My department manager at work– who is in my guild– is really awesome at professions. He has pretty much every profession ever spread across his alts, he sends billions of stacks of raw materials to a central bank so they can all share them, and he’ll have something leveled to 300 by the time his toon is level 22. Seriously. He just rocks those professions.
Me… not so much.
Now, I DO have a love affair with herbalism/alchemy. I love it. I love having buffed and long-lasting potions/flasks (though I miss when flasks lasted four hours /pout), I know herbs like the back of my hand, and I’ve never felt that this was a difficult profession combo to level.
Everything else though… yeah.
Lunapike was leatherworking/skinning until I got bogged down in the 150-range of leatherworking and dropped it for herbalism and turned her into a pure farming machine. The same exact thing happened to Tamaryn, my druid, except I never picked up a second profession. Eventually I dropped it for mining but got tired of running around Arathi Highlands looking for nodes. Recently I was inspired to make another attempt at leveling leatherworking but I’m stuck again, around 190-ish. I don’t know why it’s such a big stumbling block. It just IS. I’m not going to spend five billion gold on Heavy Leather and I don’t feel like going out and farming it when there are more fun things I could be doing with my time, you know?
Althalor was doing pretty good with Enchanting for a while. Then I started to fail again. I think he’s sitting at 155 or so. At level 60. u_u
I am off to a good start with Tawbree, though. She’s tailoring/enchanting and I think I’m actually managing to keep up thus far. 154 Enchanting/135 Tailoring — not bad for a level 36 character. I think a lot of it is because my leveling strategy with her is “Queue up for LFG, then sit around in Stormwind working on professions until I get a group, rinse and repeat.” And I get a lot of ‘chanting mats doing nothing but instances. Of course, I’ve probably jinxed myself now… hrmm.
A lot of other people say that you shouldn’t worry about professions until later or what-have-you. I dunno, I kind of like them. I think they could be much better implemented/integrated, but they add a fun aspect to the game. And I’m really jealous of people like my department manager who has one of EVERYTHING. Gawsh.
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I apologize I haven’t been writing much in the blog lately. I’ve been doing a lot of non-WoW things lately– mostly writing and drawing. I think my art may actually be improving (instead of stagnating) for the first time in years, so that’s got me excited. Speaking of art, I’ve opened up commissions for things-that-aren’t-just-avatars, so if you always wanted a cutesy Pikestyle full-bodied portrait of your character, head on over to the Commissions Page for info.
And yes, it’s February and I’m still working on my NaNoWriMo novel. (In the middle of the editing/rewriting stage at this point.)
Heh, I know how you feel about professions. I’ve been working on my DK a bit (now up to lvl 67) and his professions are: null/void.
Yup. Haven’t taken a dang thing on him.
On my baby Hunter (now lvl 43), skinning is going well. It’s pretty easy to go along with that (much like herbalism), but leatherworking is severely lagging. I’m definitely going to have to find myself a leveling guide and go nuts with that one.
Le sigh!
I love levelling professions, but I also like doing it as I level my character; I reckon going back at 80 and trying to go all the way from zero (or 150 or whatever) wouldn’t be a lot of fun. Just keep an eye on your professions while levelling and if one falls behind significantly, take an hour or two to get it caught up and then you can go back to your regular questing or dungeon-running again…
Woot! Another hunter who is an herbalist/alchemist. I think alchemists are the forgotten children of professions. We gots nuffing cool for ourselves. Bah humbug on those alchemist’s stones. I didn’t even make the one that could have been good for me for all of 3 weeks until I got a REAL trinket. I thought we were to get something cool with “Mixology”, that if you used a pot that you made, you had a % chance of getting another effect. I thought that was going to be with every pot you made and not just “Mad Alchemist”. I guess I misunderstood.
What would be extraordinarily cool is if there was a random d20-like side effect that would happen to you. Ten of them would be buffs, like your dps increases by 200% for 3 minutes at random intervals over the duration of the potion. For some, like a health pot, it would be a really temporary effect. For others, like the flasks, increasing my dps for an hour at random intervals, score!
Then there would be random debuffs, but they should be things like, “You feel really sleepy. You will fall asleep at random intervals for the next 5 minutes. You can be awakened by a hit resulting in the loss of 1% of your health or by someone poking you.” Or you turn bright blue. Or your vision gets blurry. Or you sprout wings. Or, if you’re horde, you turn into a dwarf; if you’re alliance, you turn into a belf. The random debuff possibilities are endless. Of course, if you are an extremely hard-core raider, you might not like such silliness. Man, I’d be drinking potions every chance I got if I could turn green or sprout wings.
