SE, We need to talk about Leatherworker ...

[ChloeGrace]

Mind sharing your routes/spots for mob farming? I may try some good old mob grinding out of pure desperation for Gagana and Tiger skins to level up my poor LTW.

Halgai are all clustered around the north side of The Dawn Throne. Easy to find.
Manzasiri are on the far western edge of Azim. Same deal.
Baras just north of the manzas drop much better than the Yanxia tigers.
For gags, I just ran around Fringes killing lessers. Faster kills than the higher level ones, and there are more of them.

You definitely don't need to rely on retainers for farming raw LTW and WVR materials (although they help).
Good hunting!

Edit: I just did 77 gazelle skins in an hour, which isn't too bad. No drop rate buff is required.