Is this crazy enough?Follow

My main is an L85 hunter (Horde). Funny thing is, at that level you've the gear grind, interminable dailies, and even a tendency to get bored. Most folks have multiple alts. So I tried warrior, mage, warlock, rogue (thrice), shaman, druid..... And guess what? I don't WANT to be anything but a hunter.

SO, looking at my options, I found my very first alt, an Alliance hunter I more or less abandoned at level 70 due to boredom. He's a poster child for how NOT to play. Two professions, skinning and leatherworking, both level 25 or so. Totally inappropriate gear with a level of only about 101. Barely 1000 gp in the bank.

So I think my plan is going to be to rebuild him from the ground up.

New professions, thinking herbalism and inscription, but not set yet. For example, I thought about two gathering professions to pump cash, but I think you really also need a creative profession for later.

Run every dungeon I can, mostly solo, to rebuild gear. Mostly walk-throughs, of course, but that seems to be the price I'd have to pay.

Find a good guild - it seems odd, but in my experience high-level unattached players really don't get many guild offers, so I'll probably have to find one on my own. Anybody know a good Alliance guild on the Fizzcrank server?

Does anybody else think this is certifiably nuts?

Skinning and Leather are very poor money-makers when compared to some of the others. You can make your own gear, whoop-de-doo. Once you get to Endgame, you know that 90% of all gear is gained through Justice Points, Raid Boss Drops, and Honor. About the only thing you got for money is selling leg armor kits, and skins.

You want your first max-level character to be a good money-maker to support the rest of your activities. But then you COULD roll a Death Knight for money-making profs, the OP's choice. Some don't like Death Knights.

My suggestion is Herbalism/Mining, or Mining/Jewelcrafting.

Inscription makes money *now*, but will it after the expansion? I don't think we've seen what they plan to do with Glyphs yet, and if they allow you to get Glyph Mastery recipes with research, 90% of a Glyph-maker's profits will drop into the dirt.

Jewelcrafting though, is a given. You will make money with it.

As far as a Guild, with LFR, do you really need a guild these days? Though the Perks...

Any large leveling guild is sure to have at least 4 people who are decently good enough to run Heroics with, surely or at least a tank or two you can Q with and do things with. Finding a Guild shouldn't be too hard.

Your gear is a non-issue, you're Level 70 with a pet class; just go to Northrend and take the first few quests slowly, if they're too hard, just do some quests in Nagrand or something and get quest reward gear. You'll get geared in no time and then it is a hop, skip and a jump through Northrend and into Cataclysm.

Weird double post, sorry about that.

Edited, Feb 18th 2012 1:20pm by Vorkosigan

I'm with you on this. No matter what class I try as an alt I always go back to my hunter. However, I did get a holy priest to 85. Mining and herbalism throughout the leveling process made a richer man.

The very southern part of Uldum south of the Lost City is also a great leather farming spot. Snakes and crocs everywhere makes it go pretty quick. You can also use one of those potions of treasure finding to make a little extra cash as you do it.

Can't speak for anyone else, but in my experience leatherworking has got to be the most annoying profession to level.

I'd have to agree there.

Nothing is more annoying than Leather.

It isn't too bad until you get up to where you need nothing but Rugged Leather, and most mobs in Azeroth can skin into either Thick or Rugged, which means hours of farming skins to get past that part.

Once you're past that part, then you get into Outland Hell.

Everything has a chance to skin scraps up until Level 68+ until you finally get away from the scraps. Oh, and there's the annoying Crystal-Infused Leather (they should just get of that stupid crap already, nobody uses it, it is an annoyance, nothing more) and Fel Scales which are annoying because there's a few recipes that need them, but when you're trying to get them, they are far too rare... then once you get past them, you get them all the time.

Once you get past that, you get into Northrend which isn't too bad until Heavy Borean Leather. Good God, I don't think I've ever seen a more boring thing to do in the game than farm Heavies. You have to kill 5 mobs then you get ONE Heavy and each recipe takes 10+. Nice, skin 50+ mobs to get ONE level. Unless you wait until you're Level 85, and if you're a class that solos well, you can go to town in Drak'Tharon Keep, getting lots of leather out of the Raptor Pens (and also somewhat the bat room).

Then you get to Cataclysm leather, which isn't as bad as Northrend, but still a bit annoying. At least Blizz was smart enough to give us mobs that skin into 2 leather occasionally in Tol Barad and Molten Front. Molten Front has the added bonus of sometimes dropping Lava Rubies which vendor for 5g a pop, and the spiders are quite plentiful and not all that bad, damage-wise.

The worst, though, is Late Vanilla and Burning Crusade. Really wish they'd smooth those two out a little.

I can't think of a profession I hate leveling any more than Leatherworking. They need to do away with the Heavy Leather crap, no other profession has to kill 50+ mobs for one recipe's worth of leather, AND stand there skinning each kill. Tailoring makes you kill nearly that many, but a split second to loot is MUCH faster than standing there skinning, even if you're a worgen. You need to loot and THEN skin it.

Edited, Feb 22nd 2012 10:34pm by Lyrailis

It actually can make good gear while you are leveling it but the catch is that you need a higher level skinner to provide you the mats to keep your Leatherworking on par with your level. The other problem is that the better gear often comes from harder to get recipes that you can't usually acquire until you are at a higher level than you can use them at.

Of course none of the things you can make while leveling can compare to the heirloom gear and since so many people use that for leveling alts these days, there is little reason for Blizzard to spend resources fixing up the old recipes and smoothing out the skilling up process. They seem to be under the assumption that most people leveling a crafting profession are doing it on level-capped characters who are simply interested in maxing out the profession as quickly and as cheaply as possible.