A Return to Low-End Enchants

Posted by Aleithia at 8:00 AM

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Remember back in the start of Cataclysm when the prices on high-end enchants were through the roof because of the prohibitive cost of Maelstrom Crystals? Even gold makers like me refused to pay those prices for the top enchants since they were a marginal improvement over the cheaper variety.

With the return of higher prices on maelstroms and heavenly shards, many of the high-end enchants (Landslide, Power Torrent, Windwalk, Bracers [Agility, Strength and Intellect] among others) are again becoming cost-prohibitive for people to purchase, especially when coupled with the smoother upgrade curve I talked about last week. Why would I spend between 2-3k on enchants for 378 Gear from Heroics that I'm going to replace soon (because we all think our next upgrade will be Soon™, right?) with 384 LFR Gear? I'll wait to purchase the best enchant for when I get my "best" drop, where "best" is defined as the highest level gear I think I'll be able to obtain.

A comparison of Low- vs. High-End enchants:

Weapons
Mending instead of Windwalk (Tanks)
Avalanche instead of Landslide (Melee DPS)
Hurricane/Heartsong instead of Power Torrent (Spell DPS/Healer)

Bracers
Speed (50 Haste) instead of Greater Speed (65 Haste)
Critical Strike (50) instead of Greater Critical Strike (65)
Most Bracer Enchants (50/65 Secondary Stats) instead of Agility/Strength/Intellect (50 Primary Stats)

Gloves
Exceptional Strength (35) instead of Mighty Strength (50)
Mastery (50) instead of Greater Mastery (65)

Chest
Mighty Stats (15 Primary Stats) instead of Peerless Stats (20 Primary Stats)
Stamina (55) instead of Greater Stamina (75)

Cloak
Critical Strike (50) instead of Greater Critical Strike (65)
Intellect (30) instead of Greater Intellect (50)

Legs
Ghostly Spellthread (55 Int, 45 Spirit) instead of Powerful Ghostly Spellthread (95 Int, 55 Spirit)
Enchanted Spellthread (55 Int, 65 Stam) instead of Powerful Enchanted Spellthread (95 Int, 80 Stam)
Scorched Leg Armor (110 AP, 45 Crit) instead of Dragonscale Leg Armor (190 AP, 55 Crit)
Twilight Leg Armor (85 Stamina, 45 Agility) instead of Charscale Leg Armor (145 Stamina, 55 Agility)

In most cases, the higher cost item sells for 7-10 times more than the lower end one. Some of the higher-end enchants (I'm looking at you Bracer - Mighty Strength) have huge markups (Around 1,000g on my server). Most however, tend to be not much better than the lower level enchants. But I've noticed that lately I'm selling a lot more of the low-end enchants than the high-end. So even though the lower-end enchants have a smaller gold markup, I make more gold on them because I sell a lot more.

Have you forgotten about the lower-end enchants and focused on high-end only? If so, it's time to revisit the lower-end, more affordable enchants.

Bonus Somewhat Unrelated Tip: Enchant scrolls can now be placed in enchanting bags. The change seems to be an undocumented (at the time) one that came with 4.3. If you keep a lot of scrolls in stock at any given time, it might be useful to pick up an enchanting bag.

4.3 PTR announced. (First Glance)

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:08 AM

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Over the next few weeks we will have lots of information as the last reported major patch upgrade
for cataclysm appears on the PTR's.

Information on new patterns and new items were data mined by mmo-champion.   But it is a rough list
of items and models.

With the 4.3 data mining this gives us the first of many chances to start piecing together information
on what it will mean to both the beginning and advanced Power Auctioneers.


Stepping through the professions the biggest thing seen is that there appears to be another crafting
element introduced into the materials needed.

Essence of Destruction seems to be used in all of the new patterns that will be available with the new patch. This probably means that both this items and the patterns will drop either from the bosses or trash runs with the new raids.    As with the previous 4.2 raids,   this item will be very high priced for the first month or so when it's available on the AH.   This also means that living ember,  the 4.2 crafting material,  will probably start to be in higher demand.  Both from the nerfing of 4.2 raids,  plus the
want for added gear to be crafted to raise Item level for the new 4.3 raids.

Here is a list of the new patterns broke down under professions

Tailoring

World Mender Pants 
Bracers of Unconquered Power
Dreamwraps of the Light
Lavaquake Legwraps

All of these seem to be dps patterns,  with no healing patterns seen as of yet.   Where the potential for crafting and flipping both the items or the mats are high.   Healing classes may look at the lower 4.2
crafted items to finish off their Class Gear.   Nothing with the opening salvo of information shows that
the dreamweave timer or BOP status will be lifted.   So Investing in the pattern will end up being a high risk/high reward type of scenario.  As with all of these Epic level crafting recipes.

