Disclaimer: I'm basing the following on fairly old information, which I'm not 100% certain is still accurate.

It already is, just because of item-level budgeting, at least if I understand the mechanics correctly. My understanding is that you could have an item with 116 points budgeted to strength, or one with 100 points budgeted to strength and 16 budgeted to a red socket - but because the item cost formula is exponential, you would end up with an item with 114 strength in one case, but one with 100 and 16 in the socket in the other (the numbers aren't exact but you get the idea) - and that's not even counting Socket Bonuses, which I believe are totally free on the item budget.

Nobody ignores socket bonuses to meet meta requirements. Everybody exploits their best socket bonuses in the course of filling their meta requirement, then ignores the rest to use the maximum possible optimal mono-coloured gems.

I also disagree with the removal of meta requirements, as without them everyone would just fill every slot with a 16 Strength/Int/SP/whatever gem and the perfect meta, and 90% of all cuts would instantly be rendered worthless.

That's not really a problem that originates from the meta requirements. It's just that single-stat gems always give the best return even if it means losing the socket bonus. Metagem requirements are just a nuisance that forces you to use a few crappy multi-colored gems. You "exploit" the socket bonuses to make the loss as small as possible.

As a caster I find it rather frustrating to have to socket +19 spellpower in every slot, because even with the best socket bonus (+5 Spellpower), putting in a SP/crit or SP/haste gem is still not worth it. IMO the whole gemming system needs an overhaul with regards to socket bonuses. They're just so pointless.

Even without epic gems, BS looks to be the best future investment. If WotLK is not going to see epic gems (which may well be the case after the recent JC nerf), the next expansion will add new gems with superior stats. Unless the lvl 90 BS profession quirk will be "add two sockets to gloves/bracers", being able to add a socket to an item will always be valuable.

Any speculation about which profession will have the best profession-specific perks in the next expansion is rather pointless. At that point, we can assume that all professions will be boosted to a max skill of 525 (if they continue with the increments of 75), with several new recipes for each profession being added as well.

I don't fully understand why everyone is so certain that blacksmithing will definitely become the best profession if epic gems are introduced. This is would only be true IF all other professions remain stagnant. If they do add epic gems, Blizz will likely add new profession-specific abilities that will add an equivalent bonus, i.e. add another "tier" of fur lining for LW, add better ring enchants, better dragon's eye gem cuts, etc. Blizzard has clearly decided to keep all professions on reasonable equal footing in terms of the bonus each gives. They aren't stupid, and know how doing something like only adding epic gems would give advantages to one profession or another.

For certain classes (pretty much everyone besides the pure SP/AP gemmers), the ability to choose which stat you add makes blacksmithing already much stronger than the alternatives, and on equal footing with JC after the nerf.

I think it's safe to assume Blizzard will keep the current (post JC nerf) balance once they introduce epic gems. Be it by restricting BS sockets or by buffing everything else.
There might be a slight nerf to tailoring if it becomes the new FoTM for spellcasters though.

Some examples of why BS beats the rest could be:
- intellect/spirit/haste instead of SP for certain healing classes
- strenght/agi/arp instead of AP for certain dps classes

I'd assume everyone who posts on this forum knows how valuable blacksmithing is already though, so we can safely stop "discussing" the value of BS and JC.

This is almost the only source of strategy/intelligence/"displaying mastery of the game" (to use one of Blizzard's terms) involved in gems/sockets. The only other time a DPS caster, for example, doesn't cram 19 spellpower in every single slot is when they need a little hit. The same mostly applies to melee except with hit and expertise being considerations.

Gemming is already pretty boring as it is, and taking out meta requirements would just make it even more uninteresting by removing even more decision making from the process.

The two main ways of making people interested in other gems would be either making socket bonuses better or making people care more about different stats. Removing meta requirements would be a step backwards, not forwards.

Best purple gem for a Marks hunter! (I'm pretty sure, I don't play my hunter too often any more)

Blizzard was just hedging their bets by making as many different stat combinations as they could, since they probably don't want a situation where EJ theorycrafts a fantastic hybrid gem that doesn't exist.

It just so happens that in the process of min/maxing you get to see a lot of stuff sacrificed on the altar of "Less than Optimal".

The assumption that only JC would be upgraded in a tiered fashion seems out of pattern. Blizzard can a introduce dungeon or faction reputation to facilitate the changes necessary for a wholesale upgrade to equalize the profession buffs.

Guess they're introducing Epic Gems after all, and changing the profession perks pretty much as expected

Titanium Ore prices will probably shoot through the roof soon.

