Druid Profession

[Raz]

This has been itching at me for a while. I can't figure which one can be more helpful for a druid. Alchemy may be useful for potions that may boost me, and lore wise it seems the more appropiate one, but as a leatherworker skinning is helping me make money in one of the new realms. So, any suggestions on which I should be? I m willing to start from scratch.

[Zarathustra]

Leatherworking has the benefit of being able to make your own gear as you level, often comparable to the quest rewards you'll be reaping. If you specialize in Tribal leatherworking, you'll have access to the Ironfeather and Devilsaur sets, great for many characters. Also, leatherworking is one of the easiest ways to obtain tickets for the Darkmoon Faire.

Alchemy has potions... and lots of them. If you're on the Horde side, you'll have the added bonus of a boost to your herbalism skill. The flasks (endgame recipes) are going to be improves in 1.7 to persist after death, so this could be a viable option for you.

Either way, you should get lots of use out of them.

[Trien]

I went leatherworking with my druid for the first 45 levels, and decided to go with tribal leatherworking. Then came the wild leather quests, and getting the turtle scales to make the turtle scale items... that was too much for my slow killing druid, so I dropped it and picked up enchanting instead. In hindsight, perhaps I should've stuck with it, but without help to farm the turtles, it would've been a long long haul... this would've been the first crop or characters created after release, so no higher levels to help. If you can manage to get some help though, it won't be as bad.

There are some nice items to be made at the higher levels though, if you stick with it. Wolfshead Helm was very nice to have for a while. Ironfeather was my mainstay healing gear from when I could wear it until I picked up my blue set items or equivalent. And Devilsaur is quite nice feral gear as well. There's also Hide of the Wild if you get lucky with DM north, cape that's quite sought after among healers.

[oldmandennis]

I'd say Alch

I have alts covering all of the tradeskills, and LW is just kindof a pain, though recently the market for rugged leather kits has gone way up on my server atleast. It's fairly rare that you really want any of the items, and if you do its not hard to get them from another sucker who has LW.

The turtle scales are brutal to get, it takes even a hunter a while to bring them down since they have high armor and HP.

[Treesh]

The turtle scales are brutal to get, it takes even a hunter a while to bring them down since they have high armor and HP.
[right][snapback]88476[/snapback][/right]

Get a magic user with you or cast more yourself as a druid. My shaman can take them out pretty darned quick with a couple of lightning bolts, flametongue, and a shock thrown in. Even level or higher level turtles aren't that tough for a magic user.

[nobbie]

I've chosen Herbalism/Alchemy because all the good Leatherworking stuff, i.e. Devilsaur, Ironfeather, Warbear etc, can now be bought for cheap on servers with a relatively high number of players. If your server is new and the auction offers low, then I would probably consider Leatherworking.

[oldmandennis]

Get a magic user with you or cast more yourself as a druid.  My shaman can take them out pretty darned quick with a couple of lightning bolts, flametongue, and a shock thrown in.  Even level or higher level turtles aren't that tough for a magic user.
[right][snapback]88486[/snapback][/right]

Heh... I'd already chosen Herb/Alch with my druid, I am leather/skin with my hunter... thus my comment about "Even for a hunter". As I got to my late 30's I was anticipating needing the scales and tried farming them, but the armor was too tough for efficient grinding. Thotts percentages seem way off. I ended up buying some finished pieces off the AH rather then bringing my shaman around to do the farming.

[khgerg]

My level 60 Druid is a level 300 Tribal Leatherworker and I am regretting that choice.

It was difficult to keep my leatherworking skill high enough as I leveled to be able to make items that were better that what I was getting as quest rewards or drops. The few time that I was ahead of the curve, I found that it was cheaper to just buy the item in the auction house than it was for me to get the materials.

I would suggest not doing leatherworking.

[Kevin]

This has been itching at me for a while. I can't figure which one can be more helpful for a druid.  Alchemy may be useful for potions that may boost me, and lore wise it seems the more appropiate one, but as a leatherworker skinning is helping me make money in one of the new realms. So, any suggestions on which I should be? I m willing to start from scratch.
[right][snapback]88469[/snapback][/right]

I'm a 300 elemental leatherworker on my druid, I duo'd with a rogue growing up to 60 all the way from the start zone to L58. The only execptions were I did one Mara run without the rogue and later the rogue did a run without me. At L58 we were needing another druid for our raid so I got her Onyxia keyed without Etheramwen at my side and started venturing into Onyxia's lair to help out (Warders are about 50 exp at L58).

At around L40 or so I started getting fed leather from a higher level skinner though and that is right around when you probably can't keep up with the curve.

Of course in a duo you kill and skin every beast in your path so you have lots of leather, there is no point in skipping a mob that gives you exp since it really doesn't slow you down at all in a duo.

[kandrathe]

My main is a hunter and has Herbs/Alchemy and it is a lvl 10-60 profession. You can think of it this way; If potions were available to you whenever you wanted, how often would you use them? Versus; Looking at the leatherworking patterns you could make, (knowing that almost anything on the list is available in the AH) how often would you change your outfits? If you are interested in earning, the I would suggest you to take up two gathering professions until you reach level 35-40.

