What World of Warcraft Professions Should I Chose?

There are 10 different primary professions that you can have. They are:

• Enchanting
• Blacksmithing
• Tailoring
• Alchemy
• Herbalism
• Mining
• Jewel Crafting
• Skinning
• Leatherworking
• Engineering

There are three secondary professions that are available to learn in addition to your primary professions which are:

• Cooking - Good $$ maker & helpful to you.
• Fishing - Good $$ maker.
• First Aid - Helpful to you.

In this post, I will discuss each of the primary professions briefly to give you a bit of background information if you are finding it difficult to decide which you should chose. I will also go over the secondary professions and let you know which are must haves, and which can be left to level until you are just bored without anything else to do, lol. I will start with the secondary professions.

So I would recommend grabbing Cooking, Fishing and First Aid as soon as you can! Of course you may not be able to afford them at level 1, but when you have the spare silver, make sure you grab them. The most important of the secondary professions would be Fist Aid (unless you are a healing class), so make sure you get it first.
Basically your professions are set up so that you can level them as you level, so if you are already level 70 and are just thinking about getting them now, it will be a little more frustrating than if you just do it as you level.

First Aid is easy. You just need the cloth that you'll find while you're questing, just make sure you pick it all up! If you are 70, just go farm for a bit, it won't take you that long to find it all. It will probably keep you from doing your cloth turn ins in whatever cities you are trying to gain rep with (which can be a lot of experience), so you'll just have to decide if you'd rather have more xp, or max out your first aid! (You can always go get more cloth later for the turn ins.)
If you are a healing class, you may not need first aid right away, but I do have it with all of my characters. There is always the possibility that you will want to reserve mana, in which cases bandages come in quite handy!

Fishing is one of the more time consuming professions I find. It takes 15 caught fish on average to get a point, and it does not matter where you fish, so I'd definitely recommend leveling it somewhere that you are catching all of the fish, and none are getting away. So basically, it will take you 5625 fish to get your fishing maxed, which will take a long time, so don't attempt it all at once! Just do it for fun when you are bored, or take part in the fishing contests on Sunday in Booty Bay, or fish in the canals in Stormwind when you are waiting on a Battleground. If you do manage to max out your fishing, it will really help you level your cooking and you can make a lot of money selling extra fish from Outland! (Plus the fishing dailys are really easy!)

Cooking can be irritating, but you can basically level it from 1-375 in one sitting if you are patient enough! If you happen to have fishing, you can fish your way to 375, but you will have to do a bit of farming or buy some things in the Auction House to get past 225. When you reach 225 you have to make your way to Tanaris and find Dirge in the Inn in Gadgetzan. He'll ask you to bring him

• 20 Alterac Swiss - can get from Trias Cheese in Stormwind (and lots of other places)
• 10 Zesty Clam Meat - can get from the turtles along the beach in Tanaris
• 12 Giant Eggs - can get from the Rocs in Tanaris or the Owlbeasts in Hinterlands

When you bring Dirge these items, he'll make it so you can learn up past 225. Cooking is great if you are a healer, because you can make yourself Golden Fish sticks when you get high enough, which give you a bonus to healing. There are also a ton of other buff food that is excellent in raids and sell like hot cakes in the Auction House. Plus, the cooking dailys are usually really easy and you can get rare recipes that make interesting things!

Now onto the Primary Professions. You can only chose two of these, and chose wisely, because if you want to change them, you will lose all the points you've earned toward the profession you drop, and there is no way of getting those points back!

Enachanting: Once feared because of the insane location of the trainer (inside the instance Uldaman) which they have now changed, this profession is rather difficult to get to 375. Basically, if you disenchant every single green you pick up while questing, you may still need to go farm for a few hours to get the mats you require to level. If you are interested in an easy and fast profession, do not get enchanting! It is great for healers/ casters because of the enchants you can get for your rings at 375, and if you are lucky enough to snag some really good patterns in raids/ instances, you can make a fair bit of money with it in the end. Personally, I can't say that I have ever made any money with my enchanting however. I am 375, and have a lot of good patterns, but I am not the type of person to spam trade trying to sell my services, so I only use them on myself and my friends. If you are planning on just buying mats to level, you can expect to fork out a few thousand gold at least on this baby! The mats are probably the most expensive for any profession.

