Let’s take a look at leatherworking. For anyone who watched my Blacksmithing video the changes in Dragonflight are huge. I won’t be covering the basics as in-depth here, focusing in stead on where the gold potential is and specific optimizations.
Recipe types
As with blacksmithing you can craft mostly armor, with a smattering of weapons. On top of that there are some item enhancements in the form of armor kits, intermediate materials for higher level crafts, optional reagents and some toys. I’ll only be focusing on armor crafting today, as I think that is where the profit will be.
Elemental, decayed and bestial
Leatherworkers can craft two types of armor. You have the “basic” epic quality leather and mail, and then there are three categories of embellished armor and items: Decayed, Bestial and Elemental. These come with already powerful extra effects. They vary from PvP bonuses and extra ilvl in pvp to various PvE focused bonuses. Most of them seem strong and I expect these items to be in demand, although as usual with these things the absolute best one will win out, and for that we will have to wait for sims and class guides.
Knowledge break points
I’ve summed up all the relevant knowledge break points for crafting the various recipes at quality 5 in this table. As we can see it’s actually impossible to guarantee a quality 5 craft of a mythic infused elemental piece. Outside of that there could be some minor errors, as the break points depend a bit on exactly which nodes you focus on as you can get extra bonus skill from the break point bonuses. For all of them we assume maximum profession tool bonuses, 100 skill and quality 3 materials.
Max the end nodes
As with blacksmithing the final nodes for each item type generally give a lot of extra bonuses, so to max out one specific recipe the best approach is to rush to the end-node for that recipe type. Until we see player behaviour it’s impossible to know how they value q5 versus q1, but it is what it is. The alternative is to go wide and max the middle node to unlock as many recipes as possible.
Reagents require inspiration
Intermediate materials cannot be crafted at quality 3 without relying on inspiration procs. For anyone focusing on leveling materials you will want to go for full inspiration profession equipment and nodes.
Recipe acquisition
The basic epic armors are all unlocked from the end-nodes in the leather and mail armor specializations. The infused recipes for elemental, decayed and bestial pieces come from a variety of sources, including the primordial leatherworking specialization, raids, arena and reputation. Some of them can be purchased on the auction house, and you will want to keep an eye out for those, particularly early on!
Tradeable recipe list: