Leather

Leather can mean a couple of things in World of Warcraft:

See Leather armor.
 * 1) A type of skin ingredient item usually gathered with the skinning profession from a skinnable corpse. These items can usually be used directly by the leatherworking profession without prior processing or treatment.
 * 2) A type of armor used by playable characters belonging to the fairly fragile, but also agile leather-wearing classes. Generally better than cloth armor for defense.

Leather skin
In this sense, leather is collected by skinning beasts. These items can usually be used directly by the leatherworking profession without prior processing or treatment. The type of leather is usually directly related to the level of animal being skinned.

Leatherworkers can also combine lighter leathers into heavier ones, even combining ruined leather scraps into usable leathers.

Leather is closely related to Hides, although Hides are rarer and must often be prepared for use.

Basic leather
There are 12 basic leathers:

NB: It is not possible to skin any mob in the starting zones (maybe there is a mob level minimum of 5 for skinning)

Crafted leather

 * Enchanted Leather - Created by Enchanters from Rugged Leather

Special leather
The Ruined Leather Scraps which you get when skinning low level mobs are vendor sell items unless you also have leatherworking, in which case 3 of them can be made into light leather. The frequency of getting these drops off rapidly around 10th level mobs and you will not see anymore of them at all once you are skinning 17th level and above mobs. Note: As of Patch 3.0.3 you do not need the leatherworking skill to convert 5x Borean Leather Scraps to 1x Borean Leather.

Leather conversion
Leatherworkers can assemble low-level leathers into higher-level leather.

Removed leathers

 * Zhevra Leather - Drops off of Zhevras -
 * Frostsaber Leather - From Frostsabers -
 * Chimera Leather - From Chimaeras -
 * Primal Bat Leather - From Bats in Zul'Gurub instance -
 * Primal Tiger Leather - From Tigers in Zul'Gurub instance -

=Patch changes=