2.10 profession preview - Page 11

Nausicca · 04/10/07, 11:39 AM

The Alchemy changes are really bad, really.

By limiting the amount of consumables you can use at once people are forced to go for the best elixir that they can get in the defensive and offensive slots, this narrows down the choices of elixirs people have.
As a result of this, the prices for terrocone (agi elixirs/mastery) and Nightmare Vine (fel strength) are going to skyrocket, forcing raiders to pay out even more gold to prepare for raids even though they are using less elixirs.

How is this reasonable? How is this sane?

Nakilos · 04/10/07, 11:40 AM

I don't know how you don't profit from JC. A guildy of mine made 20k since the expansion came out due to Jewelcrafting, selling various cut and uncut gems. Much like enchanting, its always going to be valuable because people will get new gear and it will have empty sockets that need filling.

Altima · 04/10/07, 11:45 AM

Originally Posted by Coriolis

Wow... can you import all the stupid people on your realm to mine? Prospecting takes very little time and anyone with a decent level of JC can do it. The prices for gems on my server are in direct relation to the prices of adamantite ore, and basically with the chance of getting a blue gem (15% per prospect according to wowhead) it makes no difference whether I prospect or sell ore.

The Adamantite Ore price on Stonemaul is disproportionately low compared to blue gems, especially Star of Elune and Living Ruby. A stack of Adamantite Ores is around 25-30g, and Star of Elune and Living Ruby easy sell for 60g+ raw.

Yes, Stonemaul economy is heavily exploitable. I know I made a killing selling enchantings mats when the PvP rewards became more casual friendly and everyone was looking to enchant their new HWL weapons. But then again, these situations are what bring a slight smile to my face at the end of the day after wiping on encounters that should be on farming status, but I digress. Whereas PvE encounters require time and coordination, I can always count on winning the auction house with relative ease.

Darke · 04/10/07, 11:48 AM

Originally Posted by Quigon

That just makes consumables required for every pull. I think you're going in the exact wrong direction.

You have to do something like have bosses ignore offensive consumables entirely.

Why reinvent the wheel? Just disallow all consumable use in raid instances like in PVP Arenas.

Easy, simple, and WoW would be a much better game for it. It may not be 'elegant', but Blizzard has proven that they don't/can't do elegant, so let's worry about making the game fun again.

Altima · 04/10/07, 11:52 AM

Originally Posted by Nausicca

The Alchemy changes are really bad, really.

By limiting the amount of consumables you can use at once people are forced to go for the best elixir that they can get in the defensive and offensive slots, this narrows down the choices of elixirs people have.
As a result of this, the prices for terrocone (agi elixirs/mastery) and Nightmare Vine (fel strength) are going to skyrocket, forcing raiders to pay out even more gold to prepare for raids even though they are using less elixirs.

How is this reasonable? How is this sane?

I will be ready to take advantage of the situation.

Also, I think you are overestimating the price increase versus the cost reduction of not using the lesser elixirs. With that said, the cost of elixirs is still miniscule compared to the price of mana potions. And how does Blizzard address that issue? By lowering the price of Imbued Vials of course. Joy!

Coriolis · 04/10/07, 11:56 AM

Originally Posted by Altima

The Adamantite Ore price on Stonemaul is disproportionately low compared to blue gems, especially Star of Elune and Living Ruby. A stack of Adamantite Ores is around 25-30g, and Star of Elune and Living Ruby easy sell for 60g+ raw.

Yes, Stonemaul economy is heavily exploitable. I know I made a killing selling enchantings mats when the PvP rewards became more casual friendly and everyone was looking to enchant their new HWL weapons. But then again, these situations are what bring a slight smile to my face at the end of the day after wiping on encounters that should be on farming status, but I digress. Whereas PvE encounters require time and coordination, I can always count on winning the auction house with relative ease.

Ok. Here is when math is your friend. You get 4 prospects per stack. Your chance on a blue gem is 15% per prospect. Hence a stack= 60% chance of blue gem (SOME blue gem, not neccesarily a good one). Living rubies/star of elune are the two most expensive gem types most likely so let's say on average the gem you get costs 45g (this is about right on my server where talasite/dawnstone are like 30g, star of elune/ruby like 50-60g). So per stack you get a 60% chance to earn 45g, which is 27g on average per stack. The other random gems + dust you get sell for maybe 5-8g (and that's rather optimistic). So you've made about 32-35g per stack and it costs about 25-30g according to you. This is all assuming you actually manage to sell these gems for these prices which tends to be harder then selling ore in my experience. This profit margin at least on my server is pretty similiar to making tailoring stuff and DEing it... not the greatest money maker known to man exactly.

And your friend may have made a ton of money from JC- except he really probably made it from mining since mining is the real money maker. The price to get a gem cut on my server is about 3g per blue and maybe 20g for a rare meta one. With patterns costing about 300-400g on my server per blue gem cut you'd need to cut a ludicrous amount of gems to make it worthwhile.

Don't get me wrong I've made alot of money - I have my epic mount and a decent stash without really farming anything overly extensively in my eyes. But that was mostly due to mining and selling stuff on the AH, not JC.

songster · 04/10/07, 12:16 PM

Well, on ER(EU), prices for cut blue gems vary from ~45g (Dawnstones) to ~85g (Living Ruby and Nightseye). Solid star of Elune sells well but is the only decent blue cut, so the price comes down a bit. In contrast, there are several high-demand red and purple cuts.

On average after AH fees I'm looking at ~55g for a cut rare gem.

