Profession

A profession is a large trade-oriented set of skills that player characters may incrementally learn in order to gather, make, or enhance items that can be used in World of Warcraft gameplay. Professions are both learned and improved from a trainer (or sometimes with recipes), for a cost. Professions can be learned regardless of their character faction, race, or class (although there are a few class skills that are similar to professions.)

Specific trade skills within a profession allow you to do specific things — craft a specific item or add a specific enhancement. These are learned from the profession trainers, from recipes, or occasionally directly from a quest trainer. Each profession starts out with a few specific trade skills.

Through practice, a character gains skill levels within the profession and becomes more capable within that profession. Note the distinction, professional skills are capabilities within a profession, whereas professional skill level is a progression metric which is used as a prerequisite for professional skills and as a prerequisite for the ability to gather specific items within a gathering profession.

There are seven (four without ) broad proficiency levels that constrain how much skill you can currently acquire within your professions.

History
New professions have been added through expansions and patches.

The Jewelcrafting profession could originally only be learned on accounts that had the Burning Crusade expansion enabled on them. Since the Cataclysm expansion, it has been available to classic accounts, as Jewlcrafting trainers moved into the old cities. While Inscription was introduced in Patch 3.0.2 (Wrath of the Lich King), you DO NOT need to have the expansion enabled on your account to be able to train in it.

Archaeology is restricted to people who have purchased the Cataclysm expansion.

Primary professions and secondary professions
Two classes of professions exist: primary professions and secondary professions. You can have only up to two primary professions at any time (but are not required to take any). You can have any number of the secondary professions, and they do not count against your two primary professions limit.

You can drop primary professions, freeing up the profession slot, but you lose the knowledge and experience within the profession; if you take it again later, you will start over from scratch. Secondary professions cannot be dropped, and there would be little point to doing so.

Categories of professions
Professions fall into one of three categories:

"Gathering" professions gather or harvest items from resources throughout the game world to supply ingredient materials ('mats') for crafting professions. Occasionally, these harvested items will be directly useful. The gathered materials can be sold in the auction house, unless binding on pickup prevents it.

"Production" professions make items from other ingredient items (herbs, bars, meats, etc.) Blizzard calls these "production professions". Most folks in game call them crafting or building. Most of the items produced will be directly useful, but some will be ingredients for further crafting. The products can be sold in the auction house, unless binding on pickup prevents it.


 * The first recipes you get are useful for gearing up low level characters (assuming a higher level character is not helping to support you). Some contend that as soon as you start running instances, the drops will usually be better than most crafted items from the same level, but this is not always the case. Quite often crafted items will provide comparable stats or utility benefits that are quite useful for characters of all levels.


 * High end crafting, including specializations, can be extremely useful and lucrative, especially from patterns that come from end game faction grinding or drop in high level instances (some of which Bind on Pickup). There are also several quests which require crafted items for completion.

"Service" professions provide a service, such as buffing items. These will generally change the properties of an existing item without changing the in-game identity of the item. Characters that want to make money with a service profession will usually have to actively solicit customers.

There is some overlap, where a profession of one type will have some functions that are of another type.

Minimap locator
The gathering professions mining and herbalism (and fishing if you find and use the Weather-Beaten Journal) can make use of the minimap to locate resources.

Companion professions
The idea of companion skills is to use one profession or skill to complement another. Typically, this is a crafting profession and the corresponding gathering profession that gathers the bulk of the materials for the crafting profession. It is by no means necessary to actually have both skills; however, having them both greatly lowers your character's reliance upon the auction house for materials. This can be a good thing if you don't earn a lot of gold per hour (if your only source of income are dailies, for example), however, gathering takes up a lot of time, and the gold per hour is much lower than for some crafting professions. Therefore, considering that time is money, it can actually cost a lot less to get materials from the auction house instead of gathering them yourself.

