Of course, you can also mine motes of fire. And arguably, frost-immune mobs are harder to deal with than fire-immunes; frost mages on frost-immunes have no moves allowing them to regain distance (fire mages typically would have blastwave/dragonsbreath), while even on a fire-immune mob a fire mage still has access to nova and frostbolt to snare and root.

Also, there is one type of non fire-immune mob that drops motes of fire at a high rate... unfortunately, the only way to spawn them is to make Spellcloth, so they're not exactly a reliable source of it. ;)

Honestly, I really don't understand why everyone is so hot over transmute mastery...

Why in the world would you go with a mastery that you can only make use of once per day? Granted, the object being created is significantly more valuable, but over time, it will still equate to a profit margin of ~20% (or whatever the proc rate - and by proc rate, I mean the chance of getting one "extra" [a 2x counts as one, 3x as two, and so forth) happens to be) and you can only do it once per day, so your earnings are effectively capped at the market price of the item being created times the proc rate (I'm guessing Primal Might will level out at somewhere around 50-100g each [as most servers seem to have them around 200g right now, this seems like a reasonable estimate], so with a proc rate of 20%, you'll be making 10-20g/day from your mastery).

Why not go with potion/elixir mastery where your earnings are only capped by the amount the herbs you have? As a former "guild" alchemist (fairly small guild, but still), I usually made around 50g worth of potions per day, but keep in mind that this was with "old-world" potions. The newer potions are obviously going to be much more expensive, so reaching the point where you are creating items with a combined value of more than whatever the "best" transmute is will be much easier than before.

I guess it depends on if you are planning on creating massive amounts of potions for a raiding guild or just have alchemy as a "fire and forget" cash source on an alt.

If the proc rate is the same across the professions, I'd need to be making 50-100g worth of potions, EVERY DAY, to match transmute mastery. I'm not the guild alchemist; if I need potions or elixirs, I'll go to a pot/elixir master and have them make them instead (although for one-offs, I'll probably just accept the potential loss and make it myself.)

New potions will level out at the same cost, possibly cheaper, than old potions - they require the same amount of mats, and the price of herbs is effectively set by the difficulty of acquiring them, and herbs aren't exactly in short supply in Outlands. In addition, the wider availability of most herbs, and the possibility of farming Botanica for herbs, seems to me to suggest that herb availability will actually be *improved*, leading to a price drop in herbs, and therefore potions, over time. I'd personally bet on, long-term, potion prices settling to roughly the same price points as before.

The other thing to consider is that potions were rarely a money-maker over the base herbs, while transmutes usually represented added value. I'm making value on a transmute whether or not I get a proc. Potion/elixir mastery suffers from the problem that the base action (the 80% result) has no added value, or even a loss in value, and that the resultant can be quite hard to sell.

N*(X + 0.2*Y) represents, assuming a 20% proc rate, the value of each mastery when repeated N times. Since N is fixed at one per day for transmuting, transmute mastery can be modeled as X + 0.2*Y profit per day, with X representing the value added by a transmute, while Y is the value of a free product. Assuming might settles out to the 5g/50g value-add and final price points, transmute mastery is a profit of 15g per day, the mastery representing 10g of it.

Potion mastery, to take a counter example, has an X of nearly zero, potentially less than zero, while Y is probably in the 1g range. This gives 0.2*N*Y as the profit margin; 0.2*N being the likely profit on 1g potions, we're looking at making 75 potions a day to match the Might transmute. This also assumes you actually have a sufficient market to sell the 15 bonus potions.

I don't see the benefit in taking potion/elixir mastery on more than one or two people in your guild.

I know why i like EJ Forums =) There's always room for formula.

I have alchemy on my main but my guild has enough alchemists that I basically only keep it for the transmutes. One of my friends can make my potions for me if they are potion mastery.

I'll see you motes of water dropping off frost-immune mobs and raise you motes of air dropping off nature-immune mobs.

Metric tons of primal air required for BoP crafted elemental shaman epic set. That's going to be fun :)

I suspect transmutes from shadow and life to anything else, and from anything else to air and mana are going to be pretty hot for a few months... air's a component in the hunter/melee dps leg patch apart from anything else, and mana seems to be required in large amounts for just about everything (and only really drops in Netherstorm and up, so it's just starting to filter into the economy now.

