Primary: Alchemy | Blacksmithing | Engineering | Leatherworking | Tailoring | Jewelcrafting | Enchanting | Inscription
Gathering: Herbalism | Mining | Skinning
Secondary: Cooking | First Aid | Fishing | Lockpicking

A profession is a craft that player characters may learn in order to gather, make, or enhance items that can be used in game play. Professions are learned from a trainer (or sometimes from a book at higher levels), for a cost. Professions can be learned regardless of their character faction, race, or class (although there are a few class skills that are just like a profession.) Through practice, a character gains skill levels within the profession and becomes more capable within that profession.

Specific trade skills within a profession allow you to do specific things. These are learned from the profession trainers, from recipes, or occasionally directly from a quest trainer. Each profession starts out with a few specific trade skills.

Professions can be very helpful when 2 boxing, but one thing to remember is it's hard to watch the minimap on your bot character, with that in mind I usually choose a gathering profession that requires tracking for my main character. Another thing to keep in mind is the class/profession combination. Ask yourself if the profession will benefit you in anyway, like leatherworking is useless for cloth casters. You can always change professions later also, so choosing ones that will make you money, especially if you're starting on a new to you server, can be a good idea also.

The last time I started a new duo on a new server (it was Orc Hunter/Warlock) I chose mining/skinning on the hunter and tailoring/enchanting on the warlock and by the end of the first night both characters were level 5 and had a full set of bags and 5 gold each from selling copper, leather, bags, and dusts from disenchanting.

Categories of Professions

Professions fall into one of three categories:

"Crafting" professions make items from other ingredient items (herbs, bars, meats, etc.) Blizzard calls these "Production professions". Most folks in game call them crafting or building.

• The first recipes you get are useful for gearing up low level characters (assuming a higher level character is not helping to support you). Some contend that as soon as you start running instances, the drops will usually be better than most crafted items from the same level, but this is not always the case. Quite often crafted items will provide comparable stats or utility benefits that are quite useful for characters of all levels.

• High end crafting, including specializations, can be extremely useful and lucrative, especially from patterns that come from end game faction grinding or drop in high level instances (some of which Bind on Pickup). There are also several quests which require crafted items for completion.

"Gathering" professions gather or harvest items from resources throughout the game world to supply materials ('mats') for crafting professions.

"Service" professions provide a service, such as buffing items.

Professions - Crafting

Alchemy

Alchemy is used to create potions and elixers to buff statistics, heal wounds, refill mana, and other utilities. One good thing about Alchemy is you don't need the Alchemy skill to use most anything made by an alchemist, so if you choose alchemy as a profession you can share the created items with your bots.

Type: Crafting
Classes: All
Companion Profession: Herbalism, Fishing
Character Status: Primary

Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing is used for creating mail and plate armors, weapons, and some utility items such as weapon sharpening stones, shield spikes, and other various items used by other professions. Blacksmithing forks into two specific specializations, weaponsmith and armorsmith, and weaponsmith breaks down into further specializations. Most items crafted through Blacksmithing can be shared with your bots or other people.

Type: Crafting
Classes: Warrior , Paladin primarily, Shaman possible if considering Enhance for Weaponsmith
Companion Profession: Mining
Character Status: Primary

Engineering

Engineering is the craft of creating devices and explosives, it can be very handy to different classes for different reasons, if you don't have a resurrection class the goblin jumper cables can sometimes revive your bot, if you don't have any ranged or stun capabilities the explosives can be thrown a decent distance or cause an AoE stun. Some of the later explosives also work like Hunter Freeze traps. Engineering can also be used to make some very high quallity guns and bullets. The biggest downside to engineering is most of the items made by an engineer require a certain minimum skill to use, making them useless to any non-engineer.

Type: Crafting
Classes: Any
Companion Profession: Mining
Character Status: Primary

Leatherworking

Leatherworking lets you create leather and mail armor, you can also make armor kits which will increase armor class and stats of any type of armor, not just leather. All but the highest end items created with Leatherworking are tradable and can be given to your bot or sold. If you 2 box a druid and shaman you can make armor for both characters that will be as good or better than auction house quailty for a long time, at least up until instance drops or raided items, since you can make armor that is suitable for a healer, dps, or tanking role. Leatherworking can be a good profession for both primary or secondary characters since it uses skinning, which doesn't require the minimap tracking, and there are more than enough beasts in the world.

Type: Crafting
Classes: Druid , Rogue , Shaman , Hunter
Companion Profession: Skinning
Character Status: Primary/Secondary

Tailoring

Tailoring is mostly useful for cloth wearing classes, and as such, your cloth wearer is most likely going to be your secondary character. Tailoring doesn't require any companion profession as most of the materials will come from mob dropped cloths. Most of what can be made by tailors will be worn by the crafter, but it's almost all droppable and sellable/tradable. One useful creation from tailoring that will benefit everyone in your multibox setup is bags, you can create up to 18 slot bags with Tailoring. At high skills you will be able to create armor kits similar to Leatherworking, but instead of melee stats they have caster stats. Enchanting is usually used with Tailoring since it also doesn't require a gathering profession, and extra green armor you create can be disenchanted for use in Enchanting.

