Professions for Leveling: Crafting
A few days ago I spoke about which gathering professions to take to level up faster.
Today I’m going to continue this series with the crafting professions, and whether I think any of them are worth your time from a leveling perspective.
Let me cut to the chase.
Don’t Choose Crafting For Leveling
Here’s why.
- The recipes you can craft are rarely better than what drops from mobs
- The time each crafted item is useful for is minimal because the level that gear is effective at passes quickly
- You spend lots of time farming the materials and running back and forth to learn new recipes
- You waste tons of gold because most crafting professions need a gathering profession to level up
With this in mind, I’m going to generally speak about a few professions I think are worth your while, and talk about why you might still want to take a crafting profession early on.
Blacksmithing:
Being a blacksmith is good if you’re a warrior or melee dps class, because you can make some simple but effective dps increasing items early in the game to help you chew through mobs a little quicker.
From time to time the gear you can make might be worth making, but as I’ve already said, you really want to avoid actually using most of this stuff because you’ll only have it for a level or 2 before something way better drops.
Tailoring:
Pretty much completely useless. Much like blacksmithing, the items you make will become useless quickly. But on the PLUS side… you can use linen you loot from mobs to level this profession, freeing up a gathering profession which means you can keep selling mats on the AH to save up gold.
Enchanting:
Also a bit like blacksmithing in that low level enchants can help you level faster by applying small buffs to various items of equipment. However, if you choose to go enchanting while you level up, understand that if you aren’t bankrolled by another toon, affording level ups and new gear will be difficult.
This is because you won’t be able to auction greens you find, they’ll all get disenchanted, and you’ll end up relatively broke if this is one of your first toons.
If you’re gung-ho on enchanting, level it up when you hit 80 – you’ll find it much easier to farm greens in low level dungeons than to grind it up while being broke.
Jewelcrafting:
Jewelcrafting is more similar to blacksmithing in that you’ll be eating your materials up to level it, but unlike enchanting/blacksmithing you won’t get buffs that can be applied to every weapon or piece of armor you can get.
Skip Jewelcrafting for leveling faster.
Leatherworking:
Another item crafting profession that doesn’t give you anything unique or useful for leveling faster. You’ll eat up mats too so skip this one too.
Engineering:
One of the more entertaining professions to level, with lots of amusing tricks up its sleeve (especially as you reach higher levels), but still of little use to leveling faster.
If you’re a hunter – maybe you’ll consider engineering for the small dps increase scopes gives you, but any other class should stay away. Again, you’ll be consuming mined mats (and more) for this profession.
Inscription:
Maybe the worst crafting profession for leveling of them all.
Glyphs can be bought cheaply on the AH with the mats you sell, and you get no personal benefit from going inscription.
Even worse, when you hit high levels of inscription the only thing that makes it worthwhile is the shoulder enchants – and even those can be had grinding Hodir reputation (roughly the same time investment).
Take a pass on inscription and save your herbalism mats for the AH.
Alchemy:
Not a bad leveling profession at all – you can make healing & mana potions to keep your up time higher… but if you take a gathering profession like herbalism, this probably won’t be a big problem.
If your class is known for chewing mana, then it might be a good idea to pair up alchemy with herbalism and keep yourself stocked with mana/health potions.
Otherwise, Blizzard is making the leveling curve easier and easier these days, which will likely mean all you’ll need is water and food for most of the time.
When should I pick a crafting profession then?
I personally think unless you’re happy to level a little slower, you should wait until 70 or 80 to start.
By the time you’re that level, you’ll have a) gold, or b) lots of mats to use for the profession you want to train up.
Doing dailies every day and completing all the quests in Northrend will net you thousands of gold a week, so there’s no reason to get a gathering skill to go with your crafting professions.
The only reason you should be choosing a crafting profession while leveling fast is if you really aren’t that gung-ho about leveling fast.
You want to level quicker, but you would rather have your crafting skills at 400 rather than 0 when you hit 80.
I personally took the hit to leveling and leveled up inscription while I leveled my last toon. It did take a bit longer, but it kept my days in WoW more varied and interesting.
Want to level your professions as fast as possible?
My friend Dave Farrel has made an awesome profession leveling guide that I highly recommend you check out. I've personally used this guide to level up 2 toons that I ended up changing gathering & crafting professions on.
Inscription Changing From Useless to Good?
I’m one of those players that chooses skills based on the lore or the “cool factor” of it. Inscription to me sounded like a cool companion to my Shaman, so I grabbed it.
Now, 80 levels later with Inscription almost maxed, I’m feeling let down… here’s why:
- Glyphs are so common place and cheap on the auction house you can almost always find what you need – there’s no inscription skilled only glyphs
- Its cheaper to buy some glyphs on the AH than to make it yourself (the materials are more expensive than the finished product)
- The big one: there’s almost zero personal benefit to choosing inscription.
