Professions

In World of Warcraft there are two types of professions primary and secondary. You can have all of the secondary professions but only two of the primary professions. All professions also fall into three catagories: gathering, production, and service.

In the chat room though it lends show to the realism and comparison to the actual game. It is a way to make money in the game and to serve as making 'points' in the chatroom. Though each time a profession is used it has to be documented in the log sheets.

Pictures on this page are interactive.

Alchemy

Alchemy is a primary profession. The alchemist mixes herbs found by Herbalism and reagants in order to generate elixirs, potions, oils, flasks and cauldrons with a variety of effects. A player can create healing, invisibility, elemental resistance and mana potions; oils to coat weapons; and much more.

Enchanting

Enchanting is a primary profession in which characters may enchant gear and craft a variety of items. The main use of enchants is to augment the stats of gear, such as more strength, intellect, etc.; resistance to a particular branch of magic; increased spell damage or healing; increased speed (attack speed, mount speed etc.); or a variety of other effects. Enchanters also create specialty use items, such as Wizard Oil and trade goods, such as Enchanted Leather.

Engineering

Engineering is a primary crafting profession that can create as many useful and amazing items as it can create junk. Engineers can create helpful items for generally all classes to be used in PVE or PVP. To counterbalance this usefulness, most items crafted by engineering require engineering skill to use, and many of these items come with a chance for unexpected backfires with often hilarious results. Hunters in particular see much use for engineered guns, bullets, arrows, and scopes.

First Aid

First Aid is a secondary profession which enables a player to heal themselves or others, and to remove poisons. First Aid practitioners may create a variety of bandages which can be used to heal any player. Bandages are made from cloth (linen, wool, silk, mageweave, runecloth, or netherweave.), with higher quality cloth producing more effective bandages. When applied to a character, bandages cannot be reapplied to that character for sixty seconds, when the "Recently Bandaged" debuff disappears. First Aid practitioners can also make anti-venom consumables from venom sacs dropped by various poisonous monsters (e.g., scorpids, spiders), though they are not as powerful as those created by Alchemists.

Fishing

Fishing is a secondary profession which allows players to fish various objects, primarily fish, from surfaces of water (or lava). Most raw fish are edible directly or can be fed to hunter pets. Many can be cooked to improve their properties. (Raising Fishing and Cooking skills together is a good synergy.) Fish have value and can be vended (for a pittance, at low levels, then more the higher you go) or sold in the Auction House. Deviate Fish caught both within and just outside the Wailing Caverns can fetch a good price, for example. A few fish are used as reagents for Alchemy, these will have a steady demand. Occasionally, fishing may also yield lower-level equipment, fish-related offhand items, locked chests, gems and herbs. Rogues can train up Lockpicking with locked containers they or others have fished. However, the Fishing profession is often neglected, as it provides little opportunity to improve a character's stats.

Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing is the art of forging items out of metals, minerals and other trade goods. Blacksmiths utilize bars of metal unearthed and smelted by the mining profession along with various trade and magical goods to produce their wares.

A blacksmith can create melee weapons, armor (mail and plate), trade items used as ingredients by other professions (such as rods for enchanters) and keys used to unlock a variety of items in the world. Additionally, blacksmiths can craft items that when applied to weapons can provide temporary (and in some cases) permanent buffs to items.

In general, blacksmithing mainly benefits mail and plate wearing classes for the unique armors that can be created. However, most (if not all) classes can use a good deal of the weapons produced by blacksmiths. Ideally, blacksmithing would be paired with mining as a second profession. Mining is not a prerequisite for the blacksmithing profession.

Cooking

From [Beer Basted Boar Ribs] to [Giant Clam Scorcho], there is no recipe too obscure or odd to avoid notice from the Chefs of Azeroth. Food is used in the game to heal players out of combat, so they can get back to fighting as quickly as possible.

As you're traveling around the world, you'll notice that you often receive pieces of meat, which, instead of being sold to merchants, could be used to create food. If you're a player that relies on food, such as a non-healing player or a player that solos, food should become very important to you.

You can buy food from merchants, but the food gained through cooking is nearly free and it is actually much more effective. Cooking is also a great "flavor" secondary skill because you can entertain players with the funny and interesting dishes you can create. Hand someone some [Gooey Spider Cake], [Giant Clam Scorcho], or a [Curiously Tasty Omelet] and you'll see what we mean.

Additionally, certain cooked foods have a 15-minute or 30-minute Well Fed buff effect in addition to the immediate health boost all foods have.

Herbalism

Herbalism allows you to find and harvest herbs from particular resource nodes scattered around the world. It is a primary profession. While a very small number of herbs are sometimes used for other trade skills, the vast majority are used exclusively for Alchemy.