What skills should I use?Follow

I have a 29 twink hunter with mining and skinning, a 13 mage with enchanting and tailoring, that I don't play. What skills should I use for my 13 priest that I want to level? My hunter runs BGs and fishes and makes good money, my mage I've stopped using because I prefer to be a priest. We are all Hordies.

What skills should I invest in?

You mean professions right? For leveling? I don't really think there is a profession that makes you level faster. Enchants and potions (alchemy) may make fighting easier and thus leveling faster. Gathering professions may make it easy to make some gold. Choose what you like. At endgame, you don't use professions at all to level up.

When I made my priest I planned on going shadow the whole time so I went tailoring, since that is some of the best gear you can get at 70. I know the healing set from tailoring is good as well, but I'm not sure if it's as essential to have. So if you plan on going shadow i'd suggest tailoring, otherwise you can probably stay with what you have.

Well, here's the thing: I can only make so much money selling Deviate fish, and because I run BGs with my hunter, the only he makes money is to stop PvPing and do some fishing. While leveling, I'll send greens to my mage to DE and sell at the AH.

Perhaps I can start tailoring, but I definitely cannot afford two crafting professions until I get a 70. Perhaps stick with tailoring and keep herbalism to sell?

Although taking tailoring right now makes sense, I suggest you wait and take two gathering professions instead: Herbalism and Skinning. Why?

1- What you'll need the most while leveling (and even more at 70) is money. You'll need money for your mounts, spells, pots and equipments. With two gathering professions you'll make lots of money with small efforts, only by picking the herbs you are close to or skinning the beasts you have to kill anyway.

2- Tailoring is almost useless until you can make the BoP set of your choice at lvl 70 and it can be easily powerleveled once you're ready to have that set. I've done it just like many other players.

3- I suggest you take herbalism because at some point you'll need lots of mana pots and they're not cheap. With herbalism you can have someone, a friend or someone in your guild, making the pots for you with your own free mats. And until lvl 70 you can make money while you level that profession. Leveling herbalism while you level your toon is very easy but, unlike tailoring, it's a pain to powerlevel.

4- Skinning is the best to pair with herbablism because of the mini-map. Don't take mining unless you want to pick Engineering also. You can't look for herbs and ore at the same time on the mini-map and skinning doesn't require the use of the mini-map.

Hope this helps.

Good points, pcote. Makes a lot of sense.

Enchanting makes great money, but there's no reason to have it on your man in the field. You'll find minerals, herbs and dead animals when you're levelling that you would not be able to harvest without the appropriate gathering skill. However, the BOE magic items you get can simply be mailed to an alt for disenchanting, and the BOP items can be saved to DE at some later date.

For example, you could be mining/skinning until level 70, saving all the cloth and items find on your bank alts. Then you switch to tailoring/enchanting, grinding out your tailoring levels on your hoarded cloth and DE'ing your enchanting up on your horded items and tailoring products. When DEing turns gray, you use all the mats you got to start enchanting your way up, making oils whenever you can get skillups from them.

My disenchanting alt was 35 for a long, long time and made me thousands of gold. Only recently have I levelled her to 50, to get my DE skill up to the levels I anticipate I'll need in WotLK.

DISenchanting makes great money. Enchanting does *not,* especially combined with tailoring, because then you're taking two of your biggest sources of income (cloth and items you don't need) and not getting any (or very little) money out of them.

Keep your Alchemy if you want. It's great for a priest, both while leveling and when you start raiding. You could make your other profession herbalism, and sell any herbs you don't use. As you level higher, herbs will start to sell better. I wouldn't be giving away bunches of potions to your group members (it isn't necessary), but mana pots can often allow you to save the group.

At some point start disenchanting with your mage using auctioneer and enchantrix. You can make money beforehand, but force yourself to get him up to level 35 and enchanting 275. At that point you will have a money making machine.

Once you get to 70, then rethink your professions. Then is the time to power level your tailoring if you want BOP tailored items. You could move your herbalism to an alt if you do this, or just buy your herbs.

Edited, Feb 11th 2008 1:11pm by dadanox