The base gathering speed in Dragonflight is 3.2 seconds for Mining and 2 seconds for Herbalism. To gather faster, you will need to gain Deftness.
When you start out with these professions, there are a few easy ways to improve your gathering experience. Combining some of the below items, you can immediately reduce gathering time by more than 50% before gaining any skill points.
Profession Equipment
You can buy the green-quality profession equipment on the Auction House and these are definitely worth picking up before you start gathering.
| Tool (these have a random stat, find one with Deftness) | Accessory 1 | Accessory 2 (increases Finesse, helping you gather more herbs/ore) | |
| Herbalism | https://www.wowhead.com/item=191241/draconium-sickle | https://www.wowhead.com/item=193538/wildercloth-gardening-hat | https://www.wowhead.com/item=193479/floral-basket |
| Mining | https://www.wowhead.com/item=191242/draconium-pickaxe | https://www.wowhead.com/item=198243/draconium-delvers-helmet | https://www.wowhead.com/item=198262/bottomless-stonecrust-ore-satchel |
Other Deftness Sources
Darkmoon Firewater: Consumable granting +15% Deftness for 1 hour. Note that the buff is removed on death.
https://www.wowhead.com/item=199804/formula-enchant-tool-draconic-deftness: You can enchant your gathering profession tool with this, however it is currently quite expensive so you may not want to use this on the green-quality tools.
https://www.wowhead.com/item=191342/aerated-phial-of-deftness: This phial is Bind-on-Pickup so is not available on the Auction House but you can obtain it by submitting a Crafting Order.
Gathering While Dragonriding
Once you reach 25 skill in your profession, you can choose your first specialization.
For Mining, Mining Process will be the specialization to choose if you want to gather as quickly as possible, and once you fill this specialization with knowledge points, it will allow you to gather while Dragonriding.
The corresponding specialization for Herbalism is Botany, and this may be the one you want to fill up first for quality of life and speed while gathering.
Make sure that gathering while Dragonriding is the most important factor for you before you commit to a specialization, as other specs are likely to make you more gold per hour.
You can expect to gain around 60 profession knowledge points in the first week from one-time bonuses, and generally less than 10 points per week after this. So if you do choose to max out Botany or Mining Process first, you won’t be able to max out another spec tree like https://www.wowhead.com/profession-trait/mastering-the-elements-59621 for a few weeks.
This is quite a big downside but for me it felt worth it, as it was a lot more enjoyable not having to mount up every time after gathering a herb or ore. You also gain increases to Finesse, Deftness and Perception from the bonuses every 5 skill points in these specs, so the Dragonriding gathering isn’t the only benefit.