Enjoy it while it lasts. We used to be in the same situation aswell a few months ago, untill the server's biggest AH player found the niche worthy of his time. Now the AH price is exactly 10*cheapestPrimalPrice + 50g.

I've been following this topic since page 1 and the time has come to make a decision for me. As most raiders on this forum, I'm pretty much currently only logging in for my dailies, some minor AH playing and 1.5 raid evenings.

Background:
I recently leveled my old main to 70 and he now has maxed mining, 290ish blacksmithing (decided not to continue that tradeskill) and not even a normal flying mount.
My main has Enchanting and mooncloth Tailoring (in my defense: the belt used to be very good! ) and while it hurts to drop Tailoring, it's not really offering me anything anymore.
I'm sitting on about 15k gold with another 5k in primals/shards/.. .

Possibilities:
A) Dropping BS on my alt in favor for Engineering and buying epic mount for it. We're looking at a cost of 2 flying mount skills + the time and money to level Engineering. Though this is indeed quite some money, I don't really need gold for anything these days (got enough potions/elixirs to last me till WoTLK).
I was wondering what kind of gold/hour (or put it in stacks of X and Y) I would get with this assuming a not too overcamped farming route. Would it be worth the trouble to level and the investment this late in TBC?

B) Now on my main, I have the option of dropping tailoring for..something.
JC is often used, but as discussed on the last few pages, I'm not that certain it is going to be worth the cost of leveling + getting overpriced recipes which will be outdated when WoTLK is there. Or does prospecting/cutting really add that much profit to mined ore?
Another option would be Alchemy, for the stone (one of the best post 2.4 healer trinkets) and the transmute (I would be going potion spec-->unlearn-->transmute spec as it seems to be a lot cheaper).
Finally, I could also just keep tailoring, hoping primal mooncloth prices will go up, sell some leg enchants on the s4 launch and see if the WoTLK launch introduces the same money making potential imbued netherweave bags were in the first few weeks of TBC. Ifnot, I can drop it for Inscription.

As you can see my biggest problem is investing alot of time and gold in any of these scenarios and not being able to profit enough from them in the time between now and the WoTLK launch. (yes, this is a pure gamble, but I'm hoping we'll see it around aug/sept) Any advice on this problem/scenarios? Or maybe even a better one?

While its perhaps more of a subject for twinking/leveling alts, A epic mount for a gathering alt is almost allways going to worth it in the long term. As for Engineering, I have alt that I have been playing in the 59,60 Battlegrounds for past few months and I switched him Engineering with the plan to be level 62+ and 350 Engineering when 2.4 hits. Is it a moneymaker? No but I should recoup some money by farming primals as I level.

For your main unless you have a clear idea of what you want to do and why ,perhaps just wait for more Wotlk information?

Gahranka without getting in the old random numbers issues, currently we are at 10 kills with no book. But the pre tbc greens disenchant for a reasonable amount and more ZG rep doesnt seem a waste of time.

I hope you're not dropping BS at 290 for the sake of saving money. BS 250-300, especially ~280-300 is the most expensive part of leveling it. 300-350 can be done for less than 100g probably, at which point you can start grinding or just buy the mats for your tier1 weapon.

If you're dropping it for another reason, then nevermind this.

I don't think you really need a healer as a lock - I've done this as SL/SL with the Frozen Shadowweave set and the rest mediocre gear and basically only need to drain life one mob in 8 or so. Voidwalker is out to tank an occasional mob and Consume Shadows back any life lost through Soul Link (2T5 would obviously negate the need to Consume). Every mob dies in 3 GCDs. If you had 2T6 as well as the Frozen Shadoweave bonus I'm sure you would never ever go OOM. You could probably also wear [Night's End] and [Medallion of Karabor] to negate a lot of damage as they mostly shadowbolt spam. This seems better than Destro for this purpose as you can move and loot while things are dying and while casting. You don't have to every stand still and wait for casts to finish.

If you could get a lock with 2T5, 2T6 (from Sunwell) and 3/3 Frozen Shadoweave I imagine you'd have zero downtime and every mob dying as soon as you got in range of it.

