There is also nothing stopping them from introducing an emblem of heroism->emblem of valor conversion (at say 2 or 3 to 1) at some future date, effectively making those rewards more accessable.

Zarhym's comment was a bit odd as it implied that there would not be many new badge rewards in 3.1 despite the release of Ulduar. I had expected that we would get new badges for the higher end content, which implies new rewards. Still I guess we will know for certain in a week or so.

I've tried for the last hour or so to figure out a formula that would tell me whether it's profitable to buy ore and prospect it.

I've tried using the "drop" percentages from wowhead but I can't for the life of me figure it out. Basically what I'm looking for is a formula that would let me input price for rare and uncommon gems and it would tell me how much one "prospect" would be worth. I realise it would be based on statistical data, but that's irrelevant since I can prospect quite a bit of Saronite (10s of stacks/day) so bad luck streaks wouldn't hurt me that much.

If any of the more math-able minds out there are willing to figure the formula, I'd be deeply grateful.

Saronite ore drops ~1 blue quality gem per stack, of random colour. That's all you need to know. Work out the average price of a blue quality gem, and compare to the price of a stack of ore.

Saronite ore also drops ~4.5 green quality gems per stack, which you can convert to necklaces and disenchant if you have a DE alt. This second step is much more time-consuming, but can double your profit margin depending on your server's economy.

Thanks for this, could you please elaborate a bit on how you came to these figures?

It's obvious that Blizzard wants to change this, which is exactly why Naxx is comparatively so accessible. If you think back to pre-TBC days, I think it would be fair to say that the vast majority of people that did 5-mans also did UBRS, which was 10-man, and many of them even had a go at ZG or AQ20. The expectation moving forward seems to be that the population as a whole will do the 10-man content, although probably not the "hard mode" of each encounter.

By prospecting an average of ~60 stacks of ore per day since the release of WoTLK.

You can also work it out from Wowhead though. Wowhead tells you you have about a 4% chance per prospect for each individual blue quality gem. 4% x 6 colours = 24% chance of getting some colour of gem. 4 prospects per stack of ore, means that you expect 1 blue gem per stack.

Did you even read my post? My point was that if you do not introduce new items that can be bought by the badges that drop from heroics then heroics will become deserted very soon. Most people that care will have the badge gear they want and the new players will get it after a few weeks of doing heroics.
So my point is that they will, in all likelihood, add a system where heroics will continue to improve your character patch after patch. Just like in TBC. Meaning that emblems of heroism will probably still be worth something after the patch.

We'll see. I'd bet money against it.

If they do add more items to the existing badge vendors, I expect them to be the same ilevel as the existing items, not higher.

I do expect them to add more sellable and heirloom items. Maybe we'll see more BoE epics for the AH. Maybe we'll see BoA shields, or more weapon choices, or necklaces, or pants. But I really don't see Heroism badges ever getting us any items of higher ilevel than 200, not until Blizzard gives it a try this way and convinces themselves it can't be made to work. The old TBC badge progression was there because too many people were locked out of raiding. The solution this time is to not lock people out of raiding. I think it's okay if heroics become (relative) ghost towns, just as it's okay that Zul'Gurub has.

Instead of higher ilvl epics perhaps better itemised ones. We all remember how it went when then sunwell badge epics were bestinslot or close to it (in part due to ilvl) because of a perfect statpoint allotment.

Unfortunatly Heroics are mostly useless as it is right now aside from people chasing acheivements. They were strikingly easy compared to TBC and trivial to complete. Unless Blizzard intends to add new encounters/retune dungeons I think they would be hard pressed to continue to reward people for doing instances that were trivial in leveling greens.

But knowing Blizzard they will have some type of carrot to keep non raiders happy.

Darkmoon Faire vendor isn't nearly as profitable as it was in TBC but can be worth camping.

Lhara now carries wotlk herbs, leather and crystallized elements and it looks like the professor is solely scrolls and whatnot.

