Project Lore

I made the mistake of taking enchanting/engineering on my first 70/main. Combine that with being a tank, and cash flow has always been a problem for me.

While it has been great having the goggles and ring enchants, I wonder if I would have been better off getting two gathering professions until 70, then using all the extra cash to powerlevel my crafting professions.

While all my friends have been flying around on their epic fliers, I have been sitting on the sidelines, begging for the gold to front my repair bill. It was not until the new vendor starting selling epic gems for badges that I have been able to see some income!

My first 70 was skinning/LWing, and that was a major time-drain trying to get all the mats for upgrades that weren't really made for my class (enh shaman). Best bet is to keep at least one crafting profession on your main and make an alt that only does gathering. You can always change them later if you want to max out your alt.

As an aside, doing the 25 daily quests will net you tidy profit for much less work than flying around and gather mats.

My main (Priest) has Tailoring/Enchanting and I don't know that I'll ever take to crafting professions again. IT was way to expensive to get both to 375.

My 1st & only toon (a lvl70 Rogue) is skinning/LWing and I kind of disagree with Whichdoktor.

It seemed most of the time while leveling I was able to get more mats than I needed (crafted armor worked for me) and with a small investment for some missing mats turn a great profit on crafted leather at the AH. To save some time I used a bank alt to do all my auction house stuff.

Between the time spent at the AH and being a CEO with limited playing time it took me 6mo to get to lvl70. However, the day I turned 70 I was able to purchase my EPIC flying mount which only took about half of my G's on hand. As for the dailies, I make sure I do the ones first that provide LW mats that make me the most money.

Point here is, I enjoyed the "major time drain" as Whichdoktor said. I just saw it as another part of the game experience. BTW, I haven't meet many toons that on the day they turned 70 purchased their epic mount.

The only reason to take a profession to boost up your char is you can make items that are bind on pick-up that are really good, or apply effects to yourself that others cannot do to you.

In my eyes the only worthwhile self boosting professions for endgame are:
Enchanting - You can enchant some of your own items that others cannot enchant.
Jewelcrafting - There are several gems you can make that are bind on pick-up and own other bind on equip gems. However I think there are now BOE alternatives available.

What about the rest, I hear you think. Yes, blacksmithing has some nice weapons, tailoring and leatherworking some nice gear, etc... but there's a major flaw with them: they will at one point become obsolete.

To take BS as an example. Fireguard is a really good weapon when you just hit 70 and is comparable to Karazhan level loot. Blazeguard is in level somewhere betweek Karazhan and half SSC/TK, I believe, and Blazefury is of SSC/TK level. So what if you have cleared SSC/TK and get the nice drops from MH/BT and SPLAT? Indeed, out goes your crafted weapon and your profession became useless.
This became even more true with Arena S2 weapons becoming available for honor, as they're really good even for PVE.

This is also true for the nice epic sets from tailoring and leatherworking. And besides that, a lot of plans that drop in the higher raids are BOP, but the items crafter are actually BOE. So collect the items, and find another crafter!

Besides the things pointed out above, I think alchemy remains useful to a certain level (but again you can just buy the products from other players) and Engineering is simply good fun.

My conclusion: think ahead about what level of endgame content you will want to encounter (because to be honest, not everyone will do BT/MH/SPLAT), look around a bit what you can gain at the max level and then see if the crafting profession is worth it.

I agree that at endgame bs lw and tailoring items become obsolete but the worth in them is the time it saves you from having to grind specific instances for single items as an upgrade to your gear. Also the gear from these professions gives you and edge as especially with nethers being tradeable u can almost buy gear that surpasses what others will have to cross fingers to win a roll for.

A final note is that with an impending expansion on the horizon you can look forward to much lesss instance grinding for gear as you level ur way to 80 and hopefully more really nice craftable epics that bop give you an edge and boe give you a possible source of income.

As for my choice of professions my goal is to have at least one of each crafting profession thoughout my toons ( i hope to have (my goal is one 80 of each class, but well see if i have the time or patience for that) havind only one of each gathering profession between them all. the biggest part of my reasoning for this is the insane prices at the AH on my server (mostly wanna avoid paying them but would also like to exploit this - i have four 70s and not 1 epic flier :( lol)

I took LW/skinning as a druid and while leveling, it helped me quite a bit, making the odd peice of kit here and there an I found it mainly carefree to level.
But now at lvl 70, yeah pretty much useless. The only thing people seem to show ANY interest in to buy are profession bags and maybe some low level armour.
So basically - this profession isn't for money, but I felt it added depth and enjoyment to the game =).
If you're looking for cash, youll own with 2 gathering professions like Juggy said.

I have 70 mage, 70 Priest, 67 Rogue

Mage is Ench/ Shadoweave Tailoring (love the frost)
Priest is Herbal/Primal Moon Tailoring
Rogue Alchemy/Jewel Crafting.

It takes about a month to get the Shadoweave Cloth or Primal Mooncloth or Spellcloth to make the epic tailoring Sets, but they are worth it because It pretty much jump starts your gear into T4/5 Equivelent. I saved Mooncloth for my priest, when I finally got my Priest to 70 It took me one week to have over 1900+ heals (I socketed everything with +Healing Gems, and acquired other epics from running heroics). The priest has a side prof of Herbalism, I had a 30 Rogue sitting there working on Alchemy as I leveled the priest. After I maxed out Alchemy for the rogues level I started leveling him more. I used the Gold from Dailys from BOTH mage and Priest to buy Ore for the rogues Jewel crafting. At 50, I was able to max out the Rogues Alchemy to 375. Once alchemy was maxed I stopped funding ore to the char from my 2 70's. The rogue was self sufficient from alchemy alone and got my Jewel Crafting to 375 soon after. The rogue is the biggest money char I have ever made and the Gold invested to get him to that position had been completely refunded 10 fold within a month. I kept Herbalism on my priest because the more expensive herbs are easier to farm then buy. Because of the massive Gold intake I have enough gold for my Epic Flyer on the rogue when it dings 70 and both the mage and priest have epic flyers.

Enchanting/Tailoring on the mage: A tailoring Recipe drops in Arcatraz. Just simple blue bracers. If you buy the mats for it, you will be spending between 10-15G depending on the economy in your server. On Wildhammer The mats cost me between 10-12G normally and I DE the bracers to get Large Prismatic Shards (on my server they sell for 25-30G). Pretty much, my mage no longer has to leave town either. The dailies are just a bonus at this point.

I started leveling a Horde Mage and Decided to start Leatherworking/Skinning for Drums. This is really not Gold efficient, but dps wise It will really help for raids.

eXo

[...] or raids. We’ll set up a time to log on for quests, exploration, achievements, leveling professions, and generally running amuck, too. My most frequent partner in crime is another female blood [...]

Mining and herbs seems to be the meal ticket these days. With everyone working on their 70s to get to 80 lower lvl mats seem to go for double even triple their worth.