Which I think is likely to be either: another crafting profession, or time spent mastering the auction house economy.
Fortunately for all the robber barons out there, there are many more schlubs like myself willing to engage in gathering professions. I enjoy finding the minerals that popup on my minimap, as well as being a fully integrated supply chain for my engineering needs. I certainly could make much more gold optimizing other activities, but this is one optimization aspect of the game that doesn’t really tickle my enjoyment centers.
Of course the most important selection of professions is the one that maximizes your enjoyment per hour, a high-dimensional calculus that for many may indeed be maximizing gold earned. I think this may be what you were alluding to with your long list of gold earning activities.
If you want to run a profession combination because it’s fun, that’s cool. If you want to tell people not to run a combination because it doesn’t synergize, that’s bad advice that needs correcting.
How does skinning take less time than mining or herb-picking anyway? At least the skins are right where you’re standing (or in the case of a hunter, a little ways away). You can level skinning much faster than any other gathering profession.
ETA: for Quasi, having a gathering profession that supplies his crafting is probably a bonus. He certainly isn’t worried about getting to 85 as fast as possible.
YMMV, but I didn’t read this particular post that way.
There is a certain amount of truth to both sides. On the one hand, it just feels right to have a skinner/leatherworker (which my hunter was for a very long time). It fights with a character type, and good feelings are very much a part of this game.
On the other hand, gold is gold, and if it’s faster (or just more fun) to make gold doing quests and then buy the materials for your other profession, or to make gold by farming ore and then buying skins, then that’s certainly the “better” way to play. Lot’s of people are sold the line that by having a feeder gathering profession they will save gold, which is pretty obviously hooey. The Goblins are always right - “time is money, friend”.
Personally, my opinion is to find what you enjoy doing, and earn gold doing that. Sounds logical, but I’ve found way too many people spending way too many hours farming in ways they hate when they could be doing things they enjoy and then buy whatever they were farming.
My WAG is that this doesn’t apply for all items (especally rare drops), just your standard quest drops.
Grooooooooan.
No worries, you found the link before I even got back to the thread!
Blacksmithing probably isn’t going to be very helpful for that character–he won’t get much use out of the items, and you’ll have to buy materials to level it with.
No, it’s not just you. I’m blown away by the new content.
No, that’s how I read most of his posts, too. And I’ve had other people ask me about it in PMs. It’s not just you.
Not when the person you’re giving the advice to is somebody who plays for fun and as therapy for their dementia. **Quasi **isn’t the sort of person who’s looking to min-max or rule the AH. So, to advise him that Skinning/BS probably isn’t a useful combination for his new Hunter is a good move.
I agree with Palooka and Jas09 - while i find it more satisfying on an aesthetic level to gather for my own crafting professions, I also recognize that it’s not a rational reason.
Can you explain that sentence? What isn’t rational about gathering your own materials if that’s the way you want to play? I can see “not an efficient practice”, but I don’t see “not a rational reason”. What is rational in this case, and by what criteria?
It’s totally rational. It may not be optimal, but wanting to be self-sufficient and gather your own materials while questing is hardly irrational.
This reminds me of an odd phenomenon on the EVE Online forums. Apparently there is a small contingent of people who think that mining is about the worst thing you can do in the game. Almost anything else is better for earning money. While that may be true, mining also requires no start-up costs and can be done with extremely low risk. Then, of course, there’s the obvious notion that if everyone took the advice not to gather materials, the economy would come to a complete standstill.
There is one exception to the professions-don’t-matter thing. That’s if your server’s economy is so poor due to low population that you’re unable to purchase the materials you need. In such a situation, you’d need to take the “complimentary” profession. Honestly, if you are in that situation though, just transfer/re-roll.
My biggest problem so far with Cata is that it has left me with no desire at all to level my Priest up from 75. I’ve got one level 80 alliance toon who’s waiting for the activity to die down a little in Hyjal and Vash’jir (he’s on a PvP server and it’s almost impossible to quest at this point), but I’ve had a lot of fun flying around the Old World and visiting all the places one could never get to before. I’ve spent most of my time this week leveling a Worgen (currently level 16) and a Goblin (level 19). the thought of going back to Northrend right now does not appeal to me in the slightest.
What’s the recommended minimum level for the new Cata zones? I might try to just grind it out until I can survive in the new zones…
If getting skillups faster is important to you, then you’re right, it’s not rational. If getting skillups (or xp, or rep, or gear) faster isn’t terribly important to you, then it’s perfectly rational. Not everyone is trying to max out level as quickly as possible, and Quasi is definitely not in the Speedy Gonzalez camp.
Yeah, I don’t think that choosing professions for aesthetic or enjoyment reasons is irrational at all - in fact I’m pretty sure I said as much in my post. I doubt I could do skin/BS or mining/LW or something like that purely for RP reasons (even though I do basically no RP’ing).
What is irrational is thinking that by taking skinning you’re going to spend less gold leveling your leatherworking. The fact that the skins come from ones you collected doesn’t change the value of them. And if you hate skinning but love mining then it makes perfect sense to mine, sell the ore, and buy the skins for your leatherworking.
ETA: Of course it also makes sense to do mining/LW if ores sell for much more than skins on your server. Then you actually are reducing the cost of your leatherworking, since you are earning more gold/hour with mining than you would with skinning.
I’m on a PvP server, too, and I’ve been amazed at how little trouble I’ve had questing in the new zones. The only times I was attacked happened yesterday:
1.) A Mage attacked me and another Warrior (who either died quickly or ran off), and a Hunter joined in. I killed both the Mage and the Hunter.
2.) The Mage from #1 tried going after me again, and one-on-one I creamed his face even faster.
3.) A Warlock came out of nowhere, popped all his CDs to kill me, and then disappeared by the time I was back at my corpse.
4.) A Hunter attacked me in one of the caves in VJ, and the guard crabs (85 Elites) immediately came up out of the water and smooshed his face in.
The faction population balance is pretty even on Korgath–I think it’s just slightly in favor of the Alliance. Everybody’s been behaving themselves pretty well–I’ve seen almost no PvP activity at all, even when going after named spawns. In fact, my biggest problem is when a Horde will try to help me kill a named quest mob faster–because then I feel obligated to stop using Revenge, Shockwave, and Cleave, which actually slows things down.
I’m pretty sure I got a few healer plates for reward on some quests in Hyjal…had to sell them though so I don’t remember the exact stats on them.
Well, BDL is now level 2 in guild rep, so we all receive a 5% bonus in experience for monsters and quests. I’ve done some fishing and cooking broiled mountain trout (+60 to haste and stam, 1 hour), and I left a stack of them in the guild vault for anyone to sample if you haven’t done any fishing/cooking yet. This is very good for dps pallies now who need more haste in their diet.
Also, I need to boost my JC to 475 so I can start the new JC dailies. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE mail me any of the Northrend transmuted gems: Cardinal Rubies, Ametrines, Dreadstones, Eye of Zuls, King’s Ambers, Majestic Zircons and what you want me to make with them. I have quite a few mined gems that need transmuting (along with some eternal shadows, earths, waters and some fires), so if you have the cooldowns at your disposal (if there are any cooldowns at all), let me know so we can arrange a tag team profession leveling appointment. After I finish, I might have quite a few items to either give or leave in the guild bank, but it depends on how much leveling I can get out of these gem cuts.
Miners…I am a blacksmith too. Any ideas to help each other out?
Was it supposed to arrive on Tuesday?
Stupid rassumfrassum Intervene-only bullshit.