With those 3 points, I often find myself considering dumping inscription and herbalism, and just leveling up jewelcrafting and enchanting.
With those two professions, I can make some awesome “me only” gear, like +AP on rings and getting hard to find jewel crafting recipes, etc.
But inscription? I get one (admittedly powerful) shoulder enchant. The end. Nothing else. Boring.
So that’s why today I was so happy to randomly stumble across a post at El’s Professions about something seen on the new PTR build: “Techniques” for glyphs.
There’s only THREE on the PTR right now… and maybe they’re just trying a few out for the future, but this gives me hope that Inscription will eventually be raised to the lofty heights JC’s, chanters & engineers are at now.
The three “Techniques” for glyphs are:
- Technique: Glyph of Eternal Water – Inscription 250, for level 50 Mage – Your Summon Water Elemental now lasts indefinitely, but your Water Elemental can no longer cast Freeze.
- Technique: Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation – Inscription 375, for level 15 Druid – Your haste now reduces the time between the periodic healing ticks of your Rejuvenation spell.
- Technique: Glyph of Quick Decay – Inscription 375, for level 15 Warlock – Your haste now reduces the time between periodic damage ticks of your Corruption spell.
Can I suggest, being the Shaman fan boi that I am, that we get a Spirit Wolves technique that also makes them permanent, but less powerful? I love my wolves!
Another thing I think Blizz could do with Inscription is give us something travel related to make. Engineers get those AWESOME helicopters, tailors get flying carpets… where’s mine?
While it might be stepping on mage toes, I think “Myst-like” books that teleport us would be very in-theme for inscriptionists.
Maybe each book that teleports you would need a TON of resources too, to stop every inscriptionist in WoW having access to every major city or location overnight. Or maybe the books *wouldn’t* take you to major cities… you could make it so you stand where you want the book to bind you to, and then you stand there crafting the book (maybe using up 20 snowfall inks & 50 resilient parchment).
Then whenever you want to return there you right click that book in your inventory & whoosh! You’re there!
What do you think? Ravings of a Myst loving mad man?
Got any ideas of your own? Let me know in the comments below.
Choosing Gathering Professions for Leveling
So you’ve just started a new toon, maybe its one of your first, or maybe you’re coming back to WoW after a break. Either way, I’m going to tell you exactly which professions I like for leveling.
This will be a series of posts, but I’m going to start with what I feel are the most important professions for leveling fast – and that’s the gathering professions.
The gathering professions are:
- Skinning
- Herbalism
- Mining
All three are great for leveling up, and if you’re hell bent on leveling as fast as possible, you might even consider taking 2 gathering professions.
Before I look at each individually, I have a few thoughts for you:
1. Start your profession as soon as humanly possible. If you start using it at level 10, you’ll be leagues ahead of anyone starting at level 20. Not to mention if you start 10 levels late you’ll need to back track… which will waste you time & frustrate you.
2. Choose a profession that makes up for class inadequacies (I’ll go into this).
3. If you’re doing recruit a friend, or dual boxing with recruit a friend it might be easier to just skip professions altogether & come back to them once you hit 80.
4. Taking 2 gathering professions will likely necessitate you swapping one for a crafting profession once you hit 80, this can be expensive. Is the trade off worth it? That’s up to you.
Skinning
Skinning is one of my favorite professions to level up with.You don’t have to go off course to find herbs or ore, you just take half a second at each skinnable creature you kill and you’re done.
So what does skinning get you for leveling?
Master of Anatomy: increases your critical strike rating, dependent on skinning level.
By skill level 75, you’ll get your first Master of Anatomy rank, which will give you a +3 crit strike rating, and you scale up to 40 by level 80.
You might scoff at +3 crit strike, but at low levels this means many more crits, much more damage, and faster mob killing.
What classes should take skinning?
Since you should always take damage dealing specs when leveling up (unless you just enjoy playing another spec), any class will benefit from this skill greatly.
Remember, +crit does NOT just affect melee classes. +crit will also increase the chance your spells critically hit (and critically heal!).
Herbalism
Herbalism is a profession I seem to choose for every toon I have…
While its not quite as easy to gain skill in as skinning, herbs are found all over Azeroth and beyond, and are still relatively easy to collect while you level.
The biggest side benefit of herbalism to leveling up (unless you’re bank rolled by a level 80 toon) is that you can sell the mats for tons of gold at lower levels… Its actually not that odd if you think about it.
Because higher level players spend all their time in Northrend and to a lesser extent Outland, the old world is relatively inaccesable to them. They’re lazy, and they just want their herbs now without having to trek across the entire continent to get them.
Which is where you come in with your herbs.
But enough about gold, what does herbalism do for you?
