Profession Priorities

NOTE: I'm just about finished my most up to date version of The List. I point this out because I was wondering if people wanted to know my general range of what I pay for materials to craft everything. Let me know in a comment and if there's enough interest I'll write another list of everything I buy.


One important thing to keep straight is the order in which you do things. Since cata is still fairly new a lot of us are likely still leveling up our professions. I'm sure most people go to wow-professions.com for the leveling info and call it done. Bad idea! As I mentioned in my from the ground up project, it is best to level a profession profitably rather than quickly.

Look at what gives skill ups and figure out what sells, how likely it will sell and weigh that against the skill ups you get from it. Also be sure to take into the investment aspect of a profession. Some might not make you any money until they're almost maxed while some will make cash right away. Always look at every angle there is and make the best decision you can from the information available. Just be sure that you have ALL the info first.

But before you get into even starting to level your professions, think about which one to take care of first. It's not very likely that you can pay the exuberant prices of new materials and max out every profession you have as fast as you can hit the craft all button. Even if you could like me, I highly suggest against that.

This is my next step in returning to the AH game.

Of all the professions in addition to their profitability, also consider their usefulness and convenience that they afford you. Personally, I never like to spam in trade for a JC that's bothered getting the cut I need or an enchanter. If you're the same way, this is an important thing to consider as you might have a local enchanter on call to take care of your gear but get most profit from JC then its an easy decision.

Out of all the professions available, here's the ones that I'm considering to max out first or last and why I think you should do the same.

JC:
With the ability to DE cheap rings and such just as you could in wrath to fuel enchanting or sell raw materials makes this a good idea right off the bat. But in addition to that gems are always in demand and with the color/stat matches being shifted there are no worthless gems anymore. There's a solid in demand cut for every color so when prospecting and don't get all uber awesome gems you're just going to make less profit instead of zero profit. If you have access to a friendly enchanter to DE your junk, the leveling cost of JC is almost nothing after the sale/use of enchanting mats. All that considered makes this one of the top professions to take care of first.

Last note on JC is that while rare gem cuts may give you 100g+ profit here and there, you have to beware of the constant and sudden price drops from people leveling their professions and dropping all their wares on the AH at a loss. When this happens, and it will, you can either be patient and wait for them to be bought up or you can try to flip them yourself for a profit. If you want to flip them do it now as prices are steadily decreasing.


Enchanting:
Complimenting JC with the DE ability is very good, the same can be said with all the quest reward greens and any that you can find on the AH (crafted dumps or drops). The old world enchants are still in demand so if you have those recipes your profession is still top quality. Also if you're leveling your enchanter you'll have another gathering profession in addition to any they already have. However with raids not really seeing much action just yet you'll have to wait a bit before the big profit enchants start having a market, especially with the price of crystals being what they are (1400g/ea on my server).

All in all, still a highly recommended profession to max out. Keep in mind though that if you have the high demand old world enchants, this profession is making good money right now and will stay that way for a while, thus reducing the need to level it asap.


LW, Blacksmithing, Tailoring:
Gear professions are a here and there sort of thing. They start strong at the start while people are trying to outgrow their greens and then are largely ignored. The exceptions being LW with the ability to turn plain leather into heavy and tailoring with their CD. Out of all of these I'd go with tailoring for the threads and CD followed by LW and lastly smithing. The main thing to consider here is the starter gear markets on your server. If they're good then these might take precedence over the rest due to the huge profits you can make right away, but you'll have to make an equally large investment. Make sure that you first compare what you have against how much is being dumped on the AH.

However there IS a new belt buckle and god knows those were IMPOSSIBLE to keep in stock of for wrath. Seriously, I once bought well over 2,000 saronite bars just to make them and nothing else and was empty in 2 weeks. So this does make smithing an extremely tempting prof to level up. Unfortunately it needs 525 skill level and that's a bit much for just one item to craft. Again, this depends on how well you did with buckles in the past and how much of the gear you skill up with can be put to use to determine if it's worth it or not. The obvious plus is that everybody needs buckles while the leg armors from LW/tailoring are only needed by a few.


Alchemy:
New crafted mount? Awesome! Market for something insanely expensive? Not a big one. I was never a large fan of this profession during wrath and with the cauldrons being available, like a fish feast for flasks, I'm not too sure how well this one will be for profit minus xmute mastery. Unless something amazing comes to my attention, this will be one of the last professions I level.


Gathering professions:
If you can, have one while leveling, but since I only have the one I won't be pressed over it. Out of all of them though I'd suggest working on mining first. For one the ore can sell for a premium since so many professions use it in one way or another. And the other reason is that if you use the bars yourself you can save a decent amount of coin when the ore is cheaper than the bars. If nothing else you can smelt the ore and sell the bars for a small but easy profit.


Inscription:
Ah, ye old cash cow how I love you. Even though they increased the materials for glyphs, they still work the same with mass sales for small profits on each with huge competition. I'll be trying to level this one asap just to get myself back into the playing field. Not as important as JC or enchanting, but close.


So what I'm doing is leveling enchanting first as my main is the enchanter and it's my favorite market so that's a no brainer. That's being followed by JC and a crafting profession that I decide on once the gear market settles down, but it will most likely be tailoring. I was blown away at the tailoring profits the first time and hoping to be again.

After those will be inscription (assuming I choose to level a gear profession) mostly because I don't like playing a warrior in all honesty. But at the end of the day, you should go with what is most cost effective considering leveling costs, estimated sale price of crafted goods, and potential profit at max level.

And lastly here's the short check list of things to consider when leveling a profession.

-Amount of items worth selling
-Potential profit margins on everything sold
-If any of the crafted items for leveling will be of use to you
-Supply and demand of those items
-Consistency of sales
-Amount of competition for the market
-Market stability
-Price to level
-Amount of money that can be made back from leveling
-How much you can afford to lose in an investment if the market goes sour


Thanks for stopping by!