In The death of secondary professions I wrote about how it felt that Warlords had removed the need for professions like cooking, fishing, etc. I also noted that changes coming in 6.1 may help with this.

Now that 6.1 has been out for a little bit, how useful are secondary professions now?

As it turns out, quite useful I think!

The change with the most impact was the addition of +125 food.

On the surface, an extra +25 stat over the savage feast’s +100 doesn’t seem very much. Especially given that the savage feast provides for your entire raid with a single meaty caged beast when compared with the mats needed to cook the +125 food which only buffs an individual – eg 30x Pickled Eel which gives +125 crit would need you to fish up ~45x Enormous Crescent Saberfish and ~90x Enormous Abyssal Gulper Eel.

Its more than a min/max thing though, thanks to a change in the stats savage feasts give you. Instead of your highest secondary stat, you’ll gain +100 in your attunement stat.

Thus for shadowpriests I’d gain 100 haste. Not bad, but given I’m now using the Auspicious Spirits talent where crit is king, using the +125 crit food gives me far more bang for my buck.

As a result of this I’m fishing a lot more – mostly for the Abyssal Gulper Eels, whilst keeping an eye out for the Voidtalon rare spawn. The increased chance for lunkers is also nice – I may even get the mount from Nat Pagel at this rate! Assuming they fix what looks like a bug / nerf with the lunker drop rate.

I’m getting the Crescent Saberfish by using excess garrison resources at the Trading Post’s random spawn vendor.

And naturally because of that I’m doing more cooking. I’m even cooking in raid as being able to hold stacks of fish in my bank and cooking up the food a stack of 20 a time is much friendlier to bag space. You can cook direct from your bank and pets like Pierre which provide a cooking fire are handy as well.

First Aid I started using a bit pre 6.1 anyway due to health potions giving more health than health stones would.

Archeology is the only profession I’ve not touched since 6.1 – not surprising given that there were no real changes which could impact it in the patch.

So all in all secondary professions feel better now. Shame about archeology though.

Oh look; its fish day at the trading post!