This is just my perception, but I have noticed the same thing too. I was regularly getting 3x Crystallized Life from herbing Icethorn and Lichbloom in Storm Peaks. I can't help but think this is related to crafting the new Darkmoon cards from inscription. Remember how Primal Shadows were dirt cheap before they removed mote drops from demon-like mobs?
I can't really say for Frost Lotus though, I've been getting abysmally few through all of WLK compared to how often I herbed Fel Lotuses in BC.

Quiet, you! I almost have my tundra mammoth paid for!

On a related note, putting the 16 Crit Rating gem on the Sons of Hodir rep guy makes me cry, both with joy, and horror. I keep neglecting the Sons of Hodir, because I hate doing the same quests every day, but at the same time, I know I need the shoulder enchants, and know I'll make a killing once I hit exalted.

With putting all recipes, for the most part, on cheap shard traders, enchanting doesn't look like it will have any really profitable enchants. Jewelcrafting will, eventually, be in the same position, because the daily-limited tokens, and the rep enchants will eventually be had by all. However, until that time, since few people on server run enough heroics to be exalted with more than one faction (if that), the rep-cuts are pretty good profit.

EDIT: Does it seem like the way of obtaining "rare" patterns was done by different teams, with almost no coordination? Enchanting and leatherworking hand in easily obtainable mats. Cooking and Jewelcrafting are time-limited with dailies. Tailoring is based off easy achievements. Alchemy and Inscription are time-limited but random. I don't know about Engineering and Blacksmithing. It really seems like different teams were told to eliminate 1% drop rate patterns, and did it in very different ways, leaving different professions far easier to obtain all patterns, with enchanting, for instance, essentially putting all patterns on the Trainer, but just with the cost being in shards, not gold. Although I've heard much complaining (in-game) from it, my personal preference is the the Jewelcrafting daily method, plus putting some patterns on exalted reps. I don't really like everyone running around with every single enchant.

I noticed the same disparity of methods, but to me this said "hey, we have no idea what the best way to do this actually is, we just know the old way was bad -- let's try a zillion new things and see what works!".

I've found this to be a great method for my main, on whom I'm a completionist. But it makes my alts' professions rather useless outside of DEing and Prospecting. I really wish they would make some of the grindy-rep recipes BoA so my alts could get a little better use out of their professions.

Interesting, I'm the reverse. I've had Frost Lotuses coming out of every orifice from my herbing, but by the sounds of it far fewer Crystallized Lifes. Hence I'm not really convinced there's been a huge change as yet.

Edit: I've seen a few complaints about the daily nature of the JCing currency. From the point of view of someone who has JCing on an alt, this is a great opportunity. A lot of mains are using their awards on Dragon's Eyes and the associated recipes while I have no such concerns. This allows me to pick up the most cost effective recipes without too much competition at this point, so the market has bottomed out as quickly as some of the other professions (e.g. Inscription).

All Blacksmithing recipes I'm aware of are learned from the trainer. The same is true for Engineers with the sole exception of the motorcycle.

The Jewelcrafting method works well, but I'm afraid it will penalize those who come late to the game. If additional options for getting tokens aren't added anyone starting six months from now will be ridiculously behind. It's the longest and most drawn out of the professions, and maybe that's by design.

I think Douglas is fairly on the mark. I don't think it's a coincidence that professions are displaying new means of learning recipes in pairs. It seems very intentional and experimental.

Glinting Monarch and Pristine Monarch are fairly comparable for rogues because we get 1 AP per agi, plus some crit. Therefore, depending on a rogue's exact gear setup, 1 agi can be worth slightly more or slightly less than 2 attack power, and it varies on a person-to-person basis. Thus, while one might be generally better, people will buy whichever one they feel is better for them, and apparently a lot of people like 16AP/8hit gems.

I know from at least talking with a few Gladiator rogues that they always chose 16AP instead of 8 agility because of resilience, and the fact that they wanted to hit and crit harder instead of more often. This is probably a very elementary answer, but it at least shed some insight into why I saw a ton of rogues running around with no agility gems.

There is no etched monarch topaz in the game at the moment, so any class that doesn't really want agility is going to go for the AP one.

Pristine is better for a majority of hunters currently. If you check out the different threads in the Hunter forum, for most sets of gear 2 AP is better than 1 agility. I know it's the one I opt for.

Just an addition of some relatively little-known profession drops that:

Cosmetic shirt recipes (very detailed ones at that) are BoE random drops across Northrend (presumably off mobs that drop cloth), although only tailors can roll on them.

Blacksmithing has 4 dropped recipes (Reinforced Cobalt) which are for uncommon resilience gear. They're actually the best way to level from 375 to 415.

Enchanting has cloak resistance drops (which are currently as useful as the reputation head resist enchants) from various mobs in Icecrown; it's possible that some rarely killed mobs drop other recipes too, but impossible to tell for now.

That's server-dependent. Pristine is much much cheaper on my server, probably because it's one of the few blue cuts you get from the trainer.

Though this might be slightly off topic, I made it a point to download the Wowhead Client just for situations like this - especially since this is a new expansion, and people are going to be looking for new droprates and such. I'd advise anyone who intends on farming these patterns to download the client, as it would greatly help out the community (e.g. those who don't read this topic) as a whole, since Wowhead seems to be the go-to place for items and such.

I find the Inscription to be the longest and most drawn out of the professions. Why? Because it's random. As a JC you have the possibility of picking up the gems you want most and then what other classes want most. Before WotLK came out for five days straight I got DK minor glyphs. Useless. I still haven't learned the 50% aquatic form minor for my druid when it's one of the first three I would have purchased it it was done that way. It also doesn't allow catering to the market or your guild. Design? Okay, but maybe it just goes to the point that there wasn't a lot of thought put into the actual Inscription profession and they spent too much time on glyphs. I'd much rather be put in the JC/Cooking boat.

