Dropping Eng. - Replace w/JCing or Enchanting?

Dropping engineering for a raid drop is counter-intuitive. Helms (and chests) are usually only dropped from the end-raid bosses.

Therefore, the engineering helm is potentially the most helpful item in getting the drop for a replacement. Then, if you get that final drop, the instance is cleared anyway. It's all farm content at that point, so the equivalent item isn't necessary.

Thus, the engineering helm, assuming it's upgraded, is quite nice and at each new tier retains its use. However, JC will diminish unless new JC-Only gems are made since, eventually, epic gems will be introduced. Furthermore, the JC trinkets are not always best and can be replaced much easier.

Blacksmithing, however, will always be incredibly strong and probably strongest. There are a few crafted BoP items that help immensely as well as the two extra slots (which are, at worst, equivalent to enchanting).

Finally, let's not forget the engineering helm is 60 base defense, 21 meta defense, and 16 yellow gem defense. This makes it 97 defense in a single slot. The blacksmith helm, by comparison, is 46 defense. The best instance drop gets is 83 defense, but has 52 stamina compared to the engineer's 112. So even if you were a blacksmith, the two sockets would net you either 48 stamina or 32 defense.

Arcane-Shielded Helm will grant 73 possible defense with only 93 stamina. So the engineering helm is still ahead by 24 defense and 19 stamina - the equivalent of 2.5 gems.

So the engineering helm is strictly better before the four horseman helm, at which point you begin to have similar stats. 4H is widely considered the third to last boss, and sapphiron / kel'thuzad aren't exactly complicated. Again, you're pretty much done with the instance.

Simply put? Engineering is a pretty good choice just for the helm, and under the assumption new helms will be introduced. The trinket is handy, also, as no other trinket offers a stamina + threat increase.

An ignored benefit to engineering is goblin depth charges. They deal ~2500 fire damage in an area blast. Consecrate is 8 (or 10) seconds and cannot move. A misplaced consecrate can easily lead to a few dead or a wipe. This essentially gives you a back up consecrate, albeit at ~2500(1.43)=3575 INSTANT threat instead of ~250((1.43)(1.9) =5434 threat over time. I don't consider the backlash damage significant when you plan to use them, either.

Finally, there's the handy pvp uses if you intend to do anything besides tank. Rocket boot enchants are probably the best thing in the world for retribution currently. Also the 3000 damage ranged trinket with the 1500 damage glove enchant are very handy.

Honestly - I changed pre-wrath from eng to JC, and I haven't regretted it yet...

mote extractor was wonderful - but in the end, I believe JC makes me plenty more cash...

on top of that... the BoP JC gems and the trinkets are seriously amazing...

the BoP crab trinket is just a ton of stam... with a good use effect, and the BoP gems are a great way to fix socket colors, and to get meta bonuses easily...

I believe that although the goggles are wonderful... they will be replaced eventually - the BoP gems... I don't see being replaceable so to speak... they are far enough ahead of the blue gems that even when epics come out - I believe the BoP ones will be superior, especially since they count as all colors...

just my $.02 - but I love JC - leveled my shaman's JC to max.... then shut down that account when I switched to my pally as my main... so I leveled JC on my pally...

enchanting is a decent choice - but I believe if you can get over the cost... JC is definitely the better call...

hasn't disappointed yet..

While the goggles were attractive at first I lost my interest in them when I noticed the BS helm was a ton cheaper and I am sure it will be upgraded pretty fast. To get the goggles you need 440 eng and to get that far from 375 your talking 4-5k gold. Now you might not spend that gold leveling because of professions like mining you might have but you are still in theory spending the money because you could have taken the ore/bars and sold them for 5k. Where as the BSing helm costs about 500 gold in mats just a little more time to craft. Since my old goggles work fine for finding the clouds and my mote extractor still works I am happy keeping eng just not leveling it as there is nothing of interest that high up right now. I think I got to 390 or 400 thinking I could get the goggles at 400 so I just used the 81 stam trinket instead.

