My Apology, i wasnt aware they didnt stack with potions. i guess that changes a few things in my head.

What i was referring to is more the financial aspect of JC paying off in the long run. The DPS gain from the JC only Gems will not make or break you as a Ret paladin. they dont now, and wont later either. Would it be worth leveling JC from 0-(cap) whatever it gets raised to? im not so sure because of the cost that materials are going sky rocket for almost all the professions when wrath comes out, Enchanting and JC especially.

Likewise with LW, 100AP drum is not anything to hoot and holler about. Unless duration changes or CD changes, it averages out to like 25AP over 2 Minutes when you can pop it again. Unless your a LW already, definately not worth spending your gold solely on that. I was not aware of the new Leg Armors, does someone have a link to those handy? They might be LW only saving grace for me at this point.

Edit: I see the Wyrmscale one now thanks for the link Av, Those look promising and shall be taken into consideration unlike Drums because our melee group always has ATLEAST 1 rogue and 1 shaman, both should be LW for their gear making me having them, kind of a moot point

Tailoring's Embroideries and Engineering's Augments (let me go ahead and coin that term) do not stack with regular enchants.

New ring enchants: enchant ring - Wowhead Search

LW-specific Leg Armor: http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...herwork_27.jpg

If we break it down:
* Mining: has a 12 stat advantage (+35 STA)

* Skinning: has a 25 stat advantage (25 crit rating)

* Blacksmithing: has a 32 stat advantage assuming 2 extra sockets with rare gems, or a 40 stat advantage assuming epic gems

* Leatherworking: has a 33 stat advantage (18 crit rating + 30 AP over the non-BOP Leg Armor)

* Alchemy: has a 45 stat advantage (90 AP over a non-Mixology Flask of Endless Rage). This may change depending on new Elixirs/Flasks

* Enchanting: has a 40 stat advantage (2x 40 AP or 2x 20 haste rating)

* Jewelcrafting: Each BOP gem you use is an 11 stat advantage over a rare gem, or a 7 stat advantage over an epic gem. There are 7 "usable" gems for Ret (haste, expertise, STR, crit, AP, hit and ArmPen), which makes JC a 77 stat advantage at the extreme high-end, or a 7 stat advantage at the extreme low end.

Added those since I missed them.

Personally (despite having Alchemy) I'm almost inclined to go with Enchanting over Alchemy. 10 AP difference is worth sacrificing in return for having the +80 AP always (Arena comes to mind, though that's not really the focus here).

One thing I noticed is: Given enough effort and money, you could probably drop and re-level multiple professions: Get some rings, enchant them, drop enchanting, get alchemy = Net double benefit (sort of like I'm doing at the moment, I have enchanted rings but I dropped enchanting long ago).

Take that further with leatherworking armor patch, jewelcrafting epic gems and it can stack up quiet high. I wonder if they'll close this loophole somehow or leave it to the insane *cough* to exploit.


Done.

I'm still wondering if they'll even add new alchemy trinkets in wotlk. With Mixology being a passive skill and potions becoming very weak, they'd have to think about a new effect on alchemy trinkets that makes them worthwhile.


Well as it stands now, Enchanting (80 AP) blows Skinning (25 Crit) and leatherworking (30 AP and 18 crit rating) away.

That's pretty much why I'm making this list, as we gather more info, we can get closer to breaking it down to point by point and adding "side benefits" as a note to each profession.

Not that this has been applied to other professions, but adding a Blacksmithing socket to a glove or bracer causes it to have a Blacksmithing requirement.

I'm not sure if it's a requirement to just benefit from the one socket, but you can still wear the item; like you can wear a Felsteel set but need to be a BS to get the set bonus, or if it's a requirement to be able to wear the item at all, but either way effectively locks you in to BS.

I would not be surprised if enchanting a ring adds an enchanting requirement, using the BOP Leg Armor adds an LW requirement, and so on.

Don't forget the 'executioner' on cloak from Tailoring as well. The only thing that may stand in your way as far as dropping and reacquiring multiple professions is the new profession token system based on a daily quest. However hardcore you are, if you're locked into getting one token a day from a daily profession quest it may take some time to grab some of these recipes once you've levelled the profession.

I guess this will be Blizzard's way of making the kind of min-maxing you are describing more difficult while still not making it impossible. However, exactly which patterns/recipes are based on tokens and how many tokens they require remains to be seen. If things like ring enchants are rep based like at 70 currently, you'll have no problem stacking multiple professions (assuming they don't all go the way of the extra sockets described in the above post).

To be honest, I certainly hope they close that loophole. Otherwise they're opening it up for a whole new level of grinding. And before anyone mentions "hey it's not required", remember: If it's possible, people will grind it.

Check the previous page, I've updated it to the latest Alchemy flask (180 AP -> 270 AP: 90 AP benefit). If only there was a way to have a post carry over to each page for a while. I'll copy it over to the latest page once we get more things down I guess.

Regarding Jewelcrafting, I'm not so sure how that 77 stat advantage will work out in practical benefit, especially with the worth of STR being so extremely buffed for us in WotLK (from 1 point of STR being worth 1.1, to being worth 1.15 and 0.345 spellpower before kings). We should break down optimum gems for each color to see which of the "extra stat epic gems" fall short of the optimum (obviously this changes again away from jewelcrafting as soon as "normal" BoE epic gems are released, if they do).

Avitus: Thread moves fast, good call on the Alchemy changes.