From a stack of adamantite ore, you average 5 uncommon gems (5-10g), 4 powder (1g) and 0.6 rare gems (0.6 * 55 = 33g). A total of 40-45g per stack.

I buy at anything under 35g. There's some risk, but if you trade in large volumes (and I do), it averages out, and you end up with about 25% profit. If you buy 1500g worth of ore in a day, that's a lot of income.

Repeek · 04/10/07, 12:18 PM

i think blizz could have easily aided the consumable issue by buffing the various alchemy master specs. If elixir spec had a guaranteed x2 proc and a higher chance at receiving x3-5 procs, life would be alot easier.

Nakilos · 04/10/07, 12:19 PM

Actually he was buying ores to prospect in mass quantities. He had a kind of silly monopoly on the JC market that really cut out other JC'ers bad, like he'd buy basically every adamantite in the AH over a weekend + what people mailed him, cut up a bunch of gems, and basically if a gem was being sold, it was being sold by him. No one could keep up with his volume.

Granted, its hard to get a monopoly on a market unless you really try, but you can definately get paid doing so if you put in the effort. Also, obviously your mileage will vary. Many people on the server still buy "dumb" gems so in an economy where fools have money and need to be parted with it, you can definately exploit that. Of course on a server where people know what gems are worth getting, its harder so I would assume the people on your server would only buy worthwhile gems. Its amazing how many people have like str gems in tanking gear, spell penetration gems, stupid stuff like that.

Altima · 04/10/07, 12:22 PM

Speaking of stupid, on weekends and Tuesdays I see a huge increase in gem prices. I've seen Runed Living Rubies and Solid Star of Elunes sold for 80-90g on those days because people demand instant gratification.

Fizwidget · 04/10/07, 12:22 PM

Originally Posted by Repeek

i think blizz could have easily aided the consumable issue by buffing the various alchemy master specs. If elixir spec had a guaranteed x2 proc and a higher chance at receiving x3-5 procs, life would be alot easier.

I think if they did this they would have to then move flasks off of elixer mastery and create a flask mastery. Otherwise specialization choice becomes a complete no-brainer.

Edit: Not to mention that all 3 of my BC-Level toons would suddenly find themselves alchemists with Transmute specialization alternately spamming Air-->Fire and Fire--->Air every 24 hours for free primals

Abbi · 04/10/07, 12:22 PM

Originally Posted by Nakilos

Actually he was buying ores to prospect in mass quantities. He had a kind of silly monopoly on the JC market that really cut out other JC'ers bad, like he'd buy basically every adamantite in the AH over a weekend + what people mailed him, cut up a bunch of gems, and basically if a gem was being sold, it was being sold by him. No one could keep up with his volume.

Yeah, I was one of two or three people owning Solid Stars of Elune on my server for a couple of weeks. It wasn't hard to buy up all the available raw gems every morning.

But this was only going to work in the early states. Solid Stars have gone from 80+ gold down to 50+. The capitalist in me is very sad and wants to hit people over the head for chopping prices. The rational gamer in me says it's probably for the best even if my money spigot has been turned off.

Quixotic · 04/10/07, 12:24 PM

Originally Posted by Coriolis

Wow... can you import all the stupid people on your realm to mine? Prospecting takes very little time and anyone with a decent level of JC can do it. The prices for gems on my server are in direct relation to the prices of adamantite ore, and basically with the chance of getting a blue gem (15% per prospect according to wowhead) it makes no difference whether I prospect or sell ore. If that's not the case on your server then either you somehow gathered all the people who don't understand simple economics on your server or you don't know how to do math and haven't figured out that you don't make much (if any) money on prospecting. It varies a little bit - at some point I would have made a small profit, right now I'd make a small loss prospecting.

JC trinkets? There is one good one - talasite owl. If you are a healer (and I am) it is probably one of the best trinkets that you can get although still not much below warp-scarab brooch and some others. And really the main reason it's so good is because the healing trinkets out of kara are so atrocious (i.e. pretty much every healing trinket from lvl 70 instances beats them). All the other ones are bad and easily replacable by badge and normal/heroic instance trinkets.

The only reason I am JC is because of the service I provide to my guildies. The personal benefits are nill.

When JC was a relatively rare profession, you could make gold off it by prospecting easily. However, now is not the case, every miner knows they can make more gold by prospecting and they just go to a JC friend who does it for free. Ore prices have skyrocketed and gems have plummetted. The rogue underbog/slave pen chest farming/exploit did not help my server's gem economy at all.

Also the prices of gems will rapidly fall next patch, as everyone will be now correctly getting the gem-stuffed envelopes from consortium rep.

The other useful JC trinket is the Ruby Living Serpent for PvP purposes for casters.

Altima · 04/10/07, 12:27 PM

Originally Posted by Fizwidget

I think if they did this they would have to then move flasks off of elixer mastery and create a flask mastery. Otherwise specialization choice becomes a complete no-brainer.

The counterargument being guaranteed 2x Primal Mights and chances for additional and the potentially absolutely ridiculous amount of Super Mana Potions and Ironshield Potions produced.

Having a Potion Master alchemy alt, the guaranteed double production would appeal to my raiding side but at the same time scream "loss of profit" to my AH jockey side.

hubar · 04/10/07, 12:38 PM

Originally Posted by mek

Flasks need to be removed from the game, and elixirs need to last through death. Add some more BoP frills to Alchemy to compensate and call it a day.

And up the cost of elixirs to make them not so easy obtainable???

I am sorry, but I have to say this with no ill intent whatsoever:

Do you seriously think about what you typed????