The following is a list of recommended companion skills that generally work well together. Only crafting and service skills and their corresponding gathering skill are listed here. Two gathering skills can be used to make money if you are not interested in crafting at all:


 * Alchemy: The best companion skill for this profession is Herbalism. However, Fishing is also highly recommended as it supplies a number of oils needed for Alchemy. Since Fishing is a secondary profession, Herbalism can be taken simultaneously to assist with Alchemy. At higher levels, Mining can be used to provide materials for some potions as well as transmutes. Check your server for auction house prices for both herbs and minerals. Choose the profession that has the highest sales prices and volume and use your profits to purchase the materials you cannot obtain for yourself. New players should stick with Herbalism and Fishing until they get used to dealing with the auction house.


 * Blacksmithing: The best companion skill for this profession is Mining. Ore is typically in high demand and thus expensive to purchase on the auction house. While blacksmithing does utilize components from other professions (mainly leather from Skinning), it does not do so in sufficient quantity to justify losing a big money maker. Very few low-level blacksmithed items sell for more than the value of the materials needed to make them. Thus, blacksmiths should only make the most basic items that will either advance their craft (items with low material requirements) or produce money from the auction house (such as rods needed by enchanters or buckles needed by tailors). All other mined materials should be sold on the auction house for profit until your skill is sufficient enough to sell weapons and armor that are in high demand and sell for more than the value of their materials. Check your server's auction house frequently. Add-ons such as Auctioneer are very helpful in determining to craft for sale or post raw materials.


 * Cooking: While Cooking is a secondary profession and utilizes many dropped meats from creatures in the game, its companion skill is Fishing. Before patch 2.4, there was no way to get the cooking skill up to high level without taking up fishing or purchasing the raw fish from someone who has taken up the skill. However, patch 2.4 corrected this short-fall and removed the need to take fishing to advance cooking. It should be noted though that fishing and cooking go hand-in-hand with each other and it is still recommended to take both skills regardless of the fix in 2.4. Don't forget that since both are secondary skills, you can have both of them in addition to two primary skills.


 * Enchanting: Enchanting actually comes in two parts: enchanting and disenchanting, of which the latter skill is used to produce the materials needed to enchant. Since the enchanting/disenchanting combination only takes up one profession slot and requires disenchantable items, it is a common practice to couple Enchanting with Tailoring. This is mainly because Tailoring requires no gathering skills, and can produce many green items that can be disenchanted to obtain the materials for the enchanting craft. If you do not like farming for cloth, or if the cost of leather is cheaper on the auction house, then Leatherworking can also produce the green items needed for disenchanting. However, this practice (though not unheard of) is not common, as everyone can farm for cloth and only someone with the Skinning profession can farm the leather needed by leatherworkers. Note that it is also customary for enchanters to farm green and blue items from instanced dungeons and to buy up cheap disenchantable items from the auction house to provide the materials needed for their craft.


 * Engineering: The best companion skill for this profession is Mining. Ore is typically in high demand and thus expensive to purchase on the auction house. Like Blacksmithing, Engineering is ore intensive. However, it is also stone intensive and uses a fair number of gems. Mining provides most of the raw materials needed for engineering. While this trade also uses items provided by Skinning, like Blacksmithing, it is not in sufficient enough quantity to justify not taking Mining.


 * Inscription: The companion skill for Inscription is Herbalism. Herbs are gathered together and made into various pastes that are later used as the basis for inks for the profession.


 * Jewelcrafting: The best companion skill for this profession is Mining. Ore is typically in high demand and thus expensive to purchase on the auction house. Like Blacksmithing and Engineering, Jewelcrafting is ore and stone intensive. Additionally, Jewelcrafting needs gems and these are obtained either from mining drops directly or from prospecting ore mined. Jewelcrafting uses so little from other professions that it would not be advisable to couple it with anything other than Mining.


