Tribal, Elemental or Dragonscale Leatherworking?

[nobbie]

My Tauren Hunter is my Leatherworker on the Horde side, and I'm planning to make him a Master Leatherworker after level 40. Now, WOW has three exclusive paths for the advanced Leatherworker: Tribal, Elemental and Dragonscale Leatherworking.

Regardless that he is a Hunter (could use Mail armor from level 40 on), which of the three specializations offers the best quality self-made recipes/items in the long run, or the "best bang for the buck"? After checking the auction houses, it seems that Tribal Leatherworking is the way to go, but I'm not sure. What do the leather experts here say? Or, based on my bad experiences with the very expensive, but weak Armorsmith profession, is any of the three Leatherworking paths worth it at all?

[Concillian]

My Tauren Hunter is my Leatherworker on the Horde side, and I'm planning to make him a Master Leatherworker after level 40. Now, WOW has three exclusive paths for the advanced Leatherworker: Tribal, Elemental and Dragonscale Leatherworking.

Regardless that he is a Hunter (could use Mail armor from level 40 on), which of the three specializations offers the best quality self-made recipes/items in the long run, or the "best bang for the buck"? After checking the auction houses, it seems that Tribal Leatherworking is the way to go, but I'm not sure. What do the leather experts here say? Or, based on my bad experiences with the very expensive, but weak Armorsmith profession, is any of the three Leatherworking paths worth it at all?
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dragonscale is basically the mail path for people who have characters that wear leather pre 40 and mail 40+. Check out the mail patterns on thottbot. I think they have somewhat limited use, but some are in demand.

Tribal is probably the easiest to collect mats for, and the Devilsaur patterns are pretty popular among high level rogues

Elemental offers some rather specific patterns, and some of the elemental type mats are quite rare.

I don't know what patterns have been added recently, but I think they were working on making Elemental and Dragonscale look a little better, because most people were going tribal. Kinda like they've been working on adding some nice Armorsmithing recipes because nobody wanted to go Armorsmithing originally.

[towelrod]

The best path to take, by far, is to drop leatherworking and take up any other profession.

My rogue is a 300 tribal leatherworker. I can make pretty much everything. I made a set of devilsaur, and I wear them. It was a total waste of time. I occasionally make lower level things for people in my guild, but its usually cheaper for them to just buy them in the AH than it is to buy the materials.

No one buys crafted stuff. It is better to sell the devilsaur leather than it is to craft it into the pants/gloves. That's true for everything in leatherworking. Until they add some BoP recipes (meaning, the item you create is bound to you) or add some truely epic patterns, leatherworking is not worth it.

AFAIK, the only leatherworking thing that anyone would wear at 60 is the devilsaur stuff. The patterns for the dragonscale stuff don't sell for much, so I'm assuming no one really wants them.

You should go mining/herbs for money. Or go mining/engineering for the cool stuff. Or go alchemy/herbs for the cool stuff. Or go Enchanting to DE stuff that you get in instances. Blacksmithing and leatherworking are a waste of time. Tailoring too, except at least it has BoP recipes like the Robes of Power that you would actually want (at least, until you get a better drop).

I should point out that I play on a high pop pvp server, maybe its different if you play on a smaller server.

[lemekim]

Tribal offers some fairly good, in-demand and relatively easy to make recipies (the whole Devilsaur line), the mats for which are not that hard to get (compared to other two paths). Best choice imo.

Dragonscale can be an ok path if you run a lot of instances (specifically, UBRS). Given the plentiful amount of scales that drop there, you could get lots of mats for your crafting needs, and the armor that they make is mail, so you can use it, although it is not that great stat wise.

Elemental leatherworking generally requires expensive and hard to farm components, procudes items that are not really in demand (Stormshroud set, Helm of Fire, etc), and in general is a big pain. Worst choice I think.

[khgerg]

I have a level 60 Night Elf Druid with 300 Tribal Leatherworking. I would have to say that leatherworking has been a waste of time and money. I found it difficult to get good recipes and by the time I found recipes I had already obtained better items by doing instance runs.

If you are set on continuing with Leatherworking I would suggest looking closely at Dragonscale recipes since a Hunter can wear mail. I veiw Dragonscale as geared towards Hunber and Shamans, Tribal for Druids, and Elemental for Rogues.

[Quark]

Tribal is geared towards Druids and Rogues.
Elemental is geared towards Rogues and Fire Resist.
Dragonscale is geared towards Hunters and Shaman.

Dragonscale is the worst, probably. Hardest to get the materials - you almost have to get them in instances, and the weakest items from what I've seen. Tribal has the best stuff, and I'd choose Devilsaur over Stormshroud for Rogues - pending the new Stormshroud bonus. Elemental is good for gathering up Fire Resist gear, and has Living recipes for Druids if they want. Elemental's main benefit that I see is that you don't have to skin to get the special materials. So you could drop skinning completely and still be a pretty successful Elemental Leatherworker.

[fractaled]

i went tribal... it's kinda nice in that you won't LOSE money getting to 300, but you won't be able to do much with it... you might be able to make ~150g from a hide of the wild if you enjoy spending 6 hours farming for the items...

depending on your server, there might be a market for rugged armor kits... or selling wicked tunics/headbands to the vendors...

--fractaled

[nobbie]

Thanks for the tips. Looks like it will be Tribal leatherworking then, even if my Hunter could wear Mail armor at level 40 :)

[Raven Vale]

Yeah I will add I was a Dragonscale LW 300 skill one of the first on our server , even then it was the biggest mistake I could have made . I really should have gone for the Devilsaur stuff :( to cut a long story short I dropped it a couple of weeks ago and took up mining .

[nobbie]

Yeah I will add I was a Dragonscale LW 300 skill one of the first on our server , even then it was the biggest mistake I could have made . I really should have gone for the Devilsaur stuff :( to cut a long story short I dropped it a couple of weeks ago and took up  mining .
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If nothing useful happens to the Armorsmith in the next patch (1.6), I consider to drop that useless profession (read: early Alpha state) too, and this after about 400 Mithril Bars and lots of other goodies to get tinto it. I could bite my arse off for doing that.

[Zarathustra]

If nothing useful happens to the Armorsmith in the next patch (1.6), I consider to drop that useless profession (read: early Alpha state) too, and this after about 400 Mithril Bars and lots of other goodies to get tinto it. I could bite my arse off for doing that.
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Oh? From what I've seen with the Advanced Armorsmithing books that were added, Armorsmithing is far more useful than Weaponsmithing. Weaponsmithing seems to be used by most as a means to an Arcanite Reaper. *shrugs*

[Kevin]

Oh?  From what I've seen with the Advanced Armorsmithing books that were added, Armorsmithing is far more useful than Weaponsmithing.  Weaponsmithing seems to be used by most as a means to an Arcanite Reaper.  *shrugs*
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Enchanted Thorium Helms are nice but expensive. I have made two of them that are still in use. I don't have the bottom half to the other 2 books yet though, but the mats on the leggings and the breastplate are steep as well. There is some good shaman mail you can make with armorsmith. Whitesoul helms are pretty cheap on the mats and are decent gear for a paladin that will be doing healing. If you can get the Dark Iron, some the Dark Iron stuff makes for pretty good fire resist gear as well, but is very hard to make.

But yeah axesmith is really the only good weaponsmith route right now.

Now are either smithing specializations better than engineering from an end game persepctive? I don't know. Jumper cables on other party members make me a lot happier when my druid is the only healer in a group, I know that. :) Bombs for more AoE and the stuns are quite handy in places. Target dummies are under utilized but actually work quite well with that initial AoE taunt pulse they have now.