This. For Alchemy as well, there are a lot of different possible Elixirs, and the three main Alchs in my guild are all trying to talk to each other to figure out what we have. The first week we all got something different, but the second week we all discovered Crazy Alch Potion. This week I think two of them got the same thing (or one we had already discovered between us). So far I've been the lucky one, getting both [Elixir of Accuracy] and [Potion of Speed], though I wish the Potion Specced one of us could have gotten Potion of Speed. If Alchs had some form of daily token system, we'd be able to better serve our guild.

Could anyone give me a ballpark figure for how much it would cost to level Jewelcrafting up to around 400 skill level? Assuming I purchased everything from the AH.

Totally dependant on server, time of day etc. So no.

A list of the approximate mats needed (or link to a non-retarded guide) would, however, be useful.

I did this very recently, and the answer is...it depends heavily on your server econ. Getting to 200 skill is usually pretty trivial - it uses cheap common mats, but you're still looking at needing 3-4 stacks of [Baroness Silverlaine's Locket]s, a couple stacks of [Lesser Moonstone], and a stack each or so of [Moss Agate]s, [Jade Ring of the Everliving], and [Deadly Citrine]s. Supply and price on the AH fluctuates heavily, but it's just not that expensive.

Past 200 it's still fairly easy, but you'll need silly numbers of [Aquamarine Signet]s and [Star Ruby] - not to mention [Flask of Forest Mojo]. when I did it there just wearn't enough gems on the AH, so I ended up prospecting some ore I had in my bank, and selling the surplus gems back on the AH. You'll also use an amazing amount of [Truesilver Bar]s if you do it the "easy" way; that's cheap on my server luckily.

Past 260 or so, it's AMAZINGLY terrible, you'll need about a stack each of [Azerothian Diamond]s, [Large Opal]s, and [Huge Emerald]s, plus a lot of [Enchanted Thorium Bar]s. I couldn't find the gems, and ended up buying thorium ore off the AH and prospecting it. Total cost to 300 was about ...1k gold, after DEing/auctioning/vendoring everything.

Outlands (300 to 350) was cheap; the AH seems flooded with uncut green and blue gems for barely more than vendor price, and you don't need any dropped recipes. Really, this is the easiest and fastest step. The downside is you'll end up vendoring everything you make, so it costs more than you think.

Once you hit 350, there's not much more to say. Cut green gems and/or cheap rings like [Stoneguard Band] - the mats are pricey, but if your smart, careful, and aren't in a hurry you can probably come fairly close to breaking even. If you're impatient, you'll blow quite a few gold here. (Of course, either way, you'll spend a fair chunk of gold just be learning recipes from the trainer.)

In summary, you could probably blow 3k gold easily if you were in a hurry, and got unlucky on the AH. 2k gold is probably a good target (and is about what I paid to get to 430 skill), especially if you have anything in your bank or can beg guildies for some key mat you can't find. If your careful, DE/AH everything possible, and farm a couple of the worst mats, you might get away with 1k gold.

A good guide/mats list for the 1-300 grind is on wowwiki. It doesn't cover the 300 to 450 steps, but that's trivial enough I'm not sure what the point would be.

It's not that I'm just seeing things, but last week there were a maximum of 10 Eternal Life up on the Auction House for ~75 g each. Right now there are 138 Eternal Life with a minimum price of 43 g per piece. The price on Frost Lotus hasn't changed, but i doubt anyone would buy a lot of those, so the AH wouldn't reflect any changes on the drop rate. But i really do believe they did something to the drop rate, out of the last ~40 stacks of Icethorn/Lichbloom I got only 2 Frost Lotus and about a dozend Eternal Lifes.

I haven't found any worthwhile recipe to do with truesilver but the one using Heart of the Wild, if you go farm those. All the other uses multiple gems, which considering their price on the AH, probably isn't a good idea. Mithril isn't really cheap either for prospecting, so I wouldn't advise that. However considering finding mojos on the AH is probably tough, I guess if you only want to AH stuff and don't care about money, yeah best way.

Again for the last few points, I'll go farm a bit and do these instead of the usual expensive gem stuff: [Ring of Bitter Shadows]

I had quite a few arcane crystal laying around(they're also about 1/4 of the price of large huge emeralds on the AH), essence of undeath is pretty easy to farm nowadays, so it leaves only demonic runes which might be annoying, but shouldn't be that bad if you're alone in felwood and AE the whole camps. I might just end up throwing 500g at the last 10skillups and not farm though.

I'm preparing mats to lvl JC myself, like when the patch hits(keeping alchemy for now, in case they make some last minute changes to tradeskills), and I already have most of the stuff from mining/smithing leftovers. However it's definitely not cheap, the low level gems, at least on my server, are all overpriced. Goes from 1g for the lvl 10ish gems, malachite/tigerseyes stuff, to 40-50g for the last preBC stuff. The first 300points seem pretty expensive, even abusing heavystone/solidstone/densestone statues until they turn grey. After that however, it looks rather cheap, lots of BC green gems and then lots of northrend green gems/blue gems which you can sell for a benefit, along with those cheap rings you can DE. I'm looking at around 1k spent, but I did have plenty of stuff laying around. Assuming I bought everything, I'd say I'd be looking at 3k or 4k total, which is definitely expensive. And it will take a few days to get all the aquamarines I need, I've bought everything there was on the AH.

Anyone have information regarding which gems (epic/blue) will be contained in the new Jewelcrafting ability Icy Prism, being slated for introduction in the next patch?

Looks like it will be the WotLK version of Brilliant Glass. Noticed the ability on mmo-champ but details are still a bit scarce it seems.

Seems to be three rare gems and 0-1 Dragon's Eye.