You actually only need 2T and 2T6, SL/SL, Succubus on defensive (way better "dot") and just run around continuously casting. You may have drops in hp sometimes but only due to bad luck and 1 mob killed in regen mode (SL, Corr, CoS, DL, DS) fills you back up in 5 seconds or so. And from hearsay it seems having any other player there looting for you is a huge boost in speed (and gain). Make that something that can heal for 2k every couple minutes or so and you gain and extra bit of time.
And oh, I'm just reffering to all other demons there, not the warlocks, never liked farming those.

I'd get epic flying anyway for your alt, NOW. Directly, no stop with a slow flyer. The 6000gold or so are certainly well spent.

I would not spec JC at the moment (I did some two months ago): the changes in 2.4 are just too unpredictable. I'd certainly not buy any recipes for blue cut stones now except if they're < 100g or so. They are also not needed for leveling anyway, you can get the two recipes from Halaa and some Meta Gem recipes are also buyable (and one is farmable). I'm not sure if the BOP jewels are worth it because they're unique-equipped. The new BOP jewelery might be worth it though.

I'm also a healer, but I'd personally not go for alchemy, the trinket just doesn't offer me enough in the end (I very rarely use potions after all). The transmuting etc is probably better on an alt anyway.

At the moment I'm thinking of dropping mining, I'm just not sure if Leatherworking is worth it now (for the drums in the end). The only other reasonable choice would be enchanting. But I'm speculating about Inscription and WoTLK - so the cost of leveling enchanting is probably not worth it. Leatherworking might be worth it even for a short time as the cost to level it is much lower.

On my server I see it from 50 to 120 per nether. Its not a profitable thing to do time wise, its like bonus money. After the patch your going to have everyone in the group roll on the things. I think their initial value will be higher as more people will now have access to get the items made they want and then it will drop off...

You can go gatherskills and max them, but it wont be very profitable until WotLK, unless you spend >a lot< of time in it. Ok , I admit Im not the best herb/ore farmer, but the times I borrewed a char with max skills and epic flyer , I got around worth 120g per hour at most in adamantite ore and various herbs. Considering that Adamantite ore is going down a bit due to the expected shift in JC, you probably not going to get much higher either.

This means in order to earn back your investment before tbc, you need to farm 50 hours, then you play it even. After that the "profit" starts. Now you could have farmed mobs somewhere else also and be at +7000 gold compared to when you bought the mount ( 140g per hour for grinding is not something unimaginable ).

To me the best way to earn gold is to grind something and pick up herbs / ores as they come as extra. Many are going to say that is not true, but imo they are stuck in the time that JC/mining was an unimaginable goldmine, these days are over though. Its still going to be decent most likely, but not as good as it used to be by a longshot.

Right now the advice I would give you is get up the herbalism and mining, but dont buy the epic flyer yet. This means that if you level your alt fast in wotlk, you can get a fresh new start at farming , Blizzard has stated flying mounts cant be used at least in the start of the next expansion. With the probably money inflation thats going to happen again in wotlk, 5k gold, or most of it , can probably be earned with questing from 70-80 and selling/de-ing quest rewards.

So what to do now ? Max professions and if you feel like it , or you feel like you are going to need it : farm.

Transmute spec is as good as RNG gets. I really cant recommend it unless you like to bet. Since it has been fixed I might have gotten around 6 primal water for doing a transmute every day, clearly not worth the investment.

( imbued ) Netherweave bags has a market on pretty much every server, the profit just depends on it how much time you can put into it and how much competition there is on it. Now that the LPS market is going down to the point where making LPS from netherweave bracers barely profitable anymore , it seems like a lot of cloth is going to enter the economy.

The Tuesday maintenance was god send for me. My stack of 50 LPS came down to 10, as after the scheduled maintenance and the extended realm shutdown for Exodar due to some issue, I logged in to find all the cheap LPS auctions had expired. Ended up selling 40+ LPS for 25g+ after AH cut.

I have now actually noticed that the time after scheduled maintenance is the best time to take advantage of the market as most of the undercut stuff expires on its 48 hour cycle from Sat/Sun to Tuesday afternoon/evening.

I did have a question, I am a fresh 375 Leatherworker, what would be a recommended profitable item for me?

