Every profession in WoW TBC Classic Anniversary can earn gold, but their efficiency varies, and some feel like tedious grunt work.

As you develop your characters - whether your main or alts - beyond combat, the profession that allows you to craft or gather resources is another aspect to consider. You might wonder which professions are the easiest or offer the best return on effort. Based on that criterion, let's rank the professions for TBC Anniversary.

F Tier

First Aid

First Aid essentially only lets you turn Netherweave Cloth into Heavy Netherweave Bandage to sell. Beyond that, it holds little value; its primary purpose is healing.

D Tier

Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing can only sell Sharpening stones and a few specific crafted items. Perhaps you can make some gold by pre-crafting resistance gear, but such items have very low turnover. In a 25-man raid, maybe only one or two people need resistance gear for certain bosses.

Blacksmithing lacks high-demand consumables, and all materials are very resource-heavy. Nor can it perform the disenchanting cycle like Tailoring. In short, Blacksmithing involves high resource input and low sales volume.

Leatherworking

The issue with Leatherworking is the lack of high-volume crafted items. You can make leg armor enhancements, but these items don't sell in large quantities nor yield high margins.

C Tier

Skinning

Skinning earns a C rank mainly because it's almost free. If you kill beasts while leveling and skin them along the way, that's fine. But if you rely solely on skinning for WoW TBC Classic Anniversary gold, unless you're in a situation like farming in Black Morass where you kill massive numbers of creatures at once, it's not efficient.

Of course, you can ride an epic flying mount and follow others to skin the corpses they leave behind - that's a method. But even then, you might still earn less than someone AFK in Orgrimmar doing Jewelcrafting or Alchemy.

Fishing

Fishing's rank might be debatable; it could possibly sit at the lower end of B rank. The problem is the time commitment. The income is decent but not outstanding, and you must stay focused - missing a bobber wastes time.

B Tier

Herbalism

Herbalism is quite good, especially when combined with Alchemy, providing you with free raw materials. However, It is not a good option to sell only raw materials, but if you're building starting capital, Herbalism is a solid choice. Though from an efficiency standpoint, it's not the best because you still need to fly, run around, search for herbs, etc. But if you gather herbs while doing quests, the returns are substantial.

Mining

Like all gathering professions, Mining is B rank. The reason is simple: it requires you to leave the city and actively play. In terms of gold per hour, it's comparable to Enchanting or Jewelcrafting, but you have to be out in the world. Competition is always a major issue for Mining, especially in later phases of TBC when ore values can drop sharply. Mining's true golden period is early in the expansion.

Tailoring

Tailoring has some decent crafted items, such as leg armor enhancements, bags, and gear that Enchanters can disenchant. Its advantage is that its raw material - cloth - drops from any humanoid mob, keeping raw material resource requirements relatively low, while the finished products still hold value.

Cooking

Cooking can yield quite nice returns. You can trade raw ingredients, cook them into finished products, and earn a profit of several dozen silver to one or two gold per item.

Cooking's profit margins are often higher than other professions, sometimes reaching 10-20%. While the per-item profit might be only 20 silver, that's a significant return relative to a 1-gold resource outlay. Cooking is great for newcomers with limited starting capital, and recipes are mostly free to obtain, making it an excellent entry-level profession.

Engineering

Engineering relies mainly on Zapthrottle Mote Extractor to gather Gas Clouds. You can obtain primal materials this way, especially lucrative in early TBC. Although Engineering is many players' raiding profession, few use it to make gold.

You can fly to Nagrand or farm gas clouds inside Steamvault dungeon for decent income. But you need to actively control your character, and there will be competition.

A Tier

Enchanting

You need a good - or even several good - enchanting formulas to reach A rank. Training from the profession trainer alone won't suffice. You need formulas like Cat's Agility, Mount Speed, or those earned through reputation.

Once you have those formulas, you can simply sit in Orgrimmar or Stormwind, advertise in trade chat, or use a dedicated enchanting addon, and earn a substantial amount of gold.

Jewelcrafting

Jewelcrafting, like Enchanting, is one of those professions that consistently generates gold. Players frequently swap gear early in each new phase, thus needing new gems. Unlike Alchemy, Jewelcrafting and Enchanting see their profit peaks typically at the start of each phase. Making gold becomes harder late in a phase.

S Tier

Alchemy

Whether it's flasks, potions, or transmutes done through alts, Alchemy's products move in large volumes. This stands in stark contrast to items that only sell a handful per day on the auction house. Alchemy consumables see hundreds or thousands of transactions daily.

Every item you make - potions, flasks, transmutes - has a chance to produce extra copies. You can specialize in one branch (potions or flasks), but it is not recommend becoming a transmutation master, as that doesn't allow mass production.

For now, you just need to watch the timing for acquiring raw materials. If you can stock up when materials are low in value, then sell on raid nights at a break-even or even small profit, the bonus procs alone can yield massive gold.

The above is the ranking of professions for making gold in WoW TBC Anniversary. However, even the most efficient professions still require you to collect materials and craft items yourself; investing might yield higher returns. But the advantage of professions is that you're almost never at a loss.