But, back on topic, yeah, I hear you. I have a level 66 priest with 325 JC/385 mining. I have a level 27 lock with 225 tailoring/enchanting. For me, it’s more about the need to level the alts beyond a certain level to open up the next chunk of stuff.
I just added a Professions Officer to my guild with the idea that someone, besides me, should know where everyone is so when someone says, “Can anyone make…”, someone else can say, “I think so and so can do that”. I might be inspired to level some more.
Then again, I might not.
Well, I’m one of those 300 skill @lvl35 (I think it’s 35 min for that) people, you can really get ahead of the game by doing that. Though only once you’ve got at least one 80 who can provide the cash!
I love my professions. It’s like a whole sub-game really, there’s tons of weird old-world stuff out there to discover, and a bucket-load of profit too, especially with the rare vanilla stuff that’s still in demand (hint – BoA weapons can only take item level 1 enchants…).
And, as you rightly point out, multiple alt-oholics like us can have a cross-character support network making sure all your toons can get whatever they need made without spending ages trying to get a request in between all the trade spam.
I especially like engineering. Unlike LW, BS, etc. a lot of the stuff you make with engineering is only capped by your prof skill, not your character level. I’m surprised that a hunter fanatic (and self-confessed geek) like yourself isn’t all over the engineering stuff. Guess your more the nature-loving hippy type of hunter rather than the gun-toting, goggle-wearing, whizz-bang-boom sort, but, well, there’s just so much fun stuff to play with:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=7189
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=10726
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=4384
And loads of useful stuff too. Jeeves + Moll-E are amazingly handy, the ‘ghetto resurrection’ a.k.a. feign death + gnomish army knife on healer will make you a hero after a ‘wipe’, the exclusive auction house in dala, teleports all over the place, an on-demand parachute, all the arrows/bullets you’ll ever need and, last but not least, a hand mounted ROCKET LAUNCHER!!
I hear ya pike, my most developed tradeskills are on my main katt, she is a herb/alchemist both at 450. BUT far from master of the profession. I have little in the way of rare/epic recipes.
After that is my hunter who is a miner/engineer for the ammo of course, and I just haven’t had the time/ambition to farm mats to get him all the way to 450 engineering.
My jeweler is still stuck in her character level of mid 40’s so naturally has stagnated. (i just can’t get back into warlocking)
My blacksmith likewise (i really hate my pally so don’t play him at all anymore.)
My leatherworker is closing in on mastry, say around the 400’s right now, (second hunter)
i prefer to play the game, not really in a tradeskill mood right now.
My 80 hunter has always been skinning/LW. As a non raider and one who seldom does instances it’s my source of good gear. My only problem is that profession gear starts to lag out after each expansion has progressed a few patches since the raiders/instancers all get better loot from the new zones, it is seldom that new recipis that are better than the old ones are released.
What I think should be done is that you should be able to buy Heroic badge loot one tier below top raid tier loot, and profession items should be one tier below Heroic badge loot, at least. But to prevent it from being too much of a good thing, have the gear made be BoP too.
Well, that’s my two copper at any rate 🙂
my 80 hunter is really good at fileting the skin off of things, but nothing else. I too got mired in the mid-100s with leatherworking and just gave up on trying to keep up with my rapid race to 80. Now my 53 hunter (Calvinball) is respectably near 300 with herb (gotta love lifeblood for pvp), and in the 200s for engineering. I’ve been taking my time lvling this go around and it’s a lot more enjoyable. I know how to huntard now, I can get into the character more, and keeing up with the profs has really fleshed it out more for me.
My hunter – http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dragonmaw&cn=Homah – has actually done OK at professions. Skinning/Leatherworking seemed a logical choice when I started him and I’ve got then both up to decent levels. I provided a lot of my own gear that way for quite a while. I’m still BC only – I ran the WotLK 10 day trial and spent that time in Northrend getting gear and GrandMaster levels which Blizzard was kind enough to let me keep. I can’t say as I found levelling the professions incredibly easy but it wasn’t that hard either. Now I have some mid 20s alts going and I deliberately set them up with different combos (Mining/Blacksmith and Herbalism/Alchemy) so that my characters can support each other as they level up. It’s working pretty good so far but deciding a strategy early on was definitely a good thing.
I’m the complete opposite, Pike. All professions get maxed as soon as possible on all toons. And it doesn’t take an 80 to fuel that habit, it just takes a desire to do it and get it done.
I’m one who likes farming though. I don’t mind spending hours collecting mats. I don’t mind running lower level people through instances and requesting my payments to be all the cloth that drops, or all the unneeded greens go to me, or whatever.
