Professions have been an essential mechanic in World of Warcraft since the MMO’s initial release and with each passing expansion, they have only continued to rise in importance. Each of the nine primary professions are available to every player in WoW and provides specific benefits and uses.
Since every class yields different stat priorities, damage, and armor types, and suffers from its own drawbacks, there is no one profession best suited for every character. These are the best professions for each class in Wrath of the Lich King Classic.
Warrior — Herbalism/Alchemy
Warriors are notoriously among the most difficult classes to level from 1 to 80 in World of Warcraft. This is in large part due to the class’s lack of healing, which makes solo encounters significantly more difficult. Herbalism and alchemy allow gathered herbs to be converted into potions of various uses, many including stamina and health benefits. Battle and Guardian elixirs specifically aid a warrior’s already capable offensive and defensive abilities.
Alchemy may not be the most profitable profession when compared to the likes of blacksmithing or enchantment, but the profession will aid warriors tremendously while leveling through Azeroth.
Druid — Skinning/Leatherworking
Druids are an extremely strong gathering class, as their many different forms provide stealth options, travel forms, and soothe animals to help close in on resource nodes. Along with experience while leveling, skinning can be one of the most profitable professions in World of Warcraft.
Leatherworking is the natural second primary profession for Druids, given that the class primarily wears leather armor. Eventually, leatherworking branches into three branching paths past 225+ skill, tribal being the best suited for druids and providing valuable items and sets.
Hunter — Mining/Engineering
Engineering is a versatile profession that allows players to create a wide array of bombs, scopes, guns, and other assorted gadgets. Given hunters primarily use bows and guns for their ranged attacks, engineering has the best potential upside for crafting better weapons and damage supplements. Engineering provides other niche abilities, such as goblin jumper cables which can give hunters resurrection abilities.
Paladin — Mining/Jewelcrafting
Jewels can provide significant upgrades for items with gem slots, immensely benefitting Paladins regardless of their talent specialty as a tank, healer, or damage dealer. Some of the strongest jewels in WoW, like the precise dragon’s eye which grants over 63+ stamina, can greatly aid protection Paladins.
Along with providing notable upgrades, jewels are often in demand in the auction craft and provide a steady stream of income to jewelcrafters. Given almost all jewels are created from ore, mining is a sensible second profession to pick for potential jewelcrafters.
Rogue — Mining/Engineering
Rogues are some of the best damage dealers in WoW, with engineering’s wide array of trinkets providing an edge in combat. Along with crafted items, engineering also grants players countless gadgets that have niche specialties. The adamantite and frost grenades give rogues an easy long-range silence that can help set up sneak attacks and the catseye ultra goggles, which can provide an advantage in rogue-on-rogue PvP.
It should be noted engineering is one of the most expensive professions to undertake in WoW. Though mining will greatly reduce the price of the endeavor, rogues who decide to pursue the path of an engineer should expect to spend mass amounts of gold to craft their desired weapons.
Mage — Leatherworking/Enchanting
Enchanting allows players to boost their items with helpful, magical upgrades to weapons and armor that can greatly aid in a mage’s damage and survivability. Enchantments take magical reagents that can only be crafted by disenchanting other items. Since low-level leatherworking can create green items from relatively easy-to-find cloth drops, it provides excellent fuel to create stronger enchantments.
Mages also have the natural advantage of teleporting, which allows mages to travel to virtually every major city in order to meet potential buyers. Enchantment is another profession that will require a significant investment, but strong enchantments are necessary for any end-game raider hoping to top the damage charts.
Warlock — Herbalism/Inscription
The release of WOTLK also re-introduced inscription and glyphs into WoW Classic. Inscription allows players to create minor and major glyphs, inscriptions that grant substantial increases to each class’s abilities. Inscriptions can allow warlocks to create glyphs for not only themselves but others for a significant profit given their necessity to end-game raiders. Herbalism will not only provide reagents for inscription, but also for alchemists to create health potions that can aid in Warlocks’ survivability.
Shaman — Skinning/Leatherworking
Since Shamans use leather and mail armor, leatherworking provides this class the ability to create their own gear for a time. Leatherworking eventually splits into three different paths, with dragonscale leatherworking being the most beneficial for Shamans and leading to the best personal gear for the class.
Skinning will provide the best supplementary profession to cut down on reagents costs for leatherworking. Though leatherworking does fall off in the late game as raid and dungeon drops begin to outweigh craftable items, leatherworking is a beneficial tool for leveling Shamans and for working to auction house.
Priest — Tailoring/Enchanting
Tailoring is an excellent profession for leveling Priests, as it opens up a variety of wearable cloth pieces for the class. Though tailoring is fairly weak in terms of gold generation, tailoring cloth pieces coupled with enchantments can create powerful items centered around the priest’s primary stats, spell power, and intelligence.
Enchantment is the best second primary profession for priests, as it allows its users to give upgrades to all of their armor and weapons. Since tailoring can provide green and blue items for disenchantment, the two professions synergize well in feeding one off one another.
Death Knight — Mining/Jewelworking
The newest class added to WoW Classic stands the least to benefit from crafting classes such as blacksmithing, given that the class starts at 68 and such professions begin to fall off into the later game.
Instead, Death Knights should look into one of the strongest professions, jewelworking. Jewels allow Death Knights to create powerful upgrades that slot into epic weapons and armor with jewel options.
Also since jewels are almost always in demand by end-game raiders, jewelworking is a massively profitable WoW Classic profession as well.
