Seeing how Major Mana Potion is a drop, and also achievable after doing a quest chain, I don't see why it should be trainable.

I thought it was mentioned that you could be summoned to the outlands, and thus only would need to hit the requirement of level 50 (required for every skill past 300).

I don't really care if it is or isn't, my alchemist did the quest chain, I just wanted to note that it was not added as trainable.

Ah my mistake

However, they may fix this, given that it kinda eliminates the whole point of level-restricting the portal; I wouldn't count on it being an available route long-term.

Transmute Primal Might and Transmute Primal water to Air look useful enough that my equivalent alt dinged 60 on Sunday ,just in time for a Onyxia and ZG run.

You can have your alt summoned to the Outlands. You need to be 55 to go through the portal, I don't think there are any other restrictions.

Actually I really think thats the point of Unstable Mana Potions instead of giving people Major Mana Potions as trainable. Also you are talking about a BOP boss drop.

Is there anything unstable about the unstable pots, or is it just a name?

Just a name as far as I noticed.

Level 58 actually and of course must have the key.

What is interesting about that for rerollers is since you can start getting quests at 58, it may be a good idea to continue leveling then rather than waiting until 60.


There is a bug that a level 50 can be summoned across the portal.

I am not so sure about that. Aren't you limiting your money making via long cooldowns? I'd rather be selling tons of pots I think. I can be convinced however, why Transmute spec?

Because there is no getting around the long cooldown other than the chance to get one or two extra and trasmute items are always in high demand. Exhibit A being Essence of Undeath to Water transmute which up until shortly before TBC release still sold for a good chunk of change.

It works both ways though.

The money you make from transmutes is a static amount as it's limited by your cooldowns, thus the potential profit is capped.

The money you make from potions is a variable amount and only limited by the time you're willing to spend on it, this is then the only limitation on your potential profit.

Each Primal Might is going to be worth a stack of cash, with the mats to make it being the Outland equivalent of 5 different elemental essences, plus a transmute being required. It's easy to see them being worth 50g+ each. That's a lot of bonus money to be made if your transmute nets you two Primal Mights instead of one. Of course, I have no idea what the likelihood of Transmutation Master "proc'ing" is.

No, the limitation on profit from potions is demand. Which in my experience is very, very close to zero. The thing is that potions can me made in any amount for which you can provide materials. Anyone with an alchemist buddy or alt can therefore turn mats into potions at an unlimited rate, reducing the price of the potion to the sum of its mats. Transmuted goods on the other hand are inherently limited in supply by the timer, which creates profit.

There is some money to be made in selling potions-of-convenience during certain times, such as various Greater Protection potions at the peak of Naxx raiding. But unless the potion/elixir spec proc rate is improbably high, I don't see it contributing more to total profit than transmute spec.

So, uhm about Ancient Lichen
Good thing - in a full run of Slave Pens and Underbog i got litle more than 1 stack
Bad thing - Underbog run takes too much time, more than hour for sure.

Six months from now when the masses have hit level 70, we'll see the same thing with Primal Might transmutes that we saw with Arcanite Bar transmutes: hawking the transmute for 5g a combine. The only new benefit is keeping the bonus transmute, which I'm sure will be drama filled until people get accustomed to it.

25/36 items that use Primal Might also require Primal Nether, which is a true bottleneck. Half of those are BoP items. Out of the remaining 11 items, the Riding Crop will be highly desired and every TBC-enabled enchanter will need the rods. However, there's no reoccurring need for Primal Might aside from Enchant Weapon - Sunfire, which has a limited audience. When raiding, you can count on a reoccurring need for more potions and elixirs, but not transmutes. So I'm inclined to go with potions or elixirs instead.

What i see is the problem, is that potion/elixir mastery will in effect do nothing but lower the price that you will be able to sell potions at. With no limiting factor, everyone who took potion mastery will be producing (Potion + X*Potion), where X is your proc rate.

You basically introduce more goods into the market than it costs to produce in materials. That will bring down the value of the good you are producing as you are increasing the supply. You would be fine if the demand would also rise to meet the introduction of more potions, but that requires special circumstances, like the Naxx shadow pot fiasco.

It may very well happen that your better off transmuting X to Primal Air in the future, rather than primal might. Either way, the only real limitation on any craftable item is time. People who are not willing to wait that time are going to be shelling out for Primal Might, most notably the tier 1 BSmithing weapons.

EDIT: Forgot to read the post above mine, did some restating.

Speaking of Primal Air, there is a ton of recipes that use it. I would imagine it will be a big selling point.

Good discussion for and against. The points on Primal might's mat cost swayed me fairly well, getting a second item of that comparative effort for free is quite a lot of virtual time saved, whereas herbs are plentiful in the world.

When I was alchemist on my old rogue, I made by far the most money from transmutes. Potions and elixirs were only a moneymaker when there were only a few folks able to make the stuff (GFP comes in my mind) and when you farmed the mats own your own (essentially the real moneymaker was herbalism therefore). The choices also depend on the way your guild economy is run. My old guild had only very informal rules, you could ask for some crafting or mats but there were no guarantees somebody would supply them. If your guild economy is more organized you will want to have 2-3 potion and elixir masters each (in order to spread the workload and to have some redundancy in case somebody quits, gets banned and so on). All the other alchemists should be transmuters imho, since this is where the bottleneck in terms of time lies. Even though an individual transmute for outsiders might only cost 5 G, its more than what you get from someone who brings you the mats for some potions (and only few folks do so, most players have a good alchemist on their list who will provide his services for no costs charged - this might be reduced by the introduction of the masteries, but I doubt that this custom will disappear). Often you can buy the transmute mats on your own and resell the result of the transmutation if you don't care for spamming the trade channel. As most crafting professions this might not make you rich on its own but it will give you a steady source of income in order to pay your bills.

I really like how the act of picking the herb gives you a buff now and some of the herbs themselves can be used as food/selfbuffs. I gave up engineering to match my 375 Herb. Raid wise I think Alch will help more than Eng.