 * Leatherworking: The best companion skill for this profession is Skinning. Skinning produces almost all of the raw materials needed to work leather. Additionally, you don't have to kill the mobs yourself in order to skin them. If the creature has been looted, a skinner can skin the corpse for leather, hide or scraps and a leatherworker can turn those items into usable pieces of leather or items. Similar to the above professions, Leatherworking does occasionally utilize other professions' crafted or gathered materials. However, like the above professions, these are not in sufficient enough quantity to warrant not taking up Skinning.


 * Tailoring: Unlike other primary professions, tailoring doesn't directly have any other associated companion profession as most of the raw materials are obtained by farming cloth from humanoids in the game. However, it is common practice to couple this profession with a gathering skill such as Skinning, Herbalism, or Mining. It is also common practice to couple this profession with Enchanting. However, except for Skinning to a minor degree, none of these are for the purpose of helping with Tailoring. They are all for either making money on the auction house from selling raw goods to other professions, or for increasing the enchanting profession's skill. Tailors that do not wish to pick up the enchanting profession should consider Skinning. This is for two reasons. First, Skinning provides a few items needed by tailors (such as leather for tailored boots or bags). Secondly, both skinning and tailoring are professions that rely upon gathering items from mobs that you will be killing in the game anyway. In other words, if you kill a humanoid, it will most likely be dropping cloth for your tailoring. If you kill a beast or dragon, you can skin it to grab useful materials. Having both Tailoring and Skinning is a great way to both save and make money at the auction house.

Increasing professional skill level
Skill level is increased by practicing the skill. This works differently for different professions.

For most professions, you have a chance to gain skill level as you craft items, perform your service, or gather from a resource. As you increase in a skill, more recipes and resources reach a 0% chance to increase the skill (at this point the recipe will appear grey in the profession window). When a recipe turns green, a skill raise seldom occurs. A yellow recipe will raise the skill by 1 point roughly 60% of the time. An orange recipe always raises the skill 1 point.

The chance of skilling up changes within a color band as well. For example, if a particular item goes from orange to yellow at 240 and from yellow to green at 255, the chance of skilling up will be almost as good as orange from 240-245, middling from 245-250, and barely better than green from 250-255. It is often beneficial to make high yellow items to skill up more cost effectively than orange items, but low yellow items should only be used if inexpensive (or if profitable!).

The formula describing the chance to gain a skill level, given your current skill level, the level at which the pattern you are using turns "yellow", and the level that it turns "grey", appears to be : chance = (greySkill - yourSkill) / (greySkill - yellowSkill) This means that a recipe that has just turned yellow will still be guaranteed to grant a skill point for its next craft (in the above formula, if yourSkill and yellowSkill are the same, the result is 1). It can be observed that the level at which recipes turn green is the point where the chance of a skill-up is 0.5. Thus, yellow recipes have a skill up chance tending from 1 to 0.5 as the recipe approaches green. The number of crafts of a recipe required to get 1 skill-up is geometrically distributed, thus the expected number of crafts is given by 1/chance. This may help in which recipe is the 'cheapest' to use to level up regarding material cost.

One exception to this rule is Skinning, wherein skinning a corpse which appears orange does not guarantee a skill increase, and often many such corpses must be skinned in order to raise the skill).

Fishing also works differently. Each item fished has a contribution to raising your fishing skill, regardless of the item level fished or the location fished. Raising your fishing skill requires progressively more catches, but it doesn't matter where you fish nor what you catch (other than you will miss more fish in more difficult areas where you have a chance to miss some fish, so it will take longer - so raising fishing skill can be inversely related to the difficulty of the fishing.)

Creating a Basic Campfire has a chance of increasing cooking skill. This has 5 min cooldown so it is not so useful.

Proficiency levels
Professions can be trained to seven levels of proficiency (six without Cataclysm, five without  Wrath of the Lich King, four without  The Burning Crusade installed). Your professional proficiency level represents a range of professional skill points, and your maximum professional skill points is capped by your professional proficiency level.

