Ever wondered what the benefits of each profession really are in Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK)? What is unique to every trade skill at level 80? Well, you’re about to find out. In this professions guide, you get an overview of the benefits of each profession so you can decide what’s best for your character.
Herbalism
Herbalism is one of the three gathering professions in WotLK (the other two being mining and skinning). A herbalist can gather herbs that are used in various professions, most notably alchemy and inscription. The main purpose of taking up herbalism is either to feed your alchemy or inscription profession, or gather herbs and sell for gold.
Since the introduction of inscription, herbalism is now a quite profitable gathering profession if you know what and where to gather.
Herbalists also get an ability called Lifeblood, a heal-over-time that scales with herbalism skill level and can be used on themselves. It is automatically granted in your spell book; it doesn’t need to be trained.
- Lifeblood rank 1 – No character level requirement & 75 herbalism
- Lifeblood rank 2 – No character level requirement & 150 herbalism
- Lifeblood rank 3 – Requires character level 10 & 225 herbalism
- Lifeblood rank 4 – Requires character level 25 & 300 herbalism
- Lifeblood rank 5 – Requires character level 40 & 375 herbalism
- Lifeblood rank 6 – Requires character level 55 & 450 herbalism
This ability can be a great help while leveling, especially for classes without healing abilities. Not to mention the gold you get from gathering herbs and selling the on the auction house. All in all, that makes herbalism an excellent leveling profession.
Herbalism goes well with alchemy or inscription.
Mining
Mining is one of the three gathering professions in WotLK (the other 2 being herbalism, skinning). Miners mine various metal ore, which is used by jewelcrafters. The ore can also be smelted by miners into bars. The bars are used by engineers and blacksmiths. The smelting ability is learned together with mining.
The main purpose of taking up mining is either to feed your own need for ore and bars for jewelcrafting, engineering or blacksmithing, or sell the ore and bars for gold (usually on the auction house).
Mining has long been a very lucrative profession, frequently cited as a more profitable choice than herbalism and skinning.
Miners also get a passive stamina bonus from Toughness:
- Toughness rank 1 – No character level required & 75 mining
- Toughness rank 2 – No character level required & 150 mining
- Toughness rank 3 – Requires character level 10 & 225 mining
- Toughness rank 4 – Requires character level 25 & 300 mining
- Toughness rank 5 – Requires character level 40 & 375 mining
- Toughness rank 6 – Requires character level 55 & 450 mining
In my opinion, this buff isn’t huge. But more health is always nice to have, especially for tanks and in PvP. Mining is often referred to as a great leveling profession, since you can do it while questing and it’s worth a lot of gold.
Mining, as mentioned, goes well with engineering, jewelcrafting or blacksmithing.
Skinning
Skinning is one of the three gathering professions in WotLK (the other 2 being herbalism and mining).
Skinners skin beasts and various specialty mobs such as drakes, for the skins and scales etc. The skins are used in leatherworking.
Skinning is convenient because you don’t need to go out of your way to do it. You’re going to kill and loot mobs anyhow, and skinning them only takes a couple of seconds more.
The downside is that skinning isn’t typically as profitable as herbalism or mining. Skinning also requires you to kill mobs, thereby slowing you down.
As a skinner you gain the passive ability Master of Anatomy, that scales with your skinning skill level, and grants passive +critical strike rating. Nice, especially for classes and specs that scale well with +crit.
- Master of Anatomy rank 1 – No character level required & 75 skinning
- Master of Anatomy rank 2 – No character level required & 150 skinning
- Master of Anatomy rank 3 – Requires character level 10 & 225 skinning
- Master of Anatomy rank 4 – Requires character level 25 & 300 skinning
- Master of Anatomy rank 5 – Requires character level 40 & 375 skinning
- Master of Anatomy rank 6 – Requires character level 55 & 450 skinning
The 40 crit rating translates to 0.87% crit at level 80.
Alchemy
High level alchemist, you can specialize in making either potions, elixirs or transmutations.
Either of these specializations will give you a chance to create more than one of each, obviously leading to greater profits. That can make alchemy a good gold-making crafting profession.
Thanks to Mixology, granted at alchemy skill 50, you also get more benefits from the elixirs and flasks that you are able to make.
There are also a number of alchemy-specific items, like gear and items that only alchemists can use.
Alchemy trinkets
These are only useable by alchemists.