Blacksmithing

Bracers of Destructive Strength
Foundations of Courage
Pyrium Legplates of Purified Evil
Soul Redeemer Bracers
Titanguard Wristplates
Unstoppable Destroyer Legplates

As with the 4.2 Raid Patterns.  None of these appear to use truegold for their crafting.   Ghostcrawler announced in his explanation that there would be multiple patterns.  So it's assuming that these non raid level patterns will probably use truegold as their base instead of the Essence of Destruction.   So truegold as of now is still going to be a viable commodity to craft by alchemist or to save when demand is higher. Chaos Orbs will be used as a traditional material for crafting.   It's guessed that at some point one of the incremental patches will remove the BOP status of chaos orbs,  opening up another market for the non raiding crafter.     Mostly dps plate,  with two pieces of Healing plate has been added.    With the high amount of drops in the Fireland raids associated with healing items.   Healing plate crafted items may not be in high demand.

Leatherworking


Bladeshadow Leggings
Bladeshadow Wristguard
Bracers of Flowing Serenity
Bracers of the Hunter Killer
Deathscale Leggings of the Storm
Legging's of Nature's Champion
Rended Earth Leggings
Thundering Deathscale Wristguards

Each of these recipes take between 8 Pristine hides.   So look for both Heavy Savage Leather
and Pristine hides to be in high demand as these items begin to get crafted.    Stocking up on
Stacks of Heavy Savage Leather for conversion to pristine hide will set you farther ahead of the
Gold wars to come.

Jewelcrafting


The PTR notes are showing that the epic gems will be based on a 50 point seperation.  So epic gems will have either a full +50 to a stat,  or split between the two stats.   This ends up being good news for the non raiding jewelcrafter.  Most people will not spend a huge amount of money to gear for epic gems
with only +10 to their stats.   They are more apt to fill the gem slots with your Rare +40 stat gems or combinations of stats to reach their raiding mark.   With no information released yet on how to obtain patterns this will allow the non raiding jewelcrafter to feed the demand to gems they already have.   A wise jewelcrafter will look to purchase stock raw gems to either flip for profit.  Or to cut when the demand is high and the supply is low.   Also remember that with the new PVP season there will be a large spike for PVP specific Gems (+ resilience,  + resilience/haste,  residence/strength,  resilience/agi).   Stocking up on your raw gems in these categories may give a decent profit in the long term.

• Notice with blacksmithing there are no high level weapon crafting patterns.   There may be more introduced later.  But it means there will be a larger demand on crafted or dropped items from Deathwing raids themselves.
• There are multiple lists of items assumed to drop in the Deathwing lair raids.   Multiple boe items (including weapons and trinkets) where their demand will be high as well.
•  The Raid patterns are taking a high amount of volatile fire and volatile water for crafting.   With 4.2 and the dailies volatile fires were lowered in value.  This may be a good opportunity to purchase volatile fires for crafting while they are low.   And alchemists switching from transmuting volatile airs to volatile water.   
• Snowballs will no longer be used for summoning the Tiny Snowman,  Winter Reindeer, Winter's Little Helper

[addendum]

Maelstrom Shatter has been added to Enchanting.  Will split one maelstrom crystal into two heavenly shards.    Should drive down the prices for heavenly shards while raising maelstroms.

For the list of all the items known from the ptr datamining mmo-champion has given a sorted list here   

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbearjoe @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at  "@Dragonbearjoe" or leave a comment here.   Would love to know how your experience with this tip works out.                    

Truegold isn't all you need to stock up on

Posted by The Lost Meeple at 8:00 AM

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Yesterday while checking some of the comments made on the blog someone posted a very interesting comment that really caught my attention:

" Truegold? Ya right, I'm sure it'll be profitable but Pristine Hides will be just as if not more profitable, seeing as how so far Truegold is only getting you i lvl 365 weapons, which isokay, but not necessarily worth it for that many people (easier heroic raid bosses drop 372 weapons).

Meanwhile, Pristine hides will be getting you boots and other things that are ilvl 378.

Take a look: http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=52980#reagent-for "

- Anonymous

That's an excellent point! I didn't even care to look at the pristine hides and boy oh boy you have no idea how surprised I was then I saw what was behind the link above. According to the link/wowhead, there will be 10 new patterns/recipes and 8/10 of them will require 8 pristine hides, while the remaining two will require 3.

Start stockpiling those pristine hides if you're a leather worker, you're definitely going to need them once 4.2 hits. If you want to take the less riskier route ( and sometimes cheaper ), you can stockpile just raw leather which can be converted into pristine hides.

50 Savage leather converts into 10 heavy savage leathers which then can be turned in for Pristine Hides. You don't even have to be a leatherworker to do this so if you want to get some cheap Pristine hides, check the prices for both Savage leather and heavy savage leather and compare them with the prices of Pristine Hides, generally there is a good profit margin when doing this.

