We are approaching the end of these profession previews, today we look at the old classic weapon crafter in Blacksmithing.
Pre-raid gearing
As with all of the other professions that primarily revolve around gear crafting the initial gearing rush is where you will want to aim your efforts. Blacksmiths get access to weapon crafting alongside plate armor. Weapons are generally the strongest gear piece you can get, which makes blacksmithing gear very sought after. For this reason it’s also very preferable to have blacksmithing on your main, as you need to get to level 80 and get into dungeons to get the required Frozen Orbs for crafting the epic weapons and armors.
Utility items
There are a couple of assorted utility items that will see good demand. First of the Eternal Belt Buckle item enhancement to add a socket to your belt. We will see everyone buying this one whenever they get a new belt, so keep them in stock. The titanium rod is needed by enchanters for the new enchanting rod, and then we have the titanium shield spike and weapon chains, that have some niche uses. The belt buckle is the big one here, as BiS enchants always sell well and have strong long term demand. If you just plan to have BS on an alt, this is the main recipe you should expect to make gold with.
Armor
The titansteel epic armor pieces are the top choices for blacksmithing, particularly the Spiked Titansteel Helm for plate DPS classes. All of the Titansteel pieces can be quite strong for initial gearing. There’s also one rare recipe, Vengeance Bindings, that you can craft even on a 68 crafter, which is pre-raid BiS for certain strength classes.
Weapons
As with armor the epic titansteel pieces are the top choices here. There are some rare weapons as well, but due to how weapon DPS scales with ilvl they are a significant step down for level 80. They have a required level at 75 however, making them great for leveling alts, so we should see some demand for these as well.
Recipe acquition
The vast majority of the Blacksmithing recipes just come from the profession trainers. This includes all of the epic weapons and armors, which is the most sought after pieces. In fact all the meaningful recipes come directly from your trainer, so you don’t really have to do anything besides leveling your profession skill.
The most promising strategy
Blacksmithing is the most straightforward of them all. If you plan to play at 80, you will want to rush profession skill up, farm frozen orbs, and start selling weapons and armors. If you plan to leave it at 68, you will just rush to skill 420, at which point you can craft both vengeance bindings and eternal belt buckles, and then you craft and sell those.
Is there a reason why the profession alt should be 68? Isn’t 65 enough, no need for flying, no dailies for blacksmithing and leatherworking.