As with skinning, at skill level 75 you get your first rank of LifeBlood, which when activated gives 300 health of healing over 5 seconds.
What classes should take Herbalism?
Classes benefiting most are those who can’t heal themselves, so:
Warriors, Rogues, Hunters, Warlocks, Mages… Any class that doesn’t have specific healing spells.
That’s not to say classes who already heal via spells can’t benefit from lifeblood. If you’re low on mana, or just a leveling fiend that wants to reduce downtime, then you’ll love Lifeblood.
Team up Lifeblood with First aid and you’re pretty much set for zero downtime.
Mining
The last profession I’ll look at today is Mining.
Mining is much like herbalism in that you need to go off path a bit to grab it, but still relatively speaking its a handy profession to have for two reasons.
First off, you can sell the mats for a ton of gold on the AH – rivaling herbalism for gold making at low levels. Secondly, you get a passive ability that you don’t need to worry about as you level up.
Mining gives you the Toughness ability. This means at skill level 75 you’ll have +3 stamina, scaling all the way up to +60 stamina at level 80.
You might already see a small problem with the mining ability… and that is, it just increases your maximum health, which means you still need to maintain that health with either healing, bandaging, or eating… and this means more downtime and resource usage.
Its for this reason I favor herbalism and skinning over mining for LEVELING. +60 stam at level 80 is a nice boost to max health and is fantastic for tanking classes or really anyone involved in PvP.
But leveling?
I have to say leave mining alone unless you want to have it for end-game benefit, or if you want to go the one gathering, one crafting profession option.
Got your own experiences with gathering professions for leveling up fast? Let us know via comments.
How Long Did Your Last Level Take? Could You Half That?
Unless you've leveled half a dozen toons to 80, you could probably use a guide that shows you the fastest questing routes. If you feel frustrated with the time it takes you to level, pair my leveling info with Dugi's popular "Ultimate Leveling Guide". I personally vouch for this guide because not only does it do a top job of leveling you fast, its also the best value in-game level guide out there (you get the Horde AND Alliance guide for the price most guides charge for each).
Mining… Skinning’s Ugly Cousin?
Today we’re talking about using mining to power level your World of Warcraft horde character.
The question I’m posing is, “Is mining just a weaker version of skinning?”
The answer is both yes, and no.
Let me explain myself… While mining is a valuable profession, and nobody doubts its ability to make large sums of cash, we really DO need to justify taking mining if our main aim is to level fast.
Justifications for NOT taking mining as a profession to power level:
1. You need to smelt a lot. Each time you need to return to base to smelt, you’re wasting precious leveling time. Yes – you ALSO need to return to base to auction skins, however… you don’t need to find a forge, which can take precious time from questing & mob killing.
2. You need to go off-course to find the mines, OR, you need to spend many, many bars of gold to buy ore to smelt from the AH.
If we forget about spending gold at the AH to buy ore to smelt (the quickest way to get our mining skill up), then we’re left with the only option – finding ore mines.
Unlike skinning, ore mines do not just pop up for us each time we make a kill. We have to go out of our way, sometimes a LONG way out of our way just to find them. This time doesn’t help our leveling, and it isn’t fast enough if you’re a dedicated horde player out to level as fast as you can.
But doesn’t the extra income from mining, and the great gear you can buy make up for it, you ask? Yes and no… I find that my skinning skill makes me so much cash while using auctioneer, that any attempt to mine is quite fruitless.
So, if you’re thinking about mining, and your sole goal is to get your horde character leveling as fast as humanly possible… drop mining, or at the least, use it only when mines practically throw themselves in front of you!
Skinning, The Power Leveler’s Favorite Profession
If we had to choose just one profession to help us level faster, what would it be…?
Skinning is the only answer!
Why are we so ga-ga over skinning at Horde Leveling Guide?
Because skinning has two amazing and useful abilities that’ll have us leveling faster in no time…
1. Skinning helps us “twink” our characters by allowing us to amass large fortunes of gold. Skinning ALONE is able to boost your bank account to almost unheard of levels. All you need to do is level your skinning skill until you’re able to skin each beast you kill, and then turn in your hides every time you get somewhere near the auction house.
Pro tip: Get the auctioneer add-on. Auctioneer will let you know the maximum price you can sell your hides, boosting the gold you accumulate… fast!
2. Skinning has a beneficial “side effect”. Every time you stop to skin a corpse, you’re recovering health and mana. Don’t over look this. While its simply a natural side effect of not being in combat, giving your character something to do while they rejuvenate health – even for a moment could equal hours of game time saved over the long run.
Would you rather stand still, or sit for a few seconds, or skin a corpse which earns you buckets of gold?
There really is no reason NOT to go all out on skinning. The extra gear you can buy with all that gold will mean MUCH faster kills, less down time healing, and faster leveling times!
Get out there & skin!
