Post by xiani
Since you say for a mage, and don't mention money, I'm guessing you care about what will help your DPS the most, and that would be the unique bonuses you need to have the profession to use.
Intellect is a mage's best stat by far, so I'm going to list what gives you more of that:
Blacksmithing gives 2 extra sockets, so +80 int from 2 more gems. Blacksmithing is a nightmare to level, and otherwise useless though.
Inscription gives a
shoulder enchant that is 80 int better than the
one otherwise available. Also, it saves you having to grind therazane rep!
Alchemy works out at another 80 extra int, either from mixology or using
this when you're not flasked up.
Enchanting gives 2x
ring enchants, another 80 int (starting to see a pattern?).
JC means you can use 3
of these, which is 81 better than what you would otherwise have, and a whole 1 more than the others so far!
Leatherworking is
this, which is very good, though you have to count it against the +65 haste or crit enchant you could use instead. It's a lot cheaper than those too.
My 2 choices for a mage would be engineering and tailoring.
Tailoring gives you a whopping
580 int for 15 secs, this happens roughly every 45 secs, which averages out to 175, though you have to knock off the 50 you'd get from the
cloak enchant you can't use at the same time. Still looks like a net gain to me, and it's easily better than or comparable to either of the other 2 armour-making profs whilst also actually being useful to you as a clothie.
Oh, and you can
enchant your pants for vastly less money than it would cost if you had to buy the
same thing.
Finally, engineering gets you
this, which does stack with enchants, and, more importantly, you can decide when to use it. If you trigger it at the same time as haste increasing cooldowns/bloodlust, etc then you effectively increase the value of it.
In addition, engineering has
customisable epic goggles that look super-cool,
this thing, loads of
fantastic utility stuff, plus a couple of extra teleports, which as a mage already is the ultimate in lazy luxury!