Addons for Leveling Professions

One of my major 2010 WoW goals is to have all professions maxed. I figure I'm not the only person who wants to do this, so I though today I'd talk about some addons that might help you get there.

First off, Altaholic. It's not just for profession leveling, but it's really useful for it. I can mouse over something in my inventory and see if an alt or a gbank has some and what alts know the recipe and what alts can learn it. I cannot recommend this addon highly enough, especially if you're trying to keep track of multiple professions on multiple alts.

Second, Gatherer and the wowhead database plugin. Every node wowhead knows about, all displayed nicely for you. Great for leveling or farming.

Third, Auctioneer. Okay, I know you're going wtf, but follow me on this. Not only can you make sure that you're buying and selling mats at a good price, you can also use the Snatch list to grab needed items when they're cheap. Just go look at a profession leveling guide (like this one), see what you're going to need, then add it to the Snatch list. Sadly the only way I've found to add items to my snatch list is to have one in my inventory, but I may be missing something. Plus, while you're there, do a vendor search and grab everything that people are selling below vendor price. Vendor them and yay, instant gold!

Other nice addons:
You need to have a character in the mid60s or so to get their professions to 450. If you don't have enough high level toons, may I suggest a couple of nice leveling addons?
Tour Guide and Jaime's Leveling Guide I've been using these for the various alts, and it does make leveling quicker.

Oh, and one last thing... Cartographer. Sadly 3.3 has borked this addon, but if you disable the look and feel module it still works. If you'd prefer to replace it completely, hit No Stock UI for a nice writeup of your options.

And I have 3 level 60s!

So after a weekend of power-leveling (I got the druid and priest from lvl 51 to 60 in two days), I've been trying to figure out a few things.

1) How to play each one separately.
2) Why my pally now stinks (gear+having no idea what I'm doing is my best guess)
3) If power-leveling mining on two more characters will drive me insane.
4) Why my DK has no talents and how to spec her This was the answer

Well, I've found some answers to number 1, and figured I should share them with you.
First, disc leveling. This is a great forum post that gives you specs, rotations, glyph choices, and gear. I haven't followed the spec exactly, but the rotation is quite effective, and a lot of fun. All I want to do now is play the priest. But she has no rested XP, so I must wait. Grr.

The druid's going feral kitty, and here are two nice guides for leveling feral.

And last, but not least, a slightly outdated guide for leveling as an aoe paladin.

And just for kicks, my favorite profession leveling site is here. The druid's herbalism and inscription are both at around 270, but the pally's still in iron, and well, the less said about the priest's mining and jewelcrafting the better.

Fishing

Well, in the hurry of leveling, I kinda forgot about fishing. My herbalism's at 379 (possibly because I hit 340 before I hit Outlands), my alchemy is at 340ish, and cooking is also at 340. Fishing, well, that was sitting at 301. And that's a problem when the zone you're almost done with (got the achievement and everything) has a minimum 335.

So it's fishing with a passion, cursing Blizzard for making me catch on average 10 fish per point, cursing because bright baubles don't raise my fishing score enough (+ 75 at this point takes me to 395, and I still lose a third of my fish), and cursing when I lose fish even after using the fish attractor. Honestly, if I'm sitting at over 400 (with the attractor), and the min is 335, I don't think I should be losing fish!

Needless to say, this is going to take a while. A long while. Like 20 minutes got me from 309 to 313 a while. On the plus side I got scavenger and caught 1000 fish last night.

Looks like this will be my view for a while to come.

A web of professions

I have alts. I get bored with them and play them more or less depending on where I am with Garetia. I also have this lovely web of crafting because, well, I did it in LotRO and I'm going to do it in WoW.

I give you my web of professions on SC.

The main is an Alchemy/Herbalist. I don't use the potions much on her, but I like herbalism. I'm not sure what the max-level stuff is for alchemy, so I may end up changing to something else. What, I have no idea, but something.
The DK on SC is a miner/blacksmith. I like mining, and I think I'll like bs once I get it to a decent level. The grind right now is a little annoying.
The Pally is a miner/engineer. I heart engineering but omg the extra stuff I need is annoying beyond belief. But things go BOOM! :)
The rogue of squishiness is a skinner/leatherworker because, well, all my rogues are skinners/leatherworkers, but I didn't have one on SC. I've never gotten it past apprentice because I've never gotten a rogue past 10, but I've been in a roguey mood lately. Plus her ponytail goes swish.
The much-neglected mage is a miner/jewelcrafter because she's a space goat. I liked jewelcrafting a lot to begin with, but she's run smack into the bronze/iron gap and I don't like playing her. Apparently there's a trick to mages and I don't know what that is or can't manage it.
And the bank toon/shaman is a tailor/enchanter. I just leveled her tailoring to her max (she's only lvl 10) and I had fun and now I want to level her to 25 so I can level her tailoring more. I had leveled her to 10 to get her enchanting up, and enchanting, while nice to keep bags clear, is an eh prof. Tailoring is fun cause I can make pretty things and bags and then they sell. Hmm. Maybe I should switch the main? Must ponder more.

I don't have an inscriptionist because it was like watching all my herbs disappear into this huge black hole and wow, what a time/money sink.

And yes, I have more or less the same web on horde side, or will. Main's an enchanter/herbalist, hunter's a miner/blacksmith, priest's a tailor/skinner, rogue 1 is a skinner/leatherworker, and the DK is a miner/engineer. Since most of the toons are squishy-city, I've not gotten very far.

Oh, and last but not least, I give you, My Belf DK. I'll be adding her to the sidebar too. She's going to be used mostly to feed shiny gear to my other characters (mostly the priest and warlock) and to get gold.