- Author: Nevermore
- Date: June 9, 2022
- Updated: September 20, 2022
- Expansion: WotLK Classic
Professions are a crucial part of your World of Warcraft character, potentially offering a large boost to your damage, healing or survivability, while also allowing you to generate some gold.
This section will cover some of your best options for professions as a Fury Warrior.
Best Professions
Like with most other classes & specs in the game, Engineering will be your strongest profession. For the second profession slot, we recommend Jewelcrafting, though Blacksmithing is extremely close to it in performance.
Engineering is the king of professions for PvE content, offering a vast, vast array of different benefits.
The main benefit of Engineering lies in the Hyperspeed Accelerators gloves enchant, which gives +340 haste rating for 12 seconds, on a 1 minute cooldown. This translates into a ~10% attack speed increase with a 20% uptime, which is already amazing on its own — but it becomes even bigger when you use the Accelerators when your various trinkets proc.
Additionally, as an Engineer you have access to the Nitro Boosts boots enchant, passively giving +24 crit rating and coming with an-use effect which massively increases your speed for 5 seconds, allowing you to move out of dangerous AoE effects or catch up to your target quickly.
Finally, just like in previous expansions, Engineers can use powerful explosives such as Saronite Bombs and Global Thermal Sapper Charges.
No surprises there, Jewelcrafting is an extremely potent profession for most classes / specs and that includes Fury Warriors. Not only do you gain access to powerful, Jewelcrafter-unique gems, but you also get to sell gems to others, giving you a modest income through this profession.
The main benefit of Jewelcrafting is the Jewelcrafter-unique gems, Dragon’s Eye, which are more powerful than regular gems, but are limited to 3 equipped at a time. The main ones you’ll be crafting as a Warrior are Bold Dragon’s Eye and Fractured Dragon’s Eye, resulting in +42 strength or +42 armor penetration rating compared to using regular epic gems.
Useful Professions
The following professions are considered viable, but offer a lesser benefit compared to the best professions, so they’re not recommended. If you’re not focused on making your character 100% optimal, you can use any of these professions just fine.
Blacksmiths can add 2 extra gem sockets to their gear — 1 on wrists, and 1 on hands. Socketing 2x Bold Cardinal Ruby or 2x Fractured Cardinal Ruby into them translates into a +40 strength or +40 armor penetration rating bonus.
Moreover, Blacksmithing allows you to craft some neat gear for yourself, which is specially useful early on in the expansion or when your character is freshly dinged level 80. However, the crafted gear is generally not as powerful as it was in previous expansions.
As a Tailor, you gain access to the Swordguard Embroidery cloak enchant, a proc which gives you +400 attack power for 15 seconds with a 45 second internal cooldown. This translates into a possible +133 attack power bonus on average if it procs exactly every 45 seconds, or a +100 attack power bonus on average if it procs every 60 seconds, which is absolutely massive.
However, there is a significant opportunity cost attached to this bonus, as it prohibits you from using the standard cloak enchant, Enchant Cloak – Greater Speed, making it slightly weaker in practice. Procs are extremely powerful as they can be stacked together with cooldowns, so this bonus shouldn’t be written off at all because of this — it’s just not as powerful as Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing, with their armour penetration bonuses.
Tailoring is pretty weak on the gold generation side, unfortunately, so the cloak enchant is all you really get here.
As a Scribe, you gain access to the Master’s Inscription of the Axe shoulder enchant, which provides a +80 attack power increase over the standard enchant available to everyone, Greater Inscription of the Axe. This bonus ties Enchanting and Leatherworking, but is strictly speaking worse than the +40 strength bonus that Blacksmithing offers.
Scribes also get to make Glyphs & scrolls, providing a nice source of income, but many will argue that the real benefit in Inscription comes in not having to grind The Sons of Hodir reputation for the shoulder enchants!
As an Enchanter you gain access to the Enchant Ring – Assault enchant, which you can apply to both of your rings for a modest +80 attack power. This bonus ties Inscription and Leatherworking, but is strictly speaking worse than the +40 strength bonus that Blacksmithing offers.
You also get to enchant your own equipment without needing to tip another enchanter, which results in a neat amount of gold saved, on top of the gold you can generate by enchanting others.
As a Leatherworker you gain access to the Fur Lining – Attack Power bracer enchant, which proves a +80 attack power increase over the standard enchant available to everyone, Enchant Bracers – Greater Assault. This bonus ties Inscription and Enchanting, but is strictly speaking worse than the +40 strength bonus that Blacksmithing offers.
