A beginner's guide to WoW's gathering professions

As soon as your character hits level 5, it's time to pick up a profession -- or two or three! Each character you have can take two primary professions -- herbalism, mining, skinning, alchemy, blacksmithing, enchanting, engineering, leatherworking, tailoring, jewelcrafting, or inscription -- as well as however many secondary professions -- cooking, fishing, first aid, and archaeology -- they want. Primary professions are typically categorized as "gathering" professions -- herbalism, mining, and skinning -- that allow you to collect materials and "crafting" professions -- alchemy, blacksmithing, enchanting, engineering, leather working, tailoring, jewel crafting, and inscription -- that allow you to create items.

When choosing a primary profession, it's good to pick two that work well together: say, a crafting skill that uses the items you collect with a gathering skill. This means herbalism is typically paired with alchemy or inscription; mining is typically paired with blacksmithing, jewelcrafting, or engineering; skinning is usually paired with leatherworking; and enchanting and tailoring can be paired with anything (though often players will pair them together and use goods created by tailoring to level their enchanting). But if you aren't terribly interested in crafting or just want to give your character a leg up with money-making, you could pick up a pair of gathering professions and take whatever you gather while you're leveling to sell wow accounts to crafters on the auction house. As to secondary professions, since you're not limited on the number you can take, you can really grab as many as interest you.

Not sure where to start with all these choices? We'll walk you through it.

Whatever profession you take, you'll start with a skill level of 1, which you increase up to 600 as you level up and use the skill. Apprentice skill (which you can train at level 5) covers skill levels 1-75, journeyman (level 10) covers skill levels up to 150, expert (level 20) covers skill levels up to 225, artisan (level 35) covers skill levels up to 300, master (level 50) covers skill levels up to 375, grand master (level 65) covers skill levels up to 450, illustrious (level 75) covers skill levels up to 525, and zen master (level 80) covers skill levels up to 600. To train in each skill level, you need to buy wow gold be both the right character level and have a certain amount of skill. Further, to harvest higher level materials or craft higher level items, you'll need a higher skill level -- in short, this means you'll probably want to work on advancing your professions while you level up.

But just which professions should you choose? There are good reasons to pick all of them, which can make picking the right profession for your new character a challenge. Today we're going to walk you through WoW's professions, explaining what they do and why you might want to take them. There's a lot of world of warcraft accounts ground to cover, so today we'll start by talking the game's three gathering professions: herbalism, mining, and skinning.

How Long Have You Played WOW

Well, it seems there is some unknown number of "core" players who have been sticking around  since the earliest years, then there is this larger group that comes and goes in waves (often associated with new Raids, but also the try-and-drop types), and then there is the biggest group of subs, those based in China.

The Chinese numbers will continue to drop until the next Expac, simply because NetEase has stopped advertising this expansion (according to their own quarterly report, it seems games have a very limited shelf-life over there).  The "waves" group will continue to decline as Blizzard has  predicted, and the old-timer group will largely stay put.

We do know from Blizzard that the majority of WoW subs are located in China now, so that means a minimum of four million and one Chinese players.  Beyond that, who knows what the actual number distribution is.

Chances are, a site like WI is attracting zero people in China, several hundred old-timers and a smattering of wave players who have discovered this site.

. . . Or people just lied in the survey and this is all a big circle jerk.  Still more engaging than dailies, though!

Since someone else mentioned it, I started playing warcraft with the original game. Then WC2, and the expansion pack, which I beat on buying wow accounts horde side. But the alliance side, I just couldn't make any headway at the beginning of the last mission, which I think was where you actually destroy the portal itself. WC3 felt like a rehash of a better game and I wound up cheating through the last few missions. I don't remember if I even finished Frozen Throne.

