There were two specific perks to boosting Rokk, my Windwaker Monk, to 90. One was to fast-track through the leveling process so he’d be ready to go for Warlords of Draenor. The other was to max out his professions. At the time, Rokk had Skinning. But he dropped that and picked up Tailoring and Engineering once he’d cleared the level 60 profession hump. Both professions provided combat perks, and the Tailoring was nice for farming extra cloth mats (as well as making bags).

That’s one jacked seamstress.

Patch 6.0 kicked all that in the manbasket. There were no more combat perks to be gained through professions. Sweet bags aside, were my selection of professions providing any real benefit? I had other characters with Engineering, and gathering extra cloth wasn’t really that much of a reason to keep Tailoring.

In various profession interviews I’d listened to, it was suggested that in WoD it would be helpful to have a crafting profession that would let you craft your own gear. Between that, and that fact that the transmog set for Rokk involved a chest piece that was a bind on pickup item from Leatherworking, I decided to make the switch. I dropped both Engineering and Tailoring, and picked up Leatherworking and Skinning.

Leveling the new professions hasn’t been that bad. Rokk is farming his own mats, but even if he wasn’t he could still level his Skinning right there in Pandaria, since a recent patch allowed characters to level their gathering professions in MoP right from skill level 1. You’d simply pick up fragments and scraps rather than whole items.

Leatherworking hasn’t been too painful either. It helps to have a goal (like a sweet transmog piece) to work towards. Once he reaches that skill level, he could complete Leatherworking in WoD since they plan on allowing skillups for professions through the garrisons. Patch 6.0.3 also fixed a bug that specifically affected Rokk. The bug would not allow a Windwalker Monk to craft more than one item, even when hitting the Create All button.

Even with WoD only being two weeks away, it isn’t too late to start working on building professions for the next expansion. It’s not like there’s anything else going on between now and then.

Oh. Right.