WoW: The War WIthin – Best Professions, Ranked

There are more than a dozen professions WoW players can learn in The War Within, but some professions are not quite as useful as others. When it comes to making Gold with professions, there’s really only one easy route to take: Dual Gathering professions. But that isn’t to say that crafting professions aren’t worth taking – they’re great for saving money to craft your own gear and consumables, but they can be difficult to make Gold with reliably.

When it comes to the best gold-making professions in WoW, gathering professions are really where it’s at. But spending some time developing your secondary Cooking and Fishing professions can help out in the long run, too. Though these are less important than your main professions for earning Gold, selling high-lvl Food and Fish on the Auction House can make for a steady income, too. Just don’t pick up Archaeology – for the third expansion in a row, this secondary profession has been left in the dust.

Dual Gathering Professions

Instead of worrying about making money through Trade, consider becoming a Dual Gatherer to sell materials. You can train two Gathering professions (instead of the traditional gathering and crafting) and just sell everything you collect on the Auction House for pure profit without having to worry about Crafting Orders or the ins and outs of creating high-iLvl gear.

Two of the best combinations are Mining and Herbalism or Skinning and Tailoring. Choose Mining and Herbalism if you would prefer to passively collect materials while flying around Khaz Algar, or choose Skinning and Tailoring if you would rather source materials from enemy loot, as you can only get Leather and Cloth from defeated beasts and humanoids (respectively) while you have these Professions.

Though there are certainly benefits to choosing a crafting profession, like being able to craft high-iLvl gear for yourself for less Gold, they can be a Gold sink if you try to make money with them unless you really know what you are doing.

Gear & Crafting Professions

The crafting system can be kind of intense for players just jumping into Professions for the first time, but it does have its benefits. The crafting system overhaul was introduced in Dragonflight and gives players unparalleled control over the outcome of their crafts, like the ability to customize secondary stats, boost iLvl, and more. But this complexity comes with an incredibly steep learning curve, and nowadays, most crafting professions are hard to make Gold with unless you are extremely good at making one thing.

And if you make mistakes while skilling up (like allocating Profession Knowledge to a Spec that’s not useful at max level), it can drastically change the quality of your crafts, leaving you in the dust behind other crafters as you wait to get more Profession Knowledge.

However, if you do decide to go all in on a crafting profession (preferably one that can produce gear for your Class), it can save a lot of money in the long run. Some crafting professions are much more broadly useful for all classes, like Engineering or Alchemy, while others are more directly tied to a specific class or armor type, like Blacksmithing and Warriors, Leatherworking and Hunters, or Tailoring and caster classes.

If you want to make your own gear, choose a production profession (and a partnered gathering profession) that can make gear specifically for your own class. But if you want to make money or provide goods for a Guild, consider picking up Alchemy, Enchanting, or Jewelcrafting instead.

It’s not a bad idea to have one character as a Dual Gatherer and one with Dual Crafting professions that your Gatherer can send materials to. Druids are particularly good choices for being your Dual Gatherer character as their Flight Form does not “dismount” you while harvesting.

Secondary Professions

Cooking and Fishing remain largely unchanged from how they have always been. As Secondary Professions, players can pick up both Cooking and Fishing in addition to two regular professions and they don’t take up a slot, though they don’t have the complexity of other professions, nor do players earn Profession Knowledge for these skills.

Though you don’t “need” to level up Cooking or Fishing to have a WoW endgame-ready character, but they do provide minor bonuses. Having access to high-quality food (and Feasts) can give you various Well Fed bonuses that are required for high-difficulty Raiding and high-end Mythic Plus. You don’t need to go into Mythic 0 or low-level Mythic+ dungeons with a few stacks of class-appropriate food, but at higher difficulties they really do help a lot. And whatever you don’t need for your own needs can be sold on the Auction House for a little profit.

Fishing is even less important in terms of gameplay bonuses, but Fish can be used to help level your Cooking skill. Fish can be sold on the AH, just like materials from Gathering professions, and you will sometimes find extremely rare items or unique things while Fishing. There are lots of side activities (like the Fishing Event in Hallowfall) that require you to have a high Fishing skill to do well in.

Plus, Fishing in WoW is kind of relaxing, and there’s a surprising number of players who spend the majority of their time in-game just peacefully anglin’.

You don’t need to necessarily focus on leveling Cooking or Fishing, but they are still worth picking up in addition to your chosen two main professions. If you care about maximizing your output in high-level endgame content, pick up Cooking and max it out as soon as you can.

Archaeology Tier

Another expansion comes and still essentially no new changes or content has been included for the Archaeology secondary profession. Like Cooking and Fishing, you can pick up Archaeology without taking up a main profession slot, but in The War Within there is literally no point in learning this skill. There is nothing for Archaeologists to do in Khaz Algar.

Introduced back in Cataclysm Archaeology has been kind of left to the wayside for a few expansions now, and though it still exists in the game as a profession that you can use to engage with older Expansion content, there has been no major update or modernization of the profession since Battle for Azeroth. One day, keen Archaeologists might get a revamp of this forgotten profession, but right now it’s best not to even worry about going out of your way to find an Archaeology trainer.