I wonder whether they will go with 20 statpoints for epic gems or 24. 20 seems to be their original idea (cardinal rubies) though 24 points would allow them to balance the profession much more smoothly. For example using 24 points juwelcrafting would give exactly the same benefit as other professions (48 statpoints / 3 = 16) so epic gems would be 24 and dragon's eyes would be 40. When Blizzard only upgrades to 20 points epic gems, a dragon's eye will either be too weak (33 points) or too strong (34 points).

Anyway, Blizzard really has put some thought into those perk upgrades and we will also see if Blizzard considers the tailoring cloak enchants balanced or not.

I'd say it is most likely that storm jewels have the same stat points as the new epic gem cuts, as [Eye of the Sea] and the PvP gems also had the same amount of stats as the MH/BT cuts in TBC.

Giving the new gems more stats than a stormjewel would indeed make no sense, however marginal upgrades have never been an issue for raiders (think about what MH/BT gems cost initially compared to blue gems, and yes they sure got sold).

If you can buy them for honor, badges, prospecting, perhaps a rare titanium node mining and some "gem encrusted titanium node" after killing boss xxx, they probably won't be as expensive as the TBC ones were when they came out.

Which proves my point about marginal upgrades not being a problem even more

But anyway, it is unsure at this moment how they are going to implement this. For example, in BC the epic gems from honor were only a few limited cuts and unique(1) for each of them. Now I'm not saying they're going to do this again, but just giving them away for 10k honor like current gems is unlikely. If a gem costs 70k honor, you bet it's going to cost you a lot on AH. As for badges, they might implement them costing like 50-75 badges, (or valor/conq badges) which would cause supply to dry up fairly quick after launch. Transmutation will probably mean an "Icy Prism" for alchemy, with a day or 2 cooldown and will likely be given a proper gem cost.

The only remaining "problem" then is prospecting which is unfortunately in near infinite supply. However, bringing the droprate of the epic gems down sufficiently will limit supply here (or at least drive costs up to come in line with other methods of acquiring these gems).

You're probably right Ingmar, as the Stormjewel stats do in fact match the datamined epic gems:

[Runed Stormjewel] = [Runed Cardinal Ruby]
[Brilliant Stormjewel] = [Brilliant King's Amber]
[Solid Majestic Zircon] = [Solid Stormjewel]

*Standard "not-yet-implemented, subject-to-change" disclaimer applies

Considering the purchasability with Emblems of Heroism--which everyone has about a billion of at this point if they want--I don't think these are going to be, nor intended to be, rare and valuable. I feel this is somewhat supported with where the cuts come from, that is "Tokens", not "world drops".

Using Valor emblems fails to solve the "problem" of getting people to run 5-mans with alts. And believe me, it's a problem. By making super trivial 5 mans a source of gems (super trivial for tier 8 geared raiders), you have spots opened up for newly 80 alts to get gear and badges from heroics and help accelerate them up to endgame. It's a win.

Exactly. Hell, I'll start dumping my main through heroics come to that. I'd suspect--total WAG here--that the new gems will be ~15 emblems per. They need to be more expensive than the blue gems, and less expensive than the actual gear at that badge tier.

I suspect they'll be 20, given that blues are already 10, 20 is sufficiently high to deplete most people's stock quickly but not so high that you have to run a couple naxx runs to get.

I'd like to see them have valor badges also make these buyable at a slighly reduced rate, but it's not that special.

And unfortunately once the mass demand for gemming subsides at the start of 3.2, I don't see this as significantly improving the heroic market. Between prospecting, alchemy cooldowns, honor buying and heroic badges the supply should be quite high relative to the demand.

BC Epic Gems cost 15 Badges once they were added to vendors. Given that blue gems in both expansions have cost 10 of the Badge/Emblem obtained from Heroics, I suspect the precedent to continue.

It's tough to say how much the Heroic market will be affected until we know how effective prospecting will be, the cooldown and materials required for the transmutes, and the honor cost.

Edit: Got things confused. Blue gems weren't purchasable in BC.

When were blue gems buyable in TBC? Wowhead lists them as costing gold, and the only vendor selling them is at the Darkmoon Faire.

Darian probably misspoke, as far as I can remember rare gems were never buyable in TBC. We only had:

1. Uncommon gems from prospecting
2. Rare gems from prospecting and Brilliant Glass
3. Epic gems from raid nodes, rarely from Brilliant Glass, 15 BOJs each and various boss drops
4. PvP-Epic gems from arena points