Alchemy potions and flasks
Here are some level 80 alchemy-specific potions (some of these are useable in arena). These are only useable by alchemists.
Alchemy has pretty strong benefits. You can keep +40 strength or +47 spell power or +80 attack power on yourself at all times with Flask of the North, and get additional benefits from potions and flasks thanks to Mixology. You can also use Crazy Alchemist’s Potion. Plus the gold making potential on top of that makes alchemy a powerful profession.
Blacksmithing
At level 400, any blacksmith regardless of specialization learns Socket Bracer and Socket Gloves, allowing you to add two extra gems to your gear.
A blacksmith can do various specializations, but they are all deprecated, meaning they have no significance at level 80. So you don’t need to take up any specialization at all.
A blacksmith can craft exceptional tanking/damage/healing gear. However, that gear – at level 80 – is not bind on pickup, so you can just have another blacksmith craft it for you.
All in all, the only exclusive benefit of being a blacksmith is two extra sockets.
Enchanting
One benefit of being an enchanter is that you can enchant your rings. Only enchanters can do that.
The level 80 ring enchants are:
You can apply the same enchant to both your rings, so you can get 2x 40 attack power, or 2x 23 spell power, or 2x 30 stamina, or some other combination.
There were no items exclusive to enchanting added in WotLK, so the above ring enchants constitute the entire benefit of being an enchanter, except for the obvious gold making potential of selling enchants and using disenchanting.
You can potentially make a lot of gold with enchanting, by selling enchants on the auction house.
Disenchanting can be used to disenchant bind on pickup loot. You can sometimes buy cheap green and blue armor and weapons on the auction house, disenchant them, and sell the materials for a good profit.
Abyssal Shatter, available at level 445, can sometimes net you a LOT of gold as well for very little work.
Engineering
Engineering can be one of the most fun professions in game, due to all the special things you get.
Combat minions, summonable vendors, mailboxes, teleports… the list goes on. Comparing it to the other professions is quite hard, but here’s a try.
Enginnering “enchants”
You can attach these to your own gear only.
Nitro Boosts – This is an engineering “enchant” that is actually attached to your belt, not boots. The on-use run speed can save your life once every three minutes. Nitro Boosts do not work in arena.
Hand-mounted Pyro Rocket – Now this has a high awesome-factor from the start. Shooting rockets from your arm every 45 seconds? No problem. Engineers can do that. If you’re a damage dealing class, you can use this on every cooldown, and it’ll provide a bit of extra DPS. Some players take engineering just for this enchant, to use it for extra burst in arena.
Hyperspeed Accelerators – Another enchant for gloves that grants you haste every 12 seconds of a minute, which translates to +68 haste rating on average if you activate it on every cooldown. Before crushing down the numbers for each class, it’s a matter of personal choice. Usable in arena.
Personal Electromagnetic Pulse Generator – Confuses mechanical mobs for 3 seconds, probably not the best for PvP nor PvE content. Does not work in arena.
Frag Belt – Belt enchant that stacks with the Eternal Belt Buckle. Works just like a Cobalt Frag Bomb. Using it will put your Saronite Bombs on cooldown. Does not work in arena.
Flexweave Underlay / Springy Arachnoweave – Usable in arena. Cloak enchants that acts as a parachute to allow you to fall slowly for 30 seconds. They work just like the earlier Parachute Cloak but with a 1 min cooldown instead of 30 seconds. Flexweave is the melee enchant, offering +23 agility in addition to the slowfall effect, while the Archnoweave enchant is the caster version, offering +27 spell power.
Reticulated Armor Webbing – Usable in Arena. Provides 885 Armor to gloves, arguably the best enchant for non-druid tanks currently in game. Also can be a pretty respectable PvP enchant for cloth classes.
Goblin or Gnomish engineering specializations?
Goblin vs. Gnomish? When it comes to engineering, specializations actually matter, to a degree.
It used to be that you couldn’t change specialization, however it’s now possible to switch (at a cost of 150 gold), preventing you from having to level up your engineering from 1 if you decide to change specialization.
Goblin engineering tends to have more explosives while Gnomish engineering tends to have more devices. Note that many of the items (but not all) that require a specialization to learn do not require the specialization to craft and/or use them. This means that once you obtain all the recipes from one specialization, you can simply spend the 150 g and switch specializations.
