Has BS'ing gottten better?Follow

I am dropping skinning from my DK and I am trying to choose between JC/BS. Now, I know most people will say, "Level up JC and /profit." And I understand that is where the money lies, but I am wondering if BS'ing has stopped being a horrible money sink and is there some profit to be made. My DK is not a raider, I just use him for doing dailies and running friends through instances. He already has 450 mining, cooking, first aid, fishing and skinning but skinning is pretty worthless now and I want a change. I have heard a lot of the higher end BS items are not BOP anymore so you can profit now with spikes,spurs,buckles and rods for enchanters along with weapons/armor now. Is it true? Or should I just level up JC and /profit??

Yes, I am not really interested in making huge sums of cash with it. What I was wondering was if BS is actually useful now. Before(i tried leveling it up before) it was simply a huge worthless money sink. The items you could make were no better than what you could get from quests/drops and it was insanely expensive/time consuming to level up as well as most good items being BoP so I could not sell them. I am wondering if that is still the case or if it has been buffed up a bit. Are the top end items as good/better than what I would get questing? Can more things be sold for profit now(as opposed to selling at a loss or breaking even like it used to be)?

Yah, sorry missed that part of your post. Up until a couple of weeks ago I was still wearing the savage saronite stuff. I'm still wearing legplates of conquest and vengeance bindings. Can't comment on other classes I'm afraid.

Thanks for the replies, and for the link. That is really what I was looking for. I always wanted to have a maxed BS as there just don't seem to be many on the Korean server I play on whereas everyone and their friends are all JC's. Looks like I will start mining some mats this weekend~~

Try inscription. Same deal. Mailbox full back from the AH. BS is not worth it in my opinion. JC makes good gold from selling Dragon's Eyes and a few gems occasionally.

Duel spec is coming sometime soon. I see JC's and Inscriptors making good gold at that time.

I would agree that trade skills are more about utility than they used to be, but there is still plenty of profit to be made by most of them if you're in to that kind of thing. Blacksmithing has gone from sewer to stellar with WOTLK. I've almost maxed my blacksmithing skill, but since I got the recipes for Adamantite Plate Bracers/Gloves/Breastplate (skill 335), not a day has gone by wherein I've not posted something I smithed & made money. I started routinely selling 2 Bracers & 2 gloves per day for a 30-40g profit on each item. I've been the lone seller of these items for weeks now.

I've found that you have to be careful about which items & the quantities you make, but I essentially leveled my blacksmithing from 335 to 435 using only mats purchased from the AH, I turned a profit, and I only have a dozen items unsold from that venture. On my server the cobalt tanking gear sells well & the saronite armor sets each have pieces that sell for remarkably high profits.

Getting to blacksmithing 335 is a different story....<cough, cough>

Compared to what it was before, BS is now great! You won't make the money of a JC, but you won't lose money at the high end anymore.

About 95% of the BS plans in WotLK are BoE and can be sold on the AH.

You can add a socket to your own bracers and gloves.

You can add a socket to anyone's belt (the mats for the belt buckle are stupid cheap, and the buckle sells for 60-100g on most servers that I have seen). Every time someone replaces a belt, they need a new buckle, so the buckles will never go "out of style".

You can make blues and purples for plate-wearing DPS, plate-wearing tanks, and plate-wearing healers and all can be sold on the AH. The tanking and DPS gear generally sell for more than the healing gear, since only Holy Pallies would want the healing gear and overall it isnt that great.

You probably won't become rich being a BS, but you will certainly make a profit on many items if you learn which items to make and watch for when those particular items are scarce and high-priced on the AH.

You can also make keys to open any lock in the game fairly cheaply now, and can steal lockpicking tips from rogues this way (and open all of your own lockboxes as well).

It is still a massive goldsink from level 1-350, but if you just choose the cheapest thing you can make that is at least yellow (preferably orange or red) and get to 350 as fast/cheaply as possible, once you start learning all of the Northrend plans you will actually see the profession start to become profitable.

Blacksmith weapon specialty proved useless, since by the time I could make the LK bop items, they were obsolete.

I don't think armorsmithing spec would've been any different.

Mind you, this was based on mining my own mats.

Just for the record, the crit bonus is universal, not just applied against beasts.