I despise the Mage Slayers with a Passion though - must be one of the most aptly named mobs in the game. They reflect spells, are arcane immune, cleanse themselves of roots and snares and blink to you when at a distance. Farming them for mana makes the baby jesus cry... :)

But yes - in general, mana isn't hard to come by. There are at least 4 camps in Netherstorm I can think of where the mobs drop it plentifully and the respawn is fast. I haven't been in Shadowmoon Valley yet except to buy my mount, so I don't know if there is another are of the game where you can easily obtain it.

There's probably a whole economics thread just in this derail, but anyway.

1) It's interesting to hear that primal earth is in high supply for your server. I can't get hold of Primal Earth or Primal Fire at all, they are Sir Not Appearing On This AH- the miners must either be keeping what they mine, or have all taken up herbalism or something. Primal Shadow is currently at giveaway prices and Primal Life not much better, though. I agree with you that prices for Primals in general will stabilize around 10g, though, and such air/water primals as are showing up seem to be selling around that mark already.

2) We're really estimating these costs on the old-world scale. We all know gold is easier to make now, though... it's hard to predict the inflation. At least on my servers, Essence of Air and Essence of Life were always a 7-10g kind of propositions (at least up until I took pre-expansion vacation when 2.0 came in), so of course it seems fair to everyone that the new version of Essence of Air is priced at that level... but in a few months, 10g might well seem like chickenfeed.

A fortune is out there to be made for people who correctly predict their server's inflation and which items will particularly rise in demand and price, and stockpile now accordingly.

Life and Shadow are the cheapest because they are the first two to drop for a player as they level up - Motes of Shadow drop a lot in Hellfire Peninsula, and Life drops off quite a few mobs in Zanga Marsh. so the supply on them is much more plentiful, and unlike Earth / Air / Fire / Water / Mana, you actually get a lot of quests that require you to kill the mobs that drop them as well.

I think in the long run, Primal Shadow will definitely remain the cheapest of them all, purely because more mobs drop it than any other type, and it starts dropping right form the very first zone.

For comparison, BTW, Earth is on sale in the AH on my server, but Fire is completely missing - not even a single mote up for sale on the Horde side. I think it's due to the vast number of Primal Fires that a mage needs for their Spellfire set.

Well, Life and Shadow are always going to be cheap, since shadow is incredibly common and not very useful, and life is a byproduct of herbalism.

On ET, earth is down to around 11g, although fire, water, and air are still in the 30-50g range. Mana isn't showing up on the AH much, but I think that's partly because everyone's keeping theirs right now.

(Incidentally, I'm making good money off of the silver healer spellthread right now; 5 primal lifes at 1-2g per, a runethread, 5-10g in mats, selling for 25g on the AH with no real trouble, putting up 2-3 a day.)

I can already feel our Primal Might bubble popping on Ysera. Only after about a week, Primal Might has come down from 200 to about 140ish. I guess expecting to make 75+ gold per transmute was a little much.

I can't imagine how every server isn't flooded with primal earth. Our primal earth is down to 5-7 gold each now. Primal shadow is just under 1 gold each. If only transmutes from shadow---anything existed.

By comparison, our mana/fire/water are all about the same, around 30 gold. And air rounds out first place at 40 gold. Alchemists can still purchase primals, transmute, and resell for a good 30-40 gold profit, but i would imagine that will end very soon.

Well, not as good, but [Recipe: Transmute Primal Earth to Water] would net you like 20g depending on server etc.

The basic rule is the same though.

Profit = (Number of potions made)*(value of potons)*(proc rate)

Assuming there is a market for that many.

Primal might transform might be a bit overpriced, Assume the primals settle down to about 20g each for air, earth, fire, water and mana, which is I think realistic, could easly be less.

For transmutes
Profit = (value of transmuted item)*Proc rate

Basically means you have to make potions every day with the value of a primal might to make more money.

The primal might is maybe worth 100g, so you are making at least 50 2g each potions every day.

The euqation is pretty simple. Look at the final selling price of everything yo make in one day, potions, elixiers or transmutes. Whichever is higher will give you the most money assuming the proc rate is teh same for all specialisations.

To be honest that has convinced me. Unless you are making potions for the guild transmutation mastery is the way to go. Espeically with the number of herbs available in outland. Right now am not bothering ot pick up a lot. This will possibly change a bit when the raiding starts in ernest again and people are chugging potions like there is no tomorrow.

Then you look at the gem transmutes, ok they have a 48 hour cooldown, but I can't see me making potions with the same value as a skyfire diamond in 2 days.

