Feral tank professions.Follow

I think mining is a bit more profitable than skinning, if you don't mind farming a lot. Skinning comes with instances and doing quests while mining requires you to actively look for the veins (unless you happen to stumble across a dozen veins while doing your dailies). I'd not suggest mining over skinning, though. Arctic Fur still sells for a bit on Kazzak and the only way I'm really making money with mining these days is buying the materials for Titansteel Bars and making those once every 20 hours. Not very profitable, though as the Titansteel bars sell for 120-130g and the materials cost 20-30g.

As for Lifeblood, it does scale with health, but poorly. At 42,000 health on my Druid, I get about 1k extra health from it or so. I'd still keep herbalism, though. Frost Lotus still sell pretty well and a 3-4k heal every few minutes fits in nicely with the Barkskin cooldown, by the way.

The min/maxer would tell you to cycle through the professions while applying the various bonuses to your gear, and then go mining for the health bonus, and either skinning for more threat, or herbalism for the heal. I think. I went with alchemy for the increase in potion effects and herbalism because I'm too lazy to log on alts to farm. Lifeblood is pretty nice when used with Barkskin and Natural Instincts. Has enabled me to solo the remainder of many a heroic boss.

I should note that 1: I never farm, anything. And 2: I don't want any professions doubled, waste of time and gold.
And since my hunter is LW/JC that ain't happening

Pretty sure this doesn't work, as soon as you change professions that profession specific bonus will turn red and say "Requires Blacksmithing (400)" or whatnot.

I'm going to dump skinning either way, the crit bonus is just not that cool.
I don't think it gives much in the way of mitigation and I do want to move to tanking raids.

Sooo, what's left... Mining, blacksmithing and.. euhm.. Oh right, engineering!
What does engineering get you anyway? Bombs, +1 agility to cloak, armor on gloves... anything I missed? (ignoring the fun bits for now)
Because Mining+Engineering looks good to me.

Lifeblood scaling is ~1.5% of max health, per WoWWiki. Tested on my unbuffed bear tank (41.7k hp), I received 853/tick for 4265 total.

While engineering may be tedious to farm mats (or really pricey to buy), having to craft various sub-components, and skilling up on an inordinate amount of engineer only type items .... it does have some benefits to consider:

Head-Mind Amplifciation Dish - An extra 8 stam (plus the mind control toy/gimmick) vs 20 defense rating from tanking glyph. Eng wins.

Hands-Reticulated Armor Webbing - 885 armor vs 240 from glove reinforcements. Eng wins

Back-Flexweave Underlay - +1 agi (and parachute toy/gimmick) vs major agility enchant. Mighty Armor (225 armor) may be top for tanking, perhaps Flexweave may be situational. Eng loss, situationally(?)

Waist-Frag Belt - Free cobalt bomb every 6 mins. /shrug But it doesn't conflict with Eternal Belt Buckle. Eng wins

or Pulse Generator - Aside from a 30 yd AoE 3s mechanical unit stun, it's used to trigger Explosive Decoys. Again, doesnt conflict with Buckle. Eng wins

Feet-Nitro Boosts - 24 crit rating (plus move speed toy/gimmick). Totally inferior for tanking. Eng loss

All these in addition to explosives, Scrapbots, Jeeves, Wormhole Generator, and some other utility items.

Not too shabby overall.

Edited, Mar 18th 2010 3:02pm by Azaza

From a stamina point of view:
-The leatherworking ench is currently 62 stamina better than the normal enchant.
-JC can equip 3x Dragon's Eyes @ +21 stam per (63 more stam).
-BS can equip 2 more non-JC gems, +60 stam.
-Enchanters can add 30 stam to each ring.
-Inscription can put 60 dodge/15 def vs Hodir's 20 dodge/15 def, although there is no corresponding augment to Gladiator's 30 stam/15 resil.
-I don't think alchemy's bonus from mixology are added as stamina in the stoneblood flask, and therefore not converted when in bear form or buffed by kings, but I am not sure. It still gives something more than the 1300 health that it normally does, but I bet it will not compare well to the other professions.
-Tailoring has no benefits for tanking.
-Azaza already covered the sordid world of Engineering. The comparisons certainly are not easily made with that profession.
-Mining makes you tough, 60 stamina worth of toughness.
-Skinning and Herb bonuses... Are either of these equal to ~900 health (and that's without kings)? I don't think so. Maybe you could macro Lifeblood in with Survival Instincts, but that seems rather situational and inconsequential.

From what I see, LW/JC is the combination for giving you the most health possible, but all of the professions were somewhat equalized. BS will give you a bit more flexibility on what you can add since you can opt to mix in other gems besides +30 stam x2. I don't think I've seen a tank of any class that had inscription.

I dont think any sane tank would opt for 40 dodge over 60 stam. (So, I'm guessing that you will take Inscription! =P)

Edited, Mar 18th 2010 5:57pm by Trylofer

I've been putting off this decision myself, my druid being LW/Skinner. I am going to drop skinning for mining, myself. Oh how I dread that 275-300 part of levelling, though. =(

Mixology grants another 650 hp to the flask, so it's "equal" to the other profession bonuses but is then eclipsed by them on account of the bear form multipliers.

20 defense rating is 4 defense (and a little bit) so 0.16% lower chance to be hit and 0.16% more dodge so 0.32% avoidance.
Druids in bear form have an additional 35% stamina, so the 8 stamina gives 108 hp.


edit: of course, just looking at raw itemvalue it's already quite obvious.
8 stamina is just over a quarter of 20 defense. (as 1.5 points pf stamina equals 1 point of most other stats, including defense rating.)

Edited, Mar 21st 2010 12:14am by Aethien

Fixed.
108 hp is cute and all, (119 hp with kings even) but 0.32% avoidance is worth more I think.

stamina is obviously a better stat than defense, but not four times as good.