Professional practice

Choosing the right profession in this game is tough, especially when you first start out. It isn't easy to know how your choice will affect you later on in the game, but the big thing to remember is that it isn't a big deal if you find out you chose the wrong profession. Changing professions isn't hard, and when you get to a high level and have a mount and good amount of money you can switch to a new profession and level it up pretty quickly. There are many high end players that switch professions and are able to make their way halfway to the top in one day. So while it is important to think about what to choose, don't dwell too much on it, this game is supposed to be fun after all.

First off, you want to pick up all the secondary professions. These include first-aid, fishing, and cooking. Now the latter two may sound boring, but when you get up to a high level they will be very important in being able to supply yourself with food that will give you extra buffs, and if you're raiding you will be expected to have these when you show up. First-aid is a must have in that every humanoid mob has a very good chance to drop some kind of cloth, usually more than one, so it's easy to level up and very convenient to be able to heal yourself, especially if your class doesn't have any healing abilities.

Gathering professions do not produce anything that can be used directly, but they do provide materials that other professions need to be able to produce their items. The best way to emphasize this would be to list the gathering profession followed by the crafting profession that it would go along with.

Skinning: goes mainly with leatherworking, but tailors use leather in boot recipes as well, as well as some engineering recipes.

Herbalism: goes mainly with alchemy, other crafts don't use herbs much

Mining: goes mainly with blacksmithing, engineering, and jewelcrafting, while other professions use the materials occasionally.

Crafting professions provide a product that can be used by characters to make themselves better, be it armor, weapons, potions, rings, enchants, or other items that provide an increas in stats. These professions give you something to sell to people, sometimes at a very high price, and can make you rich if you know what is in high demand. Some classes benefit more from certain professions than others, and I will try to keep that in mind in this list as well.

Alchemy: produces potions and flasks, providing the character with temporary buffs to certain stats. These are in high demand for raiders as they are usually required to have their own when they start the raid. These benefits any class.

Blacksmithing: creates mail armor for lower levels, but mainly for production of heavy weapons and plate armor. This profession provides the most benefit to warriors, paladins, and will soon to death knights.

Enchanting: disenchants magical items such as armor, weapons, rings and other equipables and turns them into reagents to use to enchant other equipables. It can also produce wands at the lower levels, but doesn't seem to keep with this trend as you get to the higher levels for some reason, maybe because wands only become useful for their stats later on. This is probably the most stand alone profession there is as it provides itself with materials. Enchants can benefit any class and are highly sought after in end-game content.

Engineering: mainly creates special devices for use by players such as a revival device, repair bot, and even flying mounts. Besides those choices, this profession also has recipes for guns and scopes that can be used on ranged weapons to increase your ranged damage as well as a few cloth head armor that can turn out to be pretty good for some classes. Any class can benefit from this, especially hunters, but most of the items are more for novelty than practical use.

Jewelcrafting: at first this profession allows creation of rings and necklaces that can be equipped to provide stats for players. Later on is where it shows its true colors as you can create gems that can be equipped in slots on certain armor and provide boosts to the stats of that armor. These are very important in end-game content as it provides the character with an edge over others that don't have gems equipped and can be used to customize gear for maximum potential.

Leatherworking: mostly used for the creation of leather armor, but has some recipes for mail armor as well. High level recipes allow the creation of armor kits, much like enchants, that boost the stats of a piece of armor. Also produces drums that will boost party stats for a limited amount of time when used, though with the current changes in the upcoming expansion it may become less desireable as you will only be able to have one drum buff at a time. This profession mostly benefits druids and rogues, but also hunters and shamans to an extent.

Tailoring: all you clothies out there, this profession is for you. This profession creates cloth armor for those spell casting cloth-wearers out there, and at the high levels you can make some armor that will last you a long time into raid progression before you find an upgrade. As I stated with first-aid, cloth drops off of all humanoid mobs, which you kill a lot of through the levels, and is the main ingredient for this profession as well, which makes it similar to enchanting in that it does not require to gathering profession to get materials. This profession mainly benefits priests, mages, and warlocks.

You get two primary professions at a time, and there are many combinations you can go with, but for the most part you will want to professions that complement each other. Most people go with a gathering profession and a crafting profession, some examples are:

mining/blacksmithing, herbalism/alchemy, skinning/leatherworking

There are also those who will pick gathering professions for both and sell what the collect on the AH to make as much money as they can. This seems to work pretty well as most of the time it is very hard to collect everything you need to level up your crafting profession on your own, so many people turn to the AH for materials.

You can also try two crafting professions, but while this is nice to have at high levels, it isn't easy to level them as you level your character. One combination that does work well is enchanting/tailoring, as neither uses materials from a gathering profession as a main focus for its recipes. I wouldn't recommend pairing up any other two crafting professions unless you plan on spending a lot of money buying your materials on the AH.

The choice is ultimately up to you, and there is no wrong way to go, but many players will recommend starting out as dual gathering until you reach the top as you tend to make the most money that way, then you can switch to a crafting profession and with all the money you should have you can buy the materials to level it up until you can make the items you want. I won't tell you what to do, just what to avoid give suggestions so you can get started so you can make an informed decision.