Breakfast topic: Hardest tradeskill
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
Apr 23rd 2007 at 8:00AM
Just like in real life, in WoW, some jobs are harder than others. Gathering professions tend to be pretty easy and lucrative -- it doesn't take a lot of effort to wander around and gather stuff, particularly herbs. Skinning's a little tougher, but at least you get to control how many "nodes" you have by killing everything. Mining is widely considered to be annoying because of the intense competition for nodes, but it can also make you a lot of cash.
The crafting professions are much, much harder, and tend to require a significant gold investment. I've only been an alch/herb up to 375, so everything else is based on friends and guildmates.
Alchemy ... well, alchemy is easy. It doesn't require a lot of materials, the recipes are usually easy to find, and everyone loves the guild alchemists. Enchanting has the major negative of depending mostly on the kindness of strangers, most of whom want you to enchant their gear for free, but at least you can get the mats free by disenchanting your old gear. Tailoring has cheap mats, but you need a lot of them. Jewelcrafting is apparently difficult without mining, easy with it. Blacksmithing can apparently be really easy or really hard, depending on your luck (and your patterns!)
The two professions reported to be the "worst" -- both in terms of leveling and overall usefulness -- are leatherworking and engineering. Leatherworking from 350 up is a giant pain, since you need rare patterns, and you don't make a lot of money from LW unless you get hard-to-find epic patterns. Engineering requires a lot of rare materials and is just largely useless. However, on the pain-to-level scale, nothing beats fishing. I would seriously rather beat my head against a wall than fish for more than five minutes these days. Admittedly, it doesn't cost money, but the cost in brain cells is far too great.
What do you think is the hardest profession to level? What about leveling time vs. usefulness at 70?
Filed under: Herbalism, Enchanting, Tailoring, Leatherworking, Engineering, Blacksmithing, Alchemy, Skinning, Mining, Jewelcrafting
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Mats Apr 23rd 2007 8:12AM
having leveling a few of them. Enchanting.
Leveling up enchanting costs a fortune to level up, you miss all the gold you could have from selling your old gear, and you have to buy tons of materials to skill you way up. It has no gathering skill to combo it with, only another crafting skill (tailoring) and that costs money as well to level up.
Argent Apr 23rd 2007 8:14AM
fishing is one of the easiests tradeskills to level, imo. 5 mins a day will actually get you there eventually because the path to 375 is completely predictable (fish 8-10 fish at a time and you get a skillup. how hard is that?)
atm, i've hit 375 in engineering, smithing, alchemy (2x) and tailoring. of those, the hardest (by far) was tailoring, which at the latter levels requires an absolutely astounding about of netherweave (somehting like 120 cloth per skillup.)
engineering can actually be pretty easy, depending on what you skill up on. if you rolled a goblin engineer, i'd go as far as to say it's one of the easiest tradeskills there is (just reload your goblin mortar a blue million times.)
smithing is utterly brutal unless you go farm some rare drops (felsteel armor, f.e.) using the resist gear pieces to skill up is just prohibitively expensive. if you're gonna do that, though -- scryer have it a lot easier than aldor folks, imo.
lolwtfstfu Apr 23rd 2007 8:17AM
I am a shaman and i lvled 1-375 LW in 2-3 weeks without skinning. I did use another character to skin and he was a well equipped rogue so he destroyed the clefthoof bulls so it wasn't that hard to that extent but i was annoyed by only getting leather scraps 70% of the time and when i needed Knothide leather, i would have to make a trip to the Black Morass.
Now all that work geting to 375 is all the work required to make my Netherstrike armor. LW isnt really that hard and its use for armor is a good alternative to players who do not seek for raiding. Hopefully thsi si the trend that Blizzard wants to go with so there should be new patterns in 2.1.
Blacksmithing might be the hardest though because you have to go out of your way for minerals. And funny that all professions are hard when you are Aldor. With Scryers all recipes are significantly easier to do.
Also 350-375 LW, i did not need to get epic/bop world drop patterns. I just use rep rewards.
