I went through the early half of STV (the pre-40 quests) and noticed that the rewards were pretty heavily slanted toward Hunters (probably because they were mostly the Nesingwary camp quests).
There isn’t a straight answer to this, but there’s a couple schools of thought. But first, there comes the advantages
I play a Priest, so I’m only really familiar with those stats, but they apply roughly the same for other classes, just with class appropriate stats. Each profession provides a specific buff, which is either unique or a better version of what is available to everyone else. For enchanters, we can enchant our rings at 19SP each for 38SP, Leatherworks can put a Bracer Enchant on that’s 37 SP better than what’s available to everyone else, Blacksmiths get 2 more sockets which are worth a total of 38 SP now, Jewelcrafters get 3 special Epic gems that equate to 39 SP, Inscriptionists get a special shoulder enchant that works out to be 37 SP better than what’s available to everyone else, Alchemists get Mixology which, when flasked, gives an extra 37 SP. So, as you can see, they all offer roughly the same benefit (though the benefits may differ slightly for other classes and their prefered stats).
You also have the professions that don’t directly relate, like Mining gives extra Stamina, Leatherworking gives extra Crit, Herbalism gives a heal, and Tailor gives specialized cloak enchants.
So, as the schools of thought, you first have the min-maxer who is all about getting the best buffs possible. If this is you, you probably want to go with Jewelcrafting as on profession and Enchanting or Blacksmithing as your second. Not only does it give you the most buffs, but because the JC specific gems are chromatic, which means they match any socket, so if there’s a color that’s not good for you (like I think Blue Sockets suck for Hunters) you can still get Agility or Attack Power out of it, meet a meta-gem requirement (if it requires Blue Gems) and get more socket bonuses. Enchanting and Blacksmith both also offer the slightly better buffs than the others.
The downside to min-maxing is that it can change from patch to patch. For instance, if/when they decide to add Epic Gems, (22 SP instead of 19 SP), the advantage of Jewelcrafting drops from 39 SP to 30 SP (though it still may be good by letting you put useful gems in Blue Sockets), which is considerably worse than the others, while Blacksmithing increases from 38 SP to 44 SP. So those obsessed with min-maxing may have to drop and relearn professions which is expensive and time-consuming. The other problem is, min-maxing may nto provide great synergy with your class, like if you picked up Blacksmithing as a non-plate wearing class, you’re really only getting the buff and some money making, but can’t craft anything useful.
The next school of thought is trying to find professions that either have good synergy together or with your class. For instance, as a Priest, I’m a Tailor/Enchanter, they are good for eachother (I can make stuff with Tailoring and DE it for Enchanting mats, and I need some Infinite Dust to make Imbued Frostweave with Tailoring), and they have good synergy with my class (I wear cloth). For a Hunter, Leatherworking obviously has good synergy since you wear mail. You could also pick ones that go well with any class Alchemy, Jewelcrafting, Inscription, and Enchanting. If you choose any among Leatherworking, Alchemy, Jewelcrafting, or Inscription, you can also choose to grab the appropriate gathering profession, or you can buy your mats off the AH or get them from alts, and double up on them. An ideal consideration here would probably be Leatherworking and Skinning since you get the gathering profession for the one that synergizes well with your class and being able to make stuff for yourself and the Skinning Crit buff is solid for any DPS class.
The downside here, of course, is that if you choose to double up on stuff that synergizes well but need gathering professions, it can get a little expensive (though not as expensive as min-maxing). You obviously also probably don’t get the maximum buffs. However, you’re able to make items for yourself that can make gearing up a little easier and, in the case of Leatherworking, you can enchant your own bracers and make your own leg armors, so you save a bit of effort there.
The last school of thought is making money. Some of the best ways to do it is to get two gathering professions since you have some people who double up on professions that need mats from them but don’t have alts with those professions. You could also go with a profession that makes stuff that sells well, which pretty much is only Jewelcrafting since everyone ALWAYS needs gems for new pieces, regem if they respec, or regem if they get a piece and need to get back to the hit cap or defense cap or expertise cap or whatever. Most of the richest players I know follow this mentality on professions, and many of them are Miners/Jewelcrafters.
The downside here is, obviously, you may end up really losing out on buffs and synergy with your class. You probably lose the least if you’re a tank, since the extra Stamin from Mining is always good and JC works for everyone, but as a hunter, the Mining or Herbalism buffs are pretty much a waste. Also, even without taking advantage of the limited profit from my professions, I never have cash problems; I may not ever buy the 20k mammoth mount with reagent and repair vendors, but I’m never lacking for mats, gems, repairs, or anything I need off the AH, so I think massive amounts of profit has a vastly diminishing return.
