Best skinning skills

[Raliver]

So currently looking at adjusting my skills to improve my skinning as a mean of increasing my cashflow.

Currently .5x FA and 1x survival. I'm a little overtrained in spells, so if I drop back down to just 1x, I can either do 1x FA, 1x Survival and 1x Trading...or 1x FA and 2x Survival (since both 1x trading the 2x of survival convert to 6/0).

Thoughts on which may be a better route to increase sales?

[JNewhall]

So I think the question boils down to: Which increases skin value more, trading or survival?

The answer depends on the quality of the skins you're getting. If you're reliably getting high quality skins where you hunt, then trading is more important. If you're not, then boosting survival will do a lot more for you than trading because value increases so much with quality. Ambushing (and either CM or perception, depending what weapon type you use) indirectly boosts skin value because aiming your shots is so important to the quality.

Trading gives a % bonus but won't improve skin quality. So your trading boost is less valuable if your skin quality is low. You're much better off with a 5% trading boost on a 1,000 silver silver skin than a 10% boost on a 300 silver skin. (The exception might be when the base value is so low that nothing really helps, such as skinning kobolds).

Once your skins are high quality, I would train trading to a specific goal level and then drop it. The first 12 ranks of trading get you a 4% boost (with one more rank to 5%), but later on 12 ranks gets you just a 1% boost. You also need to factor in stat and racial bonuses. The % price boost (or discount when buying) = [TradingSkill + InfBonus]/12.

TL;DR: I would boost FA and survival until you reliably get high quality skins, then train trading to a level where the % boost is worth the points. Then drop trading until post-cap. And aim your shots.