For my hunter, up until my middle 50's I wore some crafted items that I bought and some was made for me by guild friends. But, most of it was eagerly replaced by quest rewards, BOE/BOP drops. So, if you are looking at professions from the POV of clothing yourself then there are better ways. If you are looking at professions from a money making enterprise then either provides a steady stream of income. There are ways to earn money with skinning/LW and there are crucial potions that everyone wants if they can get them.

To give you a little background on my approach to professions, I have 4 mains, and 3 support characters on Stormrage. The mains are Alch/Herb(Hunter) - Tailor/Ench(Warlock) - Miner/Eng (Warrior) - LW/Skin(Priest) . The gatherer supports are Skin/Herbs (Druid) - Skin/Miner (Rogue) - Ench/Herb (Mage). Once the gatherers are able to supply my Mains professions they will be able to drop their gathering skill (with the exception of my Warlock who has two primaries). So, my Hunter will be Alch/Eng, Warrior Eng/Smith, and Priest LW may take up Tailoring (depending on whether or not she finds a finkles skinner).

So, back to how to make money with LW. My Priest is a skill 300 Dragonscale LW and there are plenty of people needing leather (from skinning), and some selected good sellers from 135-225. After 225 your choices will be different. At some point the availability of materials becomes a big issue. I don't know how many Lava Belts, or Chromatic Cloaks one could possibly make.

Here are some items I cash in on when I can;

• 135 - Toughened Leather Gloves - if you have a ready source of Elixir of Defense<>
  
• 150 - Hillman's Cloak - Used for a quest in Southshore<>
  
• 185 - Gem-studded Leather Belt - limited quantity recipe<>
  
• 190 - Guardian Gloves - used to make Truesilver Gauntlets<>
  
• 200 - Shadowskin Gloves (another LQ recipe, sell for 8g-13g)<>
  [st]

[KiloVictor]

This has been itching at me for a while. I can't figure which one can be more helpful for a druid.&nbsp; Alchemy may be useful for potions that may boost me, and lore wise it seems the more appropiate one, but as a leatherworker skinning is helping me make money in one of the new realms. So, any suggestions on which I should be? I m willing to start from scratch.
[right][snapback]88469[/snapback][/right]

I'd suggest going with either two gathering professions (i.e. herbalism, mining, or skinning) or two production professions (i.e. alchemy, blacksmithing, enchanting, engineering, or leatherworking). I'd suggest two gathering professions until you hit 60 anyway; they're easier to level and they generate good cash flow to fund your class training along the way.

I'd agree that from a lore perspective herb/alch makes sense, but herb/skinning is almost as good for lore (the idea of living off the land), and it'll generate way more cash. Plus most alchemists or leatherworkers will do your combines for little or no gold, especially if you provide them with a regular supply of materials at stable prices.

If you find along the way that you use goods from any one profession more than others, you can retrain for that profession at 60. Plus production professions require a lot of materials to skill up, and those are much easier to come by when you're level 60 with a decent bank balance, so I think it'll get you to the end stage of your profession more quickly anyhow.

Just a thought.

~Kv

[Caeth]

I leveled a druid up to 60 on a RP server at release with Elemental Leatherworking as my profesion, and am now in the process of bringing up another druid on a PvP server doing herb/alch, so I've experienced both trades to a large extent.

As for preference? I'd definately opt for herbalism as one of your main professions. Druids are natural gatherers, thanks to hibernate, soothe animal, and their travel form. One rarely has to get into any sort of combat; just hibernate whatever beast happens to be on the herb you wish to pick, gather it while they're taking a nap, and move on. The beauty of this is that no combat is required. Furthermore, the "track herbs" switch for the minimap is largely unobtrusive: the only time you need to toggle tracking is when you switch to cat form's "track humanoids."

I'd take as your alchemy as your second profession, but that's pretty much up to you. Mana and healing potions are always in demand for me (as well as the occasional shadow protection/fire protection potion for priests/mages). I don't like toggling tracking too much, so i'd avoid doing both mining AND herbalism (although raw ore always sells well). Skinning seems more a hunter driven profession: first, they've too many tracking abilities as is --- one of which, to note, just so happens to allow you to track leather sources, and second, their dps (at least at current) is far superior to druids (cat form has admittedly much improved, but still) --- which is important insofar as skinning requires you to kill loads of beasts to skin.

[Tuftears]

It should be noted that you can currently no longer buy major mana potions from the Argent Dawn at revered, so herbalism/alchemy may be more interesting for druids than before. (that's not to say they might not add some new mana potions, faction-reputation-restricted, for Argent Dawn)

There are some recipes from the Zandalar (Zul'gurub-related) that create leather set pieces that require 300 leather-working to activate the bonuses, but the bonuses aren't all that huge - for the Primal Bat Set, which has high agility/stamina and +to hit%, it's a minor increase to run/swim speed. Blood Tiger gear seems to be aimed more at PvPing druids since it offers a mix of str, sta, int, and sirit, plus the set bonus is +crit% for both melee and spells.