Being self reliant worth it for leveling?Follow

Define "worth it."

If you mean "will I save time?" No.

If you mean "will I save gold?" No.

If you mean "will it be fun?" Maybe. Some people really like crafting their own stuff. Me, I'd rather sell raw materials and buy off the AH... or just use quest rewards!

Also, the "best" perks from professions are BoP, so you won't be able to give them to your other characters.

Actually, I think it's almost the other way around - it's not exactly worthless for leveling purposes, but there's much more value in feeding an endgame toon or stable of toons.

Thanks to the economics of my server (which has been on and off the "recommended" list ever since I started), I've managed to profit off of leveling all my professions - my main is herb/alchemist who fed lazy raiders, my new-80 hunter leveled enchanting through disenchanting and leatherworking by selling what had value and DEing the rest, and my druid is on the jewelcrafting cycle (buy gems to level to where you can prospect the same gems and sell them on to the next sucker).

The actual utility, on the other hand, was minimal. There are a few "sets" of leather/mail that are better than random drops/quest items of the same ilvl, but considering the opportunity cost (either in capital to buy the mats or the labor to farm them) it's not significantly different than just buying them premade from another LW.

Another way of looking at it is as a "real-world" application of the "Law of Comparative Advantage" - it makes sense for each of us to specialize in doing the things we're best at, and exchanging the surpluses with each other. The best example of this in WoW was back in BC, when certain classes were so much better at farming primals that it made little sense for anyone else to spend any time on it at all. But it is true to a lesser extent for any kind of raw material, and even for BoE crafted items. BoP crafted items are a special case, but those are (a) almost entirely endgame, (b) much rarer than they were pre-LK.

I would say it's worth it. If you don't have high level guild full of friendlies you pay for making stuff anyway. It's either built-in in price on AH(most of the time it's HUGE cut) or by tipping. I will assume that you want to keep decent rep on server and you do tip. Making your own gear is not much of a money saver. It may save you couple hundred gold in diference between raw mats and crafted gear per character since best stuff is coming from emblems or bop drops. It may be useful to close gaps in gear while levelling when there isn't anything decent on AH but that's about it.

The power in having alts with various professions is in synergy. Let's say you have mining/JC/enchanting among 2 of your characters. Miners get eternal earth and shadow almost every node. If your server is like mine it sells quite low. However JC can make rings from one of each. They can sell, but flooding the market is not good way to make money quickly. Your enchanter can DE those rings though. By making 20 rings from 2 stacks of eternals and then disenchanting them you can make 3-4 times more than if you had sold raw eternals. Remember that Dusts and essences are in huge demand since people have to re-enchant their gear with every upgrade. While everything I wrote can be done by others for you, that would involve some sort of agreement thus lowering your income. This is just one of examples.

Not having to pay extra for stuff you buy constantly on every of your characters(belt sockets, gems, enchants, potions, flasks, glyphs) is where true money saver is. You by-pass fee for crafter by making it on your own, very often with cheap mats (mats for tuskar's vitality are worth maybe 30g on my server while scroll with enchant very rarely is below 150-170g).

I, myself, am huge fan of being self reliant. I don't like to ask people to DE every world drop boe I find, or making them craft me some gems or enchant my gear. But that's just me. Everybody must figure out if they are willing to get couple high levels alts(that takes a while) and make their's professions high enough to be useful (that takes more time/money).

I would agree with the tailor/enchanter combo for any cloth wearer , not only great gear but can be used to make a decent amount of gold by selling the excess produced from the disenchanting , i guess it will depend on your server how much gold can be made but even just with the gear and enchants i think it is one of the better combinations to have.

I also think engineering is well worth being learnt at low level as you get to use all the bombs and other toys as you level and to me learning it at high level completely misses all the fun and advantages it has , i will agree it is no gold maker but if you like big bangs and robots and the other toys that can be made which i do , i think it is a fun way to go , it is pretty good for a hunter as you get guns and ammo but there are pieces for cloth wearers as well so any class can find things to use it is just a shame there is not much that can be sold for making any gold.

I think it is a fun way to level with different professions as you said you are not in a rush to get to 80 again but it can and will get confusing at times , i know because i have quite a few low alts and all with trades.