What is the Best Profession for an Affliction Warlock?

The “best” profession for an Affliction Warlock isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer, but Tailoring and Enchanting consistently emerge as the most beneficial combination for maximizing both gear potential and personal economy. Tailoring provides access to powerful crafted gear pieces, especially early in an expansion, while Enchanting offers self-sufficiency in improving gear and generating income through disenchanting unwanted items. While other professions can be valuable, Tailoring and Enchanting offer a strong synergy and significant advantages tailored to the Affliction Warlock’s needs.

Why Tailoring and Enchanting?

This combination excels due to several key factors:

Tailoring Benefits for Affliction Warlocks

• Early Gear Advantage: Tailoring allows you to craft powerful cloth armor pieces, often rivaling or even surpassing early raid drops, providing a significant power boost during leveling and initial raid progression. The ability to gear yourself up quickly is invaluable.
• Consistent Stat Upgrades: Throughout an expansion, Tailoring usually provides recipes for progressively better gear, allowing for consistent upgrades and a steady path to optimize your character’s stats. This reduces your reliance on RNG (Random Number Generator) from dungeon and raid drops.
• Economy Boost: Crafted gear can be sold on the auction house for substantial profits, particularly during content patches where new recipes become available. This allows you to generate gold to fund other aspects of your gameplay, such as consumables and repairs.
• Embroideries/Procs (Older Expansions): In expansions like Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) and Cataclysm, Tailoring often provided unique cloak embroideries or other procs that boosted spellpower or other stats. While these aren’t always present in every expansion, when available, they offer a noticeable performance increase.

Enchanting Benefits for Affliction Warlocks

• Gear Optimization: Enchanting allows you to customize your gear with stat boosts, improving your spellpower, critical strike chance, haste, or other beneficial attributes. This is crucial for maximizing your damage output as an Affliction Warlock.
• Self-Sufficiency: You can enchant your own gear without relying on other players, saving you gold and ensuring that your gear is always optimized.
• Disenchanting and Material Acquisition: Enchanting lets you disenchant unwanted gear to obtain enchanting materials. This provides a steady source of income by selling these materials on the auction house. It also ensures you have a constant supply for your own enchanting needs.
• Ring Enchants: Enchanters can often apply unique enchants to their own rings, providing an additional stat boost unavailable to non-enchanters.

Alternatives to Tailoring and Enchanting

While Tailoring and Enchanting are generally considered the best, other profession combinations can be viable, depending on your personal preferences and priorities.

Alchemy and Herbalism

• Potions and Flasks: Alchemy provides access to powerful potions and flasks that significantly boost your stats and survivability. As an Affliction Warlock, maximizing your damage output with consumables is essential.
• Income Generation: Potions and flasks are always in high demand, making Alchemy a reliable source of income.
• Herbalism Synergy: Herbalism allows you to gather the necessary herbs for Alchemy, making the entire process self-sufficient and cost-effective.
• Lifeblood: Herbalism can sometimes offer a small healing ability which is especially nice for solo content.

Jewelcrafting and Mining

• Powerful Gems: Jewelcrafting allows you to craft high-quality gems that provide significant stat boosts.
• Unique Gems: Jewelcrafters can often create unique, powerful gems that are only available to them, giving them a slight edge in terms of gear optimization.
• Mining Synergy: Mining provides the necessary ores for Jewelcrafting, making the entire process self-sufficient.
• Income Generation: Gems are always in high demand, making Jewelcrafting a reliable source of income.

Other Considerations

• Inscription: Useful for crafting glyphs, which can enhance your spells and abilities. The value of inscription varies wildly depending on the state of the game and its implementation of glyphs.
• Engineering: Offers gadgets and utility items that can be fun and sometimes useful, but generally doesn’t provide a direct boost to damage output for Affliction Warlocks.
• Skinning and Leatherworking: Generally not optimal for Affliction Warlocks, as they primarily benefit leather-wearing classes.

FAQ Section

1. Does the “best” profession change based on the expansion?

Yes, the “best” profession can shift slightly depending on the specific mechanics and bonuses introduced in each expansion. However, Tailoring and Enchanting consistently perform well due to their gear and optimization benefits.

2. Are gathering professions (Mining, Herbalism, Skinning) ever better than crafting professions?

Gathering professions are typically more valuable for gold-making early in an expansion when materials are scarce. However, they generally don’t provide the same direct benefits to character power as crafting professions. You might choose a gathering profession initially to build capital, then switch to crafting later.

3. How much gold can I expect to make with Tailoring and Enchanting?

The amount of gold you can earn varies greatly depending on server population, market conditions, and your dedication. However, Tailoring and Enchanting can be very lucrative, especially when new recipes or enchants are introduced.

4. Do racial bonuses affect profession choices?

Yes, certain racial bonuses can provide a slight advantage to specific professions. For example, Gnomes have a bonus to Engineering, while Dwarves have a bonus to Mining. However, these bonuses are usually not significant enough to outweigh the overall benefits of Tailoring and Enchanting for Affliction Warlocks.

5. How difficult are Tailoring and Enchanting to level?

The difficulty of leveling professions depends on the availability of resources and the competition in the market. Tailoring and Enchanting are generally considered relatively easy to level, especially with online guides and resources.

6. What are the best enchantments for an Affliction Warlock?

The best enchantments depend on your stat priorities and current gear level. Generally, you’ll want to focus on enchantments that boost Spellpower, Haste, Critical Strike, or Mastery, depending on which stats are most beneficial for your spec.

7. What are the best Tailoring recipes for an Affliction Warlock?

The best Tailoring recipes will vary depending on the expansion and patch. Focus on crafting gear pieces that provide the stats you need most, such as Spellpower, Intellect, Haste, Critical Strike, and Mastery.

8. Can I have more than two professions?

No, you are limited to two primary professions at a time. However, you can also learn all secondary professions (Cooking, Fishing, First Aid, and Archeology).

9. Should I level my professions alongside my character, or wait until max level?

It’s generally beneficial to level your professions alongside your character. This allows you to craft gear and enchantments that will improve your performance throughout the leveling process. It also ensures you have a steady supply of materials for crafting.

10. How important are professions for endgame raiding?

Professions can provide a significant advantage in endgame raiding, particularly through gear optimization and consumable usage. While not strictly required, they can definitely improve your performance and contribute to your raid’s success.

11. Is there a specific order I should level Tailoring and Enchanting?

There isn’t a strict order, but it’s often helpful to level Tailoring slightly ahead of Enchanting. This ensures you have access to gear that you can then disenchant to level your Enchanting skill.

12. What happens if I drop a profession?

If you drop a profession, you will lose all progress in that profession, including learned recipes and skill levels. You can relearn a profession, but you will have to start from scratch.

13. Are some crafting professions more expensive to level than others?

Yes, some crafting professions require more expensive materials, making them more costly to level. Tailoring and Enchanting are generally considered relatively affordable to level, especially if you gather your own materials.

14. How do I find the best deals on materials for my professions?

You can use the Auction House to search for materials, but also consider using websites and addons that track historical prices and alert you to good deals. Paying attention to market trends can save you a significant amount of gold.

15. Are there any profession-specific benefits that apply outside of combat (e.g., faster movement speed)?

While most profession benefits relate to combat performance or economy, some professions offer minor quality-of-life improvements. For example, Engineers can craft gadgets that provide temporary movement speed boosts or other utility effects. However, these benefits are usually secondary to the primary advantages of the profession.