What area would be most appropriate to gather in for this type of shuffle? Can anyone suggest a good profile?
for ore/herbs, you'd have to use some judgement on whats not being overly farmed, i.e. hyjal, uldum, TH, etc.
i'd pick deepholm, mostly because heartblossom, is a key transmute herb, and it usually holds it's value above whiptail/stormvine, which tend to flood, once some bright spark decides to sell 85 stacks of 20 stormvine at 3g80s per herb... (my servers' got issues), but highlands will deliver more, as there's usually more people around, which increases node spawn rates. hyjal, for the same reason (molten front dailies), but you may need to have completed sections of mt hyjal to see the nodes, they can phase out at times.
you can try and compete on raw material supply, but you have to spend a lot of time to do it well, conversely, you can simply purchase mats to shuffle through if you don't have a mini-army of alts to produce flasks or bags, pvp gear, glyph sets, MFC's, buckles, and gems, and just pick out one or two professions to supply items for. there's still a good market in pvp items for getting people's ilevel's up to LFR standards, gem/flask/fish/enchants for raids,
i've done this by hand for ages, but with a miner/scribe, jc/alch and tailor/enchanter, using TSM (and earlier incarnations of TSM related tools) to handle the inventory and crafting runs. and lw/eng/skinning/bs oddities.
transmutes are the weaker aspect, as it's competitive. the heartblossom for transmutes, there's often never enough on the AH to buy. i may roll another farming toon, but i swapped out herbalism 525 for mining soon after cata.