Obviously, as you can see, I personally follow the second mindset and, as such, I’d say LW/Skinning would be a good choice for a Hunter. If you’re really not hot on Skinning for some reason, you could double up on something like JC or Alchemy, but that will, of course, get a bit expensive.
So, yeah, pretty verbose for a simple recommendation, but I hope it’s helpful.
That is a fantastic explanation Blaster Master, do you mind if I copy that to my guild website?
Agreed for the hunting quests but also the Camp quests which have so far only resulted in silver and the Booty Bay quests which have been money only. I am only level 33 so maybe this will get better but comparing it to Duskwood, where I had plenty of items from quests, they are far between.
Duskwood is very good for quest rewards, agreed. I’ve noticed in STV and Dustwallow Marsh that actual item rewards tend only to come at the end of a quest chain, so you don’t get them as often.
Thank you, Blaster Master for a very informative post! And also to aktep, for the short but sweet overview.
I usually go for the min/max philosophy in games like this, since even though I’m not really an obsessive power gamer, the advantages are typically large enough to be worth it. WoW seems to be better balanced so that making choices based on the fun factor is pretty much just as viable.
Based on that, and on the info here, I’m leaning towards JC and engineering. BM didn’t mention engineering, but it looks like it might give hunters a boost with ammo and scopes, and I think my troll would look awesome on a hog.
Some of the information I’ve come across may be dated, though, so if anyone knows why engineering would be a particularly poor choice, please feel free to say so.
My Hunter has Engineering and I’ve been trying to keep it up to date so he gets use out of it as he levels. Since you’re at 80, making your own ammo (if you’re using guns; you can’t make arrows) will probably get you the best damage possible, but it’ll be expensive, in opportunity costs if not direct cash. I gave up on trying to make bullets when I realized it was only at most 2 damage per shot better than the stock you can find at a gun vendor, and the vendor was vastly cheaper, as a full bag of self-made ammo requires a lot of ore I could be selling instead. The guns I can make are extremely useful, however, as are the scopes, and I’m looking forward to making a Nesingwary 4000. Engineering is a lot of fun.
I will say, however, you may not want both it and JC. They’re both extremely metal-heavy, and it can get really expensive. If you think you can afford it, then by all means. I don’t know what the typical financial situation is at level 80, but I know Jewelcrafting alone has cost me several hundred gold in materials just to get to 200, and I haven’t gone any higher than that because the next few skill points need even more valuable gems. I don’t know the exact cost, since I try to use materials only I gather (my main is Mining/JC), but you dump a lot of metals and gems into worthless items just to raise your skill.
Heh, thanks, I didn’t think it was all that great since I felt like I was rambling, but by all means, have at it.
Any yeah, I completely forgot about Engineering, sorry. Then again, I’m not sure if I could have said anything useful about it since I’m not even sure what the benefits are. AFAIK, all of the ammo and scopes that you can make with Engineering are not BOP, so you could get those on the AH (though a bit expensive) or gather mats and have someone craft them for you. The Hog is also not BOP, though they are obnoxiously expensive to craft, even as an Engineer, and I usually see them going for around 17k on the AH on my server.
I do know that Engineers get Player only “enchants” like a rocket launcher for your either your gloves, nitro boots (a quick burst of movement speed), and a parachute cloak (reduces fall speed on a 60s CD), but I’m not sure if they get anything else. I know that in 3.1 they’re adding some passive bonuses to some of those like some crit to the nitro boot enchant and some agility to the parachute cloak, and armor to the hand rockets, but they haven’t specified how much, so it’s difficult to tell if it’ll just be to catch up with the existing enchants (12 crit and hit to boots, 22 agility to cloak, or 20 Agility/44 attack power to gloves) while also granting those other abilities or if they’ll also be some higher numbers with which to min-max. Obviously, the glove one is silly for you, since you’re a hunter you just don’t need it, but the other ones are obviously a point of interest.
The other thing that engineers get is goggles and at least in BC, Engineering goggles were usually best in slot, but the ones that are available now, at least for me, are definitely not as good as T7.25
So, sadly, I really can’t give a whole lot of useful advice on how good or bad Engineering may be from a min-max perspective. I do know that the engineers in my guild seem to really enjoy the profession in general and some of the nifty stuff they can make. My advice would be to look over the patterns and decide for yourself, keeping in mind the changes coming in 3.1 I mentioned.
