Ishnu-alah! This is your friendly neighborhood Druid Ankalima, getting ready to touch on the dreaded subject of Alternate Characters. Alts slow down the leveling of mains, take precious time away from raiding and heroics, and can be aggravating at times - especially when you’re used to a nice heal spell and realize you’re on your warrior at the wrong time.
I am here to help alleviate this quandary, rejoice! There’s two major routes you can take for this one, the first being to stop thinking of your alt as an alt, and think of it more as a second main. Keeping this in mind you’d have to be willing to give almost equal time to both characters, keeping them very close in level. The reason for this is harmonizing their professions. One would be your gatherer, we’ll say Miner/Herbalist for this example, the other would be an Engineer/Alchemist.
The gatherer is feeding the crafter, so to avoid spending too much in the Auction House, you’ll need to make sure your gatherer keeps pace or passes your crafter. With the Engineer/Alchemist combo you can always opt to slow the leveling of your crafter by hanging around and doing battlegrounds from time to time. The buffs and heals from alchemy, on top of the explosive power of engineering will definitely make your time in battlegrounds entertaining - win or lose.
Another profession-based option for making your alt not so useless is to try out this combination - your main is a Miner/Engineer ( or blacksmith or enchanter), and your alt is a Tailor/Jewel Crafter. Basically your main is supplying itself as well as the alt, though most all of what it will be sending to the alt it will hardly have a need for itself. Yes, Engineering and Blacksmithing use some cloth, and leather for that matter, but not so much that you can’t afford to resort the AH for those.
Not concerned about making bags with the tailoring? Alt not a cloth wearer and you feel a little weird in full plate making bolts by the inn? Then go Enchanting/JC. You won’t be able to enchant your main’s BoP gear, but the mats created from Disenchanting help create a nice income from the AH, and can help cut the costs of keeping your other professions supplied. As well as helping you out in netting that spiffy mount you’ve got your eyes on.
Well, that's all from me for now. Ande'thoras-ethil, and happy hunting all!
~ Ankalima |