I do agree that Jewelcrafting's perk is not quite as cut-and-dried as my post may have made it out to be - I simply listed all the stats that might be at all useful to Ret's DPS, but I also acknowledge that differences in stat weights may cut down on how many of those different stats we'll actually use; which is why I established a 7 to 77 range.

Don't forget armorsmiths also get an extra meta.

I know that death knights were complaining about their rune enchants disallowing standard enchants. The blizz response was that it wasn't possible for 'technical reasons' and that they'd just make sure that the runes were always the best choice for enchants. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble digging up the post for a link since it was about 3 weeks ago.

A week or two ago, I was able to apply Frozen Rune Weapon (a 30 min. weapon buff formerly from the Frost tree) onto my weapon that had a Rune forged onto it. Both were on it at the same time. I have to imagine a normal weapon enchant would also be able to go on if this worked.

Weapons support permanent enchantments and temporary enchantments. Enchants and runeforging are permanent. Poisons, Pre-WotLK totems, weight/sharpening stones, Frozen Rune Weapon, Shaman weapon buffs, etc, are all temporary. You can have one of each.

The cloak embroideries are permanent, they overwrite and do not stack with other cloak enchants. The idea is that they're significantly better (since cloak enchants are some of the weakest enchants currently), so it's a net gain.

That's actually an excelent point, extra sockets + stronger gems may be the best combo there is in the game. Not only great for ret, but all specs.
BS is a 40stat advantage asuming epic gems, that advantage would be increased to 54 thanks to JC. That's a 14 stat gain just for mixing both profesions.

Will have to wait untill we see how armorsmith works tho... an extra metagem sounds too good to pass.

As I'm currently filling any role needed by the raid, I'm fancying dropping my blacksmithing for inscription, the extra glyph sounds like a really good asset for anyone who wants to be a little more prepared for anything.

I'll keep my engineering regardless of ret buffs because that new engineer bike sounds like pure win to me and Im a sucker for cool stuff. Altho it would be hard for me to give up my ZA bear for it.

The only thing that bothers me about choosing to switch professions now is the fact that they always add something cool that blows everything else out of the water in a content patch later on. I almost picked up leatherworking for drums/sunwell patterns until I heard about the WotLK debuff.

At either rate, I see them buffing inscription a little more in every direction at some time after release.

edit: an extra metagem? man, thats gonna be hard to beat...

I have enchanting and JC currently, and having a hard time deciding if I should swap to something else. Enchanting is just so damn useful for sharding your old gear (and everything else), and enchanting mats are always going to be in demand. All in all I'm probably going to stay with these. Sure would be nice if they added a 3rd profession slot...

Remember that the BoP Jewelcrafting gems are unique-equipped, so the stronger gems part of the synergy only applies while you have less sockets total in your gear than you have stronger than usual gems you can make. I believe someone said above it was 7 gems total that were useful? So if you have 7 sockets already on your gear, having both blacksmithing and jewelcrafting won't give you any extra advantage for having both.

Not to nitpick, but I don't see the synergy here. The "special" gems you can use are of a limited number. There would only be synergy if this number exceeded the number of total sockets in your gear.

Edit: Damn you chicken!

I guess that would be "convenient", however lets focus on the main priority here "good for ret (DPS)". Inscription pretty much is at the very bottom of the pile for that since (at least for now) there's not a single good ret glyph for PvE (disregarding the glyphs that increase buff effects, which any paladin can use).

That extra glyph spot would be just as much a waste as all the other ones we have.

As a gain when doing multiple jobs: I'm sure you can switch glyphs when respeccing, anyone know more about that? Are they more like gems that get destroyed (in which case CaptBooyah might have a point) when you switch them out, or can you take them out and put them back in like gear?

Just to re-iterate on the gems front, for Ret, the only 'special' gems that I see as worthwhile are the +hit, +expertise, + Str, and possibly +AP (depening on on much Str the non special gems give). With the extra synergy Str is getting, I would guss at this point that a non special Str gem is a bigger dps boost than a special haste/crit/agi gem.

However i'm still a big JC fan, and one myself, since the gems can fit all three roles + we (will hopefully) get some nice BoP rings/trinkets (which I always find the hardest slots to fill)

The JC-only Bright Dragon's Eye is +54 AP

The rare Bold Scarlet Ruby is +16 STR. With 15% Divine Strength and 10% BoK, that's "only" 40 AP.
The epic Bold Cardinal Ruby is +20 STR. With the same as above, that's only 50 AP.

Unless I'm missing another scaling factor, the AP Dragon's Eye is still better than a STR regular gem.

Yeah, you are right, we are probably gonna have far more than 7 sockets in our gear if we are BS.

Edited: I mentioned the 10% extra STR Blood DK's used to give, but I just realised the bonus got changed from str to just ap

The +haste gem is worth it too, unless I missed some major mechanics changes?

The BoP epic gems are a pretty strong reason to be a jewelcrafter. Using a Bold Dragon's Eye and a Bright Dragon's Eye, you immediately satisfy your meta requirement without needing any sovereign purple gems or jagged green gems. Not having any dead weight gem-wise and never having to worry about your meta requirement seems like a pretty solid reason to have jewelcrafting.

Plus if you are a blacksmith, with the 2 extra sockets you have satisfied your meta requirement without needing to worry about any of the other sockets in your gear. Of course this is all assuming the 21 agi, 3% increased crit damage is still the top meta.

Note: No math was done in this post - this is purely from a convenience standpoint!

Why would you spend your Dragon's Eyes on the colorless BS sockets, when you can use them on yellow and blue sockets to grab socket bonuses elsewhere?