There are a number of professions in World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, but only a few of them are gold making professions. As the game advances different professions come and go in demand. As such, our top five gold making professions list has been updated for the winds of change, this time for Warlords of Draenor.

There are a number of professions in World of Warcraft, but only a few are the top gold making professions. Earlier this year, we looked at the Top 5 Professions in World of Warcraft for various reasons, but we didn’t drill it down to which ones put the most gold on your pocket. Running low on cash? Searching for which profession would be best for money in the long term? Well, look no further than this Top 5 Gold Making Professions in WoW.

Key Changes:

Herbalism is no longer #1, due to the fact that the Tillers farm / Garrison herb garden has all but crashed the herb market. Alchemists are swimming in herbs and rarely, if ever, need to source outside of their farm. So it's coming off of the list, however, I want to point out that gathering is kinda profitable. Players now have options of farming their own resources without a gathering profession, so you don't specifically have a large market anymore. On one of the most popular servers, I find that herbs, leather, etc. do sell for a nice amount of gold in large quantities (4~9 gold each). That will spike before and right after each major raid launch, but otherwise it'll stagnate.

Engineering is almost as profitable if not more so than Inscription now that it's BoP, but right now I'd say with some glyphs going for more than 1k on my server, there is a lot of cash to be made at the start of the expansion.

Number 5 - Inscription

Pros

  • Low material cost.
  • Easy to get the hang of.

Cons

  • Cutthroat Market
  • Requires addons to watch the market
  • Probably won't sell anything

Inscription is a tough profession to list in the top five, but I still do it because it's still a way to make gold. Players need glyphs, this is a cold hard fact. While Glyphs are no longer a limited resource, they're still useful for players who just recently joined the game.

As the market has calmed down; there is a lot more open niches usually around at certain times. However, most people have their glyphs so there isn't much desire for it. It's still good money, though.

Number 4 - Tailoring / Blacksmithing / Leatherworking

Pros

  • You get BoP crafting materials to make some really cool epics that will sell for a lot.

Cons

  • Requires camping at your garrison to put in Work Orders.
  • Requires a ton of garrison resources to make your tailoring / blacksmithing / leatherworking hut awesome.
  • Requires resources that you have to gather, mine, or buy off of the AH to produce the BoP items.

This is INSANELY simple - you can craft rares that sell for a lot on the AH, require a lot of time investment, and a lot of resources. You can sell these to other players. However, you have to put in at least 100 work orders, each one at 4 hours each (before any modifiers). You can ease the pain with your free item transmute each day. However, think of it like baking artsian bread. Sure, it takes way longer, but it's way better. This would be further down the list if it didn't take so long to produce something of value.

Number 3 - Alchemy (Flasks / potions / Transmutes)

Pros

  • You're an alchemist.
  • The things you put on the auction house sell really fast.
  • Raid releases bring you a ton of money.

Cons

  • You make money off of cooldowns.

Transmutation is still a money maker, although profit margins depends on your server. You can transmute anything and make money, you'd surprised at how well lower level transmutes like Truesilver work out even in the modern WoD market because people still want to level up the old enchants for fun and profit. The alchemy building even without alchemy on yourself can make pretty much everything BUT grand flasks.

Number 2 - Enchanting

Pros

  • Big money.

Cons

  • Not being poor.

Enchanting makes bank through two methods - first, everyone needs enchants over and over and over and over again. Who provides them? You. You put them on a scroll and you fight on the AH with everyone else to try and push your wares on to the people. The next method is through disenchant, which gives you resources to sell on the AH. Win / Win. For your garrison, even just having the NPC who can enchant is great because you can disenchant your gear and make temporal crystals through work orders so huge win even if you don't have it as your primary and still chase enchanters down without having to get all of the secrets to do your own enchants, but with your own materials (win/win).

Number 1 - Jewelcrafting

Pros

  • Piles of cash.
  • Always in demand.
  • You're a rock star.
  • Blizzard gave you a free mine so you don't even have to have mining anymore.

Cons

  • You're a rock star.
  • Expansions don't matter, because everybody needs jewels.
  • Printing money gets tiring.

So, basically, like enchants everyone needs gem cuts. Except, unlike enchants, everyone fiddles with them every second of the day. Even now, this far into a patch, everyone will still swap gems out mid-raid because it'll give them more DPS on a certain boss. So to that extent, the always in demand nature of Jewelcrafting means you're permanently in demand to be a hero. If you want to make cash, be a JC. Obtain the in-demand cuts and then get the niche cuts.

How do you make the money? Three ways. Sit in town and wait until someone asks for a cut you have on trade, then offer to do it for them. The other is to sit on the AH and list your gems at a competitive pricing. The third option is just be the guy everyone goes to for some obscure cut that's popular now but no one has the recipe.

That pretty much wraps up our guide. Ultimately, only the final two can make you serious money in the current wow economy, but creative players can find ways to work around it. If you want the definitive answer to the best professions in the game right now, it's pretty much JC and Enchanting.


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.

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