Back in the olden days of The Burning Crusade, any pre or Kara-raiding priest who didn’t have tailoring as a profession was a silly priest. Tailoring offered a 3-piece set of gear that rivaled 25-man raiding gear and could be crafted easily with a fair amount of gold. You could ding 70 and, with max-level tailoring, immediatly throw on a chest piece that wouldn’t get replaced until Mount Hijal.
Enter Wrath of the Lich King
There is no more (or very little) BoP crafted gear. Players can now craft and sell their tailoring items which means that you’re no longer forced into using tailoring as one of your two available profession slots. You have options.
The basic theme in Wrath seems to be: Every crafting profession offers unique bonuses/gear that will enhance the performance of the player, but the bonuses are balanced. A priest could take blacksmithing and gain the ability to add extra gems slots to his gear. Or he could take leatherworking and grant his bracers special ‘enchants’.
Ok, but what’s the best profession for a healer?
So what does that mean for you as a priest? Simply put, there really isn’t a single profession that blows the rest out of the water. Each has its benefits and they are relatively balanced (and minor). You can choose the one that appeals to you most based on the extra bells-and-whistles, like a Chopper mount.
With that said, a few of the professions do come out slightly on top of the others. The two professions that *I* chose are tailoring and inscription.
Tailoring
Here are the unique BoP items/enchants that tailoring offers that are beneficial to healers:
Yep, basically two items. And one of those items you could technically purchase under the name of Sapphire Spellthread even without tailoring. It would just be a lot more expensive.
Inscription
The benefits of inscription are the shoulder enchants. The reason I bothered leveling inscription is because it was easier to me than having to grind Sons of Hodir rep. Not to mention, the inscription shoulder enchants are much better:
Master’s Inscription of the Crag
Master’s Inscription of the Storm
The other benefits are the Scrolls of Recall which are essentially consumable hearthstones on a 20 minute cooldown. But with the hearthstone CD being reduced to 30 minutes the scrolls lose a bit of value.
Enchanting offers ring enchants. Alchemy offers a decent trinket. Jewelcrafting also offers a trinket.
Give An Answer Already!
If I had to recommend two crafting professions in the name of strictly improving your character and NOT taking profit potential into consideration then I’d say: tailoring and inscription. The reasons? You’ll upgrade those trinkets you’re getting from JC and Alchemy, but you’ll always be placing that embroidery on your new epic cloak, and that shoulder inscription on your new set of shoulders.
If you’re a low level priest, I recommend mining and herbalism. It can be difficult because you can’t track both items at the same time, but the money will be great if you can manage to keep them at the same level while leveling your character. Bank tons of your farmed herbs so that you can use them to power level your inscription at 80; same goes for your cloth for tailoring. Sell your bars for gold.
By the time you get to 80 you’ll be wealthy from selling bars, and have almost all of the cloth/herbs you need to power-level two quality professions.
