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They're all good, differently.

What's your focus? Raiding, PvP, making gold, hardcore/casual?

Answers will vary.

Well, what I was thinking was mining and skinning until 40 and then mining and tailoring, selling the bags and cosplay items.

If your going feral, and want benefits from your professions, Mining for health is good, or skinning for crit, herbalism for lifeblood (great for tanking). I also like alchemy and skinning for the ability to buff and make my own armor.

i lvled 70-80 as skinn/lw but droped it the other day for mineing/jc. i think it's the highest hp combo atm not to mention i jump to boomkin from time to time so think it may help there.

Gathering professions now give a passive buff based on your profession level.

Mining gives 90 Stamina when maxed out (from memory, could be slightly different).
Skinning gives some crit rating (which sucks and amounts to less than 1% at 80, QQ).
Herbalism gives you a free HoT, can't remember the details of it.

Since we can now use most of the toys in kitty/bear form, it might not be a bad idea - the thing is that I'm not entirely sure that we'd get much benefit out of engineering?

The dps capabilities of a cat are good enough that using engineering DPS items would probably actually hurt, instead of help dps.

We've got feral fairy fire so we don't need engineering items to pull with.

Bears are very solid and wonderful at holding threat, so unlike warriors we don't need engineering to help increase threat.

I think the only real benefits that you'd get would be the aoe stun from certain grenaids and the target dummies to distract mobs if you get overrun.

All said, I think it'd be better to stick with mining/skinning - you'll make good gold selling the stuff you mine/skin and mining gives you a health bonus while skinning gives you a crit bonus, both of which are great in both cat and bear form.