Primary Professions for Mages

This is for any Mage looking to maximize their class by selecting the best possible professions available. It isn’t as easy as it seems though, since there are ten possible professions available, and can only select two of them. When maximizing your character, you would sacrifice the convenience and profit of selecting a gathering profession, and select another crafting profession.

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Either you select your profession for personal reasons, or for the sake of others like the guild, each profession comes with something that gives a boost only to yourself that you can’t share with others. This is usually the main factor in selecting a profession. Let’s take a look at what each of these professions can bring.

Alchemy

“The Alchemist mixes herbs in order to generate potions with a variety of effects. A player can create healing, invisibility, elemental resistance, and mana potions; oils to coat weapons; and much more.”

  • Mixology is the biggest reason to select Alchemy as one of your primary professions. Not only does it increase the buff you receive from the Elixirs and Flasks you take, it also doubles the duration of the effect.
  • For example: [Flask of the Frost Wyrm] will give you 162 Spell Power, and last 4 hours currently with Mixology.
  • [Mercurial Alchemist Stone] is an “Alchemy Only” trinket you can make that has decent stats, and also increases the effectiveness of your health/mana potions by 40%.
  • [Crazy Alchemist's Potion] is an “Alchemy Only” potion you can take which will give you a random potion buff as well as health and mana.
  • [Endless Mana Potion] is a mana potion that you can use in Arena, and has unlimited uses. Since Mages already have mana gems they can use, you can use the next potion instead.
  • [Endless Health Potion] is a heath potion that you can use in Arena. Currently only Alchemist can use potions in Arena, and they both benefit from the Alchemist’s Stone potion bonus.

Alchemy is not only a good profession to help others, but a great profession that gives the Alchemist some personal gain too. With future patches, new trinkets will be released, as well as new potions, elixirs, and flasks as well.

Blacksmithing

“Blacksmiths take bars of metal from miners and work them into finely crafted arms and armor. There are many unique weapons and other armaments that cannot be found on any of the vendors or monsters in the game, but can only be created by blacksmiths.”

  • [Eternal Belt Buckle] is something that Blacksmiths can make, but can be used by anyone, and gives your belt an extra gem socket. The next two however, are only for Blacksmiths.
  • [Socket Bracer] adds another gem socket to any of your own bracers.
  • [Socket Gloves] adds another gem socket to any of your own gloves.

Currently the advantage of being a Blacksmith over another profession is the extra 2 gem sockets, and essentially +38 Spell Power if you use 2x [Runed Scarlet Ruby].

Enchanting

“Enchanters use their magical formulae to grant permanent augmentation to weapons, armor and other equipment. Enchanting requires the use of special ingredients that can only be gathered by disenchanting magical items. Using these ingredients enchanters can make items more powerful.”

Currently the advantage of being a Enchanter over another profession is the extra 2 ring enchants, and essentially +38 Spell Power if you use it on your two rings.

Engineering

“Engineering is a very fun and creative Profession. You can create all kinds of wacky things that are fun to use and also entertain and amaze other players. Engineering is used to assemble metal and stones into parts needed to make explosives, guns, scopes, bullets, mechanical dragons, aquatic helmets, and much more.”

Engineering is very situational, is mainly picked up as a “fun” profession. The majority of the perks of being an engineer is PvP based, there are some PvE uses as well. In the last expansion, the best helm to have for a Mage was engineer-only, it may be the same in Wrath as well.

Inscription

“the Inscription profession allows its practitioners, called “scribes,” to enhance the spells and abilities of players’ characters, such as enhancing a rogue’s Backstab ability to deal more damage to stunned targets, or allowing a priest’s Circle of Healing to heal one more target.”

[Master's Inscription of the Storm] is a self-only shoulder enchant which can be cast on any of your own shoulders.

Currently the advantage of being an Inscriptionist over another profession is the shoulder enchant that has +37 Spell Power over using [Greater Inscription of the Storm], which requires exalted status with Sons of Hodir.

Jewelcrafting

“Jewelcrafters learn the art of creating beautiful jewelry and trinkets from metals and rare gems.”

Currently the advantage of being a Jewelcrafter over another profession is +39 Spell Power if you use 3x [Runed Dragon's Eye] over 3x [Runed Scarlet Ruby].

Of course there are other Jewelcrafter only gems such as Haste, Hit, and Crit gems you can use. As well as Stamina, and Resilience gems for PvP.

Also being able to use these prismatic gems count towards the two Blue Gem requirement of the [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond].