Twinks can generally get a lot of PvP usage out of the Gnomish devices and are still able to use most of the grenades. Goblin engineering however grants increased damage through the Goblin Mortar and Goblin Dragon Gun, which do not share a cooldown with grenades and bombs (however they do share a cooldown with each other).
Notable differences at level 80 (not a complete list):
Dimensional Ripper – Everlook. You can teleport yourself to Everlook in Winterspring with a 4 hour cooldown.
Ultrasafe Transporter – Toshley’s Station
Ultrasafe Transporter – Gadgetzan. You can teleport yourself to Gadgetzan in Tanaris with a 4 hour cooldown.
Pet Bombling and Lil’ Smoky are no longer specialization specific.
Engineering-only items
Apart from the above mentioned items, there are a few engineering-only items that may be considered cool/useful. These require sufficient skill in engineering to use.
Arcanite Dragonling, Mithril Mechanical Dragonling, Mechanical Dragonling – Combat pets, the damage from these pets at level 80 is pretty much negligible, they do however work as a vanity pet that you can summon every five minutes.
World Enlarger – This trinket is so powerful, it affects the WHOLE world. Makes everything around you larger so that you appear smaller. Will be cancelled if you attack, 5 minute duration, 15 minute cooldown.
Gnomish Shrink Ray – Shrinks the target and reduces its attack power by 250. Interestingly it can be used against some raid bosses. It can however backfire, having resulting in unexpected side effects.
Gnomish Net-o-Matic Projector – Nets a target in place for 20 seconds (10 when used against players), works in arena.
Deepdive Helmet – Allows underwater breathing, works as long as you have the helmet equipped.
Gnomish Cloaking Device – 10 seconds of invisibility, 1 hour cooldown, useful for sneaking past mobs if you are soloing a dungeon.
Gnomish Universal Remote – Mind control for robots. Mechanical bosses are immune to this though.
Turbo-Charged Flying Machine Control – Epic flying mount – for those who just don’t trust mounts they didn’t build themselves. (See also its little brother, the Flying Machine Control)
MOLL-E – Portable mailbox, 10 minute duration, 2 hour cooldown. Once summoned, it’s usable by anyone of the same faction.
Wormhole Generator: Northrend – Allows you to teleport to Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord, SholazarBasin, Icecrown or The Storm Peaks. 4 hour cooldown. Not usable by others in your party/raid. Sometimes, very rarely will give you the option to port underground, allowing you to purchase the dragonling schematics (in limited stock) from a vendor underneath Dalaran.
Jeeves – Your own personal robot butler. Allows you to access your bank, in addition allows you and your party/raid to repair and sells level 80 reagents as well as level 75 white (common) quality ammunition
Zapthrottle Mote Extractor – shows the location of nearby gas clouds on your minimap when it is in your inventory. This is in addition to any other tracking you might have active. The on-use ability allows you to extract motes or the lesser forms of eternals such as crystallized fire. Make sure you read my guides to farming gold with engineering and mining in Outland and farming gold with engineering and mining in WotLK to learn how to use the Zapthrottle Mote Extractor effectively for gold making.
Level 72 Goggles – the goggles crafted by engineers can be used at level 72, and since they have an item level of 200 they can provide a nice boost to leveling speed and lower level raiding. These also have an on-use affect, acting as a scope which allows you to look far into the distance.
Engineering items that anyone can use
Since the items below are useable by anyone, even those without engineering, there is the potential for making gold by selling them on the auction house.
High-powered Flashlight – Calls down a beam of light, identical to an Elder’s Moonstone from the Lunar Festival, however the trinket is not consumed when used.
Gnomish Army Knife – Gives the engineer a 50% chance to resurrect a friendly player every 30 minutes. In addition it also includes a Gyromatic Micro-Adjuster, Arclight Spanner, Flint and Tinder (no longer used), Blacksmithing Hammer, Mining Pick, and a Skinning Knife. Non engineers can also use one, however they only gain the effect of the tools, not the ability to resurrect.
Crashin’ Thrashin’ Robot – Watch your robot pet do battle with other Crashin’ Thrashin’ Robots.
Mechano-hog (Horde version) – This is an epic ground mount that has a passenger seat. This is the Horde version.
Mekgineer’s Chopper (Alliance version) – This is an epic ground mount that has a passenger seat. This is the Alliance version.