Bonus to profession skill
You can also increase your profession skill level with certain racial abilities, items, and enchants. Principally the chance to skill up is based on the characters base skill level - i.e. the skill level before the racial or item bonus. This makes it much easier to level up the skill. The Draenei Jewelcrafting skill bonus of 5, for example, means that a recipe that turned from orange to yellow at 30 for other races would not turn yellow until 35 for a Draenei jewelcrafter.

You must have training in the profession (at least one skill point) to use a skill bonus in that profession. With no training, the skill bonus does not apply - so you can not use the skill bonus instead of training in a profession.

Racial profession
Certain races receive a profession skill bonus as a racial trait.
 * Gnome → +15 Engineering
 * Tauren → +15 Herbalism
 * Draenei → +5 Jewelcrafting
 * Blood Elf → +10 Enchanting
 * Worgen → +15 Skinning
 * Goblin → +15 Alchemy

Enchantments
Certain enchantments create a permanent profession skill bonus on an apparel item, which is then worn to apply the profession skill bonus. Currently, all of these work on gloves. Casting these enchantments on a very low level non-binding white or gray quality cloth glove enables the glove to be worn by any character. This will also prevent anyone from accidentally disenchanting the glove. (The materials for the enchantment cannot ever be recovered in any case.) (Some folks may prefer the enchantment on a Bind on Equip glove they can't accidentally give away.)
 * Enchant Gloves - Fishing adds 2 to Fishing skill.
 * Enchant Gloves - Herbalism adds 2 to Herbalism skill.
 * Enchant Gloves - Mining adds 2 to Mining skill.
 * Enchant Gloves - Skinning adds 5 to Skinning skill.
 * Enchant Gloves - Advanced Mining adds 5 to Mining skill.
 * Enchant Gloves - Advanced Herbalism adds 5 to Herbalism skill.
 * Enchant Gloves - Gatherer adds +5 to all gathering skills

The herbalism enchantment can be cast on for a total bonus of +7 or +10 herbalism skill. This is the only way to get both bonuses at once, since individual herbalism skill bonus items would occupy the same equipment slot.

Equipment
Certain items give profession skill bonuses when wielded or worn.
 * adds +10 to Skinning skill.
 * adds +10 to Skinning skill.
 * See Skinning equipment for a detailed discussion.
 * Mail adds +5 to Mining skill.
 * Crafted by engineers who have specialized in Goblin Engineering.
 * Can be worn by Paladins and Warriors, and also by Shamans and Hunters above level 40 who have trained to wear mail armor.
 * As it is Bind on Pickup, it can only be created and worn by engineers who have the Goblin Engineering specialization; you can continue to wear it if you change specializations as long as you remain an engineer.
 * Note that this item is not available to miners who have anything other than engineering as their other profession.
 * With the mining enchantments on gloves, total bonus to mining skill is +7 or +10.
 * Leather adds +5 to Herbalism skill.
 * Crafted by leatherworkers.
 * Cannot be worn by Priests, Mages, or Warlocks.
 * With the herbalism enchantments, this glove is +7 or +10 herbalism skill.
 * For Tauren, that's +20 with no enchantment, +22, or +25 with enchantment. (All Tauren classes can wear the glove.)
 * The pattern for making the is sold only by an Alliance NPC vendor. The pattern can be traded and sold; Horde will have to get it from the Neutral Auction House.
 * The are Bind on Equip and can be traded and sold the same way.
 * See Items That Increase Fishing Skill or Fishing equipment for a table of the many items that add to Fishing skill.

Bonuses you only get with a certain Profession
Each Primary profession gives certain advantages unique to practitioners of that profession. The crafting profession bonuses, by design, are all roughly comparable: about 40 points of item budget (i.e., 40 points to a statistic other than stamina, 60 points of stamina, or 80 points of attack power). There are only a few gaps - for example, there is no tailoring bonus useful to tank.

