doesn't need to be in the instance to cut the gem so I can have any member be the JC
Tailoring - similar to BS and has no need to be in the instance group
Inscription - similar to BS

Although many of the crafting progressions aren't good for a "constant" toon, it would probably increase chances to get rare recipes/plans.

I wouldn't pick skinning, since it can be mapped to a shortcut :)
so one of your other characters can have it.

But it is a tricky choice,
I guess you have to decide if you want a profession that will benefit your Pally as a tank,
or a gathering profession.

Correct me if I'm wrong,
but I believe that using cartographer on all the characters in your team will allow you to share information between them,
when new nodes are mined/gathered.
So in that respect, with a bit of patience, all nodes would eventually show up on you main's screen.

If you really want Enchanting, then Mining is as good as any. Either that or Herbalism make sense.

However, since you're considering mining (a good choice IMHO), why not engineering instead of enchanting? If nothing else, a thrown stick of dnyamite would be worthwhile to pull with when your Avenger's Shield is on cooldown.

Skinning would be my last choice, as its easy to do on an alt.

JC is currently the most OP profession in WOTLK, while that may change in the future it is far and away better than any other profession right now. You get a daily quest which lets you make dragon eyes (sells for 150-400g), you get 3 JC-only gems with much better stats than blue gems AND are prismatic, which is huge -- you can socket them anywhere and they will match any color. For tanks especially this is great, since you can do 3 +def gems while still gearing up and hit the def cap without any issues. There is also a great starting tanking trinket.

Enchanting is an ok profession. The self-enchants are mediocore, it takes an insane amount of money to level enchanting from 400+, and there are so many enchanters (and no current "rare" recipes) that you will rarely make any money beyond DEing stuff. Blue items can be vendored for almost as much as shards sell for (sometimes more), and green BOEs can be DE'd by anyone.

For a prot pally I would suggest a combo of either JC/mining (+50 sta buff is nice), JC/BS (2 extra sockets, goes well with JC), or maybe JC/alchemy (4 hour flasks). Its likely when patch 3.1 hits another prof will become the flavor-of-the-month, especially as epic gems are brought back into the game. Currently however pretty much all the top raiders are converting one of their professions to jewelcrafting, and for good reason.

btw i have every prof (except engineering) covered on my team, it makes it really nice. never have to ask someone else to craft something and i can herb/mine/etc as I fly around.

For some their constant player may be a healer, or a DPS. Mine happens to be a tank. Although I may swap out moonkins for an ele shaman, or a priest for a resto shaman, I don't see myself replacing my tank with my 5-man. Since I don't want to "waste" any drops, it made sense to me to do enchanting on my pally since he'll always be there. Although JC is an OP profession, I was asking more along the lines of the type of profession(s) that you'd absolutely want to have on every 5-man run. Every toon having JC would be nice for the daily, but a JC doesn't need to be in the instance since everything can be cut outside.

mining and herbalism.

have [s]cartographer[/s] Gatherer addon with nodes.

#showtooltip
/castsequence find herbs, find minerals

enjoy spamming that every 5 seconds while you walk, ride, run, swim, etc.

plus you also get a HoT and more stamina from both professions. however, i do drool at crit rating.

This might sound insane at first, but consider tailoring.
The amount of additional cloth is _really_ huge. And if you have tailoring on an alt you'll constantly have to look if cloth dropped on that screen.
Mining / skinning / herbing is stuff you do once in a while, so these can easily be done on an alt, but for the cloth drops you basically want to loot / look at every mob.

kind regards

Jc/BS...awesome gems and more gems.

I would definitely take mining as one profession - mining nodes will not only yield cobalt/saronite/titanium ore, but crystalized earth/shadow/water/fire and occasional gems as well. The +50 stam is great, especially for a tank, and the ability to smelt titansteel once per day is handy.

Other than that, I'd look at BS for the ability to socket wrist and gloves (which stack with enchants) over JC, since 5 rare gems > 3 prismatic gems (even if prismatics offer a bit more flexibility in where you slot them). BS will also let you socket belts for everyone in your party, and your alt druids might like Titansteel Guardian along with the Prison Manifest (BoE drop)... and of course there is the tanking gear that you can craft.

JC's ability as a money maker is dwindling as more JC's max out their recipes and then will only be able to change their tokens into dragon's eyes instead. And since the patch, dragon's eye's also drop from these - Ice Prism (they also give 3 rare gems) - soon I would expect the price of the eyes to drop well below 100G...

Cheers,
S.

Get mining on your alt imo. Then your JC can prospect the ores for rare gems.