You don’t have to be an engineer to have a hog, just to build one. Which means that if you aren’t an engineer and you want a bike, you’d better find an engineer that you trust a lot, since mats required for it (over and above the 12 Titansteel bars, handfuls of cobalt bolts, and Arctic Fur) cost 12,500 gold and must be purchased by the engineer (they don’t even show up for sale from the vendor unless you’re a level 450 Engineer who’s Exalted with the Horde Expedition). In other words, you have to give him your money and hope he doesn’t just abscond with it.
Something to keep in mind about crafting professions: They can be horribly expensive to level, and depending on your server, it’s frequently cheaper to buy something on the AH than it is to craft it yourself.
As an example, I worked my tailor up to max skill before this expansion came out, and figured I’d make a mint crafting bags and such. I found that on the average, the mats for an imbued netherweave bag were worth 5G to 10G more on the auction house than the finished bag. In other words, every time I crafted one of these bags myself instead of buying it, I lost gold.
It still made sense to be a tailor, because of the epic frozen shadoweave set I made myself. It was BOP, so there was no way to get it except to make it yourself. Since I’m a solo PvE player, not a raider or PvPer, I wore that set until about level 74.
If you want to take a crafting profession from zero to max, expect to spend thousands of gold doing it. At least that’s my experience in three years of playing.
Jewelcrafting is horrendous about this. Where I’m stuck right now is at about skill 210 (213, really, but that’s not the point). The most reliable thing to craft between 210 and 220, when you can start working with thorium, is Aquamarine Signets, which take 4 Flasks of Mojo and 3 Aquamarines. Flasks aren’t too difficult, they drop pretty often from trolls around levels 40-50. But 30 Aquamarines is a different matter entirely. I sold a stack of 20 I’d gathered over many long hours for about 180 gold several weeks back. For 10 skill points, a powerleveler will spend something like 300 gold, if the Aquamarines are even on the AH. Collecting them yourself is a daunting task too; Aquamarines have a 30% chance of being prospected from Mithril Ore, so to reliably collect 30 of them you need 500 ore. (Obviously the real number is less than this, as Aquamarines do drop from Mithril Deposits and some critters, but it’s still a hefty number.)
There’s another option, the Golden Hare figurine, that “only” requires 6 Gold Bars and 2 Citrines each, but good luck finding the design on the AH for less than 100 gold, if you can find it at all. (I actually have been slacking in watching the AH for this; through diligent mining and buying low on the AH I actually have enough Gold Bars to do this, I just don’t have the design.)
Barring a significant stroke of luck, I’m putting Jewelcrafting on hold until I get high enough level that I can afford to drop some money on raising the skill.
When it comes to crafting professions, I can’t really speak about power leveling since i’ve been a Tailor Enchanter since the classic days and leveled them along as I leveled my character, but I can give some thoughts. Basically, orange means always level, yellow means usually, green means sometimes, and grey means never. Sometimes an orange recipe may guarantee a level, but a yellow one is a lot cheaper, so making more of them still puts you ahead. Hell, sometimes even making a green recipe is the most efficient way. I remember when leveling my tailoring, someone wanted the Frost Resist Set, the Chest was yellow and the other two pieces were green, I made the Chest first and didn’t skill up, but I got points off of both of the other two pieces. I got a number of levels making frostweave bags that were a green recipe at the time simply because they were alot cheaper than any of the yellow or orange recipes and I knew they would sell well.
For some reason, the quoting function isn’t working now, so I’ll fake it.
Invisible Wombat said “Since I’m a solo PvE player, not a raider or PvPer, I wore that set until about level 74.”
As an 80 hunter with an identity crisis and no particular love for instances, I’m wondering just what you do with your toons once they hit 80, as a solo player who doesn’t pvp. Me? I make new toons. 
Achievements, reputation, mounts, pets.
I have to ask since this is something I’ve genuinely wondered about. What’s the point of playing an MMO if you don’t like raids, instances, or pvp? Wouldn’t you be better off playing a single player game that doesn’t include so much of the problems (not to mention cost) involved with making interaction with multiple people possible. That is, sure, I sometimes enjoy a little solo play, but if I didn’t like raiding and pvp, I’d most likely be playing a different game.
Well, I can’t answer of others, but I play WoW for the quests and professions. And WoW has a much more detailed world than any single player game; I’ve yet to finish all the quests, and I’m a long way from maxxing my skills.
