This is a guest post written by Galadria.
Hello Matt’s Readers! For those of you who remember me, I’m back playing WoW and writing my blog again. For those of you who don’t, I’m Galadria and I write Galadria’s Corner (yes I renamed it… again) formerly The Light and The Dark formerly The Holy Light. I’ve got raiding experience on 2 level 70 Priests, one Holy and one Shadow, and I’m now rolling new toons on a new server, another Priest and now a Warlock (they’re both 40ish at the moment). Without further ado, here’s my thoughts on Professions in Wrath!
Professions have taken a slightly different flavor in WotLK. Each has its own unique benefits, even the gathering professions. It seems to me that Blizz decided to balance not only classes, but professions. Tailoring was so incredibly OP for casters that I felt I didn’t have a choice but to learn Tailoring or be horribly gimped in raid. With each profession having something special, the selection of your professions requires a little more thought (especially if you’re leveling new toons like I am!). The information included is from the Beta and WoWHead’s WotLK site. Since WotLK isn’t live yet this data isn’t set in stone there are likely to be a few changes. When the expansion goes live I’ll let you know what changed and how (over at my blog, or course, so add me to your reader if you haven’t already! /shameless plug off). With the disclaimers out of the way, here we go!
Alchemy
- Double duration on Flasks and Elixirs
- Increased effects of Flasks & Elixirs (it appears that the increased effects are 37 spellpower for flasks and 19 spellpower for Battle Elixirs, not sure about Guardian Elixirs)
- BoP trinket (Mercurial Alchemist Stone) that will increase effects of Pots by 40%. The highest mana potion grants 4200 to 4400 and we’ll assume that the average is in the middle. Adding 40% gives 6020 mana. Let’s assume for simplicity’s sake that boss fights are 5 mins (I’ve heard as low a 3 and up to 8). Over a 5 min boss fight, the unbuffed mana pot gives 71.5 MP5, the buffed is 100.3 MP5. Using the same logic for health pots, with the largest being about 3600 plus 40% gives 5040, giving 12 HPS unbuffed and 16.8 HPS buffed (I’m not sure how meaningful that statistic is, but there you go… I did the math for you!)
- If PvP is your thing, there are also craftable Arena potions.
The Bottom Line: Alchemy can be a great profession for anyone. The double duration will save you money and I think the Alchemy stone will be very valuable with the potion changes (my gut is telling me that this is going to be one of the more powerful profession benefits available, but nothing is set in stone yet). It can also be a money maker if you can get your hands on some of the rare or discovered recipes. If you are going to be an Alchemist I highly recommend Herbalism to go with it so you don’t have to purchase Herbs.
Blacksmithing
The Bottom Line: I can’t recommend Blacksmithing for any caster since we can’t use the majority of the crafted products.
Enchanting
The Bottom Line: I think we’ll find Enchanting to be less tedious to level and make money off of than it used to be with the introduction of scrolls. A friend told me that she was actually able to make a little money selling the enchanted scrolls that she made while leveling Enchanting. While it’s a pain to level, Enchanting requires no gathering profession and therefore pairs well with Tailoring or any gathering profession for money making. To me the ring enchants aren’t enough to make me level the profession, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good option for any caster (as it has always been!)
Engineering
- Mounts
- Utility enchants for gloves (rocket launcher, haste)
- Portable Mailbox and Vendor
- Epic Helmets – This is a level 72 helmet, I’m sure there will be a level 80 one but I can’t anything on WoWHead right now.
The Bottom Line: I’m not sure Engineering is a great choice for a caster… but I don’t think it’s a bad one either. The Repair Bot brings a lot of utility to raid and there’s no denying the mounts are really cool. If Engineering is your thing I can’t knock you for it.
Herbalism
- Lifeblood: a self HoT that scales with Herbalism level, costs no mana, and does not trigger the GCD. At it’s current incarnation Rank 6, available at 450 Herbalism grants 2000 health over 5 seconds with a 3 min cooldown. If used every time it’s available it averages out to 11 HPS.
- Fire Seed: increases spellpower by 200 for 10 seconds with a 1 min cooldown. It also increases damage taken by 10% and reduces all resistances to zero. Shares a cooldown with other crafted consumables (Drums and Grenades but not Pots, Healthstones, or Mana Gems)
- Herbalism provides the raw materials for the crafting professions of Alchemy and Inscription
The Bottom Line: As far as gathering professions go, Herbalism is my favorite and the 2 crafting professions Herbalism benefits are both useful to a caster. If you need a profession to make money for you Herbalism can be a good choice, especially since there are now 2 crafting professions that benefit from it and therefore more demand. Also, Lifeblood has saved my tail more than once!!
Inscription
- Scroll of Recall – consumable hearthstone with a 20 min cooldown that is separate from regular hearthstone
- BoP Off-Hands – There’s a PvP oriented one (or Lock tank) and a general caster one. Both look to be pretty good.
- Scribe only Shoulder enchants – these are MUCH better than the reputation versions
- Crag (spell power and MP5) – Craftable and Reputation
- Storm (spell power and crit) – Craftable and Reputation
- The extra Glyph slot was taken out.
The Bottom Line: I can tell you from personal experience that the Scroll of Recall is HIGHLY useful, but it’s not a raid benefit. The shoulder enchants are much better than the reputation versions and don’t require a rep grind on top of it. I’m leveling Inscription on my Priest and really liking it! If you are going to have Inscription for a profession I recommend Herbalism to go with it so you will have easy access to the raw materials for Milling.