I've been making a fairly decent profit selling Major healing and mana potions. They're used in a few high level enchants like vitality and 150hp on chest. Sometimes there will be a lot of them on the AH from people leveling alchemy, but most of the time there are few to none. That's when I put them up, always in stacks of 4 and BO at 12-15g. It's not something that can be done in a large scale, but it's been a nice side income for me. I don't make the pots with alchemy, I get them from doing the mana tombs chests on my rogue or buying them when they're cheap. So I don't know if it's profitable for alchemists since you need old world herbs to make them.

I wouldn't bet on quite that much inflation. As an example, Foror's Compendiums and other boe epics, pre BC, used to sell for roughly 1500-2000 gold. What are the BC boe epics like Blinkstrike going for again? Roughly the same amount. In addition, you have to figure that the initial gold you earn from questing will be immediately used up buying the ability to fly in WotLK lands (the rumored "deicer" or whatever).

Also, I have an farming alt with herbalism/mining, it is a godsend for making money. Herbalism keeps raid pots cheap, mining keeps me in the black.

Long time thread reader, first time poster.

Executive Summary:
My Transmute Specialization Procs seem to fit into the 15% rate that I have seen others quote. I will always use my daily transmute for the Skyfire Diamond. Just about once a week, I'll get 2 for my work. I specialized transmute spec right about the time that there was a Blue Post acknowledging the problem and saying a fix was on the way. Looking at it subjectively, from a gold making perspective, it would probably be a better option to take one of the other specialties and push out potions or elixers in bulk because they are not on a 24 hour CD.

Superfluous Details and Props:
This thread has so far helped me accumulate a lot of valuable items that I have just started unloading as a reaction to all the 2.4 news. I'm beginning the sell-off process now (I've been getting decent prices for items like Spellcloth-50G and LPS-28G). I have stacks of LPS, Arcane Dust, and various Primals in the bank, ready to go. In today's market, I could probably unload most of it at firesale prices and get 5-6k. I'm really hoping I picked some safe bets and can unload these enchanting mats in a good position when everyone gets their shiny new "BT-quality" 2.4 badge gear and suddenly needs enchanting mats.

I have 2 70s- a maxed JC/LW and a maxed Spellfire Tailor/Transmute Spec Alch. I also have a lvl 37 Druid Enchanter that can DE items like the Braided Eternium Chain for LPS and various rings for Arcane Dust. The 3 toons do a decent job working together to add value to mostly AH items. I buy/prospect/create/DE for my gold using all the tips I learned from this thread. My first 70 already has his epic flyer, and I'm aiming for a 2nd one after I unload more for 2.4.

I really only wanted to chime in on the RNG and Transmute Procs, got a little carried away there.. Many people jump on forums like this to voice their concerns about problems, I wanted to just give voice to the other side.

Thanks for the input. Nice to hear a rational view on the topic.

I specc'd Transmute about two weeks ago and I am yet to see a proc. I hear a lot of complaining out there, but I've always suspected that the complainers are just bad at math.

Living rubies at least for me have been steadily increasing in value, and not by an insignificant margin. ~55g was their value uncut last week, and I sold a few earlier yesterday for 70g. I think a lot of people did unload their gems really fast, and now there is somewhat of an absence of people with decent sized stocks of gems, as my uncuts were the only ones on the AH. There were cut ones already, but they were priced above even my high point of 70.

For those of you that have arrangements with gatherers to CoD mats to you regularly: how often do you renegotiate prices?

The reason I'm asking is that for commonly CoDed items like primals or ore I'm seeing huge fluctuations in price on our AH. How do you ensure that your supplier doesn't try to get more profit from the AH, or you losing money by paying over the odds to your off-AH supplier?

Use their influx of goods to ruthlessly monopolize the primal market? Think about it for a second...

- You can get away with paying them the same price whilst at the same time reaping larger profit margins.

- 2.4 is coming this Tuesday, that gives you a incredible opportunity to quickly and easily grab the market by the balls, assuming you have the volume to back up your claim.

- The "random price fluctuations" will be gone for the most part, you control the supply and markets, you can do whatever the hell you want.

- Finally, they can't do jack to counter you. Try to counter you on the AH? Shut them down. Try to get better prices? Stop paying for the primals, and find another supplier. In short, every method they can use to turn out a profit you can controll. They really have no choice but the shut up and get there asses to farming.

