As you get ready to enter WotLK, you may find yourself looking to max out a profession to 375 to make sure that you are going to get in on the hot new recipes and items you can make.  We wanted to give you a little info to snack on that may make choosing a profession or a toon for each profession a little easier if you’ve ever wondered about it.

When it comes to maxing out a profession, you definitely want to try to match professions to a racial bonus if that is possible.  The primary reason for this is that it will make the upper levels of each proficiency range quite a bit easier.  You see,  all recipes have the same skill point proc rate based on a static table. Since  Engineering is going to be a hot profession for WotLK for the motorcycle mounts, let’s look at an example from that profession so you can see what we really mean.

For everyone but Gnomes, the recipe for Felsteel Stabilizer would be orange at 340, always granting a skill-up.  At level 350 it goes yellow, meaning probably a skill up, let’s assume at least 50%.  At level 360 it goes green meaning hang on to your wallet, it’s going to be expensive.  As much as it is possible, you want to only create items that are orange, and the first few skill-ups in yellow.  Just common sense there, unless there is a green recipe with really cheap mats compared to the orange recipes you have.

I know this is all a little “old hat” for some of you, but here’s how the racial bonus helps the gnome at this level.  A gnome making Felsteel Stabilizers will be able to stay in the orange guaranteed skill up range with this item until skill level 365, and then it will remain yellow up to 375 before it goes green.  While every other race is spending crazy gold making other things, the gnome will be able to make this much lower level recipe with more inexpensive mats or at least easier to farm considering Fel iron isn’t all that hard to mine in Hellfire Peninsula.

A gnome can basically make this one recipe all the way to the profession cap while the rest of us are trying to make a bunch of flying machines or other nonsense to hit 375.  It can literally save you hundreds of gold, if not a thousand or more depending on the economy for the mats you need on your server.

So if you are considering Engineering, and have a gnome, then it’s a no-brainer if you are not capped yet.  The same holds true with Jewelcrafting and Dranei, and Enchanting with Blood Elves.  Tauren get an Herbalism boost, but it’s not nearly as useful with a gathering profession as it is on a production profession.

Ally finally get a serious advantage over horde as well in this category with two races holding a bonus to two of the most difficult to level and expensive professions in the game.  If you use enchanting like we do and DE tons of things to sell the mats, then enchanting isn’t nearly as tough as either of the other two.

With the motorcycle wanting frenzy about to start, you might want to consider adding engineering to your gnome and get it leveled up quick.  Sure, you can do it with any race, but a gnome just makes it that much easier to Domainte.