A World of Warcraft Profession Guide is a great tool to help you with your WoW character build.

Here is a World of Warcraft profession guide to serve as a little tutorial and training to help you with your WoW character build.  More in depth training on specific professions will be in other locations on the Warrior Warcraft website.

In Wow, your character starts out with a few basic trade skills, however you must learn certain things, make or gather items during gameplay to build a set of skills that defines the character’s World of Warcraft professions. These skills allow you to make specific things, enchant items, etc.

A profession can be learned from a trainer for a certain quantity of gold or other cost. Sometimes you can gain skills from a recipe. As you proceed and gain experience your character will gain skill levels and thus will become more powerful in that profession.

You must meet certain proficiency levels within your World of Warcraft Profession training before you can advance to the next skill level.

There are two categories of professions-Primary and Secondary. The Primary professions are grouped into the sub-categories of Gathering and of Crafting/Production.

Watch this video describing the WoW Professions:

Lets talk about the Gathering Professions first.

Herbalism Profession uses herb gathering to harvest resources in game play. You can sell herbs that you gather in order to have a source of income. Mostly you will be collecting herbs for alchemists who use them to make potions or to scribes that need the herbs to make ink pigments. But there are also other professions that will use use herbs for learning or quests.  The Lifeblood trait is introduced in the Cataclysm patch and will allow you to heal over time with 20 seconds of Haste that ranges from 5 to 480!  There is a two minute cooldown time for this trait and it must be activated first.

The Mining Profession involves mining for minerals, jewels, and ores. You will find that mining will be complementary to engineers, blacksmiths and jewelcrafting professions. This is a profitable profession because many other characters need large amounts of these elements to generate material for their profession.  With the introduction of WoW Cataclysm, your character with the mining profession will be granted the Toughness trait which increases your stamina depending on your mining level rank.  You can get up to 120 more stamina points when you reach level 525.

The last gathering profession is the Skinning Profession. Here your character gathers hides and scales like dragon skin for leatherworking and other trades.  Thus it is a great profession to help you increase your  stores in making WOW Gold.  And here is a good World of Warcraft Tip for you, If you are in the skinning profession, then it gives you the Master of Anatomy trait and depending on your profession level, will add 3-80 points to a character’s critical strike rate that applies in ranged, spell and melee.

Ok, now what about the Crafting Professions?

WoW Profession GuideIn the Alchemy profession you mix potions and other substances like oils and herbs to ward against magic and can induce powers.  Make elixirs and potions with recipes your World of Warcraft character learns from the Alchemy trainers.  Some recipes or only discoverable by making a a specific transmute, flask, elixir or potion.

As a Blacksmithing professional you can make weapons and armor or mail. You can specialize in weapons or armor and even have sub-specialties like a swordsmith.  In this primary profession you forge and smelt metals and ore to create masterful armor and weapons.  The Mining Profession goes well with Blacksmithing as you can obtain our own materials and thus have to spend less gold.

Enchanting can make wands as well as augment gear with enchantments like strength or resistance to magics. This can be a tough profession in the beginning because your skill level is so low.  When you disenchant specific items that have been made by the Tailoring profession, then you can create shards, essences and dusts that will be of use to you for play or to sell.  So you might want to consider Tailoring as a complimentary profession.

Engineering explosive devices, guns, and other unconventional skills can be useful in the World of Warcraft though it tends not to be an extremely lucrative profession.  In the engineering profession you will create guns & scopes, bullets & arrows, and a few other things.  You need a lot of raw materials for this profession so you should consider the Mining Profession to help your WoW character out.

Inscription profession creates glyphs that can modify pre-existing spells and can sometimes teleport. They also create Darkmoon card that players collect.  A Horde or Alliance player deals in tomes, scrolls, glyphs, and vellum while leveling the Inscription profession.  You might want to be aquainted with the Herbalism profession to get the raw materials needed for inscriptions.

Jewelcrafting profession takes jewels and gives them special attributes that can do things like improve armor and weapons.  Your character can make trinkets like rings or necklaces, among other things.  The Mining profession is a great compliment profession to jewelcrafting.  You can learn designs from the jewlcrafting trainers that are located throughout the realm in different locations depending on your rank and whether you are Horde or Alliance.

Leatherworking professionals make cloth cloaks, mail armor and things like bags. As you gain skill level you can specialize in a particular area like Dragonscales for mail armor.  Of course sthe kinning profession is a good match for Leatherworking to get the materials you need to make things.  You can get patterns for the leatherworking trainers and some materials from suppliers.  In WoW Cataclysm the specialties in Dragonscale, Elemental and Survival no longer exist.

And then there is the Tailoring Profession where you can make cloth goods and nets and even flying carpets!  Enchanging profession is a good match because you can actually disenchant tailoring profession made products to create enchanting materials…I know that seems a little circular but just trust me when I say they work well together.

WoW Secondary Professions

Where as you can only learn two primary professions in the game of World of Warcraft, the secondary professions are not limiting.  The secondary professions in World of Warcraft Cataclysm are Cooking, Fishing, First Aid, and Archeology. Anyone, regardless of Alliance or Horde, Race, Class or Primary professions can learn a secondary profession.

Cooking is is beneficial in many ways.  You can heal faster, And recover Mana or focus and energy more rapidly.  In particular Azeroth seafood can give you great health benefits so you should learn fishing profession as well.

Fishing is not just about fish.  Yes there are some great benefits to eating the fish, and if you know cooking there can be some different perks.  However, there are also things to consider like gem stuffed bloated fish or Weapons that float to the surface of certain water sources.  So this profession might surprise you a little.  It is a good one that you really should learn.

With the secondary profession of First Aid you will help heal yourself and others by utilizing materials like cloth for making bandages and antidotes that are made from gathering venom sacs during your quests.  As you play, you will find better quality materials to make better bandages and anti-venom.

Archeology is new in the Cataclysm expansion.  It pays to know your Warcraft Lore here.  You will go around searching dig sites and finding incredible artifacts that can also be powerful tools and weapons.

There is a tremendous amount of information for each of these categories and the best recommendation I can give is to do a little research and training on each.  It is ok to have several characters so play around with it.  World of Warcraft Profession guides are incredibly helpful in character builds so don’t hesitate to get them.

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