Hi guys returning player here.
I selected mining and smithing as my professions when i began. And have dutifully mined every node i have stumbled across.
I am still no were near what i need to be at to craft items to increase my smithing to anything half respectable.
Looking at it i need 100,000 ores. Which is just not realistic.
Is there any point in professions in this game now?
Not really, they killed them off a while back. Really disappointed with warcraft’s crafting now it’s a joke. Just mine/herb and sell it.
As a newish player, yes.
I get better stuff from questing and random mob loot. Although being able to enchant stuff for a small buff is always nice.
Only a few.
Mining and Gathering are always strong pick for gold making.
Ench has always market, Alchemy has both market and utility for youself, Engi has mount market and tons of utility.
All the other profession are cycling through being fotm and being dead. Es. jwc right now is on the rise for the 415 ring, as soon as everyone has it will go back to useless.
In my opinion the crafting professions are next to pointless, other than to help gear your alts up quickly. Some sell stuff on the AH but I’m not sure the resource requirement is worth the effort. Alchemy and Cooking remain useful for group content I imagine but I cannot personally say.
However, gathering professions are useful for levelling, they give you huge XP. Making money, not so much. If you’re feeling generous, you can just plonk them in the guild bank.
Ultimately, they require fixing.
Alchemy and Jewelcrafting is the only crafting professions that have any purpose to them at the moment. And subsequently because of that we have mining and herbalism as good secondary professions.
The main problem with professions today is that the items required to make good gear, is locked behind grinding raids for X weeks. So the natural consequences of that is that you got what gear you needed from those raids long before you have the required mumbo jumbo tokens to craft a piece of item.
I don’t know why Blizzard has such an aversion to grinding out items to craft your pieces of gear. They’re handing out powerful items left and right anyway so having a few items on professions that make professions useful shouldn’t cause any harm.
Am i better jusy selling my ores on AH and forgetting about smithing?
Blacksmithing is, for me, by far too expensive (ore-intensive) to make it worthy. Leveled up two chars with mining, geared up to 370+ and mined along the way. Still faaaaar from max-prof-level.
Looking at the coming recipes; worthless. So i quit.
Meanwhile, tailoring was maxed out by just looting mobs while leveling. At least there I can make fancy bags :). Quite unbalanced, again.
Pretty much. As said before, by the time you get the components from dungeons/raids to craft the shiny gear, you will have overlevelled it.
Monel-Hardened Stirrups & Monel-Hardened Hoofplates are very useful as far as QoL items go.
My Paladin is a Blacksmith and keeps all my other toons supplied so they can ride like the wind and not have to dismount when buying/selling/picking up quests etc.
The crafted gear is not useful except for scrapping , but there are many sought after transmogs to craft from previous XPaks.
I think the term Profession is no longer applicable. They are hobbies, expensives ones at that.
Blacksmithing in game is just like IRL, you can set up a forge and make swords as a hobby and maybe get on Forged in Fire on History channel but not many folk will make a living out of it.
I level the professions just for transmog and for something to do. I haven’t used any crafted gear on my main nor my alts since WoD. MOP I decked out my alts in full crafted gear unti timeless gear came along.
They need a bit too much commitment for levelling them up, but they do give some good gear now. At least for starting out the progress raiding part of a tier.
Jewelcrafting also creates almost BiS rings since they are guaranteed a socket on top of mythic tier ilvl.
And alchemy has an awesome trinket.
In compensation of not having a BiS, other professions allow covering 2 gear slots instead.
As others have said, professions blow, mostly. Crafting professions yield an item or two early in a patch and that’s it.
For gold making herb/alch is probably your best bet. For fun, as ever, engineering.
Farming profs isn’t that good , bots everywhere and cos of that prices are low. There are better ways how to earn gold.
Profs haven’t bothered to level up since MOP.
There’s the tiniest spark of life in a couple of them still, as people have mentioned.
Don’t worry; the devs will drown that last spark soon. They just missed a couple of spots on their last Blight pass.
I think Blizzard want to kill professions because they don’t want any obstacles between people and the instance portals.
8.1 actually improved the overall usefulness professions. Some intended, some naturally.
The progression rate of a new tier gave more value to crafted gear compared to the progression of a new expansion.
This time most professions got the ability to scale to 415 as soon as they have the materials. In 8.0 it seemed like they forgot about it.
Jewelcrafters are finally into the race and were given the privilege of gear crafting. (only inscription and enchanting still left out I think?)
Engineering is properly allowed to take part into the main feature of the game, Azerite traits.
So now what is missing is:
Tailoring/Leatherworking/Blacksmithing should be given their own Azerite gear to craft. A chest would be the most appropriate since it has the same stats as a head.
Only Alchemy still has a perk that is relevant and engaged with throughout a raid tier. Other professions should have their own back.
The damage is not that big. They are relevant. Problem is they are very momentarily relevant. Perks like spellthreads got the person to utilise them more often, which gave a sense that their effort wasn’t wasted. Current power gains aren’t far behind, but they lack the validation factor of actually using them a bit more often.
No! The professions are FAR from dead. They are actually very much alive and needed.
Alchemy (pots and flasks), enchanting, inscription (vantus runes),jewelcrafting (gems) and cooking are ABSOLUTELY vital for raids.
Blacksmithing, tailoring, engineering, jewelcrafting and leatherworking can craft up to mythic ilvl gear.
Gathering professions… well, their usefulness is kinda easy to understand. 
Money making: certain professions can make TONS of gold if you play the AH game, friend of mine has troubles spending his money after getting the 5 million dino mount.
Gizmos, toys, pets, containers, PvP, fun-usefull stuff… every profession has something interesting even if you don’t bother with gold making.
And with the removal of the Legion profession system with recipes locked behind quest chains, it’s pretty easy to get what you want.
So no, the professions are not dead. Do your research, pick what suits your game play and time and enjoy.
I don’t think you understand what “far from dead” means. Professions are terrible atm and hardly worth the time to level them up.
Alchemy is the only profession that has any merit and if you stretch it a bit you can include enchanting. Everything else is complete garbage.
People praise 8.1 additions to tailoring/LW/BS epics like 2 BoP items would change anything. These are NOT profession items, these are raid items, it’s like a bad luck protection tied pointlessly to profession to give narrowminded people the impression they actually give a damn.
Just sell them, ores and herbs are still profitable to sell
Personally I swapped to BS and Alchemy and mostly use BS to craft the mounted gathering items for my gather Alts and Alchemy since they brought back the potion boost trinket
Skinning is dead tho and cloth was never worth much cause everyone can loot it
Other then that if you have An alt with the armor type your profession provides it becomes more usefull cause of crafted 340 gear
Blizzard is an indie development studio that is woefully underfunded and that we should give the benefit of the doubt when regarding things such as the status of professions in the game. People complain way too much but don’t give credit to Ion for managing an extremely small development team with a very low budget.
In order to be ashamed, you have to be able to feel shame in the first place.
For all we know, the devs are proud of their work. Why else would they release it as-is?