Professions are divided into two types: primary and secondary professions. You can only have 2 primary professions at any time, but you are not required to take any at all. You may take as few as none or as many as all of the Secondary professions.

Primary Professions

Gathering Professions

• Herbalism
• Mining
• Skinning

Crafting Professions

• Alchemy (specialize: Master of Potions, Master of Elixirs, or Master of Transmutation)
• Blacksmithing (specialize: Armorsmith or Weaponsmith [Further specialization: Swordsmith, Axesmith, or Hammersmith])
• Enchanting
• Engineering (specialize: Goblin or Gnomish)
• Leatherworking (specialize: Tribal, Elemental or Dragonscale)
• Tailoring (specialize: Primal Mooncloth, Shadowcloth, and Spellcloth)
• Jewelcrafting

Secondary Professions

You may train as many of these secondary professions as you want.

• Cooking
• First aid
• Fishing
• Riding

Note: Gathering, Cooking & First Aid Professions have level 35 requirement to train past 225. (Patch 1.8 change)

Class Professions

A profession usable by only a specific class.

• Poisons (Rogue only): Debilitating, damaging, and debuffing substances to apply to a Rogue's weapons.

Bonus to skill, be it from racial or item bonuses, has a couple of benefits. Principally the chance to skill up is based off of the characters base skill level - i.e. the skill level before the racial or item bonus. This makes it much easier to level up the skill. The Draenei Jewelcrafting skill bonus of +5 for example, means that a recipe that went from orange to yellow at 30 for other races, would only go yellow at 35 for a Draenei jewelcrafter.

Certain races receive a profession skill bonus as a racial trait.

• Gnome +15 Engineering
• Tauren +15 Herbalism
• Draenei +5 Jewelcrafting
• Blood Elf +10 Enchanting

Bonuses from enchants

Certain enchants give profession skill bonuses.

• Enchant Gloves - Fishing adds 2 to Fishing skill.
• Enchant Gloves - Herbalism adds 2 to Herbalism skill.
• Enchant Gloves - Mining adds 2 to Mining skill.
• Enchant Gloves - Skinning adds 5 to Skinning skill.
• Enchant Gloves - Advanced Mining adds 5 to Mining skill.
• Enchant Gloves - Advanced Herbalism adds 5 to Herbalism skill.

Bonuses from equipment

Certain items give profession skill bonuses.

• [Finkle's Skinner] adds +10 to Skinning skill.
• [Zulian Slicer] adds +10 to Skinning skill.
• [Goblin Mining Helmet] adds +5 to Mining skill.
• [Herbalist's Gloves] adds +5 to Herbalism skill.
• See Boosting Your Fishing Skill for a table of the many items that add to Fishing skill.

These items can allow you to skin creatures with levels greater than 70, or catch fish in areas that require greater than 375 Fishing skill.

Most professions fall into one of three categories:

Gathering

Users of this profession mostly gather or harvest items from resources throughout the game world to increase their proficiency.

• Fishing: Requires a Fishing Pole and a body of water with Fish.
• Herbalism: Harvest herbs scattered throughout the world.
• Mining: Requires a Mining Pick to mine protruding mineral veins or deposits for minerals, ore and stone. Use a Forge to smelt the ore you find into bars of metal.
• Skinning: Requires a Skinning Knife to skin corpses marked as Skinnable for leather, hides and scales.

Crafting

Users of these professions mostly make items from other ingredient items (herbs, bars, meats, etcs.) taken from the gathering professions or created by building professions. Blizzard calls these Production professions. Most folks in game call them crafting or building.

• Alchemy

• Blacksmithing

• Cooking:

• Engineering

• Leatherworking

• Tailoring

• Jewelcrafting

Service

Really the "other" category, but generally covers professions that primarily provide a service over producing equippableitems or consumable buffing items.

• Enchanting: Extract (disenchant) magical dusts, essences and shards for use to enchant various attributes, powers, and properties to all sorts of equippable items. You can also make wands and oils that can be applied to weapons providing a temporary buff.
• First Aid: Make various ingredients into bandages and various aiding items (anti-venoms, etc.).

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