Professions

Professions on WoD have a specific "flow" to them. Once you understand this flow you will understand all the professions for Warlords of Draenor. The (unbuffed) maximum skill for professions is 700 and you learn new professions via your trainers in major cities and Draenor-level Professions from your Garrison's "Small Buildings".

Functionally, professions are player enhancements designed to increase a character's utility and power. Some of the best available items in the game are derived from professions. Professions are how players have 725ilvl armor, massive buffs, are able to fish and cook for themselves, or find + build rare mounts.

All gathering professions are somewhat nerfed in WoD due to the garrison providing so many of these resources "passively". Though using a gathering profession in Tanaan Jungle has a chance to earn you Felblight, a necessary and expensive resource for crafting high end gear.

There are no "combat" professions and there are no direct buffs or perks that make any particular profession a better dps / healing / tanking choice. That said,  there is a best profession of the expac --> Engineering . Engineering is the only profession that gives your character more options, more powers, and rounds out what your class may be missing. With engineering you get teleporters to every continent (and many sub zones), warrior charge, farsight, slow fall, portable mail and banking, repair, and access to two free gifts daily. If I had to rank the professions they would fall like this: Engineering > Alchemy > Enchanting = Jewelcrafting > everything else.

List of Professions
There are eleven professions to choose from. Each individual character can have two unique professions (some professions even have sub-specialties) and four additional "universal" professions available to any and all players. These universal professions are learned in cities and characters can use all four. Normal professions are limited to two per character. All professions are useful, some just more so.

Below is a list of the professions and a brief description of their end-game use.

Alchemy
Uses herbs to create potions, flasks, trinkets, and other elixirs to increase your character's potency. The trinket alchemy creates is the best dps trinket readily available (buffs your main stat by ~1800 frequently). Flasks and Potions are required for high end raiding, buffing your stats for 1hr by 250 and potions temporarily buffing your stats by 1000. Alchemy is a decent gold making profession since the consumables are always in demand. It's a profession of overall utility, granting water walking + speed boosts + invisibility etc. The garrison small building allows you to create the 1k stat boosting potions without the profession. Very worthy profession.

Blacksmithing
Converts ores into armor and weapons. The best available weapons in the game (besides guns and staves) come from blacksmithing. Blacksmithing creates plate armor, shields, and weapons. The small building associated with blacksmithing gives you two neat buffs (that don't persist through death so are semi-useless): immunity to repair and one that spawns a fire elemental to dps for you. Blacksmithing is higher in demand than leatherworking.

Enchanting
Empowers your armor and weapons with additional stats or effects. Enchanting uses the ability "Disenchant" to destroy unused items into raw materials which are then fuel for your magical enchantments. In Draenor one can enchant the necklace, rings, cape, and weapon for end game empowerment. Enchanting your heirlooms (leveling gear) can improve your utility significantly, like increasing your movement speed by 18% or giving your weapon extra power for even faster npc kills. All end game items in the main slots will require enchanting, so it's consistently in demand. It is an expensive profession to maintain, with no easy ways to gain the necessary disenchanted raw materials. The small garrison building gives you the ability to transmog your enchantments!

Engineering
Engineering at the most basic level creates goggles/helmets, guns, consumable combat items, invisibility, gliders for slow fall and fast travel, mounts, and "scopes" (enchantments) for the guns it creates. At a deeper level engineering allows you to break the game's physics, perform feats that are usually class-specific, be your own teleporting mage, provide repairs for your comrades while on adventures, portable banking and portable mailbox, and so many others. Engineering is the best profession in the game. It provides the greatest overall power-up to an individual character and is such a massive quality of life increase that I recommend engineering to all main characters (maybe to all non-mages is more accurate). There is one best profession and it is engineering. For Firestorm you benefit massively by buying($$$) all the recipes.

Herbalism
Enables the collection of raw plant/herbs from the open world and some npcs. It's a "gathering" profession which means you can farm Felblight with it in Tanaan Jungle. Herbalism is also a good way to level up a character, since each time you pick up a plant you are earning exp. Sadly in WoD your garrison provides you with hundreds of herbs weekly and herbs can be purchased manually with the "Trading Post" building. This diminishes the utility of this profession significantly and I don't recommend it on main characters.