Since the release of Wrath of the Lich King, no profession has had bind on pickup items of great value. Several professions have blue quality items that will be useful to fresh level 80s, but quickly replaced with better gear.

The gathering professions (Mining, Herbalism, Skinning) provide some variety of simple bonus ability.

Notes: Mining is as good as any other profession for tanks, but useless for other roles. Skinning is decent for any DPS role, though never optimal, since no class values critical strike rating as highly as certain other stats. Herbalism's haste rating bonus can be very valuable for classes that value haste.

The crafting professions each have recipes for items that require skill in that profession.

Alchemy
The primary Alchemist tool for transmutation is the Philosopher's Stone. In addition to being a tool, it is a trinket available at comparatively low level. Alchemists progressing through the Master (350) and Grand Master (400) skill levels will be able to create Philosopher's Stones. There are several varieties of these trinkets (one or more of which is bound to be useful to any given class), but their common ability is to increase the effect of healing and mana potions on the wearer by 40%.

In addition, midway through Apprentice level (50 skill), Alchemists get a passive ability, Mixology, that doubles the duration of any elixir (or flask) that they use, provided that it is one they are able to make themselves. This ability also increases the effect of the elixir, but the amount of increase varies from item to item.

Alchemists can also make a. This is a non-consumable item providing bonuses comparable to those from Mixology, though it does not stack with other flasks or elixirs. It is usable in Arenas.

Alchemists are also able to make a small collection of potions that only they are able to benefit from. Notable among them are the and, potions that are not consumed.
 * ''See also Items only usable by alchemists

Blacksmithing
The most notable exclusive benefit Blacksmiths get is the ability to add a socket to bracers and gloves, that requires 400 Blacksmithing skill to remain active. (This makes Blacksmithing an attractive complement to Jewelcrafting, for characters who are not worried about gaining required materials.)

Blacksmiths can also create skeleton keys to open locked doors and chests, providing a limited alternative to a rogue's lockpicking services.

In addition, Blacksmiths are able to craft gear that only they can wear, dependent on the specialization they have chosen: weapons or armor. These items become available at several points:
 * {| class="darktable zebra"

!Character level !! Skill level
 * -align="center"
 * 47 || 260
 * -align="center"
 * 65 || 330
 * -align="center"
 * 70 || 350
 * -align="center"
 * 78 || 415
 * }
 * ''See also Armorsmithing plans, Weaponsmithing plans, Skeleton keys

Enchantment
Enchanters are able to enchant their rings with effects that are roughly comparable to an additional cut gem.
 * {| class="darktable zebra"


 * Enchant Ring - Assault
 * Enchant Ring - Greater Spellpower
 * Enchant Ring - Stamina
 * }
 * Enchant Ring - Stamina
 * }

Engineers
Almost every item an engineer makes is usable only by other engineers, making it difficult to compare to other professions. They have custom made items that do everything from snare or mind control opponents to gaining access to a mailbox or bank space in the middle of the wilderness.

Much like Blacksmiths, they are able to make a small selection of items (headgear) exclusive to engineers.

And in common with most other crafting professions, they are able to augment select items of their own gear. While most of these changes are gadgets (increased movement speed, rockets, parachutes), many also give bonuses to combat statistic abilities (armor value, critical strike rating, haste rating, etc).

In common only with Tailoring, there are two mounts that only Engineers can create and use. (There are a further two mounts - the motorcycles - that require engineering to create, but anyone can use.)

Scribes
Scribes at Grandmaster level (400) are able to put powerful enchantments (Inscriptions) on their shoulder items. This also saves characters the bother of grinding Sons of Hodir reputation.

Beyond that, they are able to use Scrolls of Recall, which act much like the Shaman Astral Recall ability, with close to the same cooldown period.

Jewelcrafting
Starting as low as level 35, and continuing at least to level 75, Jewelcrafters are able to make trinkets that only they are able to use (BoP).

