Priest + Mage - Dual Boxing 1-80 with RAF - Need Profession advice please

[Razuya]

Basically, I'm about to start to level a Priest + Mage 1-80 with RAF bonuses.

I really want to make some serious gold with these guys with their professions. I am stuck as to 2 options.

1. Just take mining/skinning & herb/enchanting ( to DE quest rewards ) and farm to my hearts content.

2. Get tailoring + enchanting & Jewelcrafting / mining.

What would be my best option (if not even listed above) to make serious gold and have a decent profession at 80 that will continue to make good gold?

[Khatovar]

With RAF xp, you are going to outlevel things very fast. You work on tailoring, but you blow past things so fast that you're getting silk drops when you still need a ton of linen. You're level 40 but you still need mats out of RFC to level enchanting. I almost always took gathing professions to start, so I can sell ore/herbs/cloth/leather to fund my way to 80, then at 80 I switch and powerlevel a profession I want.

[Razuya]

That's true I guess yeah, so just work on mining/skin + herb/enchanting? ( for DE )

[Starbuck_Jones]

Unless you have a specific reason to do a trade skill, I would stick to a pair of gathering professions. Once you get to 80 and can do dailies, you can buy any/everything you want in 1/10th the time it will take to make it yourself. I would go with mining for the extra sta and skinning for +crit. These will bring in more than enough coin to buy bags and mats to hire a tailor and train your skills.

On your other guy take Enchanting to DE quest rewards and anything that drops you cant use. 2 cloth toons so they will be fighting for the same gear.

[Gadzooks]

With RAF xp, you are going to outlevel things very fast. You work on tailoring, but you blow past things so fast that you're getting silk drops when you still need a ton of linen. You're level 40 but you still need mats out of RFC to level enchanting. I almost always took gathing professions to start, so I can sell ore/herbs/cloth/leather to fund my way to 80, then at 80 I switch and powerlevel a profession I want.

All it takes is a few runs through Deadmines or Stockades at 40 to fill your bags with wool and cloth. Tailoring is probably the easiest profession, because you get the mats from looting. I always have too much cloth, from alts.

I would do this:

Get a guild bank. Get at least 3 tabs. Yes, it's gold, but it's worth it.
Take enchanting, for de's
Take skinning, herbalism, and mining.
Dump everything you gather into the bank, fill your bank slots on each toon when the bank fills up. Drop your gold and mats off when you return to town.
Level to 80.

By the time you get to 80, you can pick and choose which professions to take, and will have enough mats that you'll only need to buy a few things off the AH, or going to get the stuff is easy - just go knock over a few low level dungeons for whatever you need.

Bank every recipe you get along the way, for professions you don't have - and do this for cooking too.

The only flaw with this is tailoring gives you more drops of cloth in Northrend, which is nice, but it's not that bad.

Along the way, play the AH hard. It's the best source of big profits, if you know what you're doing. The quest and white drops while leveling can be pretty profitable, like the white vendor trash fangs that are needed for blue level gear, and twink gear sells very well.

Don't buy anything until 80, and gear your guys through quests.

Professions will slow you down, and with RAF, anything you can make will be replaced quickly. Just save, and only spend on training.

Do your fishing and cooking and first aid, they come in handy later, and if you start the cooking and fishing dailies at 70 in Dalaran, you can be almost all the way to revered with Kirin Tor by 80, and exalted after doing the Kirin Tor quests and a few instances. Plus, it's good money, fishing dailies are easy, easy money, and some fish sell very well, as raiders need them for buff food.

[Ualaa]

It would be redundant to level enchanting and go for recipes on two toons. That said, enchanting purely for disenchanting quest items is a strong money making option. Use an addon which shows the vendor price of each item, quest rewards will be the same item level, which means they'll each have the same chance to DE into whatever. If the DE value is greater, which is seems to be 75% of the time, DE, otherwise buy the one which vendors for the most and sell it.

For leveling purposes, enchanting on two toons is worthwhile. The boon of enchanting is enchanted rings, which at the moment aren't the largest or smallest of bonuses compared to other professions. In 3.2, most of the bonuses are supposed to be balanced against each other, so your professions won't make a huge difference as far as the buff you get - still each class has its own needs, so one will likely be better then the others for your class.

Gathering skills are the best way to make starting money, when you don't have any or much. If you have RAF and take the time to level a gathering skill while leveling, it delays your progress. You'll have more gold during level up, no doubt. If you wait until 60th and then do the profession, you generally break even on total time invested to level and profession skill up; running one team won't make a difference either way, but if you want to RAF up 8 teams to 60th, you can do professions after RAF expires, you cannot level later teams after RAF so that is a consideration.

*EDIT*
Forgot to mention, dual gathering, go with mining or herbalism on the main. Furosphere, in another thread, highly recommended an addon called MAPPY. I got it from Curse.com. Firstly it makes your minimap square so the circle does not cut off part of your view. Secondly it is resizable, which means you can make your slaves minimap (and their tracking) huge and easily readable from the mains window. Third you can have whatever you track pulse blue and yellow, which is very easy to notice. Highly recommended.

Enchanting and Jewelcraft seem to be the production skills that make the most on my server. Engineering is a decent gold option too, mainly for the Eternal cloud extraction item.