For WoW itself, I tried the game either right before or right after Wrath launched and found it way too grindy, with way too little direction on what you were supposed to do. I wound up giving up with a 30ish warlock one because of the annoying boar spleen quests, but also because the friend that was getting me to play wouldn't actually play on a same level fast wow gold character. I came back soon after Cata launched because I wanted something to "do." I also had a coworker that was wanting me to be a paladin healer for his t11 raid group. That guild kind of fell apart, so I never got to pally heal, but my Mage seems okay with that.

RPPM mechanics

It is a complicated discussion, and even more difficult to model "time off target" than time on target. What I've taken from the EJ threads is that it depends on which fights you've got on farm vs which fights you're currently smashing your face against, and what your role in each of them is. If you're sticking on Ji'Kun the entire fight, then I guess haste would probably trump mastery, but if you're on the egg team, the probably mastery is better. If your raid is still fighting Horridon, then haste isn't going to be as useful as mastery. Pretty sure Shadowcraft is really only capable of modeling what you do if you get to stick to a target.

Seconded. I'm 536 ilvl and I still go full mastery. The difference between full haste and full mastery is only ~1% on a patchwerk fight. Part of haste's value is the increase in RPPM mechanics. If you get bad luck, mastery is better. If you get good luck, mastery is better. Haste just makes your luck better over a very long time but you can still get screwed. It's only buying wow gold averaged over many, many fights that haste's effect on RPPM totals up to a DPS increase.

Additionally, if you're target swapping at all or losing uptime for any reason, mastery becomes better (poisons keep ticking harder with mastery and haste doesn't affect DP ticks while you lose more autoattack swings as haste). Almost every fight in ToT involves target swaps.

It's a very small gain to go haste in an optimal situation averaged over a long time. Proc RNG over smaller periods of time (like 4m-10m; a real individual boss fight) and real fight conditions (target swapping, etc.) however favor mastery. It's just not worth it at this point even in cheap wow gold full BiS gear. Maybe next tier the difference will be large enough to warrant going full haste even with real fight conditions if they continue to inflate gear at this rate.

I'm talking a difference of a few percentage points here too, so in the end, you can gear whatever feels best and still be perfectly viable. I prefer mastery for more consistent and RNG-resilient damage while sell world of warcraft accounts others may prefer haste for a slightly faster rotation.

Wrath of the Lich King

In fact, that brief moment we were shown, the duel between Garrosh and Thrall, was another pivotal exchange right on the heels of the first one. Garrosh made another seeming 180 from being pleased at Thrall's revelation, to being incredibly upset with the way Thrall was handling things as Warchief. And frankly, he had every right to be -- what we were shown of Thrall in vanilla WoW was honestly, very little in terms of character advancement. Thrall didn't seem to really be actively doing anything at all for the Horde, other than sending players on a few questionable diplomatic missions. Based on what we saw in vanilla, it was only natural that Garrosh would question Thrall's right to lead -- because we had been shown that Thrall didn't really seem to have a handle on what the Horde wanted or what it should be. Thrall sent Garrosh to Northrend, and it was simultaneously the best and worst decision he could have made. It got Garrosh out of his hair, it gave Garrosh a wow gold for sale chance to prove himself, and ultimately, it gave Garrosh's ego enough of a boost that he felt completely comfortable continuing to question and badger Thrall at every turn. Yet by sending Garrosh to Northrend, Thrall missed an opportunity to demonstrate exactly who and what the Horde were -- Garrosh had to extrapolate his own opinions out of buying wow gold what he witnessed in Northrend. What he pulled from that experience wasn't really the correct image of the Horde at all. And from that, Garrosh took the opportunity to needle the other races of the Horde the moment he came back a hero. Why? Because he was a hero. He was a success. He proved he had what it took in Northrend, and he came back to cheers and accolades. Sure, he was reluctant to take Thrall's place as Warchief come Cataclysm -- but it was because he understood being a military leader and being a political leader were two very different things. Unfortunately, Garrosh didn't grasp the nuances of politics at all -- to the point where he began, where to buy wow gold in his arrogance and bravado, to belittle and push the other Horde races away.

