Help for Someone Completely New to Professions

[meddlingmage]

So I'm certainly rolling a Warlock for the upcoming fresh server, and I'm really planning on taking my time and enjoying the game and the journey first and foremost. I'd really like to know what my choice should be when it comes to playing and leveling with the Warlock. I've always like skinning, is this a viable option? Also, reading through old posts I see that tailoring is considered "mandatory" by many and I have no idea why. I've never been into crafting in the least so my knowledge on the topic is extremely limited. Does skinning go with tailoring by chance? What exactly can I expect to do for myself with tailoring?

Also, AFAIK you can have two professions correct? For instance mining and skinning, both can be used right? But then whats the next category? That would be tailoring right? How many of these can you have? I know I'm sure this is all very basic... but I would like the ELI5 breakdown! (explain like I'm 5).

I thank everyone in advance for their time.

[Pottu]

You want tailoring because there are a couple of good cloth items for a warlock during the leveling process and then a very good robe at 60. Both the robe and the recipe for it are BoP so you have to be a tailor to use it. Once you've crafted that, you can drop tailoring unless you wish to make money by making bags and mooncloth.

Enchanting is often paired with tailoring since neither needs a gathering profession. You can enchant your own gear along the way which helps a little and you don't need to pay money to gather ingredients for enchants at 60 since you can just DE dungeon loot. But it is the most expensive crafting skill to get to 300. It'll still be useful at 60 through the game because you can DE dungeon/raid loot while farming them, get tips from enchanting other peoeple's gear and keep enchanting your own gear.

Skinning goes with leatherworking, herbalism goes with alchemy, and mining goes with both blacksmithing and engineering. That one is very good for PvP, which is why you'll see loads of engineers on PvP realms.

[Aslan]

The robe mentionned by Pottu is http://db.vanillagaming.org/?item=14514 which is considered pre-raid bis, but the true reason why you want to have tailoring is the bloodvine set http://db.vanillagaming.org/?itemset=421
The set is bis until you enter t3 content, therefore it will still serve you for quite some time in case you end up progressing through naxx. You need maxed tailoring (300) in order to benefit from the setbonus, you can still wear the items themselves without the profession.

Now on one part you mentionned that you want to take it on easy and just enjoy the game, that would mean it doesnt matter if you get the best possible gear option of pve at lvl 60, on the other side it also means that you wont get into naxx, so you might at least want the 2nd best option. You can also save your clothes while you are lvling and decide later on if you want to be a tailor or not, the bloodvine set wont be released until probably 8 months from when the server launches.

As far as professions in general go, you can pick 2 primary professions which are herbalism, mining, skinning, alchemy, blacksmith, enchanting, engineering, leatherworking, tailoring and as many secondary professions you want, cooking, fishing and first aid. Hope I didnt miss one.

By the way, if you happen to detect pve or pvp ambitions, engineering is crucial for playing either on a high level.

[meddlingmage]

You want tailoring because there are a couple of good cloth items for a warlock during the leveling process and then a very good robe at 60. Both the robe and the recipe for it are BoP so you have to be a tailor to use it. Once you've crafted that, you can drop tailoring unless you wish to make money by making bags and mooncloth.

Enchanting is often paired with tailoring since neither needs a gathering profession. You can enchant your own gear along the way which helps a little and you don't need to pay money to gather ingredients for enchants at 60 since you can just DE dungeon loot. But it is the most expensive crafting skill to get to 300. It'll still be useful at 60 through the game because you can DE dungeon/raid loot while farming them, get tips from enchanting other peoeple's gear and keep enchanting your own gear.

Skinning goes with leatherworking, herbalism goes with alchemy, and mining goes with both blacksmithing and engineering. That one is very good for PvP, which is why you'll see loads of engineers on PvP realms.

Okay so question for you, in order to level up tailoring is it expensive? And how exactly do I level it up (I know I know...) Ill essentially learn the skill, and then have to buy recipes from a tailoring vendor or what? Are there any major milestone items I should be crafting for myself at such and such a level. What I mean is when you say "You want tailoring because there are a couple of good cloth items for a warlock during the leveling process" being so new I don't know exactly what/when I can expect to tailor certain items.

I think I'm going to stay away from enchanting at this time as it seems so expensive and I don't really want to balance two professions at the moment. So when would I expect to start making money by crafting bags? Would this be once I hit level cap? I was just guessing but I figured bags would be made out of cloth (skinning) so thats why I wanted to go skinning.... thanks for your time so far

[Drain]

If you're a serious raider, you want Tailoring+Engineering. The first has a BIS caster set, better than anything out of T1. While it is BoE; it has a set bonus on it which requires tailoring. Those without the profession don't get the full benefit of the set. Engineering by contrast, has a BIS caster hat, this one requiring the profession just to equip.

If you're only willing to work up one of these, I'd suggest Tailoring. While 3 with the set bonus is still inferior to all 4 without the set bonus; tailoring is easier to skill up, and doesn't require mining hogging up another slot. If you do want to work both... you might want to do engineering first because it requires mining. Tailoring mostly uses cloth, which can be farmed up in advance without a profession, then stocked up in the bank until you dump mining for tailoring. If you didn't keep any, you could always just go farm it later. The alternative is trying to get ore, with no slot for it to go on. However, keep in mind that you could just use a 2nd character to mine ore. If you take up more than 1 character, only 1 miner is necessary to farm ore. Keep in mind though that once ENG is 300 with everything you care about crafted; you basically don't need ore anymore, not unless you want to keep throwing explosives.

[Crysthal]

Hey mate skinning yields leather which is mainly used for leatherworking so picking skinning as a Profession without leatherworking makes no real sense unless you want to sell the leather to leatherworkers (but usually leather is cheap and thus not a great "Gold maker")

You don't need any professions at all yet they have certain benefits as already mentioned above.

For the immersion and fun I'd certainly pick up tailoring on a character who only wears cloth you so can craft yourself some gear and bags while leveling.

Herbalism and mining are great gold makers but aside from that they are only important if you want to be a blacksmith or Alchemist.

I plan on playing either a warlock a mage or a Hunter on the new Server and my professions will be:

Warlock/mage : tailoring + herbalism
Hunter : either skinning+leatherworking or mining+Engineering

[ShaqPack]

Already been said but tailoring is the best profession, you're going to be getting lots of cloths off humanoid mobs anyway while leveling so you may as well put it to good use. From there it's somewhat debatable, but engineering is just about mandatory if you are going to do some serious pvp ranking. If not, herbalism is a safe bet. People will need potions, flasks, and elixirs all the time, it's not like vanilla, many high end guilds expect people to flask for raids even when the content is already outgeared lol.

Leatherworking is easy to level but that's the problem, it's so easy that you'll always have to compete with other leatherworkers that can easily just get many stacks by going out into the world. There's lots of miners already out there because of engineering too, arcane crystals are worth some money early on but eventually grow less useful and from there your profits dip down A LOT. Enchanting is really the only other viable option, it's not a bad one, you can make some decent tips and some rare recipes can net good cash, but it just boils down to luck and if the guild is willing to pass you those recipes.

[SmashSplash]

First Aid is a very useful secondary profession you also should consider training. This profession can be trained no matter which two primary professions you pick. I have written a First Aid leveling guide you can read here:
https://classicguides.app/first-aid-leveling-guide/