Jewel Crafting: This profession was added in the Burning Crusade expansion, and if your character is a Draenei, you may want to pick it up because they have a racial + to this profession. If you do decide on Jewel Crafting, you MUST have mining as your other primary profession. If you don't it is going to cost you SO MUCH to purchase all the ore you will need to prospect and all the gems! I had two 375 miners, and had saved most of what I had gathered leveling them up, and I still needed to buy ore and such from time to time. When you get up to 365ish, you will find that you only get points for cutting blue gems (unless you are lucky enough to find certain patterns that I did not have.) This isn't as bad as you may think, because although each blue gem is 20g-65g, once you cut them and get your points, you can turn around and reauction them for more! Jewel crafting is actually a very good money making profession once you get up to 375, and one that I did not find too irritating to level.

Tailoring: Tailoring is probably one of the easiest professions to level up until you reach 350. Before level 350 you can just use the cloth you find while you are questing/ doing instances to level up, and if you happen to have Enchanting as your other primary profession, then you can DE the greens/ blues that you make for Enchanting mats. Once you reach 350, tailoring can become somewhat pricey. You will need to make imbuded netherweave robes to get to 375, which take so much netherweave, netherweb spider silk and arcane dust that it will drain your gold or take up a lot of your time while you farm. Despite this, if you are a cloth wearer, it is a great profession to have! If you are not a cloth wearer (my paladin has it) then you can still make a lot of money making the specialty cloths and rare/ epic items!

Blacksmithing: Anyone who has reached 375 blacksmithing, I have a special respect for you! This profession is a constant struggle, and despite the 1000g I have put into it and my three 375 miners, I am still stuck around 365. Of course I could just spend another 1000g to get my last 10 points, or spend hours and hours searching for mining nodes, but I haven't been bored enough to do that yet! If you are a blacksmith, you will also need to be a miner. Expect much frustrations, lots of farming, and be prepared to put out lots of gold! If you are lucky enough to find a really good pattern at 375, I assume you could make back your gold.

Alchemy: If you are looking for an easy profession to level that can still make you a lot of money, Alchemy would be it! It is definitely the easiest non-gathering profession to level and if you have herbalism as your second primary profession it is really cheap to level! The elixirs and health/ mana pots that you can make at 375 come in handy a lot and you can sell them easily in the Auction House. Also, you can make flasks which will also sell for a fair bit!

Herbalism: Herbalism is really easy to level if you do it while you are leveling! If you are 70 and pick up herbalism, it can be somewhat of a pain because unlike mining where you can smelt for points, you have to go out and physically pick every plant in order to gain points. With an epic mount and some good tunes you can go out and get up to 375 in one sitting, but it does take a while so be patient! You can sell the plants you pick for good money or use them to level your Alchemy.

Skinning: Skinning is a good profession to grab if you're not sure what you want to get, but just want to have something, or if you are a leather worker (obviously). If you are leveling it while you are leveling, it is really simple, just make sure to remember to skin whatever you kill! Leather from Outland can sell very well, so if you want a good gold making gathering profession, this one isn't bad!

Leatherworking: If you are a leather-wearer or a mail-wearer, leather working is a handy little profession to grab! Not only can you make yourself some decent gear for level 70, you can also make handy little things like Drums of War, that are great for raids! It does take a lot of leather to level, so make sure you have skinning as your second primary profession, or you may have to spend a lot to buy all the leather.

Mining: This profession is easy to level if you do so while you are leveling (like most gathering professions) but if you are 70 and grab it, be prepared for some frustration! I have leveled it starting at level 70 twice now, lol and it is time consuming!!! Mining is probably the most handy of the gathering professions to have however, because the ore and stones are needed for Blacksmithing, Jewel crafting, Engineering, and little things you can make (like belt buckles) are needed in all the other professions as well (except Alchemy). If you are only picking one profession to start off with, I'd recommend grabbing mining just because it pairs up nicely with so many other professions!

Engineering: This profession used to be the most unused of all the professions, but after one of the latest patches added the buildable flying mounts, a lot of people grabbed it! The fact that you can make yourself a little helicopter flying mount is really cool, but this profession is really hard to level. Basically, if you are taking up engineering, make sure you keep like everything you make! Each time you learn more patterns, they take items that you made to level up a few skill points ago. Once you make it to 375 though there are a lot of really sweet things you can make yourself, including a really nice helm. If you want a profession that is going to make you a lot of gold, this probably isn't a good one to go with. It is mostly a self-buffing profession.

Hopefully this will help if you are trying to make a decision on which professions to chose! If you have any further questions/ concerns please feel free to contact me at lilgamergirl@gmail.com or leave a comment!