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

[Hachoo]

For those saying JC/BS for the extra gem slots - I was weighing in between JC/BS and JC/Mining on my tank and I chose to stick with JC/mining.

Besides the fact that mining makes more money and the ore is useful for JC also, the extra 2 gem slots for BS seem better than they are. yes, they're fairly flexible, but if you compare them to the +50 stam you get from mining they're not that great. Blue stam gems are +24 stam each, thats +48 stam for both slots, whereas you get +50 stam for mining. True you could use some other gems in the BS gem slots but for a tank I just don't think the benefit is that much greater.

Now, once epic gems are highly available maybe things will change but for right now I would take mining on a tank over BS.

[Owltoid]

Heh, I guess it's my fault for not asking the question clearly. Everyone is talking about what professions a tank should have, or what professions make the most money because of daily quests, etc. Forget that my constant player is a tank (it could have been DPS or a healer) and pretend that your alts can do all that daily stuff. Also pretend that you're not worried about maximising gear for that one player since everyones constant player may be different.

I'm asking which professions do you need when stuck inside a 5-man instance? Enchanting is good for the drops that noone needs. It would suck to have to vendor drops all the time because the alt that is the enchanter is not in the group. What else? There are mining nodes inside the instance that would be tough to pass up (if an alt is the miner and they're not there right now then you missed an easy node). Similar situations on skinning and herbaslism. Missing rare reciples/plans could happen if the constant player does not have those professions.

[Niley]

You dont get 50 stam from mining, its just hp increase, it doesn't scale like stam.

JC/some other crafting proffesion(be it lw/ench/bs etc) is best if Youre raiding on Your main.

[succulent]

My raiding main (mage) is a chanter/tailor, tho if I were to level her now I'd do chanting/JC. That's probably the overall best combo for self buffs and general utility, and they're both great for making stuff to auction.

I always take gathering skills on slave toons -- they aren't really all that useful in an instance/raid if you're not multiboxing, and I find enough mining/herb nodes without having the scanner on my main (though I'm sure I miss them when flying around).

[Hachoo]

You dont get 50 stam from mining, its just hp increase, it doesn't scale like stam.

JC/some other crafting proffesion(be it lw/ench/bs etc) is best if Youre raiding on Your main.

I'm pretty sure the patch notes stated that all mining benefits of hp were changing to +stam instead, but since I'm at work I can't go check right now. Even still, +500 hp is more or less just as good as 48 stam (maybe slightly worse but mining will make a shatload more money then BS).

Also to the OP, why does it matter whether you're stuck inside of a 5 man instance or not? That is irrelevant. You want the professions that will benefit your character most which means - better stats and/or making money. Most of our answers are relating to that.

[Owltoid]

Would you be ok having a 5-man team where nobody in the group had enchanting so you vendor everything that you can't use? It was along those lines since there are tons and tons of threads/posts about which profession makes the most gold, is best for tanking, etc.

[Hachoo]

I'd be ok with anything, all I really want is each character to perform the best they can perform. The only other consideration besides that is money and honestly you can make so much money via dailies or any other various professions you may have on your characters, you shouldn't really consider the professions of your main character based off things like being able to DE stuff or mine nodes in instances IMO. Sure having enchanting to DE stuff is good but up until you're at 450 enchanting it won't make you very much money since you'll be using mats to level instead of vendoring the items.

But, refer to my first point anyway about how money is easy to make anyway.

[Owltoid]

Yeah, good point. I'm not at the step where gold is flowing in, but I'm sure I'll be there in a month or two

[puppychow]

Check your server, on many you can vendor instance BOP drops for more than they will DE into. And really, unless you plan on running 10 instances a day for a long time its not going to make much of a difference. What does make a HUGE difference when you start out is whether you wipe or not, and the better geared your tank is the less you will wipe. And that goes back to the original issue of a tank with JC/mining or JC/BS is great.

In WOTLK you can make 1000g/hour just running around doing quests (even dailies), money is really not an issue especially since there is no new 5k -mount type of moneysink. There is the mammoth tundra, but I have ~30k gold and haven't bothered to buy one. I think you are focusing too much on "omgomgomg I need to spec my profs so I can make tons of cash!!" instead of figuring out what will help your character the most. In TBC some profs were insanely better than others, and all the recipes were instance drops or faction based, so it made a big difference what you chose on your main vs alts. In WOTLK it doesn't matter as much, the profs are mostly balanced (with JC on top and engineering on bottom) and each gives unique buffs that are nice perks but not must-haves like drums or self-only enchants/gems in TBC.

fwiw I have 3 miners and I haven't xmuted a titanium in over 2 weeks (could prob make 20g/each if I advertised on trade, but who cares) and I haven't sold a dragons eye in over a month on my JC, I just do the daily every day and get new recipes. All the prof recipes are faction-rep based, and there are a few rare world BOE drop JC recipes, plus alchemy "discovers" new recipes once every 4 days.

[valkry]

My choices are the same whether you are a tank or not. JC/BS, awesome gems (and epic gems in the future) and more gems. If you are a tank you can get hp, you can get AP, Str, Agi, Spell power, crit, hit, whatever.

The reason why 3 prismatic gems are awesome, apart form being awesome gems, is because it basically allows you to gem the rest of your gear how you want and you will still make your meta gem work.