This is not a bad idea at all. In a sense you can already buy skill points by simply purchasing the mats you need from the auction house, instead of grinding them yourself. This of course can be ferociously expensive, so by being able to purchase skill-ups directly from a trainer, the levelling process would become a lot less expensive (it's not as if Blizzard would go overboard with the cost of purchasing a skill-up, I could easily see it costing perhaps 5g per skill point, which would be so much cheaper than purchasing from the auction house).

I kind of hope this will be the case-- professions at 600 really calls for something to aid in the process. Leveling is much, much faster than profession skill gain. A revamp, more daily quests, buy skill points with gold, something.

This could also help act as a sort of gold sink; I don't think it should be too cheap (5g/skill point might be a bit low; for the full range to 525, it's only 2625g [plus w/e the trainable skills cost], which isn't that large of an investment), but also something not WAY overblown. I also think it should be limited to how many of these can be done, maybe 10 per profession level, so that way it's not JUST a "buy your profession" and you actually have to get out and do some legwork.

With the DMF basically giving 5 free skill points every month, I kinda doubt it.

So you would rather give your gold back to blizzard than help someone out who took their time to farm them mats? That's kind of crappy. I like how it's set up now. You either work for it and farm yourself, or purchase the mats on the AH and reward the person who worked for the mats. Seems like it's working pretty good to me.

I think it would have a lot economic implications, just a couple I can think of now:

* There would be less point having gathering professions at lower levels, because all the low-level stuff wouldn't sell for a decent amount of money, because it would be cheaper to pay for skill-ups than pay for the mats to skill-up.
* People who put crafted/prospected/DEed stuff on the AH to sell to people levelling skills would see their income dry-up.

Also if you never had to do a profession to skill it up it would lose it's flavour somewhat, and be seen as just about the stat bonuses they provide.

As a gold sink... Maybe.

But to make life easier? Nononononononono!!

This is an MMO - it's based around farming: grinding for mats, exp, gold, rep... It's already bad enough how simple everything else is in the game - lets not dumb it down further.

If you just want to buy your way to max level, there is a PS3 game over there for you.

It could be a good guild perk. Apprentices... just like irl, the master leaves the manual labour to his students, who in turn gets experience. Considering how many flasks and potions and leg enchants that needs to be crafted, there's a lot of skill point potential there.

@rollo

I have a level 25 guild, but you can't do that to people who are not in a high level guild. I think it's a little over blown. Leveling a profession gives decent bonuses. If you are level 85 and wanting to level a profession from scratch, you already have the advantage of being maxed.

What I would like to see is a buff to those people who have both the gathering and crafting profession on one toon. Like a 10% mining/skinning/herbs. I know that is a guild perk already, and a good one. But those are the players that need it. The other thing I would like is- a max level angler should be able to hit the pool he is casting into 9 out of 10 times. That and there should be a chance to catch more/rare fish/drops.

I would have gladly done this over spending almost 100g/stack of frostweave just to level my tailoring. I dropped close to 6k on my alt mage's leveling of Wrath tailoring/enchanting. I also farmed for close to a week to get my mats and finally just gave up and bought the materials. I don't have hours upon hours to spend farming for that kind of stuff and in that time I could have been to 85 rather then sitting in IC trying to farm Frostweave. It was very frustrating.

That being said I think a better idea is to let you buy mats in a limited quantity/day from your profession vendor and making it so that you can't buy mats unless you have a certain skill in order to buy it and to deter people from profiting off of it (although it will still happen)

Having leveled every profession at some point or another, some of them are really just fine as-is while others do seem to be outleveled pretty easily. I had problems with tailoring, enchanting, blacksmithing, and leatherworking, but not with any other professions (and gathering professions like mining and herbalism tend to out-level my own level more than anything else).

So maybe a better solution would just be to address why those specific professions lag behind and adjust what it takes to level them or availability of the mats required.

It's a fine line between instituting quality of life improvements and having the game play itself for you. Face it, if your toon is heirloomed up or you level largely through the RDF, you're going to need to spend some quality time alone with your profession in order to level it as well. That's just part of the game and is working as intended. The gaining of ranks should imply that some effort and/or time was spent in achieving said ranks. To me it would be weird to go to a vendor and plop down a stack of gold and suddenly be an "Illustrious Grand Master" at anything.

@ Noyou
I don't think they'll ever allow any type of casting speed/accuracy advantages as long as the fishing tournaments are set up as they are. The premise behind those contests is that everyone has an equal shot at winning. It might work if the bonuses were locked out in the applicable zones during those events or something.