Can someone break down the state of tradeskills?

[Captain Insano]

What is the status of tradeskills these days in WoW?

Which are useless, which are the most important, and which are critical to PVP?

I'm going to choose two.

[Maeya]

Alchemy is always nice for PVP for various potions. Engineering can be handy... but I'm thinking for strict PVP, alchemy is your best bet.

I always go solid gathering, though; herbalism and either mining or leatherworking. Great way to make a lot of easy cash while you level, so you can buy the gear and potions you need.

[Arlos]

Engineering is more directly useful, alchemy is good for buffs pre-fight. The thing is, only 1 person needs to be an alchmeist, they can make potions for the entire team. To use engineering stuff, you need to BE an engineer.

Engineering makes a lot of stuff like grenades, dynamite, and various robot fighting pets that you can summon to help kick ass with you. Plus it gets you access to helms earlier than normal, and you can make your own guns & bullets. Pair Engineering with mining.

Since the engineering uses are up close and personal, if you've got a rogue/priest team, have the rogue go mining/engineering and the priest go herbalism/alchemy.

-Arlos

[Captain Insano]

ok gotcha... that sounds like a really solid break down.


Are there any other gathering skills needed for engineering or is mining it?

[Arlos]

Just mining.

One secondary skill you will absolutely need to work up is First Aid. Even when you're teamed with a healer, being able to heal yourself mana-free for 2500 (with the max-level bandage) is very nice. At lower levels, it'll let you get rid of poisons on yourself, which is also useful.

If you have a 3rd person as part of the team, a good combination would be either Skinning (or maybe Tailoring) plus Enchanting.

Skinning will get you stuff you can sell on the AH with every beast-type mob you kill. Won't sell as well as mining/herbalism parts, as leather's not used as much, but it's still something. Tailoring is another possibility for the slot, but I don't really recommend it. Very little you can make with Tailoring is any better than drops you'll get, especially from instances, and you can always just get the raw materials and hire a tailor if there's something you really want. On top of that, lots of your cloth drops you get will be going to first aid.

Enchanting is useful at all levels, and is the single biggest money-making tradeskill once you max your levels out, if you can get ahold of some of the rarer enchants.

I wouldn't really recommend going for Leatherworking or Blacksmithing. There's tons of them out there if you need anything made, and again, like tailoring, there's not much that's crafted that you can't find better than from drops, etc.

-Arlos

[Captain Insano]

I was just going to ask about leatherworking...


I think goosse is going to do herbalism/alchemy so I will probably do mining and engineering.

Eventually I will want to do enchanting, but that is probably somet hing I will work on more when I'm 60.

[Mop]

seriously go mining / skinning you will have mad cash

[Maeya]

At least on our server, herbalism tends to sell better than either skinning or mining. But its' a toss up on which to pair it with.

[Mop]

i usualy have all my alts with around 400 gold at lvl 30 just from farming.

[Captain Insano]

wow... i will do that. Thats some solid cash right there. Thanks mop.

[brinstar]

go goblin spec engineering

because gnomes are gay

[Naethyn]

If you plan to play PVP. Go engineering. Gnomish death ray, invis, battlechicken ect. Nothing better than lettiing loose the battlechicken on a group of level 30's in STV.

Also, bombs are great. Many fights have been in my favor because i was able to get off that sapper charge. And they introduced the reflector trinkets. So you can reflect certain magic types for some minutes. Great to see mages poly them selves or priests mana burning them selves. Oh and finally, go engineering.

I played on frostwolf for a year as a hunter. In my experience trinkets make a huge impact on pvp. Make sure to pick up the Grand Master Arena. 1k priest bubble. Before I quit I had 2 bags dedicated just to trinkets and bombs.

And with any pvp always remember:
You're born, you take shit. You get out in the world, you take more shit. You climb a little higher, you take less shit. Till one day you're up in the rarefied atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like. Welcome to the layer cake son.

[Naethyn]

Also, engineering is the only trade that makes like 0 cash. I sold a few bullets here and there but most of the gear made requires engineering to use.

But the functionality of engineering in PVP outweighs any money count from other trades.

[Captain Insano]

If you plan to play PVP. Go engineering. Gnomish death ray, invis, battlechicken ect. Nothing better than lettiing loose the battlechicken on a group of level 30's in STV.

Also, bombs are great. Many fights have been in my favor because i was able to get off that sapper charge. And they introduced the reflector trinkets. So you can reflect certain magic types for some minutes. Great to see mages poly them selves or priests mana burning them selves. Oh and finally, go engineering.

I played on frostwolf for a year as a hunter. In my experience trinkets make a huge impact on pvp. Make sure to pick up the Grand Master Arena. 1k priest bubble. Before I quit I had 2 bags dedicated just to trinkets and bombs.

And with any pvp always remember:
You're born, you take shit. You get out in the world, you take more shit. You climb a little higher, you take less shit. Till one day you're up in the rarefied atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like. Welcome to the layer cake son.

I fucking love that movie. I've watched it like 5 times. Good advice too thanks!

[Naethyn]

If you decide engineering is the trade for you. I recommend making bullets whenever you can to raise skill. They are cheap and raise it fast.

[Naethyn]

go goblin spec engineering

because gnomes are gay

I would recommend gnomish over goblin. The only difference between the two is what items you can make and use. Both goblin and gnomish engineers can use each other's products unless the product made is no drop. Death Ray and Battlechicken are superior in my eyes.

[Captain Insano]

are there a limit to the amount of tradeskills a player can do?

Can I do skinning, mining, first aid and engineering and eventually later, enchanting?

[Donnel]

Not on one character.

2 Main profs.

Can have all three secondaries in addition to your two mains.

Secondaries are First Aid, Cooking and Fishing.

However you can always drop a main and grab a different one if you choose to.

[Captain Insano]

is mining considered a profession? I would have thought it was a secondary.

[Snero]

mining is a profession, the only ones that don't count towards your 2 tradeskills are fishing, first aid, cooking, that sort of thing

[Snero]

oh and also the main differences between goblin and gnome engineering: goblin does more dynamite, and has an upgrade of the jumper cables (lets you rez somebody). Gnome has gimmicky stuff mostly but does have gnomish death ray which can do a good chunk of damage

[Arlos]

The goblin-engineering cables are BOE though, so you can get someone to make them for you and use them, even if you're a Gnomish engineer. As far as I know, the Death Ray is BOP.

If you want max money-making potential from tradeskills, go Mining & Herbalism. If Goose is doing alchemy though, you won't want to sell herbs, cause he'll need them, so this is right out.

Alternate money-making plan: Mining & Skinning. Herbs are more in demand than leather bits, but leather is used for some smithing & engineering recipes, so it's not just leatherworkers that need it.

For PVP-power, go Mining and Engineering. The grenades you make can do an AOE stun, you can make Exploding Sheep, and later on you can make some actually pretty powerful mechanical pets that will fight for you. The Arcanite Dragonling is actually pretty damn powerful, once you get up that high.

Once you hit 60 and max out engineering, you can probably drop mining and pick up enchanting. Just shell out a few hundred gold in buying cheap blues & greens to disenchant to work your skill up. At L60, especially if you get a rare recipe like Crusader or something potent like +15AGI on weapon, Enchanting is the biggest moneymaking profession, bar none. The top-end enchanters I know with the best enchants all have disgusting gold totals of like 5000+.

-Arlos

[Naethyn]

thats exactly what i did arlos

[Captain Insano]

nice move.

Shit but whats the consensus here on engineering goblin or gnome? I'm more concerned with PVP... So what the best engineering for that?

[Tikker]

gnome


simply for the death ray