The new item filtering feature in Diablo II Resurrected Season 13 has been a great convenience for many players. However, when it comes to determining whether a rare item has any practical use, this feature falls short.

A rare item can have up to six different affixes, with a maximum of three prefixes and three suffixes. Evaluating the value of a rare item mainly depends on how many of those affixes are useful and whether their rolls are high enough. Let's take a look at which rare weapons are worth using.

Melee Weapons

Melee characters are the primary users of rare weapons, though some other builds also favor them. Barbarians can wield any two-handed sword in one hand.

For an acceptable rare melee weapon, its damage must be sufficiently high. This means it must be Ethereal and possess one of the following two affix combinations:

• Cruel Weapon: When both the Cruel and Master's prefixes appear together, the weapon can reach up to 450% enhanced damage. Any weapon with over 350% enhanced damage is worth using.
• Fool's Weapon: When both Cruel and Fool's prefixes appear together, the weapon maxes out at 300% enhanced damage but gains bonuses to maximum damage and attack rating based on character level. Such weapons are mainly used against high-defense characters, namely Barbarians and Paladins.

Against Amazons and Druids, such high attack accuracy is less necessary. Therefore, most melee players who can equip any weapon class typically keep one Cruel weapon and one Fool's weapon.

If the weapon's damage is adequate, the following three affixes largely determine its overall value:

• Increased Attack Speed (IAS)
• Two sockets
• Self-repair

With sufficient damage, possessing any one of these makes the weapon usable. Having all three makes it a top-tier item, potentially worth a full inventory of small charms or even more.

Ranged Weapons

Throwing Weapons

Throwing weapons require essentially the same affixes. However, they cannot have sockets, and Self-repair must be replaced with Replenishing. Barbarians do not need this affix because they can replenish quantity through their mastery skills, but an Amazon's javelins are completely useless without Replenishing quantity.

Bows

The situation for bows is simpler: they cannot be Ethereal, so they never need self-repair. Bows with over 400% enhanced damage are very popular, but Fool's bows are not entirely without merit.

The key factors for value are two sockets and attack speed. Unlike other weapons, bows can only roll up to 20% IAS. Bows can also spawn with Visionary prefix, which is normally seen only on helms. Note that Fool's and Visionary belong to the same prefix group, so they cannot appear on the same item.

Rare bows are mainly sought after in special leagues and tournaments. Under normal circumstances, most players still prefer Runeword Faith.

Class-Specific Weapons

Class-specific weapons can spawn with staff mods. Here are some examples.

Assassin Claw

For a Trapper Assassin, the ideal claw carries a total of +5 to Lightning Sentry, with priority on IAS and two sockets. Damage is not important because Assassin sockets Um runes to cause Open Wounds, and fast claws are preferred.

A Ghost Assassin needs the same affixes as a melee character: Ethereal, Cruel or Fool's claw, high damage, and ideally Self-repair, two sockets, and IAS. The weapon should deal as much direct damage as possible.

If a claw has both strong melee stats and skill bonuses, its value increases further. Other skills such as Weapon Block, Mind Blast, Blade Fury, and Blade Shield also add to a claw's worth.

Sorcerer Orb

Some Sorcerer Orbs can provide +5 to various key skills via staff mods, which is very valuable for a Sorcerer. The best ones also come with up to 20% Faster Cast Rate, two sockets, and extra mana.

Necromancer Wand

Necromancer Wands can roll skill levels for Poison Nova, Bone Spirit, and Bone Spear, making them potentially usable. However, bone Necromancers still favor Runeword White, and a good Death's Web outperforms almost any rare item for poison Necromancers. Therefore, rare wands are largely ignorable.

Paladin Scepter

Two skill combinations are highly sought after on scepters:

• For a Blessed Hammer Paladin: +5 to Blessed Hammer and +5 to Concentration
• For a Fist of Heavens Paladin: +5 to Fist of Heavens and +5 to Conviction

A scepter with relevant affixes can also serve as a melee weapon, in which case staff mods that boost Fanaticism are an added bonus.

Warlock Dagger

Daggers can spawn various staff mods, but Diablo 2 Resurrected Runewords and certain unique weapons are clearly more competitive. For a Miasma Chain Warlock, rare daggers can indeed be used, but Runeword Void is typically preferred.

For an Echoing Strike Warlock, an Ethereal two-handed weapon is better than a dagger (looking for the same affixes as melee weapons) because two-handers can achieve higher values. Overall, rare daggers are not very competitive for Warlocks.

Shields

Only a very few melee builds consider rare shields. For a shield to be valuable, it must have two sockets and very high defense. High enhanced damage alone is usually insufficient. A shield truly becomes competitive only if it is also Ethereal and carries self-repair.

Deflecting suffix is excellent, providing 30% faster block rate and 20% increased chance of blocking. For Paladin shields, it is even better if they also include skill levels, along with affixes for enhanced damage and attack rating.

For many players, rare items serve only as stepping stones. By the endgame, they usually follow their build guide for gear selection. However, if a rare item has all affixes useful to your build, it can still be very valuable.