So on my warrior I chose Mining and Blacksmithing because I wanted to create weapons and armor for myself while I leveled up. Much to my dismay, anything you can create is woefully underpowered at the level you build it at. It makes me wonder what they actually intended for these professions. Was it to create gear to put on the AH so lower levels could buy it? Or were they just thinking about what to create at the end game? Very weird set up to me.
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I think they kinda expected you to go around and hunt for nodes outside of normal questing
If you did that until you needed the next tier of ore before moving to the next zone, the gear is pretty adequate
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I’ve found smithing/LW/tailoring to be pretty lackluster. If you’re leveling these it’s usually for 1-2 items you’ll need at max level, but almost none of these require you to have the profession (except tailoring which is wierd).
They could have made these infinitely better by moving some of the engineering items to these professions…but they stuck literally ALL of the cool stuff in one profession. They could have also thrown in some end game consumables to the profession to keep it relevant, but again it’s all engineering/alchemy there too.
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You can keep yourself geared by replacing slots you haven’t found an upgrade for yet. If you are crafting items of your level, they should be on par with the items you are getting elsewhere. Obviously some quest items are a lot stronger and many dungeon drops will be better. Professions fill in the gaps for unlucky folks who haven’t gotten the drops they need yet.
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you have to actually find the plans… theres plenty of great gear that can get you thru leveling… but yes its time consuming and either have to AH plans… or get to the vendor before they sell out for the good stuff.
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Elemental Sharpening Stones say hello
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that’s broadly true of items you actually pick up outside of dungeons though. Most greens that you pick up will have a level requirement of 3-5 levels below the level of the mob that dropped them.
e.g.: check out who is dropping a random green sword with a lvl 31 requirement: https://classic.wowhead.com/item=15213/mercenary-blade. Most of the entries on the loot table are lvl 35+, and a lot of them are elites.
That’s kinda how the economy is structured: if you want the best stuff at any level before 60, you do it through trade. That encourages trade to actually happen by design.
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Its filler gear for slots you might not be lucky to fill. Also not everyone spams dungeons while levelling.
Its also great DE fodder for example.
I’ve been going ham on professions in classic while i haven’t maxed any on retail since MoP because they felt pointless, or entirely replaced by other systems such as the Mobile Gaming Table.
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a few quest item here and there.
twink gear
and, of course, some very rare and highly desirable pattern for max-level player who requires a ton of mats ( stuff like lionheart helm for a blacksmith).
but stuff while level’ing up? … maybe alchemy… and first aid.
I am often a few levels behind what I have the ability to make on my tailor and leatherworker… idk if blacksmith is different, but I spend time actually getting materials… might be difference?
thing is… you’d be better off just lvl’ing some more and getting a random quest green as opposed to hunting rare pattern… until max-level stuff like devilsaur anyway.
not that an additional 3 str will make a big difference to your level’ing experience.
Slightly off topic but for engineering, I got through like 200 still using copper-based items which I thought was… interesting.
My 22 warrior who has smithing was able to make a belt and maybe some gloves that were good in the low teens but since then the only thing I made that I use was a 2 handed mace. It wasn’t as good as the 2 h sword I had but I’d just learned the mace skill and needed something to level up with.
The entry level stuff like copper is absurdly long in the tooth. It’s like it for engineering and smithing.
The mithril stage for smithing is painful as well. 12+ bars of mithril for one experience point.
This is why I only take engineering OR enchanting and 1 gathering profession (or 2 gathering professions if you like that).
Game design was much different back then.
Back then ‘World’ of Warcraft, ‘World’ being the essential concept. IT’s a rolepalying game, they wanted you to go out and explore. The intent wasn’t to rush to 60 and farm BIS items. They really had no concept of how everything would work together for maximizing dps to kill raid boses, or do quests. They just put stuff in the game and let people figure it out for themselves.
They have… In expansions 
The intent is that you’d work on professions up to as high as you can get them in order to keep them adequate to your level. Crafting professions have always slowed down leveling for this reason.
I kept my professions up to par with my level as best I could, and was able to make some decent weapons for myself. Armor kind of sucks for BS until you go armorsmithing.
The idea is that keeping professions up to date will make leveling easier, but slower. Sure I lost 2-3 days of time keeping BS and mining up to date, but the gear I was able to make certainly made the leveling process easier.
It gets worse. To level weaponsmithing of any sort the most efficient way, you need 740 thorium bars. In addition to this, you need to nab some mithril spur plans.
With armorsmithing, it’s a little easier as mithril is easier to farm, but it’s 780 mithril bars.
Most of my time spent immediately post-60 was farming thorium.
It’s hard work, but in doing so, I earned myself the spot of being the guild axesmith.
For a main character I find it better to do two gathering professions to start off with (to sell stuff on the AH) to help get mount money. Once that’s set I usually drop one for engineering (because I just love engineering). For the record I recommend Mining/Skinning to level with.
I did learn that the hard way though. My original character in vanilla I was blacksmithing / mining and I ran into all the same problems you guys have mentioned here. It’s just not worth it while leveling unless you are really focusing on leveling it before yourself - and that’s tough to do.
Smithing is the only vanilla proff I haven’t maxed to 300. Aside from the keys and sharpening stones, the mithril spurs are really the only thing I can use. Having leveled all of the others, smithing is the most useless while leveling.
All for those endgame maces.