A lot of the really good epic BoP patterns in TBC were from dungeon drops. And realize also, that(atleast with leatherworking) NO items require skill over 440 to craft yet, even the epic ones.

The best is yet to come, and I can’t wait.

My shaman is only 72 but I’ve leveled his engineering almost to 450 so I can make a Nesingwary 4000 for my hunter. I have to say that engineering is the most personally useful and fun profession I’ve used.

My neglected Death Knight is a scribe 300+ and blacksmith around 15. Once I get my shaman to 80 I’ll probably focus on this guy.

I have been sorely tempted to go dual-gather on my hunter simply because of how much metal is selling for right now. However, alchemy is too useful with transmutes and making my own potions and elixers for me to drop it. Esp. with all the discovered transmutes I’ve got. Leveling that on another toon just is too painful to contemplate.

I agree that crafting professions are less “essential” than they were in BC but that’s by design. Blizzard wanted people to take professions because they enjoyed them, not because the one or two pieces of crafted gear were so fantastic. I think they’ve accomplished that goal, but might have gone too far the other way. I know that GC has said they’re adjusting the mats for enchanting simply because it’s been tough for enchanters to get dust and essences. I could see them doing something similar for JC or other professions.

From a raider’s perspective jewelcrafting is THE number one profession. Never having to worry about meta’s, being able to craft the jewelry. As a feral, or any tank really, the trinkets you can craft are going to be top 1-3 in slot after 3.08 depending on how highly you value stamina vs agility. I am in the process of leveling mining on my death knight whom i am leveling strictly for the purpose of promoting jcing on my main (feral druid of course :) ) without spending too much money. Death Knights are awesomely fun though.

You might want to consider making your tailor priest your herbalist and leveling jcing if you really want to min/max on windshadow since, as you’ve noticed, tailoring really got the screwjob this expac. JCing’s benefits are without a doubt the highest of any professions right now in my opinion and the opinion of most people I’ve talked to. Wow I’m long winded and opinionated. Gl leveling your profs.

Inscription professional = Scribe

And I am loving my leatherworking, I have a druid, rogue and several hunters, so it takes care of almost all my armor needs. ^_^

Tailoring sucks a whole lot now. Because absolutely everything is BoE, the only real reason to grind it is to make big bags, to make spellthreads and embroidery… and get extra cloth when you farm it. Somehow… all of those reasons which are easily just made by other tailors, makes tailoring kinda stupid now. But so many of us are stuck with it because of BC and there’s not really a solid profession to replace it for say… a holy priest. I mean, there’s herb/alch/inscriptions… but the last two require herbalism, and some of us just don’t have that, so it’s rather expensive. Silly profs.

I’ve never been big into personal profession benefits – rings, extra stamina, extra shoulders power. Who cares. Choose what you enjoy, dont kid yourself that those small min/maxing choices will help your guilld progress faster than without. If you feel good about it do it! I’ll always love lifeblood for tanking – maybe I’d put that on an equal first with JC for ferals. But its nice that there’s no longer any “ultimate” professions. And while JCers might enjoy making money right now, dont forget it wont be long into wrath before gold is useless anyway. People talk about earning thousands of gold in wrath… they never tell you what they spend it on, because the assumption is that gold is an end in itself. Different shaped mount anyone? Cool, I cant wait.

I don’t make profit off LW now, because I don’t bother. If the AH is involved, I’d prefer not to craft anything and just play the market with auctioneer or just sell my skins.

I realize that there are some profitable professions, for instance being a fisherman/cook has always brought me a modest but steady stream of income. But when I’m out to make serious gold, I only do those things after I do my dailies. Because seriously folks, Blizzard gave you a perfectly simple way to make money. Dailies. I ran the Quel Danis dailies every day and easily bought my epic flying skill. I never could understand why people who I see on the game every day complain about gold. Run dailies for half an hour to 45 minutes every day for a month, and all of a sudden you have 3k gold. Add that’s if you do nothing else to earn gold like complete easy quests after you are max level. A person could sit down for two hours per night and make easily 200-300 gold if they worked out a system of doing the dailies. With a few rare exceptions, I’ve never seen professions as a way to make gold.