You’ve probably asked the question a million times - As a priest, what professions should you get?

Tailoring
The answer currently being pushed is tailoring. The Primal Mooncloth gear is absolutely astounding, and is arguably the best gear of its kind for a long, long, long, LONG time.

I believe it’s done as a way to reward non-raiders with raid-quality gear. This irritates raiding non-tailors, who believe that it is overpowered and should perhaps be on par with 5-man loot rather than raid loot.

I’m not here to argue that point, one way or the other. What I will say is that I doubt things will stay that way. I don’t think the devs want to REQUIRE a profession for any class. Choosing professions is one of the ways that players differentiate their characters, and herding all cloth wearers to tailoring has to be against the vision for the game.

I am not a tailor, nor do I intend to shift to tailoring. I am, however, eagerly farming mats for my Whitemend Hood - a raid-quality tailored hat which is BIND ON EQUIP, rather than bind on pickup.

If I were a dev, I’d make the Primal Mooncloth (and other such sets, like Frozen Shadowweave) BoE as well. The materials are scary enough that tailors would make money by offering them to non-tailors. I see that as a win-win situation, but obviously I’m not a dev and they may have reasons beyond my ken for the current state of affairs.

Anyrate, tailoring is considered a must-have for clothies looking to get the best gear available - and I would generally agree. It is the best gear available for most priests. But you don’t HAVE to be a tailor to be a good priest (or a good anything for that matter). It is a good choice, but not a required choice, I would say. There’s plenty of great gear available that doesn’t require tailoring to use.

And, on a purely shallow level, I like for my character’s outfit to change from time to time. I don’t want to have the same exact robe for months on end, even if it is totally awesome.

Jewelcrafting
So, now that we’ve discussed the hotly argued “necessity” of tailoring, let’s discuss the new kid on the block - Jewelcrafting.

The pros of Jewelcrafting are somewhat limited. At a low level, you can get amulets and rings more quickly than would otherwise be available to you. Once you proceed past that point, there are few upgrades or useful crafted items until you pass 300 skill. At that point, you can begin cutting and shaping gemstones for insertion into sockets. You can generally sell the green-quality cut gemstones for about two gold on the AH. As time passes and you level, you and your guildmates and friends will acquire gear which needs the gems, and it’s very nice to fill that role and be useful.

The cons, however, are somewhat staggering. You need ore in monstrous quantities. Five ore can be prospected into an array of possible gems (thank goodness for the recent patch which said that prospecting will ALWAYS yield at least one gem). If you need one particular type of gem for the “cheapest” skillup, it can take stacks and stacks before you get even one of them. And don’t even think about buying the gem itself on the Auction House - the vultures are hard at work, and any of those needed gems sells for high prices. And just when you thought skillups were difficult, it gets WORSE. The last ten or so skillups to 300 are agonizingly expensive.

Then you can start cutting gems and you get a number of skillups fairly quickly. Then those green-quality recipes turn skillup-gray and all the sudden you have no recipes to give you any skill points. Where do you go? The answer’s easy…you start farming rep with various factions. Consortium, for example. Of course, you’re not high enough to play around in Nagrand yet, so that’ll have to wait. If you could get some of those blue-quality recipes you’d be able to skill up off of those, but Blizz - in its infinite wisdom - made ALL of them random world drops. So you can’t go farm them anywhere, you just have to either be exceptionally lucky (don’t hold your breath) or spend exorbitant prices on the Auction House. If you find any one of those recipes for less than 300 gold on my server, you can count yourself lucky. 500 gold is much more common.

And, of course, any skillup from a regular recipe requires a great deal of time spent mote-farming. You’d best make friends with an alchemist - you’ll need an alchemist stone for mercurial adamantite, and transmutes to create earthstorm and skyfire diamonds.

In summary, Jewelcrafting is extremely time and money intensive. If you don’t like farming or have someone to farm with you, do not choose this profession. The only item that I currently use that is a product of jewelcrafting is my Talasite Owl, which required revered reputation with Sha’atar to get, and will likely be replaced soon. I do like being able to help my guild out with gem cuttings for sockets, but I believe if I had known then what I know now, I would have chosen some other profession. I have easily dropped a few thousand gold on Jewelcrafting alone, both in ores and recipes. And that was while being thrifty, and with three different miners supplying me with ores and gems. The turnaround is slim - some cut gems sell very well, others poorly, and the return on investment is very very low.

I don’t necessarily want to scare everyone away from this profession, but at the moment it truly is not for the faint of heart. I do recommend pairing this profession with mining, however.

Smithing and Leatherworking
You’re joking, right? Please tell me you’re joking. These professions are almost not worth it even for people who can actually USE the output. For priests they are a giant “kick me!” sign draped across your backside.

Alchemy
This is a decent profession to have. End-game, especially if you raid, it can be very handy to make your own potions. You’ll probably be expected to make potions for guild members as well, which is nice if you like to feel needed. Everyone loves a generous alchemist. Recommended you pair this with Herbalism, and you can expect to spend a lot of end-game time picking flowers.

Enchanting
I personally do not have the patience to spend hours in the trade channel, offering my enchanting services to people who frequently request enchants they cannot pay for. That is the biggest drawback to enchanting - there is no way to easily offer services to the general public. For Christmas this year I’m asking Santa to allow me to create “enchanting scrolls” and sell my enchants on the Auction House.

If you are going to be doing a lot of instances as you level, this skill is easy to level up. The steady supply of blue drops ensure you never run out of shards, and all the green drops will keep you in dust and essences until your eyes pop. End-game, you’ll be in high demand from your guild and friends.

It’s terribly difficult to “sell” though. I’ve found that I make more money for my time by selling my extraneous materials on the AH and leaving trade channel banter to those who love it.

Engineering
I will have to plead ignorance here, as engineering is the only skill I have not dabbled in. I know that it can be something of a pain to level up unless you are also a miner, and that it’s very difficult to make a profit from. It is, however, quite possibly one of the most “fun” tradeskills to master. Who doesn’t love exploding sheep or world enlargers?

Gathering
Skinning, Mining, Herbalism. If you’re wanting to MAKE money instead of spending it, these are your ticket. I say pair skinning with either of the others. Herbs and ores/bars sell VERY well on the Auction House - as everyone who has ever cringed at spending a gold per flower can attest. Choose only one of either Mining or Herbalism because both of those use some form of tracking on your minimap, and you can only have one active at a time. Skinning requires no tracking, and is quite possibly the easiest profession to skill up, as you can skin while you level without going out of your way. And leather sells well on the Auction House to boot.

Secondary Professions
Cooking, Fishing, First Aid. All of these are good skills to have. I’ll be going back and leveling at least my Fishing, but I wish I’d taken Cooking from the start as I’ve already wasted all of my quest reward recipes. Some of the new end-game recipes are lovely, and my inner healery priest squees at Golden Fish Sticks - which requires both fishing and cooking. First Aid isn’t laughable either, especially if you’re soloing. Yes, you can heal yourself, but if you can be regenning mana instead of spending it, that’s all to the better, yes?

Summary
You want the easy answer? Tailoring and Skinning, Fishing and Cooking

You want to pick something else? Go for it. There is no profession that will either make or break you. There is no “wrong” answer (well, leatherworking or smithing is as close to a “wrong” answer as you can get). There are some skills that directly benefit priests, some skills that directly benefit your guild, some that are good for raiders, and some that are good for soloers. Do whatever makes you happy because in the end, this is just a game.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2007 and is filed under Soapbox, ~ Vonya. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.