Inscription
Uses herbs and inks to create "Glyphs" and trinkets and staves. To be honest, inscription is a silly/stupid profession. Necessary yes. But it's not fun and is tedious. To get the raw materials necessary to use this profession you must destroy herbs (five at a time, no fast way of "milling" the herbs) which becomes pigment, then use the pigment to purchase ink from a vendor, then use the ink to create individual glyphs (one at a time of course with no fast way). This is a wildly time consuming process and I hate it. Inscription makes decent trinkets that provide buffs to core secondary stats like crit, bonus armor, and spirit. Inscription also makes staffs + wands which are excellent for some classes like monk and spellcasters. Glyphs are required for each character in the game, so is a good way to make gold.

Jewelcrafting
Uses ores to create stat boosting gems, crafted rings + necklaces, utility items, several mounts, and many RP-style items. Like enchanting, jewelcrafting (JC) enhances "socketed" gear with their stat boosting gems. Draenor gems provide a +50 benefit, and some old world gems have utility and value in testing - but mostly it's the secondary stat (haste/crit/etc) gems JC provides.

Leatherworking
Uses farmed animal hides and cloth in the creation of mail + leather armor, crafted capes, drums that provide a 30% haste buff, armor kits that can be used on heirlooms, and a 4% stat-boosting drum that applies as a raid buff. Like blacksmithing and tailoring, it is a profession designed to create equipment for specific armor classes (plate / mail / leather / cloth). All players should carry the Bloodlust/Heroism/TimeWarp item "Drums of Fury". The leatherworking building helps you construct "Tents" which are a 10% stats buff you can share in outdoor adventures.

Mining
Is a gathering profession to collect ore and metal from nodes. With mining you can purify ores into metal bars and assist in many crafted item creations. Each node you mine provides experience for gaining levels, along with the material and misc items. As a gathering profession you can use it to gain Felblight in Tanaan Jungle.

Skinning
The gathering profession most associated with leatherworking and tailoring. NPC corpses of certain types (beasts etc) will be "skinnable". The skinner collects hides and furs from the corpse to use in other professions.

Tailoring
Provides bags, crafted cloth gear + capes, mounts, specific cloths, and nets. WoD's "Hexweave Bags" hold thirty item slots and are the (second) best bags available. The carpets tailoring create can be used even if you don't have tailoring! Fun fact, carpets are one of the "silent mounts" - no flapping or roars from carpets. Make gold with tailoring by selling bags and the crafted gear.

Archaeology
A universal profession that uses a treasure hunting system to gather fragments for the creation of ancient RP objects. Many toys and several utility items are derived from archaeology. It can be a bugged profession on Firestorm, forewarned. Could be considered a low priority profession.

Cooking
A universal profession that converts food materials into buffs and RP items. There are so many cool food items! You can track humanoids, grow or shrink in size, change gender or race or appearance, buff all manner of stats, etc. This is a profession that greatly benefits from purchasing all the recipes. End game players require cooked food buffs for maximum power, the best of which provide a 125 boost. Pandarians get double the stats from their food buffs!

First Aid
A universal profession that enables all classes to self-heal (badly) and have healing potions. First aid's "Healing Tonic" and engineering's "Shieldtronic Shields" share the same unique cooldown, both providing a 59k boost to health making them raid optimal. Most classes don't use first aid anymore (besides Healing Tonic) and the heals gained with bandages are really quite bad. This is a low priority profession.

Fishing
Is the universal gathering profession, all classes can gather fish from water. Fishing in Draenor can bring you pets, the materials for the top tier cooking/food buffs, and is frequently used to gain Felblight in Tanaan Jungle. The fishing mini game can be relaxing and easy to play if you're tired or want to idly fiddle on the computer. In farming Felblight and other materials I have put a movie on in another window and used a tiny fraction of attention to find the hook-icon on screen. It's by no means exciting to do, but it's not awful.

Leveling Professions on WoD
Leveling and learning professions in WoD has been streamlined. The only bottlenecks are the daily cooldown in your ability to learn a new recipe and the traveling profession trainers that arrive in your garrison to teach you new recipes. Everything else about professions in WoD levels up quickly. You can level from 0/700 skill to 700/700 skill using only Draenor materials.

Everyday you can create one item called "Secrets of Draenor Profession", and a profession-specific set of materials. These materials are fuel for the application of what your profession does. The following are the "core materials" of each profession: Each time you use your daily material CD you will also create "Sorcerous " which are essential for crafted gear and professions in general (can be sold/shared).
 * Enchanters and Jewelcrafters make types of crystals
 * Blacksmiths make ingots
 * Leatherworkers make burnished leather
 * Inscription makes paint
 * Engineers make gears
 * Alchemists make catalysts.