Seems a tad random for Blizzard

This has to be the most well thought out, edited, filmed short movie I've seen made about WoW. Now, how long before Blizzard partners with a film company like Pixar and makes World of Warcraft the movie. Could be a box set for each expansion.

I have loved this video for years! I had it on my MySpace page for years as well lol. Might still be there, for all I know. This is an epic video; good to sell wow accounts or see it is still around. I think this video gets forgotten so quickly is because that wretched noise people are calling "music" ruins it so fast you forget you were watching something cool. I just turn off my sound. Very competent animation, otherwise.

Seems a tad random for Blizzard to discuss this video right now, considering it's a few years old. Having said that, it's still one of the best made machinimas ever. I was actually reminded of this video a few days ago when I was thinking about video animation. To all of you who are complaining, by the way; the music is very fitting with the video. ' it's un-warcrafty'. It's fan made, it doesn't have to be like Warcraft! You can't do any of the things in the video in game, but you only complain about the music being not representative of the actual game?! Didn't care to see where to buy wow gold? a BE wipe out my Alliance troops, and if I had been that Ally rogue, that BE would have been hunted to death. Great Animation and I'm looking forward to seeing much more. Please contact me if there's anything I can do to help for future projects. I think this would be amazing to be apart of.

Maybe another month to finish leveling an alt

You guys should know i love this game and i play this for years and will never quit. But they do expansion after expansion patch after patch they upload thing way to fast. years ago you could enjoy the patches before the new came everything required skill Like pvp and now? what u dont even need arena raiting for better gear u lvl to 90 in like 2 days thats just to cheap wow accounts and sick and you lose all the fun of the game. (Sorry For Not The Best English)

Wonderful, realms have been down for nearly nine hours and you've managed to update your Facebook cover photo. You get a cookie. No...no! I will not resub again. I must quit once and for all. Well, maybe I'll just buy a month to see the content. Maybe another month to finish leveling an alt. Maybe 2 months to max some more profs...but then I swear I will be done! League doesn't even fit under the same category as WoW. Please don't say it's better or buy wow gold and compare the two at all. I think that's rather insulting to MMORPG's.

i agree with that i enjoyed when normal dungeons actually took teamwork nd cc... now its run through everything.. no environment interaction.. used to need help on some quests nd meet new players now its que for fast dongeon sit in city and wait... sooo fking boring. *flails* Gaaah! I'm freakin' out xD Pleeaaseee get the servers workin'! I was like, "Why is it making me choose a realm? Oh...right...Blizz is taking forever."

The thing I really enjoy

The thing I really enjoy about this scenario is that there is absolutely no down time, unless you decide to pause for a moment. The action starts the moment you zone in -- your ship is under attack by the opposing faction, and it's up to you to fend off the attack. The soldiers really don't present a huge problem as far a mobs go, they're relatively easy to beat. The challenge in this particular scenario is avoiding the cannon fire from the other ships as you go along.

See that big red ring that the orc in the screenshot above is standing in? Yeah, that's the big red ring of death. It won't kill you instantly, but it'll knock a good chunk of your health off. And if you get hit by too many of those, you can kiss your life goodbye -- as the orc in the above screenshot figured out. This cannon fire will continue throughout the entirety of the scenario. If you and the rest of your party can avoid getting hit by cannon fire throughout the entire instance, you'll get the achievement Keep Those Bombs Away! from me... -- which sounds pretty easy until you're on the ship and you see exactly how to buy wow gold.

Once you've cleared out the enemy attackers, you're sent to the next ship. Oh, you don't swim, or climb a ladder, or anything remotely like that. You hop into a cannon and get shot over there -- because that's so much more ridiculously entertaining. Please keep in mind that jumping in the water is the last thing you want to buy wow gold. Remember that whale shark from Cataclysm? The one, if you were as obsessive about collecting achievements as I was, you killed for From Hell's Heart I Stab at Thee? Yeah, his son is in the water and won't hesitate to swallow you whole. Just take the cannon. Trust me.