Which profession have you gotten the least out of?Follow

Leather working - that's gone pretty static for my main - its not worth the cost to buy/make the IC rep patterns for me and I really don't have anything that's high demand on the AH - all I do now is make the occasional leg patch for myself or friends when they upgrade. However, the profession served me well for leveling and gave me a couple of nice 200 level items to start myself with at level 80 (this was when the xpac first came out, thus giving me a big edge tanking heroics when I dinged) so I give LW thumbs up for leveling but thumbs down for maintaining.

JC - a good consistent profession as the cuts help all my toons with leveling and gear upgrades. I'm sure I could make some nice cash playing the AH with my gems but I've got too many alts who are constantly upgrading gear to spare any so thumbs up for both leveling and maintaining.

Alchemy - like JC - my alchy alt stays busy making flasks and since all my toons do the fishing dailies I've got a steady supply of pygmy oil to make into Guru elixirs for AH bait. The xmutes are invaluable for making metas or simply convertering earth to useful elements, being able to turn "trash" gems into the 10k pvp honor gems is priceless and saronite to titanium isn't half bad either, plus, every three days I do my research for a shot at free flasks - definitely thumbs up for leveling and maintaining.

Tailoring - haven't made any new gear in a while, so it's on par with LW in that the patches are the only upgrades it makes, however, there's the bags - as a packrat the 20 and 22 slot bags are priceless to me, plus, I make some nice cash turning netherweave cloth into AH bait so thumb up for leveling and maintenance.

Enchanting - same as JC - it's a miracle I'm able to keep any chanting mats in stock - if I spent a weekend doing nothing but randoms on my chanter toon then I'd probably make a grand or two selling the disenchanted mats on the AH - two thumbs up again.

Engineering - was beautiful for leveling having all those wonderful toys to give my toon an edge when it's gear sucked (leveled as a ret pally - engineering is a must for that class spec IMO) and of course the goggles were wonderful when the toon could finally wear them - better then any 200 level gear out there. Sadly, the skill's post leveling use is minimal - the occasional scope and ammo for my hunter is nice and Jeeves and Molly are nothing to sneeze at if I get a group that's willing to chain run randoms but I open up my engineering window so rarely I swear there's a puff of dust and cobwebs when I do. So thumbs up for leveling but thumbs down for maintenance.

Inscription - except for the shoulder chants the rest of it is fairly useless when leveling. Occasionally I'll have a use for the hearth scrolls but that might be once a month. The cards are basically one shot wonders and the rewards from them barely last long enough to justify the cost. The darkmoon cards are questionable as the cost to make seems to exceed the cost of just buying them outright - really about the only use for leveling are the shoulder buffs (extremely nice though) and the scrolls that can replicate the priest STA buff (but not till you hit 80). Yes, you get all the scrolls you can eat but now that they've nerfed stacking them with each other and many other buffs the benefit of scrolls is minimal. Maintenance is slightly better as, assuming your inscriptionist leveled first and has everything, you can hook up alts, plus, there's a good number of good AH inscriptions out there. Still though, I have to wonder if it wouldn't have been more profitable to simply sell the plants and buy what the inscriptions. Thumb down for leveling and thumb sideways for maintenance.

Blacksmithing - none of my toons have this profession but my brother's warrior does and he ranks it with LW.

As a side note, LW, Tailoring, Engineering and BS all have some personal buffs akin to the inscriptionist shoulder buffs.

My inscriptionist hasn't dinged 80 yet so maybe those priest buff scrolls will prove uber useful but for now, I'm calling that trade skill as the one I've gotten the least out of.

Currently? All of them. And it's very depressing.

I keep hoping that as I level professions on each new toon (5 80's + 2 almost there) that one of them will click and I'll find a moneymaker. Haven't yet.

JC was going well for awhile but now the gem market is so tanked the raws are selling for about the same price as cut. I used to be able to buy raw epics for 150-175 and sell cuts for 200-225; now they're all in the 145-155 range making it pointless.

Alchemy is the same way where mats are roughly the same cost as product. I used to to the transmute gem -> send to jc deal but but actual profit kind of gone it seems more reasonable to just hold on to the gems for use.

Blacksmithing has never done anything but lose me mass amount of gold. I finished leveling it about 3 months ago on my pally and still have 3 Titansteel items that have been put up for auction about 10 times now (even at massive undercut) and not sold. Just . . .nobody wants this stuff. At all, ever, apparently.

LW I still don't have completely maxed but it's at 441 I think. The legplates actually did turn me a decent income as I seem to be able to sell those for 175-ish pretty steadily. Haven't tried this for a couple months or so though so I'm not sure if this still rings true.

My engineer doesn't look to be making much but the utility of AH in dal and all the gadgets is at least personally useful. I'm hoping to get this maxed and try the chopper business.

Enchanting has thusfar been a massive cash sink as well. Hopefully that will turn around at endgame. There are sooooo many mats required for leveling this, and nothing on the AH that isn't ridiculously priced. Plus I'm losing out on everything that usually gets vendored along the way while leveling so cash on hand is shorter than usual.

Honestly, most of my AH income has been from farmed raw mats.

At 450 skill I have Herb, Mining, and Alche.