Nida

Actualy instead of getting those 5k gold mats goggles I spent the 5k on upgrading my gear to the saronite and titansteel set and came in well under what just the one goggles would have cost including enchants. Buying all that gear got me uncritable and about 23k health and 22k armor all from almost crafted new gear well worth not spending it on the helm. Until they make high level eng more profitable or eng friendly with gear or items I just don't see the point leveling past mote extractor use.

Nida

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting are without a doubt the two professions tankwise ,that have the utmost potential.

I've made 100's of gold in a day doing nothing but waiting for raid and cutting gems, make some Titansteel items, and profit there also.

Thats the $ side of it. Prospecting ore is potentially back to where it was in TBC before the epic gems for badges phenom hit and basically helped curtail buying ore, prospecting, cutting and reselling.

Right now, even if you don't farm your own saronite, you'll average a 4:1 profit on prospecting AH bought ore. If you cut some perfect gems, guess what, bam 50-150g, and if you get a rare and can cut it into a much wanted one, 200-250g, for what, 60g a stack in ore, that doesn't take into consideration the other gems you have acquired through prospecting @ 5-30g/ea x at minimum 4 gems, and possibly 10-15 gems. (I have gotten 1 uncommon and 2 rare in a prospect, so its entirely possible)

There's no way that anything can come close to pure profit potential as jewelcrafting, why you think they had to curtail its growth with dailies, if they made all the patterns say heroic drops, they would have done the reverse of what they've done now, and thats to make JC the single easiest profession to make money on right now.

Then you throw in all the BOP gem benefits, coupled with prismatic sockets and the ability for the prismatic gems to activate a meta and not make you have to use a subpar gem to do so. Hands down, JC is a 100% win for a tank. If you think otherwise you're just focusing on 1 specific thing, not looking at the larger picture and the overall benefit.

Will the BOP gems benefits wane as epic gems come out, sure, epics are what, 20-30 stat points for epics, that still is a considerable loss compared to the 3 potentials for Dragon's Eyes, and in due time they'll be selling for dirt cheap cause JC'ers will have all the patterns they want/need, and nothing to spend their tokens on, so they'll buy those and resell em, and the market for need will not overcome the market for greed if ya get my drift, basically making 7-20 stat points free for you, or so very close to free that you'd be stupid to bypass them.
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I'm an enchanter/jewelcrafter and I'm really enjoying jewelcrafting right now. Don't get me wrong, having your own enchants is very nice, but between the dailies, different patterns, prospecting and prismatic gems, there's a lot to be said for JC. It feels like I'm really making stuff, which is a great feeling.
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on the subject of 'if the engineering helm is upgraded' if it gets upgraded, so will the JC trinkets. AFAIK the only stellar ones are the blues which only need 400 jc to make and use. i would be quite happy to get an epic version of the crab, even more stam and dodge on use. or potentially something like the epic turtle from SSO rep. also making money with JC doesn't require much time or effort as opposed to mote farming. just more attention span.

i would be very surprised if new bop items don't come into play with 3.1 for all the crafting profs, ffs they better.
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I'm one of the legion who took engineering in BC because it let you get something you could happily use starting at 70 and not replace until T6. Now the goggles are worse than 2 helms found in T7. That's pretty disappointing.

Seems like it would be far cheaper for me to buy a BoE epic BS helm than to level engineering up.

I still have some leftover jealousy about Blacksmithing in BC because of all the epic BoPs they could make - belt, boots, etc. I'm half tempted to drop Engineering for BSing, but that would cost a ton, and since almost nothing is BoP I can just buy it and save money.

I will probably finish levelling to 80 and take a look at how much money I've got then. I may end up levelling engineering and getting goggles for both Prot and Ret. I tend to believe they will continue to upgrade the goggles as WotLK plays out.

What is this Engineering STA trinket, btw? It's not on Zamach's loot list. Anyone have the name and stats handy?

The more I think about it, the more sense double gathering makes. At least my other high level character is herbs/skinning.
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