Should all crafting professions have related gathering professions?

Monday's Breakfast Topic on WoW.com got me thinking about tailoring and enchanting, two crafting professions that don't have a gathering profession associated with them. (Tailoring once used leather for some of its patterns, but that practice petered out after the release of Wrath of the Lich King, and though enchanting uses some materials that can be gathered with mining, it's hardly enough to make pairing the two a foregone conclusion.) All of the other crafting professions have some gathering profession associated with them: blacksmithing, engineering, and jewelcrafting have mining; leatherworking has skinning; and alchemy and inscription have herbalism. This makes tailoring and enchanting a couple of black sheep in the professions world. Though it used to be common practice to pair the two, considering that they were nicely self-contained, as far as I know, this practice is less common today. I myself am an enchanter who took herbalism as his second profession, partly to make some money on the side and partly because I love Lifeblood (especially as a tank, though I may switch to mining at some point in the future--probably not until I have a max-level alt with herbalism).

But that's beside the point. Considering that these two professions are outside of the norm, in that they are self-contained in both the gathering of their materials and the crafting of their items, should they have an associated gathering profession? At this point in the game, it's probably too late to make a such a drastic change to the profession system, but one can still consider whether we are better off with this system or whether it would have been better to associate those two professions with a gathering profession.

I use the word "would" because with the system as it is, it is perfectly justifiable for tailoring and enchanting to be self-contained professions. For starters, Enchanting is expensive to level up and use. If you level enchanting as you level your character, you lose out on the money you would have made selling your extra quest rewards and green items. (blues are usually worth enough that if a blue item is BoE, it's better to sell the item and use that money buy shards if need be than to disenchant the item.) Having enchanting as an independent profession allows the enchanter to take a gathering profession, allowing them to gather items to sell on the auction house to offset the cost of leveling enchanting. The same reasoning applies even when the enchanter reaches the skill cap. They still lose out on the money they could have gotten by selling BoE greens (I disenchant them, at least), but by having a gathering profession, they can offset that cost.

Tailoring, as it is, is also justified in being a stand-alone profession. Tailoring stands out to me as the most limited of the crafting professions. Alchemy makes potions that everyone uses, blacksmithing makes armor for three of the classes in the game and weapons for everyone, engineering is just all kinds of fun, everyone needs their armor enchanted, jewelcrafting makes jewelry for everyone and gems that are not only for all classes but also for all gear levels, inscription makes glyphs for everyone, and leatherwoking makes armor for four classes. Tailoring is the most limited profession after leatherwoking, making armor for only three classes and nothing else*. With such a limited objective market, it's reasonable for tailors to be allowed an additional profession slot with which to add some more utility to their character.

Now we move from the realm of the here-and-now to the realm of the what-could-have-been. Suppose Blizzard had made tailoring a more expansive profession and made enchanting linked to mats that don't deny the player a source of income; would they have been justified in linking both of them to a gathering profession? If we ignore the logistics of how they would have done this when we consider this issue, then there seems to be no logic against it. However, the logistics are where the idea falls apart. Skinning would have been the logical choice to pair with tailoring (it needs the love; it has no use outside of leatherwoking and minor use in some other professions), but how to make cloth out of leather? Perhaps there could have been a gathering profession that allows tailors to gather cloth somehow (perhaps from the clothes of their enemies), but enchanting would need to be linked to that one as well to prevent it from becoming a second one-crafting-profession gathering profession (skinning being the first). I could conceive of cloth being the base material for enchanting; it could be used to apply patches to gear, patches that have been infused with various materials gathered by the enchanter. However, this would leave no way for people to gather cloth to make bandages with first aid. Some other way for them to make bandages would need to be implemented, but no other commonly available reagent would work from a realistic point of view. Thus Blizzard would need to add some sort of specific reagent to first aid, but that would create an orphan reagent that is useless for all other purposes, or else they could add a way for players with first aid to also gather cloth for their own purposes only and oh no I've gone cross-eyed.

Yeah, it's a logistical nightmare. I'm glad Blizzard chose to make enchanting and tailoring the way they are.

*I realize that tailors can make two different cloaks that all classes can use (though only caster classes would use), but leatherworkers can also make two cloaks that all classes can use, as well as armor for four classes. My only point was the tailors have the most limited market in terms of what they can make, and their two cloaks don't change this fact.