- Author: Nevermore
- Date: July 27, 2022
- Updated: July 27, 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 Protection Paladin.
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 comes incredibly close to it, and several other professions are incredibly competitive.
Engineering is the king of professions for PvE content, offering a vast, vast array of different benefits.
Similar to other tanks, Protection Paladins don’t use the ubiquitous Hyperspeed Accelerator glove enchant, as haste is not too powerful of a stat for us. Instead, we will be using the Reticulated Armor Webbing glove enchant, which offers a permanent +885 armor boost. Furthermore, as Engineers, we can use the Mind Amplification Dish helm enchant, which offers a minor +8 stamina bonus over the standard helm enchant, Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector.
Additionally, as an Engineer you have access to the Nitro Boosts boots enchant, passively giving +24 crit rating and coming with an on-use effect which massively increases your speed for 5 seconds. Protection Paladins sadly lack the mobility tools that other tanking specs have, meaning this enchant will be invaluable for getting you into the fight ASAP, allowing you to move to a particularly threatening target before it kills a raid member.9
Finally, just like in previous expansions, Engineers can use powerful explosives such as Saronite Bombs and Global Thermal Sapper Charges.
Jewelcrafting is an extremely potent profession for most classes / specs and that includes Protection Paladins. Not only do you gain access to powerful, Jewelcrafter-unique gems, but you also get to sell gems to others, granting you a steady income.
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 Protection Paladin are Solid Dragon’s Eye and Precise Dragon’s Eye, resulting in +63 stamina or +42 expertise 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.
As a Leatherworker you gain access to the Fur Lining – Stamina bracer enchant, which proves a +62 stamina increase over the standard enchant available to everyone, Enchant Bracers – Major Stamina. This is just 1 stamina less than what Jewelcrafting offers, though Jewelcrafting has far superior flexibility, as you can use many different types of gems.
As a tank, Leatherworking also gives you access to different resistance-boosting Fur Lining effects (for example, Fur Lining – Shadow Resist) which improve your resistance against a specific school of magic. This can be situationally useful, though you’ll usually gravitate towards Fur Lining – Stamina.
There are sadly no other useful benefits gained from Leatherworking, as you don’t want to use leather or mail gear as a tank. It’s not particularly good at gold generation, either.
Blacksmiths can add 2 extra gem sockets to their gear — 1 on wrists, and 1 on hands. Socketing 2x Solid Majestic Zircon into them translates into a +60 stamina bonus. This bonus ties Mining and Enchanting, but Blacksmithing overall has more flexibility, as you can socket anything you need in those 2 extra sockets — you’re not forced to go for stamina if you need another stat more.
Moreover, Blacksmithing allows you to craft some neat gear for yourself, which is especially 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 an Enchanter you gain access to the Enchant Ring – Stamina enchant, which you can apply to both of your rings for a modest +60 stamina. This bonus ties Blacksmithing and Mining, offering superior flexibility to Mining but inferior flexibility when compared to Blacksmithing.
Apart from the ring enchants, as an Enchanter you get to enchant your own items, which saves you a decent bit of gold that you would have otherwise spent tipping other Enchanters. Furthermore, you can sell your own enchants on the Auction House, generating a nice little income.
Miners gain access to the Toughness passive, which offers a +60 stamina boost. This bonus is incredible for tanks, tying Blacksmithing and Enchanting, though both of those offer flexibility that Mining just doesn’t have.
Mining is an extremely good gold-generating profession, allowing you to make some gold on the side, which will be invaluable as a tank.
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 +650 health increase when using Flask of Stoneblood, our preferred flask. This is sadly a smaller boost than what other professions can offer, but not by much — after raid buffs and talents, it works out to being roughly equivalent to a +54 stamina bonus.
Alchemy can be considered the best profession when it comes to gold generation, especially when you think about how many flasks, elixirs, and potions are in constant demand. Alchemists, just like in TBC, can acquire a sub-specialization, allowing them even more possibilities to acquire more gold.
As a Tailor, you gain access to the Lightweave Embroidery cloak enchant, a proc which gives you +295 spell power for 15 seconds with a 45 second internal cooldown. This translates into a possible +98 spell power bonus on average if it procs exactly every 45 seconds, or a +74 spell power bonus on average if it procs every 60 seconds, which is absolutely massive.
Protection Paladins, being a physical and magic hybrid tank, can also use the attack power embroidery: Swordguard Embroidery. This gives you a +400 attack power boost 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. It is not yet clear which of the 2 embroideries are superior for a Protection Paladin — we will update when simulation tools produce more concrete results.
While both embroideries offer a significant boost, as a Protection Paladin you will generally not need the extra threat, so they’re only really useful for the extra damage they provide. This is unfortunately not as useful, particularly as our damage scaling isn’t great — you’d much rather stack expertise, or defensive stats like stamina and armor. To make matters worse, using this embroidery prevents you from using the superior cloak enchant, Enchant Cloak – Mighty Armor.
Being a tank, you don’t want to use cloth gear, meaning those are all of the combat-related benefits Tailoring offers for you. It isn’t really great as far as gold generation is concerned, either.
As a Scribe, you gain access to the Master Inscription of the Pinnacle shoulder enchant, which provides a +40 dodge rating boost when compared to the equivalent reputation shoulder enchant, Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle. However, this bonus unfortunately fails to keep up with what other professions offer; you will typically want to stack stamina rather than dodge, opting to use the Greater Inscription of the Gladiator enchant instead.
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!
Skinners gain access to the Master of Anatomy passive, which offers a +40 crit rating boost. Crit just isn’t a great stat for Protection Paladins unfortunately, meaning this profession isn’t all that good either, as this is all you get as far as combat bonuses go.
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 useful benefits and are thus not considered viable for Protection Paladins in PvE.
Herbalists gain the Lifeblood active skill, which heals you for 3600 over 5 seconds, with a 3-minute cooldown. This is useful for some classes, but as Protection Paladins we have some incredibly powerful self-sustain already, meaning we really don’t need this. The heal amount just isn’t particularly large, so it won’t really save your life in a pinch.
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!
Â
About the Author
So, you have chosen Jewelcrafting for the additional +63 Stamina from 3 gems, while Mining can provide Toughness, increasing stamina by +60, and Blacksmithing can also potentially provide +60 Stamina, or other stats that may be lacking?
Both Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing have flexibility in that they can provide other stats you may need (like expertise, hit, defense, whatever) as you say, whereas Mining only offers stamina. They’re all very much viable however!
63*3 is more than one time +60 my guy lol also allows for when you don’t need stam you need expertise u can just switch them out
So as Engineering what is best for PvE Gnomish or Goblin?
Gnomish generally had more ‘fun’ gadgets like the shrink ray, death ray, world enlarger etc, where as goblin was more focused on bombs ( which are great for threat on aoe packs etc )