Which profession is best? Well, when it comes to professions, there is a short answer, and a long answer. The short answer is, they all are. All of the crafting professions will give you roughly the same bonus, and if you are not too concerned about min/maxing, whatever you take is probably fine. When talking about the gathering professions however, only really skinning gives a valuable bonus – crit. Herbalism gives a heal and mining gives you more health, and while both a good, they are very situational, and probably not worth much compared to the damage you can get from skinning.

Some people take one crafting and one gathering profession. The latter would be to compliment your crafting, as to save money and be self sufficient. Others, myself included, level up two crafting professions, but this is obviously costly, because you need the materials from somewhere. The cheapest version of these are tailoring and enchanting, where all items can be farmed without a gathering profession.

But when it comes to bonuses, if you are not too concerned about squeezing out that extra +2 spell power, just take whatever you enjoy playing with. But if you want the most out of your two professions, its a whole different matter.

The raw stats

First off, lets cover the pure stat bonuses you can get from professions:

• Alchemy: +47 spellpower
• Blacksmithing: +46 spellpower
• Engineering: -1 spellpower, -23 haste, +Hyperspeed Accelerators
• Enchanting: +46 spellpower
• Inscription: +46 spellpower.
• Jewelcrafting: +48 spellpower
• Leatherworking: +46 spellpower
• Tailoring: Lightweave Embroidery
• Skinning: +40 crit rating

Obviously, most of this is pretty tangable, and as you can see, the DPS difference between Inscription and Jewelcrafting is only ~8 DPS at the worst. You may think that engineering looks to be off to a very bad start, but as you will see, this is not quite the case!

Alchemy

Alchemy gives you access to Mixology, which increases the potency of your Flask of the Frost Wyrm to 172, as well as increasing the duration of the flask. It also gives you an Endless Mana Potion to play around with, and lets you transmute Cardinal Rubies.

Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing lets you put additional sockets on your wrists and gloves, and a cardinal ruby in each gives you 46 spellpower.

Enchanting

Gain access to a cheap +23 spellpower enchant on both of your rings.

Inscription

Instead of using your Sons of Hodir shoulder enchant, you can gain a 70 SP/15 crit shoulder enchant, which is 46 spellpower higher than the one from SOH.

Jewelcrafting

Use 3x Runed Dragon’s Eye instead of Cardinal Rubies for another 48 spellpower.

Leatherworking

Lets you enchant +76 spellpower to your wrists, instead of the basic +30 from enchanting.

Skinning

Well, 40 crit rating. Joy.

Tailoring

Tailoring comes out slightly better than the professions mentioned above, as the Lightweave Embroidery gives you a proc increasing your spellpower by 295 for 15 seconds. With a 35% chance to proc and a 60 second cooldown, you stand to gain an average of +70 spellpower, but since you lose the haste enchant on your cloak, the total benefit is somewhere along the lines of +55 spellpower.

Engineering

Obviously, I’m not biased. Scratch that, I run a blog, ofcourse I’m biased. Man, I just loooveee me some engineering. Out of all of the professions, engineering actually has the most potential. You will loose your normal glove and cloak enchant, but it gives you the Hyperspeed Accelerators and Springy Arachnoweave. The Arachnoweave almost makes up for the loss of spell power, and while you are losing 23 base haste, you gain something a lot more precious.

The Hyperspeed Accelerators gives you a 60 second cooldown, 12 sec duration, 340 haste. If you strictly divide this by 5, the average +haste comes out at 68. But we’re not “just” using it at random times. The Hyperspeed Accelerators has to be used during lunar eclipse, the only time where you actually need haste.

Adding 340 haste to your starfires is a massive bonus. At 998 haste unbuffed, with bloodlust, a speed potion, nature’s grace and these babies, I’m doing 1.1 second starfires. That is insane amounts of damage, all crits, all fast, and a huge languish tick. If you use it smart, you can have it up for every other lunar eclipse.

But, you don’t have to ever think about using this. You can make it use itself. Turn your starfire into a macro, and have it cast automaticly whenever its up, and it will start with the first lunar starfire whenever its off cooldown. It can get scewered, but you’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly. The macro I use is this:

#show Starfire
/use 10
/use Starfire
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

The first line merely shows the visual graphics of Starfire on your button. You can change this if you like. The second one “uses” your gloves, or rather, the enchant on it, meaning that it will be used when you press the macro if it’s off cooldown. Thirdly, it casts the actual starfire, and I’ve topped off my macro with a clear command, which removes the red text spam in the top. You would probably also want to go into Sound Settings and disable Error Speech.

Aside from that, Engineering is insanely fun. Rocket Boots has saved me countless of times – or at the very least, given me some leasure – and they are very fun to use. They make you run faster than a land mount, and there is nothing better than a rocket powered moonkin. Add to that the 30 second cooldown parachute, Jeeves your portable butler, MOLL-E the mailbox, the Portable Wormhole, saronite bombs and lots of gadgets. Oh my god, I’m having a lot of fun with engineering.

My perspective

My druid has seen a lot of professions. It started as a classic Leatherworker and Skinner. In Wrath of the Lich King I swapped it to Jewelcrafting and Mining. Then I dropped the Mining and picked up Enchanting instead for a double bonus, and lately I’ve dropped Jewelcrafting for Engineering.

While Jewelcrafting is a tiny bit stronger than Enchanting, having two professions dependant on ores doesn’t seem like a good combination. I’ve planned ahead, and I guess that I will use the money I make from Enchanting to level up my engineering.

If you want two crafting professions, be ready to pay it. If money is tight, level up one of your crafting professions with it’s corrosponding gathering profession, and then drop the gathering one to pick up another crafting. You will have to supply the materials to level this – and your other crafting profession – from the auction house, or use alts to gather the materials.

Enjoy!

- QQ

I used this page as a reference for the bonuses.