The Previous Week.

Or, Adventures in Profession Switching.

The early part of the week was spent doing a little bit of PvP, a quick downing of a trio of Kara Bosses, and my first foray into Heroic Tanking.

In the PvP stakes my partner (a Frost Mage) and I went 4-6 IIRC. Not great, we're still working at things and 1600-1650 will probably be where we end up. It's not helped by my gear, which is most pretty sub-par for PvP (S1 and S3 Honour Gear), but we had a couple of good wins against tough opponents so I can't be at all unhappy.

Tanking... wasn't as fun as I'd hoped. Though my gear definitely isn't great, it was very much a tester in Ramparts, and we did in fact clear it, it wasn't nearly as fun as I had hopped. I'll leave it at that I think.

Kara was pretty easy, even 8-manning it. A very IMBA tank and healer help.

The latter part of my week was spent on the aforementioned Profession Switch. Jana, my Paladin, is a Blacksmith/Miner are your main may be and you think to yourself 'Hey, why do I have mining on my main?'. That's a very good question, and one which everyone should be thinking going into Wrath given the number of reputation-based instance drop recipes we've seen in TBC. The flip side of course is that the gathering professions are due to see passive character buffs of their own in the Expansion, such as +Stamina for Mining and +Crit for Skinning, so best not make a snap decision.

Anyway, after much consideration and soul-searching you have decided to drop the gathering profession from your main. Well, you need to make sure that you have a gathering alt to continue feeding your Blacksmith/Engineer/Alchemist/Leatherworker all that lovely Adamantite, Khorium and (later) Netherbloom. Levelling this alt, you also have the chance to stockpile the materials needed to level the new manufacturing skill you're taking on your main. Yep, I'm all about the maximisation of return on effort.

So, what do you choose? Well, that totally depends on the alts you already have and your own personal preference. I chose Engineering, not because it features the greatest effort return (that would probably be Alchemy, Jewelcrafting or Enchanting) or increased raid viability (LWing Drums for example) but because it's fun. Yes, fun, that subjective factor we often seem to forget in a game that sucks days of our life out at a time.

So, I've ground out a whole load of Copper, Bronze and Mithril on my new Alts' travels to 50, and an equally obscene amount of Thorium on my Main. Once my Alt is roughly at the profession level where he can mine/smelt any shortfall it's time to swap.

[Insert a screenshot here of my dropping mining, which I forgot to take]

And then 4 hours later, with much mailing of materials and buying of minor things on the AH (bloody Wool Cloth :/) Jana reaches 350 Engineering. I used something very similar to Ten Ton Hammer's Levelling Guide, although I have to confess I had a shortfall in Solid Stone (easily rectified by a trip to the AH) and Fel Iron (much more troublesome to deal with), and mined much too much Thorium. Thankfully I got luckly with a few skill-ups on yellow and green products and comfortably reached 345.

The next day I grind out some Knothide Leather, and make the odd component and Jana now her very own set of Furious Gizmatic Goggles. That's a pretty big upgrade for me from my S1 Helm. With the help of a friendly Jewelworker and a long ago Heroic Drop I have:



This puts me in somewhat of an awkward position wrt Hit Rating, necessitating another upgrade fairly soon (maybe a Red Belt of Battle if I can find someone that can make it). Also no luck with a Shard of Contempt, or even getting into a Heroic run for such, so I think I'll make alternative arrangements. Other than that, plenty of upgrades left to make from Heroics and through Kara.