To Profession or Not To Profession (except for Enchanting)

So my 5 Shamans are starting to level nicely now as I spend more time levelling and less time macro'ing, however, currently they have no professions whatsoever save for the following exceptions:

* First Aid on all.

* Enchanting on my main.

Both of these I figured to be gimmies - the First Aid for bandaging is exceptionally useful since typically most aren't taking hits (and I'm thinking of a way to build a "sit it out for the moment champ" macro for when 1 guy gets too much hate), and then of course Enchanting for DE'ing all that non-leather / non-mail post 40 crap that drops (pfft...like other classes have loot needs...shehshh).

This means 4 of my 5 guys have no main professions at all. Ultimately I was thinking of:

Shaman1: Tailoring, Enchanting
Shaman2: Skinning, Leatherworking
Shaman3: Mining, Jewelcrafting
Shaman4: Alchemy, Herbalism
Shaman5: ?,?

The question is:

1) Do you pro-5-boxers level professions as you go, or once you hit max-cap?

2) Do you only use gathering professions or make use of the crafting ones?

3) If you level as you go, does it slow down your levelling a great deal? (I'm interested in getting to 70 at a good, fast, but not panicked pace).

Finally,

4) If I'm building this team mostly for heroic-PVE-badge-farming, is there really any point to using crafting professions, outside of the possible exceptions of jewelcrafting and tailoring?

Interested in any answers / comments / thoughts / suggestions.

I have two teams.

The first team are all the same level and are leveling under their own steam. They're doing quests and doing instances. My main has mining and herbalism (which in reality means he only mines nodes he falls over) and one other has skinning which is macroed so I can do it without switching toons. Some of the others have crafting professions.

Frankly, professions with this group are a pain in the arse. I'm always having to trade stuff between them and when I do settle down to burn through the mats I've collected and skill them up, it can burn an entire evening.

My other team is being boosted. I levelled them to 8 and then took them to RFC. None of them have professions. I'm only looting blues.

Of the two approaches, I'm preferring the second one.

Yeah, more than anything else, I decided to skip professions because of the time it would take. I have a 70 Hunter feeding them gold (just over 3,000 so far and they're only level 33), so golds no problem. I really want to get professions, but - unless there's a massive reason to do otherwise - I was figuring I'd do that @ 70.

I find professions more fun to do as you're levelling, because it's more like 'a task' when you're 70. Plus it's handy to be able to use the stuff that you're making, even if it's only an occasional set of items.

I do:
character1: mining + skinning
character2: leatherworking+enchanting
character3: engineering+blacksmithing
character4: nothing

atm I don't level engineering actively, because I need the ore for blacksmithing

I have done:

Level 70 Pally - Enchanting (Currently 377)
Level 67 4x Shammies = 350 Tailors so I can farm the special cloth
Level 70 Priest = Tailor

Level 63 Priest = 255 Tailor
Level 63 x4 Warlocks = 255 Tailors

I am going for full Primal Mooncloth farming.
20 Slot bags to sell in the AH, my realm never has any on the AH, so I think 250g per bag with 10 tailors in total making 20 mooncloth every cool down should be sweet

I have and using:

Paladin - Engineering / Mining - Using the Eng Helm, Rocket Launcher, Repair Bot and Seaforium Charge.

Shaman - Enchanting / Alchemy - DE Everything making 20g min a day for nothing (DE Ogri'la Aegis once a day) and working on Ring Enchants - Alchemy making min 20g a day (Earth -> Water) and might work on Redeemer's Alchemist Stone

Mage 1 - Alchemy / Tailoring - Alchemy making min 20g a day (Earth -> Water) and might work on Sorcerer's Alchemist Stone - Wearing Spellfire Gear and might make Spellstrike Gear

Mage 2 - Tailoring / Herb - Wearing Spellfire Gear and might make Spellstrike Gear

Mage 3 - Tailoring / Skin - Wearing Spellfire Gear and might make Spellstrike Gear

All of them are at 375 except Engineering (369- working on it).

Professions take a lot of time... I remember spending 2 hours questing running instances, then another 2 hours afterwards sorting out all the mats, going to profession trainers and leveling them up. I would say, that at least 1/3 of my 17 days played to level was for my professions.