More significant than those trinkets, though, is the ability of Jewelcrafters to create and socket more powerful epic quality gems. These gems (up to three allowed at a time) are up to 40% more powerful than the best gems that non-jewelcrafters can obtain. Much like Blacksmithing and Enchanting, this provides benefits approximating having an additional two gems installed in your gear.


 * ''See also Jewelcrafter only designs

Leatherworking
Leatherworking allows the practitioner to augment their bracers (a substitution for normal enchantments), and their leg items. (Leg enchantments are typically done through leatherworking anyway; the Leatherworker-only versions are far cheaper but equal in power.)

As with Blacksmiths, Leatherworkers are able to create a fair selection of armor items that only they may use, at pretty much the same levels as blacksmiths, but lacking the recipes at 415 skill/level 78.


 * see also Fur Lining and Leg Reinforcements

Tailoring
Tailoring, like Leatherworking, provides cheap top-end leg enchantments, albeit for spellpower rather than melee abilities. It also allows the tailor superior enchantments for cloaks (providing one of several varieties of 'proc' buff.

Tailoring, like Engineering, has a pair of unique flying mounts that only Tailors can ride.

Lastly, tailors gain a passive ability, Scavenging, that allows them to loot extra cloth off of Northrend humanoids.
 * ''See also Embroidery

Easy money making
Every profession offers opportunities to make money. The gathering professions offer an obvious avenue: Sell what was gathered. Some of the crafting professions also have "value added services". The value of those services depends on the market prices for the source and completed items, or upon the price players are willing to offer for the "cooldowns".


 * Alchemists can transmute epic (Northrend) gems from rare northrend gems (often with an Eternal ingredient) every 20 hours.
 * Miners can Smelt Titansteel out of and several Eternal ingredients.
 * Tailors can produce rare cloth, and.
 * Jewelcrafters can create an, which yields rare and sometimes epic gems out of mere uncommon ones. They also have access to jewelcrafter-only daily quests, which can reward a Dragon's Eye, which often sells for 50-100g.

Reputation
All of the skills have reduced cost to train depending on your reputation with the Faction to which the trainer belongs. Since you can generally have at least one reputation at Honored by 20th level, selecting where to train will save you (5% as compared to the cost when Friendly). This is also true for all recipes for the building professions.

Trainers

 * The Trainer page has links to a comprehensive list of trainers for each profession/skill.
 * The Profession trainers by skill page is currently incomplete and out of date.

Factions
Many good high-level recipes are sold by factions. Faction grinding keeps many crafters busy for several weeks and can often be very expensive if you are not backed by a guild. It is not uncommon for a crafter to start out with two collecting professions (usually Skinning/Mining or Skinning/Herbalism), later learn the first production craft, and in the end learn a second production craft to maximize benefit from the faction.

Unlearning a profession
You may unlearn a profession and start a new one but this removes the chosen profession. If you were to learn it again, you would have to start leveling it from a skill level of 1 again. You will also forget any recipes you may have acquired in your old profession, so they must be reacquired if you take it up again. Note, however, that you do not unlearn your speciality, if you have one. If you later re-acquire an unlearnt profession for which you had a speciality, you will still have the speciality. The new profession you choose to replace it with also starts with a skill level of 1. You can unlearn a profession from your skills tab (the hotkey is k). To do so, click on the appropriate profession, and in the bottom part of the panel is a tiny icon that when moused over will tell you it lets you unlearn your profession. Be sure you really want to unlearn a profession; Blizzard will not undo it if you change your mind!

One way to make use of this is to look at primary professions from a different perspective. You can only have two. But they are not 'cast in concrete', you can discard a primary profession and replace it. And they are dirt cheap - Apprentice level training in a primary profession costs 9 copper in your starting area. When you are first starting, you might benefit by switching professions to meet a goal. You can use this to get a fair upgrade to your starting gear cheaply, and stock up on some low level consumables.

The downside is that you lose all of your built up skill and recipe knowledge.