Leatherworking

“Leatherworking is a crafting profession that goes hand-in-hand with the gathering profession of Skinning. You can also create armor kits, which are single-use items that give a permanent armor or statistic boost to any type of hand, leg, chest, and foot armor.”

Currently the advantage of being a Leatherworker over any other profession is the bracer enchant that gives you +37 Spell Power over the normal bracer enchant you can get.

Tailoring

“Tailoring allows players to cut and weave various pieces of cloth into armor, bags, shirts, and other cloth items. They can learn powerful rare recipes as the highest levels which allow them to create powerful gear useful in raiding.”

Currently the benefits of being a Tailor versus the other professions, it is the weakest. [Sanctified Spellthread] is just cheaper to make than [Brilliant Spellthread]. Lightweave Embroidery will be getting a buff next patch though, so that it is worth taking over [Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed].


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Comments

  • Mahlaine said:

    Sorry to nitpick, but I think the arithmetic on inscription is a bit out. Master’s inscription of the storm grants 61 SP and 15 crit rating, which is only 37 more SP than Greater Inscription of the storm (+24 SP and +15 Crit rating). I think this is important to point out, otherwise inscription would be significantly over the bonus given by other profesions.

    Sorry I haven’t linked the enchants, not sure how. The links in the main text show the values – someone please tell me if I’m wrong (so I can start to grind inscription…)

  • Tuna (Author) said:

    Woops I took 61 SP and compared it to the 15 Crit by accident instead of the 24 SP. You are correct, 61 SP vs 24 SP is a difference of +37 SP.

  • Egamamai said:

    My main Mage is a Tailor/Enchanter.

    Enchanting is good for the ring enchants, but also it’s good to have at least one enchanter on an instance run, to DE any of the unwanted BoP stuff that drops. It’s also useful for “recycling” those old soulbound items after you’ve upgraded beyond them. More than once, I’ve enchanted a new piece of loot that dropped in an instance, either for myself or for someone else, so they can start using it right away. That’s another minor benefit, although I suppose theoretically folks could carry around enchanting scrolls to accomplish the same thing.

    For Tailoring, since we only seem to be talking about *personal* enhancements here, I’ll point out that the various 4-day cloth transmutes (Ebonweave, Spellweave, Moonshroud), grant moderately-strong 30-minute buffs when they are performed (crit, haste, health/mana regen, respectively). While I haven’t orchestrated these buffs myself — since I don’t raid regularly — a Tailor could theoretically arrange to have these buffs at the start of an instance run or raiding session, for a little extra performance edge. You can have all 3 buffs at the same time, with very little of their duration wasted, since all 3 transmutes are done in central Dragonblight. The buffs don’t survive through death, however, so don’t do anything stupid to get yourself killed…

  • zupa said:

    seems like +37 spell power / profession is about what Blizz expect us to have :)

    I am going to have trouble letting go of my tailoring, useless and crappy though it may be!

    What about flying carpets?!

    zupas last blog post..

  • Tuna (Author) said:

    @ Egamamai

    Hmmm I didn’t really think about the xmute buffs. It would be void for Arenas, but you could time them for raids and such. I know when I get the Darkmoon Fair buff, and zone into Naxx, the buff goes away, I’ll have to see if the xmute buffs stay on.

    @ zupa

    Fly Carpets do nothing for PvE/PvP!!! They are awesome though :)

  • Scott said:

    When I decided to level my 70 Mage to test out Arcane Spec, I decided that I would keep my Alchemy but drop my Tailoring when I got to 78( just to get more cloth from questing, instancing, etc ). The point of keeping Alchemy was that, of all the professions, I think it scales with Raiding. Extended flask up-time, extended potion options from Crazy Alchemist, extra oomph from Flasks and Elixirs. I’m also doing a little forward speculation and hoping that an epic alchemy trinket will be introduced. As it is, the Rare Quality Trinket is fairly nice for the bump to Mana Pots and Crazy Alchemist Pots making my rotation as Arcane a little more flexible.

    I picked up Enchanting at 78 for purely selfish reasons. My Druid is pretty much done with gear and upgrade after upgrade sits in her bank as I’m unwilling to just destroy the epics I worked so hard to get. At least my mage will be able to say goodbye to epics in good fashion :)

    Scotts last blog post..On Goblins of Avaricious Nature and the Social Aspects of WoW

  • Bruce said:

    I kept the alchemy too. Think that was a good way

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