WoW Professions

• Notice: This is a quick overview of all professions in World of Warcraft. If you are looking for a 1-80 leveling guide, visit these pages: Team Idemise Guide and Zygor Guides
• If you need a leveling guide, the best guides are: Warcraft Gold Secrets Guide and Warcraft Millionaire
• If you are looking how to best play your character class, click here: WoW Class Guides

There are a number of different WoW professions available to characters in the World of Warcraft. These professions are broken down into primary professions and secondary professions. Players can have only two primary professions at once, but they can learn all of the secondary professions. Players can also drop professions if they want, but if they do and then later take up that profession again, they will have to start learning that skill all over again.

Racial Passive Bonuses
Some races are particularly suited to certain professions, and they start the game with bonuses.

Gnome – +15 to engineering
Tauren – +15 to herbalism
Draenei – +5 to jewelcrafting
Blood Elf – +10 to enchanting

Primary WoW Professions
The following are the primary professions, which are often divided into two groups: production and gathering professions.

Alchemy
An alchemist can create health and mana potions, make powerful stat-boosting elixirs and flasks, and even transmute elemental essences and gemstones into other items. An alchemist needs a lot of herbs to make their potions, so many take up the gathering profession of herbalism as their second profession.

Blacksmithing
A blacksmith can take just about any metal and turn it into armor, weapons, and other interesting items. They can make skeleton keys to open locks, add sockets to their own bracers and gloves, and create whetstones to temporarily make weapons stronger. They can specialize as armorsmiths or weaponsmiths. Most blacksmiths take mining as their second profession because they need a lot of metal and stone to make items.

Enchanting
An enchanter can cast powerful spells on weapons and armor that permanently add different abilities and bonuses. They can add extra spellpower to a mage’s staff or give a warrior’s shield more defense. Enchanters can also create magic wands and oils that provide temporary bonuses. An enchanter can disenchant some weapons and armor, too, destroying the item but creating some of the materials needed to cast their enchantments.

Engineering
An engineer has the ability to create explosives, goggles, mechanical robots, unique pets, and more. Many of these items are usable only by engineers, which makes this profession one that doesn’t often make money. However, a lot of the little trinkets and items made via engineering are very useful and unique. Engineers can also make special mounts, including flying machines and motorcycles. An engineer can specialize as either a gnomish engineer or a goblin engineer. Engineers use a lot of metal, so they often take up mining as well.

Inscription
Introduced in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, scribes have the ability to create scrolls that can be used to store enchantments in, glyphs that provide permanent new abilities or bonuses, and special books and cards. Scribes need herbs to create pigments, which they then turn into ink. Herbalism is a good companion profession for inscription.

Jewelcrafting
To become a jewelcrafter, a player must own the Burning Crusade expansion. Jewelcrafters can make rings and necklaces, cut gems into more powerful gemstones, and make special figurines that only they can use. Jewelcrafters can also take raw ore and prospect it, destroying the ore but creating gems in its place. Mining will provide jewelcrafters with the metal and ore they need to make their items.

Leatherworking
For those who wear leather and mail armor, leatherworking provides some nice equipment. Leatherworkers can also create armor kits that can be used by any character to add more defense to four different pieces of armor. Leatherworkers can also specialize as either elemental, dragonscale, or tribal leatherworking. Leatherworkers need a lot of leather and many hides, so skinning is a good second profession.

Tailoring
As a tailor, you can make use of all the cloth you collect from battling humanoids to create robes and other cloth armor. Tailors can also make enchanted spellthread to enhance players’ pants and bags. Some of the largest bags in the game, in fact, can only be made by tailors. Tailors have six different specializations, three of which are available in Outland and three of which are available in Northrend.

Secondary Professions
Players can learn all of these wow professions; they do not count as one of the two primary professions.

Cooking
A cook can take raw meat and fish and turn them into cooked items. These cooked items restore more health and mana than raw foods, plus they often can be stacked in larger stacks, saving inventory space. Cooked foods provide some temporary stat boosts to those who eat them. In upper level raids, the fish feast is invaluable in that it provides huge stat boosts to everyone in the raid. This makes high-level cooks very welcome in parties.

First Aid
For those who can’t heal themselves, the first aid skill is very useful. It allows you to turn cloth into bandages that restore your health. You can also create antidotes to cure poison. First aid can be useful for healers, too, because they can save their precious mana for other spells.

Fishing
Fishing allows players to catch raw fish and other items. Raw fish can then be cooked into better foods or fed to hunter’s pets to make them happy. You can also fish up some rare items, materials for other professions, and even a special sea turtle mount.
Riding

While it’s not always classified as a secondary profession, the riding skill is listed with professions on the character tab. You will need to train in riding in order to use mounts, but unlike with all other professions, you never gain riding skill points—you simply become an experienced rider. Apprentice riders can use the +60% land mounts at level 20. At level 40, journeyman riding gives access to the +100% land mounts, while characters at level 60 can learn how to ride regular flying mounts. At level 70, players can learn artisan riding and take to the skies with epic flying mounts. Once a character has gone to Northrend, however, they won’t be able to use these flying mounts until they’ve learned Cold Weather Flying at level 77.