Type: Crafting
Classes: Priest , Warlock , Mage
Companion Profession: None, but Enchanting is usually paired with it.
Character Status: Secondary

Jewelcrafting (Burning Crusade Required)

Jewelcrafting lets you create rings, necklaces, a few trinkets, and one or two armor pieces, some of which you can create long before you will see them droppable (such as rings starting at level 10, necks at level 12, trinkets in the 30's, etc). Later Jewelcrafting recipes also let you create socketable gems for your armor. most items (except trinkets) are droppable and tradable so you can share them with your bots or sell them for profit. Jewelcrafting also has it's own secondary skill called Prospecting which lets you remove gems from mined ores. This can be another money maker by prospecting other miners ores who aren't jewelcrafters but want to sell the gems or have them cut for themselves.

Type: Crafting
Classes: Any
Companion Profession: Mining
Character Status: Primary

Enchanting

Enchanting is the service of adding particular bonuses to items, such as specific stats to chest, feet, or hands, or chance on hit procs to weapons such as fiery weapon. Except for a few self only enchants, enchanting can be given to you bots, or anyone else. It's a decent way to make money because, unlike most other professions, you can't just walk into the Auction House and buy it, like you can crafted leather or plate armor, gems, potions, etc. It also has it's own secondary skill called Disenchant which destroys a green or higher item and created dusts, essences, or shards use in enchanting (and used by a few other random items in other professions). Like prospecting the disenchant service can be sold to people wanting thier tradable green+ items turned into dusts, etc for enchating thier own items. You can also use disenchant on all your own soulbound items once you outgrow them, or if you get quest rewards you don't need.

Type: Service
Classes: Any
Companion Profession: None, but usually paired with tailoring
Character Status: Primary/Secondary

Inscription (Wrath of the Lich King required)

Inscription is very similar to enchanting, except it enhances spells and abilities instead of armor and weapons.

Type: Service
Classes: Any
Companion Profession: None
Character Status: Primary/Secondary

Professions - Gathering

Herbalism

Herbalism is used to gather herbs used in Alchemy and a few other random recipes from various professions, it uses to the minimap to locate herbs around you, so it's a skill best suited to your primary character.

Type: Gathering
Classes: Any
Companion Profession: Alchemy
Character Status: Primary

Skinning

Skinning is the profession of taking hides, scraps, and pelts of leather from all the various beast and dragons in the world, it does not use the minimap so it is suitable for a secondary character, and when combined with leatherworking make some very nice armors and utilities.

Type: Gathering
Classes: Any
Companion Profession: Leatherworking
Character Status: Primary/Secondary

Mining

Mining is the profession of removing ores, stones, some gems, and some motes from ore veins. Mining also uses the minimap to locate veins, so it's preferable to the primary character. One good thing about mining is it is a useful gathering profession for 3 companion professions, so you can sell the ores easy, or use them for mulitple professions, for example, with my Hunter/Druid combo my Hunter is a Miner and Engineer, and my Druid is Jewelcrafter and Enchanter, so I can gather ores for both engineering and jewelcrafting from my main character.

Type: Gathering
Classes: Any
Companion Profession: Engineering, Blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting.
Character Status: Primary

Professions - Secondary

Cooking

Cooking is great for creating food to top off your health, but you can buy that stuff, the best part of cooking is the stat food you can create, practically from the time you pick up the skill, and other than spices most ingredients are drops from what you're killing to level. Some of the early stat food adds stamina/sprit (like 2/2, 4/4, etc) and the later ones add attack power, agility, healing/spell damage, and some even add chance on hit procs. Fishing is recommended for cooking since you can cook what you fish, and in the high 200 skill range fish based products are the only ones that will get you over 300. However, if you're like me and have no time or patience for fishing you can get them from friends or Auction House.

Type: Crafting
Classes: Any
Companion Profession: Fishing
Character Status: Primary/Secondary

First Aid

First Aid lets you turn cloth into bandages and venom sacs into poison cures. First Aid is useful for all classes, for primary and secondary classes, although it's more useful to classes who can't heal or cure poison, there will come a time when you are out of mana, heal potions are on cooldown, and you'll be glad you have bandages. Similar to Engineering, most of what you create can not be used without the first aid skill, and appropriate skill level, so it's a good idea to train this on all your primary and secondary characters. A good thing though is that all materials for this skill are dropped, so it will never cost you anything, and excess bandages can usually be sold for a little cash.

Type: Crafting
Classes: All
Companion Profession: None
Character Status: Primary/Secondary

Fishing

Fishing is pretty boring (to me, some people enjoy it though) but almost needed if you plan on leveling up cooking and don't want to buy anything from other players. Also if you're an Alchemist some reagents used in recipes are fished as well. You can sometimes fish up containers (holding items and materials for some professions like engineering, etc) Trophy Fish (held in off hand) some 1hb fish weapons, motes and essences, and even then random raid boss.

Type: Gathering
Classes: All
Companion Profession: Cooking/Alchemy
Character Status: Primary/Secondary

Lockpicking

Lockpicking isn't truly a profession, it's more of a skill, limited only to rogues (although engineers can blast open locked items, and blacksmiths can make some keys). But considering it's a service to other players, some rogues consider it a skill, and level it up like a skill. If you box a rogue, it's a great skill to work on for opening your own locked chests, boxes, and locked doors.

Type: Service
Classes: Rogue
Companion Profession: None
Character Status: Primary/Secondary

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