Skinning vs. Mining

[necroscope]

First ... I do both but ...

I feel mining is WAY better than skinning simply because with mining you harvest the ore AND smelt it .... skinning ... you get what you get ...

I think the biggest flaw in skinning is they made the equlivant of smelting in skinning part of leatherworking. if they allowed you to make the conversions in skinning I think it would much more productive and a more rleished gathering profession.

What I'm trying to get at is the "combines" the 3 leather strips = 1 light leather; 3 light leather = 1 medium leather, 5 medium leather = 1 heavy leather, etc ....

Mining you have smelting bronze, smelting steel, etc ...

What do you guys think? i mean ... think about it ... waht if you HAD to have blacksmithing to get the alloys as well? ... granted ... if you are a blacksmith generally you will also have mining ... but if I was purely in this for the money I would do both mining and skinning ... that way I could provide all the necessary core ingredients for the professions.

[Eiger]

I don't think it makes much difference. For mining you have to smelt so that other professions can use the ore - all recipes and quests use bars not just raw ore. This is not really an upgrade, just a refinement and allows you to stack twice as many as well. Stacking is the real benefit as you can carry/store more bars than you can leather.

For leather, the conversions you refer to are upgrades from one material to another. Very different from refinement. And that's appropriate for a different profession to do. Similar to achemists transmuting metals from mithril to gold for example.

Otherwise, it's more difficult to find ore than it is to find animals to skin. Especially when you can skin animals killed by non skinners.

For me, a choice between the two would be based on how much you can make at the AH by comparing light leather to copper, bronze to medium leather, and so forth.