Gathering professions

Unlike Ideale, who has had a hell of a time keeping her mining leveled — I basically gave up when the mobs in Thousand Needles were green but I still could not mine iron, continued to 70, and am now cruising old Azeroth to level mining — Ahami took skinning and herbalism. Because double-gathering is smart, at least until you hit Outland.

Let me tell you, skinning and herbalism are WAY easier to level than mining. At first, I thought it was just the tracking issue. With Ide, I had to sacrifice tracking enemies in order to track mining, so I just mined what I could see. But then I remembered my paladin back on Laughing Skull, who is a miner/blacksmith. Her blacksmithing has outstripped her mining, and she, too, cannot mine iron at level 32. And with her, I was DILIGENT. Every yellow dot on the map was mine, even if I had to go way out of my way and kill 3987496597 mobs to get to it.

Ahami, in contrast, has her skinning just a few points shy of 200 and her herbalism is not far behind. In fact, she will need to gain several levels in order to improve them at this point. She is killing orange mobs, but they are grey when it comes time to skin. And the only herb she is currently gaining points from is Liferoot (unless there are herbs hiding around Ashenvale that I haven't found yet). At 27, she needs at least three, or more comfortably five, levels to move on to a zone where she will start gaining profession skills again.

So if you are planning on double-gathering (and you are, because you're smarter than I am, right?), I would say definitely go with skinning and mining.

What? Mining?

Well, yes, but keep up with it. It may take a lot longer to level, but holy crap, the amount of money you can make off of mining once you hit mithril (at least on VeCo) is insane. Because so many professions rely on mining products (blacksmithing, engineering, jewelcrafting, etc.) and people don't have the time or inclination to go farm the materials themselves, ore, bars and jewels can go for some crazy amounts, even at the lowest levels.

You might go with skinning and mining until you hit Outland, then drop skinning (it seems to make the least amount of money, perhaps because it doesn't require tracking, so most double-gatherers have it) and pick up herbalism and cruise through the lower zones leveling both, if you've let your mining slip, or leveling herbalism while picking up ore to sell. (Although herbalism can also be a good money maker, particularly for certain herbs. For example, on my server, briarthorn is going for quite a bit more than many herbs found at the same level. If you plan to eventually pick up alchemy, you'll probably want to stick with herbalism anyway.)

If you don't mind constantly switching your tracking, herbalism/mining would probably be the best combination.

This is my noob opinion. *gives it the noob stamp of approval and ignores the fact that basically every other WoW blog in existence has covered this topic*