If you haven't checked MMO-Champion lately you'd know that they posted a list ( which might not be complete ) of reputation based items that you will be able to obtain from the Firelands Raid Repuration. No where on the list did it show that the new patterns and recipes will be obtained from here so it's stockpiling Truegold/Pristine hides will definitely be worth.

Profiting Off Leatherworking Bracers

Posted by The Lost Meeple at 8:00 AM

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I got an interesting e-mail yesterday that pointed out something that I think you guys should note, especially the leatherworkers out there. Read the e-mail below:

" Hey Markco & Mageshadow,

Just thought I'd give you a shout.. I know LW isn't a traditional heavy-hitter in the gold making business, but I just got started and already had a max level LW.

Here's a quick tip.. Hunters have almost no good Rare bracers options, and with ilvl 346 requirements for the new dungeons, they're definitely selling extremely well on my server. Roughly 300g to craft and selling for 800-1200g. Don't know if it is only a trend on my server or not, but I thought I'd pass it along. "

- Matt


An excellent tip. Like Matt said, hunters don't have many good starting bracer items, there are only a couple and they're very hard to obtain. With the recently release of the new ZA & ZG heroics people will want to "boost" their Ilvl as high as possible and since there isn't a real boost for Hunters... they resort to using the ilvl 346 leatherworking bracers ( Bloodied Wyrmhide Bracers &  Bloodied Leather Bracers & Bloodied Dragonscale Bracers - ilvl 339 ). Thanks for excellent tip Matt!


Do you know of any other items that sell well because they isn't good pre-raid gear? If So what items? Drop a comment below!

Twilight Highlands Profession Trainers: Vendor Gold Tip

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

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Well I finally hit level 85 on Markco and am in the process of leveling blacksmithing and enchanting to full in the Twilight Highlands. To my surprise when I visited the vendors there I found an awesome gold making strategy... (see youtube video and subscribe for more updates!). [Note: The vendors have been hotfixed as of this posting to sell the items featured more frequently. This will cause a drop in prices but you should still be able to sell them for double the vendor price at the very least.]





I'll be looking to add more detailed walkthroughs in my gold guide for these particular professions and once I am finished I'll move on to leveling the next character and the next. Perhaps you would like to inform me of which characters you personally would like to see brought to 84 first?  You can choose from the following who are currently at 75-80 each:


Engineer / Miner
Tailor / Leatherworker
Skinner / Miner
Alchemist / Herbalist

Click to Continue Reading...

Pre Cataclysm Gold Guide - Elemental Invasion

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

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Elemental Invasion Part 4: Twilight Bosses Loot Table

251	Shield	Melee	Off Hand	Barrier of the Earth Princess
251	Plate	Heal	Waist	Girdle of Oblation
251	Plate	Melee	Chest	Tectonic Plate
251	Plate	Melee	Chest	Salamander Skin
251	Plate	Melee	Wrist	Twilight Offering Bands
251	Mail	Physical DPS	Legs	Sacrificial Mail
251	Leather	Heal	Feet	Flamewaker's Treads
251	Leather	Physical DPS	Chest	Pulmonary Casing
251	Cloth	Heal	Chest	Earth Bride's Gown
251	Cloth	Physical DPS	Back	Cloak of Mocking Winds
251	Cloth	Spell DPS	Back	Zaetar's Deathshroud
251	Cloth	Spell DPS	Feet	Sandfury Sandals
251	Finger	Melee	Finger	Old Gods' Blessing
251	Finger	Physical DPS	Finger	Sulfuron's Favor
251	Finger	Spell DPS	Finger	Ring of the Three-Headed Beast
251	Neck	Heal	Neck	Pendant of Burning Spirits
251	Neck	Melee	Neck	Flamelash Amulet
251	Neck	Physical DPS	Neck	Amulet of the Centauri
251	Neck	Spell DPS	Neck	Amulet of Evil Winds

Great Markco you pasted some info from MMO-Champion. What are we supposed to do with it?

Make GOLD of course!

Now, the first thing you're going to want to do is focus on the items which you can actually provide upgrades for:

Click to Continue Reading...

Cataclysm Profession Break Down

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

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Hello JMTC! I am Miss Mediocre, an average gamer and avid blogger! I was very glad to see that Markco was accepting guest posts about upcoming changes in Cataclysm, as I just recently won myself a Beta Key! I decided to focus my guest post on professions, as I have not yet recognized any
real Cataclysm gold making strategies in my beta travels.

One major improvement they've made in Cataclysm regarding professions is that you can now level from 1-525 in any of the major cities, which means no more irritating trips to Outland and Dalaran for anything above skill level 300! Also, in your profession window there is a new filter that you can check called "has skill up" which is handy for leveling as it will show you only things that you can craft that could result in a skill point.

Click to Continue Reading...