Blacksmithing no longer profitlessFollow

In the days of Vanilla WoW and even TBC, Blacksmithing was a gold sink, plain and simple. Almost all of the "good" plans were BoP, and the "good" BoE plans were raid drops. It was nearly impossible to make any money as a blacksmith (other than getting good tips for making enchanting rods).

Now with WotLK, there are tons of plans learned directly from the trainer for items that are basically all BoE, and the items are actually better than many of the quest rewards for comparable level quests. Blacksmithing is almost a necessity for a Prot-spec toon (or items purchased from a Blacksmith).

There are now plenty of items I can actually sell for more than the raw materials would cost me (I mine, so the mats are technically "free" other than the time it takes me to mine them).

I guess Blizzard listened to the complaints that Blacksmithing was totally un-profitable and also had very little for Prot-spec, because now it can be very profitable and has loads of Prot equipment as well.

We also get to socket some of our own equipment as well as create a BoE item that will allow anyone to socket their belt.

This just went from a "meh" profession to a "win" profession in a big way!

I guess I was trying to indicate that (at least for now) even if I was not a miner, I could still turn a profit from Blacksmithing. This was certainly not the case in the past.

Case in point:

On my server 6 cobalt bars cost approximately 18g on the AH. BoE DPS helm which I can craft and can be used by Paladin/Warrior/DK that takes 6 cobalt bars I am selling for 25g.

http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=40942;source=live

Not a huge profit, but in the past something that cost me 18g to make would only sell for 5g, and the better items used to all be BoP; whereas now almost all 70+ items I can make are BoE and can be sold to anyone.

This is a huge improvement. Yes, the price I get for the items I sell will drop, but the cost of ore will also drop as it becomes more available on the AH, so I anticipate that the percentage profit will probably stay about the same. It will (of course) take time to verify this theory, but it is very nice that Blizzard made this profession far more useful/potentially profitable than it has been in the past.