Myhunterisanoob’s Blog

Last time I talked about professions, I told you about what the gathering professions gave your hunter. Now lets get to the crafting ones. Remember, this is not about how your hunter can make money but the extra bonus’s they get.

Alchemy – Alchemist make potions, flask, and elixers. That’s the big thing here, but for the most part these can be purchased on the auction house. Sure they can make better ones that only they can use and get some extra use out of them, but it’s not really going to pay off in increased damage. Mighty Alchemist’s Stone is a nice trinket that can be made, but it’s not a top end item. To get the best bang out of your hunter’s gun, alchemy is not recommended.

Blacksmithing – Blacksmiths make weapons and armor. The problem here is that none of them items are exclusive to the profession and few of the items are of any real use to a hunter. The pay off here is socketing. They can add additional sockets to their gloves and bracers, allowing your hunter to put some additional gems. This better for Survival hunters than it is for Marksmen or Beast Master hunters. The reason. If you have your hunter put 2 Bright Scarlet Rubies he or she will have an extra 64 attack power. Pretty sweet right? The thing is the extra 64 attack power can also be picked up through Enchanting, Inscription, and Leatherworking. Survival hunters prefer Delicate Scarlet Rubies for an extra 32 agility. Blacksmithing is recommended for Survival specced hunters, and a toss up with Beast Master and Marksmen hunters.

Enchanting – Enchanters cast spells to enhance items. The cool thing enchanters get is an additional 32 attack power to rings. It gives a total of 64 additional attack power, but as I mentioned earlier, this can also be gained by several other professions. My recommendation is that it is part of 4 way tie for all classes for BM and MM, and slightly behind Blacksmithing for SV.

Engineering – Engineers make so pretty weird things. There’s alot of unique things that can be created but not alot of them have good combat use but to be perfectly honest, none of them are really worth the effort of making. All the useful items can be purchased from Engineers. While it may save your hunter some gold, the savings is not worth the dps they are missing out on from having one of the other professions, so I cannot recommend this profession for hunters.

Leatherworking – Leatherworkers can leather and mail armor, a couple of cloaks, and some armor patches. The only advantage to choosing is Fur Linings that give 114 attack power. Since you can get a 50 attack power enchant on your bracers from an enchanter, it’s really only a 64 attack power bonus, same as the others that I spoke of with blacksmithing. So as with enchanting not as good as blacksmithing for SV hunters, but on par with the others for BM and MM.

Tailoring – Tailors make cloth items. Maybe for mages, but there is nothing good here for hunters. Seriously this may be the worst option for hunters.

Jewelcrafting – Jewelcrafters cut gems to put in sockets and make some interesting trinkets. While there is some decent items here, nothing to write home about. The payoff here is prismatic gems. Only jewel crafters can use them and they are better than what they can normally get. Let’s look into attack power gems. Bright Dragon’s Eye gives 54 attack power while, a Bright Scarlet Ruby gives 32. That’s a 22 attack power advantage times 3 means a bonus 66 attack power. It might be slight but that is a 2 attack power bonus for jewelcrafters. In addition to that, you can put them in any slot you want. So that blue socket that gives you +8 attack power can be gained without having to use a less than desirable blue, purple, or green gem. So in reality it’s gives 2 attack power and 3 socket bonus’s that you wouldn’t get from using the Bright Scarlet Ruby. For survival hunter’s using Delicate Dragon’s Eye it will give a total of 33 more agility than using Delicate Scarlet Ruby. If you haven’t figured it out by now, Jewelcrafting is recommended for all hunters.

Inscription – Scribes make glyphs. Nothing special there, they can be bought on the auction house. Master’s Inscription of the Axe gives you 104 attack power and 15 critical strike rating. This gives, you guessed it, 64 more attack power than Greater Inscription of the Axe, with the minor bonus that you can get it without being exalted with the Sons of Hodir. It’s tied with Enchanting, Leatherworking, and Blacksmith (BM&MM only)

So to review.

Best – Jewelcrafting
2nd best for Survival hunters only – Blacksmith
2nd best for Beast Master and Marksmen – Enchanting, Leatherworking, and Blacksmith (personal preference)
If a gathering profession must be taken, in order, Skinning, Mining, Herbalism
Not recommended and less desirable than gathering professions, Alchemy and Engineering
Not recommended ever, ever, ever, Tailoring

A word about making gold with professions. There are better ways to make gold than with your professions. I’m just a cat, I’m not the expert here. You know who is? Goblins. But don’t ask Zahana, because when it comes to making money, my hunter is a noob.

There are 3 things professions do for you in the World of Warcraft

1) get you new things
2) give you some sort of bonus
3) get you money

Now the first thing was supposedly pretty cool. An engineer got to make a rolfcoptor, leather-workers had drums, blacksmith got some sweet sword or whatever. Now that people have left the Outlands and made their way to Northrend they have found any special recipes that really only they can use. Everyone can have a chopper, drums from the outlands can stand up to the harsh winter climate, and they yet to find a sword so intricate that you have to be able to manipulate metal to know how to use it. Until they find a new thing that you can make and only you can use, there is no one profession that is better than another.

Now giving you some sort of bonus, personally it’s the biggest factor when choosing a profession. Why? Like I said earlier, there’s really not any item that is paticularly useful that can’t be bought. What can’t be bought are the bonuses. Let’s start off looking at the gathering proffesions.

Herbalism- Flower pickers get a heal over time spell bonus called Lifeblood. The best flower pickers in the game can heal themselves for 2000 health over 5 seconds every 3 minutes. Now this seems nice and all, but in most situations where Zahana is at risk of peril, 2000 health over 5 seconds isn’t going to prevent him from dying. I don’t reccomend this profession for a hunter.

Mining- Spending a fair amount of time smashing rocks with a mining pick is tough work, giving a miner a natural Toughness. At 450 mining, that is an additional 50 stamina. Even with Zahana being a Survival hunter with his 10% stam bonus and 30% of stam becoming Attack Power, 50 stamina isn’t really that big of a deal. Mining is also not reccomened for a hunter.

Skinning- Removing a creatures skin from it’s body takes some skill and knowledge of said creatures’s anatomy. Being a Master of Anatomy that skinners become can add as much as 32 critical strike raiting. Looks good, but in reality that is less than a 1% critical strike chance. I’m not going to show you the back side of my paw if you take this, while the increased crit raiting is cool and all, the are other professions that you will get more dps from than this. While I don’t reccomend this, if your hunter abosolutely has to have a gathering profession, this is the best of the three.

That’s it for the gathering professions. Professions (Part Deux) will go over Alchemy, Engineering, Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Inscription, Leatherworking, and Jewelcrafting. The noob will be raiding tonight, so it’ll probably be a few days.