If elixir mastery DOES Proc on flasks then you are looking at something else, as you could potentially be making a lot of expensive potions every day (but to be honest who buys flasks?, unless there are more titanic leggings like recipes coming.

The remaining question I have with regards to specializing is how long will Primal Might have value, indefinitely? Potions and elixirs will always have value, that's a given, but can we bank on that being the case for transmutations after the bulk of people craft their gear? Will it always be the case that people are crafting gear (new players, alts, etc.) or Blizzard at least introducing additional transmutations?

Edit - I forgot the most important question of all, is preliminary data indictating that the proc rate for transmuting is the same as potion/elixir making?

How long did people need Arcanite?

Arcanite selling for 20g and the transmute for 3-4g?

Not to speak of that getting gold is really really easy. I'm rather getting 4 more protection potions than a primal might every few days (don't forget that you need to get mats to transmute too, or sell it, DAILY). With a 16% procc rate like somebody posted earlier you're looking at just a bit more than 1 primal might every week, wow. 10g/day?

Yeah, obviously this would appear to be the standard for which to base things off but things aren't quite what they were. The expansion offers many more avenues for which the casual player can upgrade their gear beyond rares so they don't necessarily have to resort to crafted epics. Additionally, I would wager that the crafting of legendaries contributed in a non-trivial way to the arcanite market and wouldn't necessarily presume that expansion legendaries would require heaps of primal might.

If there are some means, aside from restarting the trade, to change your specialization, then this isn't nearly as big of deal.

I'm still in the air as to what mastery I will go. I have the elixer quest currently but am transmuting primal mights and attempting to sell them. If they sell good if not I'll probably just turn them in for the mastery quest.

The only thing that keeps me going that route is that personally I like using pots/elixers whenever possible and if I proc extras then I consider them throw aways. By this I mean I can pop one while running around grinding rep or mats. Where as the transmutes I dnt have much use for them and I dont think I will. The prospect of proccing two or more extra X transmutes is exciting because its like instant money. Even if the going rate for X product is 100g, if I got two or three extra from a proc, you better believe I am selling them for 80g just to get rid of them and grab the gold and run. But then I think I can only do this once a day and thats assuming I have mats for X transmute. I guess I could do arcanite bars as a fallback

Well that's sort of my point, that's exactly why it's not attractive. My initial impression was that all transmutes were on a separate timer, thus if you do all 4 transmutes in a circle (earth->water->air->fire->earth), you could basically pop up one free primal per day.

However, that's not how it works, all the transmutes share the same timer. Thus, when you're looking at the lolzb-esque fights and need massive greater X protection potions, you're only going to be able to transmute 1 primal per day, so transmute mastery would give you maybe a whopping 2 extra potions per week (via primals).

Now for a guild with multiple alchemists, then optimum is clearly going to be 1 elixir, 1 potion, and the rest transmute, that's sort of a given. But if you're a guild that doesn't have multiple alchs, or don't have a 1elixir/1potion person that has the guarenteed playtime that you require (since he'd have to do combines for the entire guild), transmute mastery seems to be by far the worst mastery of the 3.

p.s. The primal earth->water transmute can make some money atm, but the sporeggar grind is stupidly easy, so don't expect that to last. As someone stated in some thread (might be this one), the hibiscuses in underbog respawn while the mobs don't. And even if you didn't know that (and I sure didn't), the grind from honored->revered only took me 7hours.

More interestingly: how long did people need Essence of X?

Arcanite was never the profitable transmute.

A lot of people are missing the point. It's not all about gold and silver, it's also abut convience. If I were master of transmute, and I have to make this elixir, but the elixir guy isn't on, I'll probably just make it myself. Unless you have 3 alchemy alts or 2 other guildies who plays 24/7 and sits in Shatterath all day, I think that's what most of us will do.

Also, transmute mastery has one more draw back. You transmute, you're done. That's it for 24 hrs. But I can offer my speciality as potions/elixir master to as many people as I want. I can help this dude make some elixirs and another dude making another elixir at the same time. It's not about how much I will make from these transactions, but how much guildies / myself / friends I can help. Even if I do my transmutes for free, it's still once a day.

Edit: sure it's not for everyone, but to me elixirs or potions is the way to go. Elixirs tipped the scale because it can proc flasks too.

Hopefully Potion Mastery can procc flasks too :/