My Troll hunter is a Enchanter/Alche, all I do with him is DE stuff and make Pots/Flasks for my other toons. I'm too lazy to lvl his enchanting to cap due to their being about 4 other enchanters in my guild. If I need something, I can get the mats and they can do the chants. I did however PL Alchemy on him a few weeks back. I only make pots for my DK (main) and for my Warrior that I'm lvl up (HP pots, Def pots, etc.). And I transmute saronite ores into titanium

My Main DK is the Herb and Miner. I do all the farming I need for my professions on him. He is also the "money maker" due to the farming.

My lv62 (or 63) Warrior is both JC and BS. I fig at 80 these would be the best professions for him. All I do is mass farm on the DK, and send what is needed over. JC is capped at 375, and BS is not too far behind.

My hunter use to be a skinner, and I use to make bank when Arctic Fur sold for a pretty penny, but then I found myself never selling them anymore. So I dropped it and picked up the Alchemy. BUT, with BS I keep finding myself needing leathers...
I have to pay the AH fees rather then farm them up ><

Most of my professions are just for ME to use. I've made some money off what I make due to farming the mats, so I can sell the stuff for a low amount and make a total profit.

One thing I liked about FFXI to WoW, is I could be a profession player on FFXI.
Lv1 characters with max professions? yea I had a few. It was like playing a NPC.
Do wish you could do that in WoW (or have more than 2 professions XD)

My main is a rogue that I've been playing for about 5 years and the entire time he has been skinning/leatherworking.... I honestly didn't use it but maybe twice during all of vanilla sadly.... TBC game me hope but I felt like outside of using the drums I still didn't get use.... Even during Wrath, the best I could hope for was some slight profit off of armor kits and an underwhelming bracer enchant.... For some reason though, I feel as those these professions are a part of who my rogue is so I can't bring my self to change.... Sometimes sticking with it isn't the best idea.... I need to learn when to give up....

My hunter on the other hand, has mining and engineering and I could think of a better combination.... I got to make myself an amazing chopper mount along with some super fun gadgets and convenient transporters.... I can sell my extra ore on the AH for a decent amount since I rarely use Titanium or Titansteel too....

[incoming QQ alert]]
Inscription, without a doubt. More often than not, I'll put a set of glyphs on the AH, and practically before I've even logged off, they've already been undercut three times over by the 24/7 AH players. I guess it's not so bad if you have nothing better to do than sit at the auction house all day and cancel/relist over and over ********************* but, I don't have that luxury.

I should just make a bonfire and throw all my friggin' gold on it. It'd be faster than leveling Inscription.
[/QQ]

On my main character, I have level 450 Herbalism and Inscription... Unfortunately, the only profession I really use right now is Herbalism. I just generally auction the herbs I gather for money, because glyphs truly sell for rubbish gold on my server. The only thing I actually still use Inscription for is to make glyphs for my alts and friends...

And on my alts, I've got a Priest who is leveling Skinning and Tailoring, and a Death Knight who's leveling Mining and Blacksmithing. Not sure if they will actually still have a use at level 450, but it least it spends the time. :P

I have never gotten much out of Blacksmithing, though maybe I never gave it a fair shot. It' been awhile since I've tried levelling it on a toon, so I never had a higher level toon to bank it. A bank certainly helps with the crafting profs. ;)

I have, however, given Inscription a fair shake, and really didn't enjoy it or get much out of it. :(

Edited, Aug 2nd 2010 4:34pm by Earthhorse

I know several folks who do this, and they really don't spend more than an hour or so total time on it each day(5-10 minutes several times daily), and make ridiculous money doing it.

Well, at least they did. I haven't talked to them about it in a month so I can't really say if its the same now.

It's okay, I already have other professions maxed on my other characters, so my scribe will always stay my scribe-and if I'm one of fewer people making glyphs, then more money for me! :D

Blacksmithing on my warrior. Its been nothing but a money pit from the get go, at least for me. With my LW at least i could find small niches on the AH i could work with and profit from on occasion. But, with BS it might just be that i didnt give it enough time / had too much competition. As others seem to have done fairly well with it.

The profit margin - even on my server - for ilvl 245 LW gear was 500-1000g per unit, and on ilvl 264 gear was 2500-3000g per unit.

And in Cataclysm we'll be able to craft starter raid gear, as opposed to starter heroic gear. All of it BoE. Then we can use the patterns that drop in raids.

It's necessary that there be both crafters and gatherers, and as long as they both think they're making money off the efforts of the other, the system is sustainable...

I don't think we really disagree all that much.

I'm pretty sure it'd be easy to find comments from me in other threads recommending two gathering profs until your account has a nest egg (might be just the first toon, might take a few). My first main was, and still is, herb/alch, and the alchemy was just for personal use at first, since I hadn't discovered the economy for 30 levels or so.

I'm just advocating, after you have that safety margin, not going overboard on gathering on new toons, and certainly not continuing to spend time farming to make money (as opposed to leveling e.g. smelting to the point you can make/derive everything you need).

Also, in the specific case of Jewlcrafting (prospecting) and Enchanting (disenchanting), leveling them up should be at worst zero-sum, even if you don't farm your own mats. Leveling those two is a serverwide pyramid scheme, so as long as you're not the last one to level, you can pass on the cost to the next set of levelers.

It's a calculation that every individual has to make based on their own situation. The change to cause gathering nodes to generate XP means that gathering-while-leveling is more lucrative since less time is "wasted". On the other hand, the IF bank doesn't pay interest - you should be making your balance work for you, and it does the most work when you're at or near the crafting cap.