One of my mages leveled Herb/Insc to 450 in each, built up a stash of herbs, dropped Herbalism for Tailoring, got it to 450, ran out of herbs, dropped tailoring for herbs, and then got it back up to 450. My paladin got to 450 Mining/284 Blacksmithing (Thorium farming sucks!), dropped BS for Tailoring, got it up to 400, dropped mining for Herbalism, got it to 450, then dropped tailoring for mining, got it up to 450, and now he’s considering another profession swap and he’s only level 78.
I always have to have my professions as high as they can be, or the character just feels like he’s only half way done. He’s like a hunter without a pet – that might put it into perspective for you.
I find leveling guides very useful with professions. I use http://www.wow-professions.com a lot. They give me a tidy shopping list of materials as well as how many of any given item to make using the recipes that will give me the most skillups for the least amount of materials. I would tack on 5-10%, though for the times those yellow/green recipes don’t give that last ding the way they should.
I also wholeheartedly agree about mining as well. Chasing nodes is horrid. I can never find the ore I want – I either find the grey kind I just finished with, or the red kind I can mine in juuuussst 3 more levels (which will never come because I can’t find any green or yellow ones 🙁 ).
I level my professions mainly because they can be really useful.
If you’re having troubles, I used:
http://www.thenoobschool.com/worldofwarcraft/
for my smithing, fishing and cooking. There are others that can make it relatively painless to do.
(also ,I REALLY try to level my rtades as I level my toon – cooking & fishing aside)
Long time reader first time poster!!
As Alex mentioned wow-professions.com is a god send. I leveled the bulk of my Blacksmithing not using that and then I found it. Bam level 450.
Skinning maxed and 441ish LW with my hunter. If you think 190’s are hard to level wait until the 400’s with LWing…UGH!
@ Steves – it’s not so much that I’m a hippy/nature-loving hunter, as a mad scientist, let’s mix dangerous chemicals up in the la-BO-ra-tory hunter!
Well, that’s even better. I think you should dump herbalism (that’s what the AH is for!) and get some engineering, gnome or goblin flavour – the basic themes of the stuff you get with them are, respectively, ‘mad scientist’ and ‘dangerous’, you can’t go wrong!
It even says so right here (another very useful toy):
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=18986
I have never really been a professions guy. I will pick two gathering skills, and make money while I level up. Once I hit 80 with my toons the gathering completely stops.
I am just like you. I have better things to do than spend hours gathering herbs, looking for nodes, skinning mobs.
I just turn to AH farming once I hit 80. It is so much easier to make money that way, and just eventually buy stuff I want.
It depends on the character I think for me. My first character was a hunter and I went LW/Skinning because I heard it was good for a hunter.. but I didn’t really pay attention to it till a long time afterwards and so I had to grind out leveling it (which STILL isn’t done cause it’s such a bore). I think I’d like it if I ever get it maxed though.
One of my characters I thought it’d be fun to make a horde, Belf Pally who was a bit crazy.. and liked to tinker with stuff and had awesome goggles so obviously I made a Engineer and since the profession was more what I was wanting than the pally (don’t get me wrong, I love my pally now) I never had the prof fall behind me. Too bad there isn’t any GOOD goggles at 80 now. 🙁 At least I have my Jeeves though! Just the other day I was running off the platform at the Saurfang boss while waiting for guildies to show up with Nitro Boosts + Parachute, then bubbles as the effect wore off and I got to no mans land! Was awesome 😀
Now, my Alliance druid I went Alch/Herb and absolutely love it as a druid, and it was way ahead of me in levels forever (might still be actually) but I stopped him at 70. Now I’m remaking another druid Horde side because I’m too lazy to transfer him and I’m FOR THE HORDE now, and I’m doing Alch/Herb on him also. The problem with this guy is I’ve been leveling since lvl 15 almost entirely from tanking and pvp so I don’t exactly get a chance to get herbs so it falls very behind. I just hit 60 today and my alch is 110 or something I think.. and just before the server went off I hit 203 herbalism cause I went and farmed mats in attempt to catch up. I don’t want to progress too far into BC content without my alch/herbalism up.
On my lvl 30 lock I went Enchant/Tailor but it got behind.. just didn’t give it much lovin’. I just hit 20 on my new mage though and she’s doing a lot better with Enchanting/Tailor, already surpassing my lock. It’s not as bad as I thought it was.
Sorry for the wall of text! 😉
I find it easier personally to take a gathering profession as I level – then keep it at the same rough level as the characters levelling area.
I’m levelling a druid atm as Enchanting/Mining purely so I can swap to Enchanting/Engineering at 80.