Any idea how much a Hunter would benefit from Jewelcrafting?Follow

I'm a bit torn between skinning/leatherworking and mining/jewelcrafting, so I figured I would see if I can find anybody on here who has done it :) I've looked through the beta thottbot stuff and most of the jewelcrafting seems like it would benefit various casters more than a hunter, but being able to make your own gems might be kinda handy. Any opinions on this one?

Also, has leatherworking been made more end-game viable at all? The crafting professions for armor/weapons always seem to end up falling out near end-game compared to pvp or raid gear, so it's never really seemed worth it to me before. But...I've seen some of the new crafters gear, and its insane :) So I'm wondering if there are any people who can give me an accurate comparison.

Thank you in advance, and happy expansion day! :P

Since raiding and other multi player content is usualy more difficult than farming(that is unless like MC/ZG style mats are involved) So you will be hard pressed to see the gear you make with leatherworking be comprobale to the type of gear you will get in a instance. The game has worked this way since day one, why would it change with the X pac? But, Leatherwoking has changed a chunk. firstly the presence of drums(expendable buff items) makes some change, next is the riding crop(speed boost on mount), and lastly...... Jewlcrafting. Whacky how a additonal craft has changed the current ones. The deal is that some of the crafted gear is customisable....... let me elorbrate.

As it stands(acutaly as of say mid december)if you are a hunter you take dragonscale leatherworking to make blackdragonscale gear. It is not BAD, just not great. It realy only has one place to shine, Fire isntances. It provides some RAP, but mostly is chosen for Fire Resist. If you get to the Naxx, the stuff is now almost useless, yet that has changed. lets look at a example:


Flamescale Belt
Binds when equipped
Waist Mail
357 Armor
+27 Stamina
+30 Fire Resistance
Blue Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +8 Attack Power
Durability 40 / 40
Requires Level 69
Sells for 2 Gold 49 Silver 68 Copper to vendors
Item Level 112

So like the black dragonscale this has Fire resist(a crapload more), but can be customised with gems to what ever the player wants. This provides a situaion where either a shaman or a hunter would want this belt if they were fighing fire mobs. Either class could use gems to make it more for what they want.

The new armor kits are amazing too. My point is that the craft has a bigger role in endgame content, but NO you will not be making better than what you can dig out of instances, that is unless you are crafting a peice of gear for a spific need(like eazaly atainable FireResist or Arcane Resist).

Well, It realy depends on what you do endgame. As for me I have done raiding, and will likely not ever do 40 man content again, so stuff that would benefit a huge raid would not be as of much intrest to me. I know some players that wont even do 20 man content(just do not like the drama) so stuff that benefits a large group would be of no use to them (for example a repair bot).

Oddly though no matter what you do both have a use. You could make multipule set of armor with leather working, Heck some could even be the same sets, just with diffrent Gems in them(making them situational). This would take up a lot of bank space, but leave you ready to tackle a lot of diffrent situations at a moments notice. Lastly Leatherworking offers the new elemental armor kits that let a user boost the resist of gear with a armor kit(like in the neighborhood of +8 to one school of resist).

Jewlcrafting on the other side will let you craft diffrent gems to go in to the armor, this would put you in to a situation where you could trade for armor and armor kits.

The upside I see to leatherworking is that jewlcrafting shows to be a VERRY popular choice for the first few mo of the XPac meaning that their will likely be a lot of folks selling Gems, and less attacking the leatherworking trade. Lastly is the new BoP leatherworking items. I have not seen them yet but accordign to Bliz, this could be the futrue of crafted items and make taking the production tradeskills more viable.