Quote Originally Posted by Sservis View Post
I have some negative thoughts on the value of gathering professions. You may have them for reasons other than value (completionist, etc, although you're missing engineering)

Gathering brought no special bonuses in classic. For sheer character power, other professions are better. They're only worth taking if you're a completionist and want the possibility, even if it's never used.

I would suggest gathering from the AH. The best gold/hr for a multiboxer is very unikely to be gathering as there are no intrinsic advantages. Given that, it's probably better to earn gold in other fashions and buy mats instead of gathering first hand. The gold/hr value of self farming will be less than other methods, which translates to fewer herbs/hr of farming. Plus, it frees up more slots for more useful professions. Your whole team can be doing Alchemy transmutes for instance if you drop skin/mine/herb.

Then again, maybe you hate buying on the AH and love gathering. Fun (enough to be able to do it) is important, and in that case, I'd maybe level more characters with both gathering professions so they could park in zones.

Note: I think Skinning has some value with rare mats from instance skinning. Mining also has some value from smelting as a transmute of sorts, allowing you to pick the cheaper of ores and bars.
Fair points. I was more thinking about end game crafting and ability to not rely on the AH.
dropping herb you loose the ability to snag black lotus? purple lotus? I can't remember. The one BOP herb you needed for end game flasks.

I think it also offers the ability to change some stuff up. It can get boring farming instances for gold/ drops. Maybe I want to stretch my legs and wonder around Un'goro crater, hitting some nodes, and skinning some devilsaurs to craft some of their sets and sell them on the AH.

I also can't remember if specialization of alchemy was in classic or bc? Being xmute spec and getting some procs was always nice.