They also take a lot of gold to level ... but at the same time, if they help you at 70, then you'll kill mobs faster, which means finishing more dailies == more gold.

Only look at the BOP items for each profession and make sure that's what you want. If it's BOE, ignore it, because you can just have someone make it for you.

Even if you don't level them up right away at least pick a bunch of different professions on each toon so you will get BOP patterns/designs/etc when you run instances.

I went with mining and herbalism on my main. One alt has skinning, which is fine since it's easy make an assist macro for so I never have to switch over to do it. Of course I have the requisite enchanter, and finally a jewel crafter simply for the sake of having never leveled that profession before.

I didn't take first aid on any of my guys, it's next to useless when you have 5 healers and the amount of cloth required to level it x5 is not cheap.

I currently only have Enchanting on one shammy and Skinning on another. However, I am currently planning on having all 4 work up leatherworking. I'm not a gatherer really, and drums of panic really look interesting to me.

I level gathering as I level but as for other trade skills, I wait for 60 or 70 depending on the tradeskill.

for my 5 shamans the tradeskills i have set up are as follows

1: Alchemy / Mining
2: Alchemy / Skinning
3: Alchemy / Herbing
4: Alchemy / Enchanting
5: Alchemy / Jewelcrafting

I picked up alchemy on all chracters as they are going to be 58+ and I refuse to waste a 68+ character as a non alchemist that can easily turn primal earth into water. dirt into gold .

Mining, skinning, herbing as gathering is very good money.
Enchanting for the obvious DE in instances, and Jewelcrafting to make sure I can turn down my ores into gems. Or cut gems for my alts.

Of course what trade skills a person takes is always up to the person, but this is what I like doing.

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Originally Posted by 'Crucial',index.php?page=Thread&postID=66829#post6 6829

Even if you don't level them up right away at least pick a bunch of different professions on each toon so you will get BOP patterns/designs/etc when you run instances.

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Yep - already doing this. If a BoP pattern drops, it goes to the Shammy that I plan to use for that profession.

Thanks for the responses all. I think I'll stick to my current plan, and level them up once they're maxed out.

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Originally Posted by 'OzPhoenix',index.php?page=Thread&postID=66684#pos t66684

...(and I'm thinking of a way to build a "sit it out for the moment champ" macro for when 1 guy gets too much hate), ...

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While I don't have a macro for this I'd imagine that you could simply do a macro that swaps that specific toon's action bar to another actionbar that does not have any offensive abilites on it. I'm thinking basically something to the effect of...

/swapactionbar 1 6

for /swapactionbar you need the 2 action bars listed that you want to swap inbetween. In this case you'd switch between bars 1 and 6. Now if you have 5 buttons to spare you could assign one to each toon so say just for simplicity sake we used F1-F5 you'd do a set-up something like this.

F1 (for toon 1)
/swapactionbar 1 6

F2 (for toon 2)
/swapactionbar 1 6

etc...

Action bar 1 would be your normal bar that you use all the time and Action bar 6 would have no offensive abilities on it. Say maybe a heal or totem only so that toon could still at least heal themselves. Would just have to make sure you remember to swtich them back to the right bar :P

Whilst levelling my chars to 70 I'm doing First Aid plus one profession each- Mining, Skinning, Herbalism, Enchanting, Alchemy. This way I'm getting the cash from mining and any mats I DE which I don't need, herbs are converted into potions which whilst levelling me normally aren't losing too much cash when they hit the AH.

When I hit 70 I'm going to redo skills a bit, possibly even end up with Blacksmith/Engineer (Paladin), and the Shamans a LW/one-of-four-gathering-professions. May involve a lot of running round getting ores etc. but with the changes to Mining skill-ups from Smelting, and the need for metal for the Paladin, it could make a lot of sense.

Someone had a great idea of starting your own guild and putting all crafting items in the Gbank. I don't think it makes sense to level anything other than herbalism, chanting, and alchemy on your way up. Those professions will help a lot while you level, others not so much.