There are sadly no other useful benefits gained from Leatherworking, and you generally don’t get to make much or a profit with it either.
As an Alchemist, you gain access to the Mixology passive effect, which increases the effectiveness of flasks and elixirs you consume, but only if you can craft them yourself. This results in a +64 attack power increase when using Flask of Endless Rage, our preferred flask. This is sadly a smaller boost than what other professions can offer, but not by much.
On the flipside, Alchemy is one of the best professions for gold generation, as potions, flasks and elixirs are always relevant and in high demand. This makes it a great profession for your alts to have.
Skinners gain access to the Master of Anatomy passive, which offers a +40 crit rating boost. This is weaker than all of the other professions mentioned in this list, but at least it’s something.
Skinning is generally not that good at gold generation either, so it’s overall not a great profession.
Sub-Par Professions
The following professions do not offer any DPS-increasing benefits and are thus not considered viable for Fury Warriors in PvE.
Herbalists gain the Lifeblood active skill, which heals you for 3600 over 5 seconds, with a 3 minute cooldown. This can occasionally come in handy, particularly while leveling, farming or questing, but will generally never be enough to save you in a dungeon or raid.
On the flipside, Herbalism is one of the strongest professions for gold generation, as herbs are used in Alchemy and Inscription, and thus always in demand. This makes it a good profession to have on an alt, particularly a Druid, Rogue or Hunter.
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If I have Blacksmithing and mining on my warrior and mining would be dropped, would it be best to pickup engineering or JC to work with blacksmithing? I can’t decide and people have said either would be great.
Blacksmithing is better in my opinion. Is constant.
Engineering is effectively mandatory for end game raiding if you are trying to optimize. Rocket boots allow you to get out of all kinds of danger, as well as back into damage range faster. Grenades add a constant damage boost, and the glove enchant is a solid damage increase, especially given that you can line it up with everything else.
(340 Haste x 12 sec) : 60 sec = 4080 : 60 = 68 Haste
Hands
68 Haste Ench vs 44 attack power Ench Crusher = 24Haste
Feet
Ench Nitro Boots 24 crit and run speed 5 sec/3min CD – Greater Assault 32 attack power = 8 attack power vs run speed 5 sec/3min CD (Ench Icewalker 12 hit, 12 crit)
Saronite Bomb 1150-1500 Fire damage 10yard/1min CD vs Blacksmithing Strengh 40 (80 attack power)
1500 Fire damage : 60 sec = 19, 177 – 25 Fire damage/1 sec
19,2 – 25 Fire damage vs 40 Strengh
Blacksmithing is better for me.
You’re looking at this very incorrectly.
Calculating the average of an on-demand Haste cooldown isn’t a functional way of looking at it. The fact that it is on-demand means you can line it up with other cooldowns and buffs to maximize its value.
The move speed from Nitro Boosts can be used to increase your uptime on a boss if you for any reason are not where you need to be. It can also be used to rapidly dodge mechanics before charging back in. For example against Algalon, you can maximize your uptime on the boss during Big Bang by using Rocket Boots to sprint into a portal at the last possible moment.
They also allow you to keep up with your raid, who will likely all be using rocket boots also.
I’m not sure I understand your math here either, because you say that the comparison is 8 attack power vs run speed, but that is false. The comparison is 24 Crit + Move Speed vs 32 Attack Power. Crit is a fantastic stat for Fury Warriors, and is generally going to be worth more than Attack Power.
You counted Saronite Bombs, but neglected Sappers. Global Thermal Sapper Charges are 2188 to 2812 Fire Damage. Both Sappers and Grenades also have Area of Effect, meaning that on a lot of bosses, they do more than just the listed damage. Razorscale, XT-002, (Council), Kologarn, Auriaya, Hodir, (Thorim), Mimiron, and Yogg-Saron all have AoE components to their fight. This makes up the majority of the encounters in Ulduar.
Blacksmithing currently offers 2 additional sockets, with the best option currently being at most 16 Strength gems. This puts you down to 32 Strength, not 40.
In the end, you are more than welcome to use Blacksmithing, but your math just doesn’t check out.
A quick, and likely not optimally set up Sim shows 90 DPS loss using Blacksmithing over Engineering. Feel free to provide a sim setup that shows otherwise.