As an example you can purchase arctic fur for ~12g from Lhara so parking an alt on the faire is still fairly profitable.

Oddly the vendor has limited quantity gems but sells for them 10 badges of heroism. I can't help but think that is a bug since it's completely redundant.

I have to disagree with you and others on the uselessness of heroics. You're looking at the situation through a narrow perspective, specifically that of the hardcore raider. From that vantage point heroics certainly were exceptionally easy and without much merit. However, it's a mistake to assume that is true for everyone.

While it's possible, as Exewut noted, for a new player to get all the heroic gear they need in a couple of weeks it is a mistake to assume what is possible automatically translates into the actual. For example, I just got the achievement for 100 Emblems of Heroism a couple of days ago; I've been level 80 for a little over two months.

That's not to contest that heroics will diminish in significance as time goes on (particularly if no new gear is added), but there will be a significant number of people still lacking current heroic gear by the time Ulduar hits. I don't doubt that Blizzard will add new rewards for Emblems of Heroism, but it's clearly possible we won't see a BC-esque progression.

Your numbers are totally wrong.

If there is a 4% chance of getting any of 6 rare gems on a single prospect, the chance of getting at least one rare gem in 4 prospects is 1-(.96^24) = 62.46%

This is presuming the chance of blue gem spawns is independent, which is how it has always appeared to me. Clearly there is something slightly different at work for green gems since every prospect always gives at least one green.

What Kalroth is actually trying to say is there's an expected value of 0.96 blue gems per stack prospected.

Yes, but we don't care. We want the expected number of gems per stack, not the chance to get at least one gem per stack. The fact that Kalroth gave a number greater that 100% should have been a clue that we're talking expectations, not simple probabilities. To calculate it your way, you need to add up all the following:

1x the chance to get 1 gem PLUS
2x the chance to get 2 gems PLUS
3x the chance to get 3 gems PLUS
4x.... etc.


Alternatively, and much more simply, you can just add up the expectations.

4% chance to get each blue gem on a single prospect means your expected number of blue gems per prospect is 6 x 0.04 = 0.24
An expectation of 0.24 blue gems per prospect leads to an expectation of 0.96 blue gems from 4 prospects (one stack). That's the relevant number, that's the one the OP was given, and that's also my personal experience from prospecting over 5000 stacks of ore.

No, no, no. The 4% is wrong. And Tessari, your math using the 4% is wrong. (1-(.96^4) = ~.18, not .6246).

There are really two questions here.

(1) What is the average number of blues you receive per prospect?

Using the Wowhead data as of 2PM EST today, that number is 64462/269088 = .2396. (64462 is the sum of the "count" values for blue gems, 269088 is the "total prospects" value.) Let's call that 0.24, the .0004 difference is statistical noise.

Since the count data strongly suggest that the drop rate does not vary by color of blue gem, this is the only value that should concern a profit-calculating JC over the long run. Over the long run, you will receive 0.96 blue gems per stack (.24 x 4), with an equal number of each color. If you are only valuing blue gems, the gold value of one stack of ore is then 0.96 x B/6 where B is the value in gold of a basket containing one of each of the six different colors of blue gems.

(2) What is the percentage chance you will receive *at least one* blue of any kind in a particular prospect or stack?

This is a different question not precisely answerable from the data, because the Wowhead "count" data is simply a sum of all gems received so far from 269,088 prospects, including the rare prospects that produced 2 or more blue gems. (Note that if you sum all the green and blue "count" values, the total is 359,969 gems from those 269k prospects.) Due to the rare double blue procs, the % chance of getting at least one blue from a prospect must be slightly less than 24%, probably in the range of 23.0% - 23.5% would be my guesstimate. Using 23.5% as an estimate, the % chance of getting at least one blue per stack would be 1 - (.765^4) = 65.8%.