These core materials are generally "difficult" to create. This difficulty is what gives your item creations value. For example, some mounts require thirty days to create due cooldowns on the creation of certain items! Try to stockpile a large amount of your profession's core material. Crafted items take a massive amount of resources to create, so it is good to be prepared.

Learning Recipes
Use your garrison's "Small Building Plots" to construct the building associated with your profession. In that building you will find a recipes vendor who will convert your "Secrets of Draenor Profession" into the ability you want to learn. It takes roughly two weeks to learn every recipe for your profession. There are also traveling recipe vendors that appear in your lvl3 garrison. When they arrive purchase every recipe in your profession they offer, it is usually for gold or some raw material like ore/herbs/dust. (Some recipes will be grey in color, don't worry about those, they are "dead" items --> that is why they are grey)

The traveling recipe vendors sell a way to inefficiently create your core material. These essential recipes require "Primal Spirit" (an item you'll find throughout Draenor) and use more of your raw material than the efficient daily CD. Farm and stockpile "Primal Spirit", I keep around 5000 at all times, to ensure you can always create more core materials for your professions. Your daily CD gives you a set amount of the core resource everyday, the inefficient recipes allow you to create core materials anytime you want in any quantity.

Crafted Items and their Upgrades
Crafted items are player profession created armor / weapons / trinkets (etc) and are the strongest items in the game. Crafted weapons can become 715ilvl and crafted armor can become 725ilvl. A single crafted item requires a massive quantity of core materials, 105 sorcerous elements, 45 "Savage Blood", and 60 "Felblight". Characters can wear three crafted items at once (or four if you use a shield/tome). In general the best crafted slots are: weapons, trinkets, rings, belts, boots, and helm/chest/legs (depends). The other item slots are filled with Kazzak's 705ilvl items, the 4p set bonuses, or your legendary ring.

All professions create items in the same basic way. In addition to upgrades players create, there is also the "Valor" system for upgrading items. Valor is an extremely rare resource that is used to upgrade Kazzak, crafted, and Hellfire Citadel items by an additional ten item levels. For the Kazzak stat-stick trinket, the stats increase from +187 to everything to +205 everything! Gain Valor only from the rare chance the weekly garrison quest from "Seer Kazal" involves pvp, this is the only way to get this resource.
 * 1) Create the initial gear piece you want to upgrade
 * 2) Reroll the stats of your item to your desired secondary stat combination using your professions reroll recipe
 * 3) Build the three upgrade items (Use: Increases the item level of an item by 15, up to a maximum of 675)
 * 4) Requires 45 blood, 45 sorcerous element, and many core materials
 * 5) Build two "Mighty" upgrade items (Use: Upgrades an item level 675 to 690)
 * 6) Requires 60 felblight, 60 sorcerous element, and a ton of core materials
 * 7) There's a helpful bug where instead of building a Mighty and Savage upgrade (would cost extra resources), we can just use two Mighty upgrades!  Thanks to my predecessors for discovering this ♥
 * 8) Note that Alchemy's "Stone of Elements" cannot use the Mighty x2 technique
 * 9) Ensure your not upgraded armor/weapon/trinket has correct stats!!!
 * 10) Use the items x3 you created in step3 on your armor/weapon/trinket, then use the items x2 you created in step4
 * 11) If the armor/weapon/trinket seems to lose its stats, deposit into your bank and retrieve

Tips and Tricks
The following macro is a quality of life and time saving addition. What it does is give you a one-button-click to create your daily profession materials without opening any windows. This is especially useful when you have multiple characters or want to begin half-automating your repetitive tasks. Replace "Inscription" and "War Paints" with your profession name and the name of your daily material, save the macro, then put it onto your bars. Then you can double click and the material will begin to be crafted. Buying your professions from the Firestorm Shop is a good way to save time. It will provide you with every recipe (except Draenor-specific, they expect you to earn those) from the old world including unobtainable recipes, some of which are very powerful and interesting.

Certain professions have addons associated with them that improve quality of life. Like enchanting is improved by the addon "OneClickEnchantScroll" since it puts a button on your enchanting window to create the portable enchantments with a single click. Or Inscription semi-requires a "Milling" macro to save you massive time clicking mill-->herb; you create a macro that says "/milling /use " and then spam that button. Other professions have similar quality of life improvements.