PvP and instances are simply diversions from that for me.
Depends.
Some gamers might like to treat it as a solo game with a built-in chat function, allowing them to talk with buddies while they play by themselves. I do this on City of Heroes; I’m solo 90% of the time, but I like having chat available.
Some gamers might like to play with other people but can’t handle huge groups. I play with my girlfriend all the time on WoW and nobody else (although we’re prepping for endgame raids), and my roommate enjoys playing with a few friends at a time on City of Heroes, but a full team overwhelms her.
A few MMOs offer a unique experience you can’t really get from a single-player game. There is no game quite like WoW or City of Heroes. I think Morrowind and Fable come closest, but they’re still not really the same.
Raiding and PVP are just two aspects of the social nature of MMOs, really, and pretty intense ones at that. Someone looking for a more laid-back social experience would reasonably be turned off by them.
I’ve posted before that I rarely group at all, let alone for instances or raiding, and that I would actually prefer WoW to be scalable to the size of your “group” (from solo to five or 10 or 25 or 40), so I COULD play the whole game solo. However, I enjoy the MMP aspect of WoW in the cities/AH/etc. I just don’t want to actually quest or grind with anyone else.
So why play WoW? Because I love the world, and the lore, and the look, and the fun. I love just about everything about the game but the necessity for grouping for certain content.
There are two schools of engineering. One, goblin, is concerned mainly with things that go boom. The other, gnomish, tends towards gizmos. Gnomish engineering is open to the Horde, by the way, you don’t have to be a gnome.
Some stuff, like parachute cloaks and dynamite, is potentially useful for any class (for my Pallidin Engineer dynamite is the only way she can pull an enemy). Some, like mechanical squirrel pets, are just novelties (but you might enjoy the novelties, I certainly do). Engineers can also make their own flying mounts as well as motorcyles. At higher level engineers can make field repair bots, potion injectors, and temporary mailboxes that are well liked by high level players. In general, for every class there is some engineering stuff that is redundant (my Paladin can rez on her own, she doesn’t need goblin jumper cables) but other stuff that is useful. If you aren’t a min-max power raider or PvPer you might actually enjoy engineering more for the fun and whimsical aspects of it.
But it is expensive to level. That’s the biggest drawback in my opinion.
Also, the Dustwallow Marsh rewards, at least the ones connected to Theramore, are heavily skewed toward paladins and warriors, since they hand out a lot of plate.
What I’ve found sells really well (my paladin is a tailor) is the Black Mageweave Leggings. Most likely because, on a female toon, they look like a pair of black panties with matching black thigh-high stockings, and combined with a Black Mageweave Vest, the vest and “panties” meld together to look like a one-piece black teddy. The only thing that would make the “set” look cooler would be a garter belt connecting the vest and the leggings 
The various Swashbuckler’s Shirts seem to sell pretty well, too.
But other than that, I’m not making a lot of money with Tailoring. For the most part, I’m just using the skill to make nice clothes for myself and my other toons. And bags. It’s nice being able to set up new toons with 12-slot Mageweave Bags at level 1.
It is nice to know that ogres seem to be the best source for “free” cloth. As near as I can tell, ogres lvl 30-40 drop silk (so I head for STV), 40-50 drop mageweave (I head for Tanaris), and 50-60 drop runecloth (Burning Steppes, Searing Gorge). I find myself wondering what these ogres are doing with all this cloth, seeing as how they wear so little. I have to assume that, after I kill them, I’m just stealing their loincloths (what’s that smell?). I also find it somewhat disturbing that the ogres at my level are now so big that when they fall over backwards my toon is left staring straight into their crotches :eek: Still, my Tailoring skill has fallen behind my character level, so I’ve been collecting a lot of runecloth lately but my Tailoring isn’t high enough yet to do anything with it. So I’ve run out of “found” mageweave and have been buying it at the AH (expensive!) simply because I’m concentrating on leveling my toon and haven’t had time to run back to lower-level areas to collect mageweave.
Mining: What, exactly, makes Silver Ore so much more valuable than Gold Ore? Right now I’ve got a stack of 18 Silver Ores, with Auctioneer showing a market price of 85g 32s, and a stack of 15 Gold Ores showing a market price of only 40g 69s 20c.
Oh, and now I’m positive my pally will have 1000g before lvl 60. She’s currently lvl 57 and has 927g 29s 73c 