And a subsidiary question:

(2A) What is the percentage chance that you will get *at least one* of the particular blue gem you really want (e.g. Scarlet Ruby) from prospecting n number of stacks?

Since the chance of a particular color dropping from one prospect is .04, this chance is 1 - (.96^(4xn)).

Here are the results for various values of n:

1: 15.1%
2: 27.9%
4: 48.0%
10: 80.5%
25: 98.3%

This shows why prospecting can frustrate people: On average, you will get 1.6 rubies from 10 stacks. (.04 x 40 prospects). But it's not rare to prospect 10 stacks and not get one. You can only really count on receiving averages over high volumes of prospecting, such as 25+ stacks .

(hoping these posts don't get anyone in trouble, because i'd really like clarification on prospecting values)

I was also under the assumption that on AVERAGE, over whatever number of stacks it takes to reach the average, you were guaranteed one blue gem per stack. if you prospected 1000 stacks of saronite, you could pretty reasonably expect to get 1000 blue quality gems from it, give or take a few. It made sense to me this way, as if that's how the whole system was designed. Are we saying this is wrong? Has anyone seriously tracked this over a significant number of prospects, rather than relying on anecdotal/wowhead evidence?

When you are talking about statistics, nothing is ever guaranteed. You could prospect 20 stacks and get 0 blue gems, although this would be incredibly unlikely. From what I gather in this thread, the average is actually .96 blue gems per stack. This is close enough that calling it 1 blue per stack is pretty much right, but in the long run it will be slightly less than that. On average if you prospect 1000 stacks you could expect to see 960 blue gems.

From the wowhead Saronite Ore prospecting numbers:

total number of blue gems = 64,462
stacks of saronite prospected = 269,088 / 4 = 67,272
blue gems per stack = 0.958

I don't know about this. I haven't been on a guild run in WotLK of any raid. I just pug them from groups advertising in LFG and the trade channel. I'm in a WoW study where I track my time in game, and I logged a mighty 5.5 hours of WoW last week. And I say... Heroics are useless for non-achievement progression after a week or two of getting to some minimally acceptable level for 10 man raids.

I don't disagree that some cross section of the population might somehow find them useful still. But I sure don't believe that any of my friends are in that population, I'm not in that population, and for playing 5 to 10 hours a week and only doing PUGs, I hardly consider myself a hardcore raider.

Make sure you check the price of the various BoE bracers. On M'G (high horde raider population), they are under 2k, so may not be worth it for you.

Also you can buy PvP gear with badges.


I agree that it is very likely Ulduar 10 mans drop emblems of valor and 25 mans drop a new kind.

I did this with Veiled Noble Topaz back in TBC for awhile and what you can do if it is possible for you is swoop up the patterns but sell on the opposite faction and use that money to either cut even or make more profit from discrepancies between horde <-> alliance. So you pretty much milk your pattern for an extra few weeks until those other JC'ers finally get their hands on theirs.

I was thinking about something to make money, but since it's pretty risky, I thought I would ask people who probably have already tried it: Monopolizing an item on AH.

On our server, there's never more than 40 abyss crystals on the AH and they're max 80 gold each. So I was wondering if buying all of them and relist them higher would be a viable strategy for fast gold?

ex: 30 abyss crystals on AH with an average price of 80 gold. I buy them all(I have the money for it) and relist half of them for 100-120 gold right after, thus gaining 40 gold per abyss crystals and increasing the demand for them.

There are 2 possible problem I can see:
1- people will see what I did and wait a few days to see if prices drop back to 80 gold, therefore I won't sell.
2- I will have to check AH almost 24/7 for the first few days to make sure nobody undercut me too much.


So is it possible? Should I do it with another item like frozen orbs? This method obviously has to be done with a really high demand item so people will still buy it if I double the price and also has to be done with an item wich is pretty rare, else I won't be able to buy all of it. Any tips from people who have done it would be appreciated. I don't wanna try with no background and loose 2000 gold :P