Kirby1612 Apr 23rd 2007 8:18AM
I've always leveled my professions as I leveled my character. I have farmer professions Mining/Skinning and they were extremely easy to rise up to 375 as I was just leveling normally.
If you ask me, skinning is easy to level. 1 mob=1 skin
Mining node=competition and mobs that will soon aggro around you (2.1 ftl). Nothing beats fighting a mob to get a node as someone else "ninjas" it from you =/
As for herbalism, I guess its the same as mining. Caves usually have a lot of ore and herbs with mobs around them. Herbs are usually out on the field while ore is spread out around edges of a zone. Either way, I belive the difficulty to gather them is still the same.
My guildies that have crafting professions(and enchanting) are usually broke whenever trying to level it up. With Primal Earth market being in the gutter on my server, I can send them what need, and get to 375 skill in no time. Some materials are stupidly expensive like stuff in engineering (khorium scope costs how much?!?) for such little benefit. Also, excluding jewelcrafting, your materials will always sell, but your products may not. Herbs are always good gold on the auction house, but pots and flasks seem to be a little cheaper than the materials themselves. I'm glad to see that crafting professions are getting easier to level, because it's practically for that reason that I almost refuse to grab one.
nubular Apr 23rd 2007 8:22AM
I hated enchanting, I got it up to 276 by mainly re-enchanting my gear over and over again because spamming the trade channel in IF resulted in very few people actually needing any of my enchants. I was trying to give away stuff for FREE and no one wanted it. So I decided to just get it to at least 275 so I can disenchant everything. I basically leveled up an enchanter just so he could be my d/e mule.
Mad Cow Apr 23rd 2007 8:53AM
@nubular
... same here. When bliz nerfed my level 5 de mule/bank, I played the alt long enough to get them up to 275 ... enchanting sucks, period. Now, granted ... once you have enchanting up high enough to not require mats to level, you can make a TON of money on the AH. Greater Astral Essence goes for 150g per stack of 5 on my server. I had my epic mount for my main within 4 farming runs of random instances.
... back to the subject. In my opinion, #1 is tailoring ... followed by Blacksmithing/Armorsmith ... with Enchanting in 3rd place. Jewelcrafting, Leatherworking, and any of the collection skills are too easy in my opinion (that includes alchemy). I have several toons with 375 professions and while I appreciate the ease as which I can level leatherworking to 375, it's almost as if it is too easy. Now making money with your professions, that's fine just where it is...
BoBoTheChimp Apr 23rd 2007 9:09AM
I've only been playing since January and I don't have the BC yet so my character is stuck at 300. I have tailoring and skinning. Tailoring is a pain in the ass due to the sheer number of mats you have to collect. I just started making things that require Runecloth and I haven't even come across any monsters that drop it (I'm level 47) so I wind up just buying it in the AH. A stack of Runecloth on my server goes for 2g easy in the AH. That might not seem alot to the higher levels but when your recipe calls for 5 bolts of the stuff (basically 5 stacks of 20) it can get expensive. Combined with thread and other misc items it gets even more expensive. On the other hand I have found skinning incredibly easy to level. I maxed that sucker out weeks ago just by skinning everything skinnable. Heavy and thick leather sell pretty well in the AH, somewhat off-setting my tailoring costs. When I first made my character I tried blacksmithing/mining but for some reason the trainer wouldnt teach me any plans until i had a skill level of 5. How was I supposed to up my skill level if I had no plans to make anything to increase it? Maybe I missed something. Oh well, I'm sure it will just get harder for me when I finally get around to buying the BC and go beyond 300.
Flit Apr 23rd 2007 9:18AM
After leveling herb/alch., Jewelcrafting is a bi-... sucks. Only about one recipie gives you any skill from about 100-150 (until you get the mithril filagree). Prospecting destroys a lot of ore for some crappy gems (sometimes no gems) and those little healing statues? Useless. You should be able to prospect the Stones (say 10) for more gems.
Anyway, I think jewelcrafting sucks, but i'm sticking to it!
Brim Apr 23rd 2007 9:24AM
In the end every trade gets useless in the end. I just go for Mining/Skinning and just use the extra cash I get from having those to buy the things I need from some sad git that leveled enchanting to 375 and hangs on to it because he can sell stuff three times a week.
