I'm at the point where I have to decide if I want to skill up blacksmithing
to 375 on my warrior alt.  My skill is around 335 and it's been fairly
cheap leveling up to this point, but it looks like it will get much more
expensive from now on.

It occurred to me the other day that I very rarely make anything that I
actually *use*.  I made a rod or two for my enchanter main, and I think
I made one piece of the Fel Iron plate set for use when I was 63 or so.
But that's it.  When I hit 70 I bought the Felsteel set items, because my
skill wasn't high enough to make them myself.

I've browsed around this group, the official forums and some of the more
well-known guild forums, and the general opinion seems to be that unless
you want to craft an epic weapon such as Stormherald, smithing just isn't
worth it.  I'm specced for tanking and always will be, so it seems like
a smart move to choose another profession.  (Of course, who knows what
the expansion will bring.  Maybe smithing will have some great new items,
so part of me just wants to wait and see.)

One thing I've seriously considered is Engineering.  I'm already a miner,
so I'd be able to skill up to a decent level pretty quickly.  Engineering
has the awesome goggles and a lot of neat trinkets as well as the Mote
Extractor, so it seems like I would actually get some *use* from being an
Engineer for a change.

But just today, I had another thought: why not become an Alchemist and
spec for elixirs, to complement my potion-specced priest?  I chose potion
mastery because I go through a lot of mana potions on my priest and my
mage, but I've found that I use a ton of elixirs as well and it would be
nice to have a reliable source for those.  There are people in my guild
who are elixir masters and are happy to make them for me, but sometimes
it can take a few days for us to be online at the same time and not
otherwise occupied.  Plus I always feel a little bit like I'm imposing on
them when I ask them to make a large batch of elixirs for me.

Any advice?