Jewelcrafting
- Slightly better epic gems – you can equip up to 3 and they are prismatic to match any socket color. The JC only gems have 7 crit, haste, or hit, 3 MP5, 11 sta, or 9 sp more than their counterparts. These are epic gems so to see this benefit you’ll need gear you’re willing to put epic gems in!
- Entry level BoP trinkets – Healer, or Caster DPS
The Bottom Line: Jewelcrafting can be a money maker if you can get the high-end patterns, though it is very expensive to level (second only to Blacksmithing). If you are going to have this as a profession I would recommend Mining to go with it so you have easy access to the ore for Prospecting.
Leatherworking
The Bottom Line: Leatherworking is like Blacksmithing, I can’t recommend it for a caster
Mining
- Health bonus that scales with mining level
- Mining provides the raw materials for the crafting professions of Blacksmithing and Jewlecrafting and is recommended for Engineering.
The Bottom Line: If you are a Jewelcrafter, Mining is a good choice for your second profession. Also not a bad idea to accompany Engineering. I also know several people that have paired it with Enchanting to make money
Skinning
- Bonus to Crit rating (now that Crit is a uniform stat this will benefit melee as well as casters)
- Skinning provides the raw materials for the crafting profession Leatherworking.
The Bottom Line: If you need money Mining or Herbalism will make you a lot more money and Leatherworking just doesn’t benefit us. However, if you are going to have 2 gathering professions for leveling or on an alt skinning pairs well with the others since you can’t track herbs and mineral nodes at the same time.
Tailoring
- Tailor only Leg enchants with cheaper mats.
- Tailor only Cloak enchants
- Bonus cloth drops
- BoP Flying Carpet Mount
- Entry level raiding gear
The Bottom Line: It appears that Tailoring won’t be practically necessary for clothies this time around. Yay! I have never really liked Tailoring, the only reason I had it was to get the gear. That said, Tailoring is nice because it requires no gathering profession and can be easy to level while you level your toon since you are always picking up cloth. Bags can be a money maker on some servers (my experience is that it will be more profitable on low-pop servers).
There you have it! You can look at the BOP benefits of each and see which suits your playstyle best. I think we’ll see a lot more variety in professions this time around. I’m really looking forward to seeing where the expansion takes us.
New blog post: Guest Post: 3.0 Professions for the Priest (and Clothies) http://tinyurl.com/6lgs4o
very nice post!
My tailoring is already 375 on my lock, so i guess ill keep that and the Enchanting he has, but i’m actually torn for what i want to do as my DK in 7 days… i’m not lvling BS again…
Pretty nice post but it could be a bit better 🙂
I did a similar comparison a little while ago here. Long story short, with currently availiable information JC seems to benefit raiders more than other professions but others are pretty much equal in terms of how much they give. Once the BoP stuff becomes availiable I bet things will change a bit.
Aye, i agree with the BoP that is why i’m leaving tailoring on my lock =D
Nice post, Galadria!
Of course, I’m depressed now that I took tailoring and herbalism on my warlock–no spellpower bonuses whatsoever. Oh well, I’ll be riding around on a phat magic carpet.
One thing to note is that Skinning as a gathering profession for Mages and Warlocks in particular, can very quickly generate some huge profits. Considering that (usually) most mining nodes and/or herbs are in locations that mean you will almost always have to fight a mob (in Mining, the most reliable places for Nodes to be found are also places that you have to kill SEVERAL mobs to get to them) the inherent disadvantage of Skinning that you almost always have to kill something isn’t so bad.
The reason it works so well for these casters is that they can gather up large numbers of mobs to AoE down in one fell swoop, and skin all of them. Also, if you are clever, you can hang around common quest areas for leveling characters, most of whom are probably not skinners, and swoop in to skin the corpses they leave behind. I used to love doing that in Nagrand, around Garadar, where people are killing Clefthoof for the Nesingwary chain. I began calling it “vulturing”, since I was just hovering around in Flight Form on my Druid, waiting and watching, and skinning was allowed in Flight Form (I don’t know if it is anymore).
Politeness tip: If you do this, always make sure to wait until it is clear that the player whose kills you are scavenging is NOT a skinner themselves (i.e. they leave the area they are killing in without skinning anything). Its also nice to buff or heal someone a little while they are doing the grunt work for you.
Thanks for this article.
I am planning to keep tailoring and enchanting on my priest, however, I am still trying to figure out if I should drop skinning on my druid (her secondary is herbalism) and take up inscription. My other shaman alt is herb/alchemy…
So I guess the real question is if it’d be worth it to lose out on money I could make from skinning in favor of spending money to level up inscription and reap the rewards as they pertain to scribe-specific talents.
Nice round up but keep in mind that LW and Smithing can be useful to “casters” if you don’t limit caster to just cloth 😉
Also you might want to redo your MP5 caclulations for alchemy, last time I used a potion I was locked out from using another till combat was over. That is a change they made then reverted then changed again during beta if I recall correctly, either way it seems to be live in 3.0.2 unless that was a bug.
@Bernard
The MP5 calculations are based on one pot per encounter, assuming it’s a 5 min encounter.
Galadrias last blog post..Wrath Midnight Release
Thanks. I wasn’t sure and wanted to make sure you weren’t assuming chain chugging (which I hated being the assumed method since I never did that, and we hardly ever lost a battle do to a healer being OOM it was usually due to other factors).