I do have one alt who is a master transmuter who can transmute Primal Earth into Primal Water making me between 20g and 80g a day.
Quoi Apr 23rd 2007 9:26AM
Just because cloth is dropped by mobs doesn't make tailoring any easier to level. By level 350 or so, you need about 80 cloth per skill point, and by 360, you need 120 or so, not to mention all the arcane dust. It's incredibly useful, just a pain to level.
Enchanting is also really hard to level, mainly because when you spam trade you get 2 kinds of people: level 20 noobs that want Beastslaying on their OMGAWESOME Cruel Barb, or people that want +40 spell damage for 15g, your mats. Luckily, I have the highest level enchanting in my guild, with a couple of the rarer recipes, so I get a lot of guildies that are gearing up and need enchants.
kuchikirukia Apr 23rd 2007 9:32AM
i think alchemy is the easiest! and everything u do, it sells / has some use either for ur friends/urself.
tailoring is hard. partially bcoz whatever u tailored out has no value (except low lvl ones) but after that, its selling those shirts and bags only, mats are hard to find and cost a bomb too. once u reach lvl 300 u practically need to lvl it together with enchanting so u won't make much losses.
I roughly spent 100g each time I need to lvl up my enchanting. Expensive but it's worth it considering how much u can make in the long run (plus, no dep required in AH, so no losses, just keep on putting them in AH).
Shiro Apr 23rd 2007 9:34AM
One of the reasons that my SO and myself leveled up so many alts was because we wanted one person to have each profession, plus and extra one for each specialty. The only one we were missing as macecrafting (blacksmithing).
Leveling each one of them to 300 was never that bad. My Tailor/Enchanter was probably the hardest, but even that wasn't too bad. Most of her enchanting mats came from disenchanting her Tailoring skillups.
The 'hardest' one thus far for me to level up is my Engineer. There just isn't much worth making, so I always find a reason to use the mats for something else. I suppose once the three blacksmiths get out of using Fel Iron (Armorsmith is beyond it already, swordsmith is close, and axesmith is halfway) then I'll start really getting to it serious like. :)
Tailoring hasn't been too bad. Though the farming of Netherweb Silk has been a bit of a pain in the butt. I've not had any issues with finding enough Neatherweave though. I've found so much that I've been able to max out First Aid on a couple of the more bandage dependant alts.
Our Jewelcrafter got a big bump as we'd been saving gems for a long, long time. I've got a second JC now, that's leveling organically (she's horde as opposed to my alliance main) and she's not having any problems leveling it up either.
Once my DS Leatherworker gets out of Zangarmarsh I'll know a bit more about the 350-375 grind for that, but it hasn't been too bad to get to 350.
Samidare Apr 23rd 2007 8:34PM
Sorry, but just having to gather materials isn't hard at all. Its just time consuming. Enchanting and jewelry crafting have to honestly be the hardest.
Most of the enchanting recpies call for a massive amount of items destroyed, just for one skill up. So, its not running around looking for nodes, collecting cloth, skinning anything. I have to go farm mobs... hope for some greens to drop. Or if I am lucky have a guild group take me on a de'ing run. Just so I can try and skill up. Then, I have to farm for the recpies. And pre bc, if you wanted the good recpies you where wasting away working on hitting revered with thorium brother hood. Which is one of the worse factions to work on especially if you are not a miner.
Jewelry crafting...I love competing with the black smiths, and farmers for ore. That I get to destroy, and hope I get lucky and get a gem I can cut and skill up on. While others may have to collect more items. I have to depend on the random number generator to even get the items I need make something. Most of the time I just end up with powder and a green gem that few even want to put on their gear.
Don't get me wrong, I love tradeskills. But after having leveled all of them up to a minimum of least 300(except smithing). Jc and enchanting win. Hopefully 2.1 will make it a bit easier.