Inscription
With the arrival of WotLK, another profession was added: inscription.
It provides you and your fellow players with glyphs which modify your abilities, and many glyphs are greatly in demand because they are nice for either PvP or PvE, and it is possible to earn great amounts of gold by selling them on the auction house.
You either learn these glyphs from your trainer, or get them from a vendor. Some rare glyphs can be discovered by doing Minor Inscription Research / Northrend Inscription Research.
If you have inscription, you get one of the following shoulder enchants:
- Master’s Inscription of the Axe
- Master’s Inscription of the Crag
- Master’s Inscription of the Pinnacle
- Master’s Inscription of the Storm
Keep in mind, anyone else can get weaker versions of the above enchants, so the additional benefits for having inscription are: +80 attack power or +46 spell power or +40 dodge rating or +46 spell power.
Jewelcrafting
Jewelcrafters benefit from some gems only they can use, so called “Jeweler’s Gems”. You can only have any 3 of these equipped on the gear you wear.
All these gems are made out of Dragon’s Eyes and have no more than one stat, much like the normal red, yellow and blue gems for everyone else. The Dragon’s Eyes can be bought with Dalaran Jewelcrafter’s Token. You can get the jewelcrafting quests for the tokens from Timothy Jones in Dalaran inside the jewelcrafter shop (Cartier & Co. Fine Jewelry).
Red gems
68+ Attack Power, 39+ Spell Power and 34+ of the following stats: Strength, Agility, Parry Rating, Armor Penetration Rating, Expertise Rating and Dodge Rating.
Yellow gems
34+ of the following stats: Intellect, Resilience Rating, Haste Rating, Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating and Defense Rating.
Blue Gems
51+ Stamina, 43+ Spell penetration, 34+ Spirit and 17+ mana every 5 seconds.
Most of the items you need for jewelcrafting come from mining, and they therefore make a great combo.
It may seem like Jewelcrafters get the best benefits, seeing how huge the stats are on their gems, but keep in mind that everyone else can get epic gems with good stats, so that must be taken into account. For example, a jewelcrafter could have 3 x 39 spell power gems giving 117 spell power. But anyone else can have 3 x 23 spell power, totaling 69. So the jewelcrafting benefit in this case is “only” 48 spell power.
Leatherworking
With leatherworking, you can potentially make tons of gold by crafting gear and selling it on auction house. Always check out the total cost of making it vs. the price on auction house.
The high level unique leatherworker benefit is to get your own bracer enchant, and cheaper leg enchants (physical ones).
Leatherworking wrist enchants
The linings above are learned from a trainer, but there are also some with resistance.
Leatherworking leg enchants
You can also make leg enchants super cheap for yourself. These are much cheaper than the alternative for everyone else.
Aside from the gold-making and gold-saving potential, the benefits of leatherworking basically come down to one of these:
- +130 attack power
- +76 spell power
- +102 stamina
Keep in mind that everyone else can still get 50 attack power or 30 spell power or 40 stamina, so your true leatherworking benefit is “only” +80 attack power or +46 spell power or +62 stamina.
There were no craftable bind-on-pickup (BoP) leatherworking items added in WotLK, so you’re not missing out on any BoP gear by not having leatherworking.
Leatherworking specializations do not matter much, if anything, at level 80.
Tailoring
As a tailor, your trademark will be your flying carpets that work like flying mounts:
At higher levels you get cloak enchants that really can be nice, with the choice of these 3:
These are better than cloak enchants for non-tailors.
You also get dirt cheap leg enchants so you can enchant your own gear much cheaper than anyone else:
The tailoring specializations do not really give you any unique advantages one way or the other.
There were no craftable gear unique to tailors added in WotLK, so you’re not missing out on anything there if you’re not a tailor. The one unique tailoring item that was added (except the flying carpets) was Frostweave Net.
Conclusion
As you can see from this profession comparison guide, many professions have been “normalized” to provide comparable benefits.
For example: alchemy, blacksmithing, enchanting, inscription, jewelcrafting and leatherwoking grant almost the same stats, with jewelcrafting and blacksmithing having more choices and alchemy having some other perks.
Tailoring and engineering give you unique enchants.
The gathering professions are best for gold and the extra abilities are nothing to scoff at either.
All in all, which professions to choose is not self-evident, but the differences, in my opinion, are not huge. If you really change your mind, you can unlearn professions and choose something else.