Engineering is great for the casual player, providing things that are very handy questing and getting around.

However more than one raid has been thankful for the repair bot. :)

yay, quirky.

well except you know the crit/agility/sp enchants you can get on an assortment of tinkers which are paired with the super hand parachute, rocket boots. and even the nice 1 minute haste CD for your gloves which can act as a 3rd trinket. Engineering can be a very nice addition to some of your stats, and thats all i have to say about that

Wish I could find the post from the official forums which discussed engineering and its tinkers from a min/max point of view. The conclusion was that engineering, for a DPS role, was slightly better than blacksmithing or jewelcrafting.

I'm a fairly serious raider (tanking TOTGC now), and I find a great deal of practical uses for engineering. I can't count the time the rocket boots have saved me or a teammate (like when the opposing tank gets an Acidmaw poison, kiting Anub's spikes, oh shit moments etc.), and being able to get to the AH in Dal saves me a great deal of time, as does the Wormhole as it acts basically as a second Hearthstone. The mind control helmet actually adds more stamina to my helm than the Argent Crusade head enchant, and Jeeves has raid worth beyond describing.

Sure there are plenty of reasons why one might consider BS or JC more valuable, but to say that Engineering provides no raiding benefits is incorrect.

not true in the slightest, testing has been done which shows engineering to perform as the best profession for dps in 5 man dungeons and a slight second to jewelcrafting in 10 and 25 man's due to the full range of stat scaling buff's you would use. Given that the extra stats may not be scalable (ie. BoK only works on flat stats) then engineering would possibly out perform it. Stemming from the fact the Hand Mounted Pyro Rocket isnt on the CD and is available every 45 seconds its a flat dps increase.

Source : http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2009/09/best-hunter-professions-for-dps/

granted its for hunters, who gem for agility, so JC outweighs engineering ,engineering may come out on top for a class that gems for spell power.

"Translation: Engineering doesn't actually provide any benefits if you are a min-max raider."
Rogues would like a word with you.

Don't forget that you get almost a thousand armor to your gloves. Nothing else comes close in the game if you're a tank.

@Cowburger: The analysis you linked doesn't account for the fact that the rockets can crit. I haven't seen anything that indicates for sure whether they use your crit % or some built in figure (I'll dummy test it later if I don't find answers). The number I see kicked around is 20% crit, in which case the rockets weigh in at 48.96 DPS, making them BiS for DPS regardless of the buffs you're carrying.

But wait, there's more... The rockets' dps is quantized far differently than a standard static buff. If a given fight lasts exactly 45*n seconds and you're right on the cooldown every time, you'll derive that 48.96 DPS benefit and no more. If, however, the fight's duration does not divide exactly evenly by 45sec, you've derived *more* benefit from it by virtue of the fact that the damage is front-loaded for each period.

Use Patchwerk for an example, as it's a quick fight:

If your raid takes 2min 15 sec (135 seconds) to beat him, you get 3 uses of the rocket in that period, yielding 48.96 DPS.

If your raid takes 2min 16 sec (136 seconds) to beat him, however, you get *four* uses of the rocket, yielding 64.8 DPS.

If your raid only takes 2 minutes (120 seconds), you've still used the rocket three times (0, 45, 90) and derived 55.1 DPS from it by consequence.

In short, given the cooldown of the item, as long as you have it macroed into something you're hitting constantly the DPS output will always be *higher* than the simple damage over cooldown math indicates.

Add to that the utility of bombs on AoE packs (and with boxes of bombs, the cost of this is negligible even compared to repair bills, particularly given that they are a skill-up item), the fact that the cloak tinker yields an extra 1 Agi over the BiS cloak enchant available), and extra effect from injectors, and it is clear that engineering is in pretty good shape in terms of offered benefits.

Alright, in light of new information, I'll modify my translation in light of new information.

Engineering provides mainly tricks that are either not easily quantifiable (parachutes, rocket boots) and devices that help save time (wormholes, Dalaran auctioneer, portable mailboxes, repair bots). There are some enchants that are useful for min-maxers of certain classes or roles, but even if you don't play these, the aforementioned tricks and time savers may be reason enough to take it.

wrong.