Prauche Apr 23rd 2007 9:52AM
Of the crafting professions -- and I have to say that I haven't tried JC at this point. I think Chanting is the worst, followed by BS and Engineering. Chanting is a pain, as those before me have noted, because you end up just wasting mats to re-enchant things over and over and over because you can't even GIVE them away. At least give us the ability to charge people to d/e their bops in the 'will not be traded' window so that they get a mat and we get a little bit of a return. sheesh. Fortunately, I was able to farm the Crusader enchant as well as acquiring the riding skill to gloves chant, which on my server is ridiculously expensive, so I have a couple of chants that are *somewhat* in demand.
Blacksmithing is a pain because it, like tailoring, takes an inordinate number of materials which are just ridiculously spread out across regions. And because of that, mats are crazy-expensive on the AH.
Engineering is bad because, let's face it, if you're not into the PvP trinkets, honestly, how good is engineering? If you're a hunter and get the Goblin Jumper Cables XL, ok, maybe (FD/Jumper Cables = instance-wipe insurance).
I had LW on my hunter, but dropped it loooong ago because the mail items I could craft left a lot to be desired.
I recently grabbed tailoring on my mage, who was 67 at the time. I just hit 68 Friday and yesterday hit 350 tailoring. Yes, the cloth is somewhat expensive to buy, but I don't find it to be that bad -- especially since between my own loots, and my Farmer, I mean Hunter, gathering alt, I get about half of what I need for it. Besides, all those BOEs I tailor get sent to my chanter to be d/e'd for future use in Tailoring or Chanting -- Nice little bonus there.
Paradoxic Apr 23rd 2007 11:26AM
Enchanting, bar none, is the most difficult tradeskill to level. With the lack of low-level enchanting mats on the market these days, I'd say it is nearly impossible to level from 0 to 300 without huuuge AH goldsinks. The reason I say enchanting is most difficult is because there's really no gathering skill to fuel it... (unless you're like me and you're tailor/enchant and craft tailoring items just to disenchant them.) I actully dropped my 'chanting which was stuck at 245 in favor of a far easier and more lucrative tradeskill: Mining. One of the best decisons I've ever made. Income while raid-spec'd holy is quite nice.
LW and Engineering are just gimp professions in TBC, not really a lot going on there... unlike... Tailoring which is basically the God skill for any caster. It's kind of a trade off because tailoring 0 to 350 isn't that difficult, but the materials for the last few levels becomes pretty steep... of course it's worth it for the absolutely amazing BOP epic sets you can craft In fact, my guildmaster (priest) dropped his 375 enchanting and picked up tailoring purely for the Mooncloth set. . Tailoring got a lot of love in TBC.
Kabira-Fenris Apr 23rd 2007 10:05AM
Fishing is getting minor buffs next patch. The fishing timer is going down to 20 seconds and it's no longer going to be possible to go the whole 20 seconds without getting a bite. I am one of those weirdos that actually ejoys fishing.
That being said, enchanting is hell. All the money you'd get from selling your old gear? Disenchanted. All the enchanting mats? Used on skillups. All the money? Out the window...
Ryan Apr 23rd 2007 10:35AM
I always use 'gouging out my own eyes with a spoon' as a preferable alternative to fishing.
Geo Lara Apr 23rd 2007 10:10AM
My vote goes for Enchanting and Engineering. Both professions can be crazy expensive to level, and do not have any pay off until you hit the higher levels.
Engineering really needs one big change to make it profitable: Make the head gear (goggles, dive helmets etc..) wearable to everyone, not just other engineers.
FireStar Apr 23rd 2007 10:26AM
i hate fishing in real life but like it in game. When i go to STV all i see up and down the coast is "treasure". Pools of fish that since i have every tradeskill i can do something with them. There's been a couple times i went up the coast to level somewhere, but fished the entire way then ran outta time and had to log. oops :).
Mekias Apr 23rd 2007 10:37AM
I have a level 60 rogue with 300 gnomish engineering. Is there ANY reason at all to level it higher? I enjoy my World Enlarger and Transport to Tanaris but that's about it.
It's a shame that engineering is so worthless. It has a lot of potential and the devs just refuse to improve it. I mean, what's the point of the new head armor? They're worthless at 70.