Maybe tailoring so you can make bolts of cloth, and reduce the number of slots that things take up, and give you chanting mats.

My advice is make all your cloth guys tailors for the nice crafted sets. Make sure you have an enchanter. Likewise make sure one of your toons is herb/miner. I would highly recommend doing one JC and as many alchemist you can. Its easy as hell to level and a gold mine. What you do is spec them all transmute masters. You make mights for all the crap you need to craft. Then when you dont need the items you make diamonds and have your JC cut metas making a shit ton of gold. I can spend 50g on mats for the diamond, turn around and cut a meta that sells for 180-220g. If you have multiple achemist thats lots of free money. Not to mention when you proc a transmute and get two diamonds or mights.

The trick to getting them all transmute master is making them potion masters first. Its the easiest master to do. Once they are potion masters you drop it and go talk with the transmute master guy. You pay 150g and your a transmute master. Or you can waste 5 primal mights and do his quest.

It depends on what you want to do. I am on my 57th time through the game (feels like it anyway :P ), and now I just want to level. So taking the time for all of my characters to work on professions is going to cut into leveling time. So I usually just take the gathering professions on my main and work on the others at later levels.

It's usually not hard to farm mats off of the AH for tailoring and leatherworking. But I sometimes find a lack of herbs at certain levels so you'd have to run around whichever lowbie zones until you had enough mats to progress. But I would say tailoring is the easiest, as I had dropped it twice and gone from 1-300+ just by purchasing mats.

Now I am playing through again with QuestHelper and all I feel like doing is skinning. I'm too lazy to mine/herb even when it pops up close to me on the mini-map :sleeping:

A good use of netherweave is to turn them into arcanoweave bracers and disenchant them for shards. This is assuming you don't have a shortage of large prismatic shards.

If you an abundance of large prismatics, you could also turn your cloth into void crystals by using the soul essences from kara that almost no one ever holds unto.

Personally I use all my cloth to turn them into 16 slot bags and stuff all my alts with them.

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Originally Posted by 'Fursphere',index.php?page=Thread&postID=67190#pos t67190

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Originally Posted by 'badashh',index.php?page=Thread&postID=67186#post6 7186

Someone had a great idea of starting your own guild and putting all crafting items in the Gbank. I don't think it makes sense to level anything other than herbalism, chanting, and alchemy on your way up. Those professions will help a lot while you level, others not so much.

Maybe tailoring so you can make bolts of cloth, and reduce the number of slots that things take up, and give you chanting mats.

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Once you start grinding instances, you're going to have so many greens and blues to DE it'll make your head spin. I channel everything through my banker character, and I constantly have all my bags full of crap I need to DE. I've actaully considered just vendoring all the greens just to get rid of them, because DE'ing takes time too.

That and netherweave..... o the f'ing netherweave. My server AH economy was selling netherweave x20 stacks for less than you could vendor bandages for (20x NW into banddages = 3g vendor). So I couldn't sell my cloth in the AH... I had like 2000+ (not kidding). So I sent it all to a first aid character, and hit the "grind all" button. 1.5 hours later a (I was working on real work on my laptop), I had large chunk of vendor change. lol

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[Edit] Lol the guy above me said the same thing.

There was a movie on warcraft movies about it, it's actually profitable even if you just buy the NW cloth yourself, for less than 2.3g per i think.

If you want to spend the time, Buy netherweave thread and turn all that cloth into bolts, and then into netherweave bracers. They are a green item you can DE for 2-3 dust per. Takes 3 bolts and 1 thread per.

If your willing to put in the effort, it's really good money.

Personally I would pick LW for all toons, it may become expensive to level or slow you down a little but the BOP epixs are nice. I would take skinning on a Slave, since it is the only Gathering trade that can be macro'd easily. That leaves you with 3 to go. I would either get Herb, Alc for transmutes or grab a tailor or 3 for Cloth Selling and DE'ing.

5 sham team here too:
Toon1: ench
Toon2: lw + skinning
Toon3: tailoring

I will put alch on one toon upon reaching the outlands buying mats of the AH. I may get mining, herb or both, but not without an epic mount. Having those while leveling slow down too much.