Someone linked a pretty in depth write up of this method a good ten pages back or so, Look it up if you want to try it out.

It has been analysed before.

Read this thread - it's been discussed at least half a dozen times, over as much as the length of a couple pages.

It is? Did I miss something? Have they taken the PTR down already?

This would be nice, I'm ready to see how the prices are going to change.

I wonder how you manage to solo him as a prot war.
I have tried with my prot war with the following :
- T6 stuff
- 102.4% miss/dodge/parry/block
- Chaining heal pots and Ogrila's health stones
- Figurine of the Colossus every time it's ready
- Spyglass (SSC) at each cooldown, or tried also with the ashtongue trinket
But I can't kill the 3 priests before they kill me (mortal cleave at 1k5...), I generally bring them down to ~10% each before they kill me.
Do you have another tip to manage them ?
Thanks

It's not final.. but I would guess at an 80% chance of this Tuesday being the day. One good reason is they have been steadily adding lager and larger loads to the background down loader, while at the same time adding only minor and insignificant changes to the ptr build. I could see them holding It back to implement any final fixes and do a final check of everything, but not much beyond that.

It's not only the rare (i.e. limited) vendor patterns that sell well but a lot of the unlimited ones as well. And yes, a lot of people care about having every pattern, or they buy certain patterns so they can skill up more cheaply.

Here's a few vendor items, both limited and unlimited, that I've found to sell consistently: the high level cooking recipes to be bought in Terrokar Forest (Spicy Crawdad, Golden Fish Sticks); the limited BS patterns from Lower City (YMMV, it worked well for me for a long time until that market collapsed); Recipe: Monster Omelet (this sells extremely well, I don't know why, maybe it's because of the name, maybe because it starts at 225 cooking); low level fish recipes (Brilliant Smallfish, Longjaw Mud Snapper etc.); several Enchanting formulas, e.g. Oils both low and high level as well as SPS/LPS transmute; Strong Fishing Pole; ...

Comment on Monster Omelet: it's sold by only three vendors, two of which are in Felwood, the other one is in Winterspring -- these are deserted zones, Felwood is ugly and Winterspring is hard to access for low levels. Still the recipe is very nice to have when you're skilling cooking on your alt (or main, even) because it starts at 225 cooking, i.e. after you've done the cooking quest, and the ingredient is easy to farm. The recipe is unlimited so you can stock up and inject them into the market daily without extensive traveling on your part.

Look at the numbers on Wowhead: it costs 1g20 before discount and they list an average buyout of 17 (!) gold. A true money maker.

This is just what springs to my mind. Don't feel locked into trading with limited recipes only! You will be amazed how many unlimited recipes sell at obscene markups, every day. Sometimes it's just too inconvenient having to travel around to obtain a pattern you need. In other cases people just might not know about Wowhead and friends so they have no idea how to find a certain item/pattern other than at AH.

Looking at my own experience with vendor-sold items, probably the most profitable market overall is COOKING recipes -- so give that a try on your server if you haven't done so yet.

First off, thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread and given away there money making schemes, I’ve read it all, and finally managed to save up enough for my epic mount for my alt (my main still has crappy one)

My alt is a protection paladin, with mining and engineering, and since getting the mount I’ve been flying around Shadowmoon valley at 450% speed mining, collecting motes of shadow and aoeing demon hunter supplicants. I’ve already made about a grand in the day I’ve had the epic mount.

As far as the supplicants go, I’m able to take all of them out easily in badge/Kara/ZA gear, however I got a bit adventures and decided to pull every mob from the bottom of the ramp where Xi'ri is all the way up, I was able to kill them all using LOH (and my shield breaking), however I'm wondering if any of you super Paladins with a passive uncrushable set has tried it.

http://www.sixpackguild.com/image/us...licantp182.jpg

It’s probably not as efficient as just killing the supplicants and then mining until they respawn, but it’s funny.

I also checked out the nether wing daily quests, they just seem very ineffective for money as a prot paly, I can do the same aoe grinding on the flayer dudes inside, but it’s hard to get more than 4 at a time with the 45 other people in the mine. I don’t really care about the mount itself, but I’ve heard at higher rep the quests become much more profitable, is it worth the effort to rep up just to make more cash?