Enchanting is, perhaps, the only profession in WoW that cannot be categorized, as it is neither crafting, nor gathering. Enchanters take enchanting materials obtained through disenchanting gear of uncommon or better quality - and turn them into permanent enchants for their own or their allies' gear.
Enchants vary, but the most common ones are the plain +stat enchants like Enchant Bracer - Greater Speed, Enchant Gloves - Mighty Strength, or Enchant Bracer - Agility. Some rare, and usually expensive and powerful enchants have a proc effect - Enchant Weapon - Windwalk for example. Yet others provide a passive bonus that is not directly linked to your combat stats - Enchant Boots - Lavawalker or Enchant Gloves - Gatherer, for instance. The item slots available for (Enchanter-made) enchants are: chest, feet, wrists, hands, back, and weapon. There exists only one enchant for an off-hand item - Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect - but since it was added in Cataclysm, this may be an indication that Blizzard wants to make more of those.
As a point of interest, those are not the only slots that can take an enchant - merely the ones that can be enchanted by an Enchanter. Your shoulders and helm enchants are purchased from certain faction quartermasters and required you to have some reputation with them. Engineers are able to enchant their own gloves, cloak and belt with some funky and dangerous engineering enchants, Tailors have their own special cloak enchants too, and Leatherworkers have bracer enchants more powerful than anything you can craft as an Enchanter.
Other than the end of days, the Cataclysm brought some fun toys for Enchanters to play with too. Similarly to the state of this profession during Wrath of the Lich King, high-level Enchanters will have to purchase a lot of the good enchants with Heavenly Shards or Maelstrom Crystals, obtained through disenchanting rare and epic items respectively. And the actual new stuff comes in the form of two pets - Magic Lamp and Enchanted Lantern. Each faction has one of the two available from its Shard Vendor in the Twilight Highlands, but you can buy the other one from the neutral auction house.
Disenchanting
Unlike the crafting professions, Enchanting does not require your character to have a gathering profession to provide the materials needed for leveling. Instead, practitioners of this craft can Disenchant weapons and armor of uncommon quality or better, producing almost all of the materials needed for their enchants. There are four types of enchanting reagents you will have to use:
Dusts: Dusts come from disenchanting armor (usually) and weapons (rarely) of uncommon quality. They are the most common enchanting material and you will usually need a lot of them.
Essences: Essences comes from disenchanting weapons (usually) and armor (rarely) of uncommon quality. They comes in two varieties - lesser and greater of each type. You can convert three lesser essences of a certain type (e.g. Lesser Celestial Essence) into one greater (e.g. Greater Celestial Essence) and vice versa.
Shards: Shards come from disenchanting weapons and armor of rare quality. They, like essences, can be either lesser or greater, but you can't convert one form into another.
Crystals: Crystals are the rarest of all enchanting supplies and come from disenchanting epic items.
Profession Perk
As their profession perk Enchanters receive an additional slot to enchant - their rings. The only enchants available for rings are the ones that increase primary stat - Strength, Agility, Intellect, and Stamina. You can have both of your rings enchanted too.
Subject: Enchanting 
Sat Mar 03, 2012 11:47 am
