What professions do you all plan to level up in the expansion?

[Ellay]

I've been spending insane amounts of gold trying to level it. I might just wait till after xpac is out for a bit until I finish them. There is way too much demand and 0 supply.

[Aradar]

I had LW on my healer already but leveled the other 3 at the same time. With no skinner, it was painful to say the least.

Here are the blue quotes I was referring to earlier:

There will not be a Stormherald type weapon "high level crafter only". There are however a fair number of epic crafted BoE weapons that smiths will be able to make in LK.

We didn't like the vast number of people who felt they were required to be Blacksmiths in order to get a good weapon. Players should choose their trade skills based on what they enjoy, not what they feel they must do.

and

It is very likely that we will be adding more recipes to all trade skills as the content progresses. The reason the crafter only weapons were done away with however was that most people chose to take the profession purely for the purposes of being able to skip ahead of the content or not do the content because smithing provided them with something far easier to attain than anything else they could normally get. While this is ok from time to time with an occasional piece of gear, the concept of crafters making "best in slot" items was more or less considered bad from our end. When many people dropped the trade skills they enjoyed simply because taking a different trade skills made them more powerful (Stormherald, Frozen Shadowweave) than that is clearly not what we intended.

As far as "what do I get from profession X", well I think many of the posters in this thread have pointed that out. All trade skills now provide some special benefit to the crafter that isn't just a super item. In the case of blacksmithing it's the ability to add sockets to your gear. Most of the profession perks are relatively equal in terms of what they provide, some are slightly better than others, but not enough so that you should feel ou are missing out by doing the profession you enjoy doing.

[Rin]

I'm going:

Mining, Mining, Mining, Mining, Mining, Mining, Mining, Mining, Mining, Mining (mining on all 10 of my toons)
Tailoring, Herablism, Alchemy, Alchemy, Inscription, Enchanting, Enchanting, Engineering, and... <insert 2 more professions - maybe 2 more alchemists; haven't thought about it much>

Why so much damn mining?

Cooldowns. That and the fact that everyone and their grandmothers will want the motorcycle (12+ days worth of cooldowns if you wait on 1 character to do them); it also appeared as if most of the awesome epic items (shields and such), can be purchased for raid tokens, so I don't see any sense in going with a profession that isn't going to be a cash cow. Mining, Herbalism, Tailoring, Enchanting, and Alchemy have always been strong, and now with the new items, new cooldowns, and new demand, I can't imagine that we'll see a slowdown in any of these professions.

[algol]

Mining has cooldowns now? Just what the game needs, more cooldowns...

[Schwarz]

I am starting to think that jewelcrafting might be a good option to pick up. Granted they don't have epic gems listed for wotlk yet but if you look at

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42144

This almost does 2 things for you. It gives you more spell power and also counts toward a blue gem for meta gem/socket bonuses.

Now the question is what does Unique Equipped: Prismatic Gems (3) mean. Can you have 3 of these equiped in your gear? If so I would argue that Jcing is looking really nice.

[Rin]

Mining has cooldowns now? Just what the game needs, more cooldowns...

Haha, I hear you. IMO, this expansion is a farmers dream with all of the items that are created through crafting/materials:

http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=55208

I believe you need 12 of those bars for one component of the new motorcycle mount (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Material cost alone will supposedly easily exceed 18,000 gold (just raw materials and merchant stuff); factor in someone blowing 240 hours worth of cooldowns and then finding an engineer with training maxxed to craft the item for you, you'd probably be looking at an easy 23,000+ gold (if add in AH inflation, and the price will only get worse)...

This is just one item, and an example at that. There are quite a few things in WoTLK that are cooldown/tradeskill based; so I'd really expect to see prices rise. Cheers.

[Kyudo]

I'm going:

Mining, Mining, Mining, Mining, Mining, Mining, Mining, Mining, Mining, Mining (mining on all 10 of my toons)

Hehe I've done almost the same for the same reason (being a titansteel factory). Finally got my hunter alt team to 70 and have taken up and levelled to 350+ mining on 3 of them. Man it was /wrists, but hopefully worth it in the long run. The only thing that concerns me atm is that at present it doesnt seem possible to smelt your way up your mining skills, and as this is my 3rd priority team, it may be a while before they hit 450.

For the rest, I'm retaining the skills they have for now:

Team 1
Pally: BS/Eng
Shammy1: Eng/Skin
Shammy2: Mining/LW
Shammy3: Tailoring/LW
Shammy4: Ench/LW
Shammy5: JC/LW

Team 2:
Warrior: Mining/Herbalism
Mage: Herbalism/Alch
Druid: LW/Skin
Priest: Tailoring/Herb
Hunter: Eng/Ench

Team 3:
Priest: Skin/Herb
Hunter1: Ench/Mining
Hunter2: Mining/none
Hunter3: Mining/none
Hunter4: None atm

[Schwarz]

Mining might help you with gold but is it going to help you with PvE or PvP?

Granted the stam buff might help a little bit. I am kind of pissed the way they are going with professions. I always looked at professions as a way to get 1up on instances with starter gear. Looks like you aren't going to have this option in wotlk. I horded away enough leather to level from 1-375 on 5 characters now I am thinking i could have used the gold/space for a better profession.

What Bop stuff is there left?

engineering - haste enchant
blacksmithing - sockets
leatherworking - better bracer enchants
enchanting - ring enchants
jewelcrafting - jc gems

[algol]

I was a little against the BoP --> BoE trend to start with, but after thinking about it...would you rather have it be BoP and you make it once and that's it, you win the tradeskill, and you're stuck with one you don't use much so you can keep the item equiped...or would you rather it be BoE and you can make more to sell too? The item will be the same either way...so...I don't really see a catch. The only loss is the percieved exclusivity / accomplishment of obtaining the ultimate super-epic crafter-only item.

Factory method has its draws. But there's titansteel, cloths, transmutes, etc...we'll have to wait, really, to see whether one is markedly more profitable. For now I think it might be best to diversify. You can still pick up any BoP recipe you come across (minus one tradeskill on a 5-box since there are now 11), and you have a variety of mutes until we have a firm trend showing which (if any) gives us the best economic leverage. Drawback is that you may eventually want to re-level a bunch of tradeskills at great cost of time and gold.

I plan to distribute my gathering skills to offset this (incl. "disenchanting"), leaving each with one slot "free." Using a Pal + 4xSha team, so inscription on the pally for cheap glyph access and Scrolls of Recall so the whole team can hearth every 20 minutes. Also mining since the tank can make the best use of the extra health, such as it is. Probably skinning on the one fated to be a resto...extra crit is fun for lightning bolts, but also fun on the healer, and it keeps things nice and symmetric.

[valkry]

No profssions for my mboxing chars because I just cbf!