Taking the opposite view as the thread at large…
P1 is the best time to take engineering… because you’re going to have nothing better to do with your time when there’s no honor system in place yet.
Get the main, alts, their professions, mounts, and a stockpile of gold all together during p1, specifically so p2-3 can be spent pushing ranks (ideally 10) on the toons you want to play.