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Thursday, March 20, 2008
Casual Gemology
My first epic flying mount was financed to a large percentage by me mining or buying adamantite ore, prospecting it, and selling the rare (blue name) gems after cutting them for about 50 gold each. Haven't done that for a long time, so yesterday I tried it again to see where the market had evolved. Adamantite ore has remained pretty much constant in price on my server, between 20 and 30 gold a stack. But the prices for gems have changed a lot, and not all in the same direction. I sold two cut red gems for 75 gold each, while cut green gems went as low a 15 gold, and uncut green Talasites for less than 10 gold in some cases. So not only has the chance to find a rare gem from prospecting been nerfed by Blizzard, there is now also a chance that the rare gem you find is worth less than the ore you prospected it from. My try ended with me making just a small profit, and that was with being lucky with the colors I got.
The reasons for this price difference is that most people went towards a strategy of ignoring gem slot colors, because the bonus stats you get if you follow the colors is too small. So people advised my warrior for example to ignore all colors and fill up all my slots with blue +12 stamina gems. Blue and red gems are popular for this, yellow gems less so, and except for the red/blue Nightseyes all the mixed color gems are totally out of favor.
The upside of that is an opportunity for people with little cash. Mixed color gems aren't really all that bad. Two green gems for example will give you exactly the same stats as one blue and one yellow gem, but you might be able to buy them for less than half the price. And sometimes mixing stats is better than taking all the same kind. I'm not going to follow that advice to use only +12 stamina gems, because then my defense would drop even further below the magic 490 limit. So a cash-strapped warrior might be well advised to go for Enduring Talasites (+4 defense, +6 stamina) at 25 gold each instead.
I expect rare gem prices to drop in the future, especially the expensive ones. The demand is driven by the kind of people who have sufficient gold and want the very best gems possible. But with patch 2.4 the very best gems will be epic ones. The uncut gems will be sold for badges of justice, and the jewelcrafting recipes for reputation, so epic cut gems will soon be available. As for the common gems, which are already trading only at pitiful low values, apparently there will be recipes to combine them into more valuable stuff in patch 2.4. So maybe jewelcrafting can become profitable again, in spite of the usual differences of getting people to pay anything for cutting a gem. ("Looking for jewelcrafter who has a recipe that costs 1,000 gold on the AH, is willing to travel to my location, and then cuts my gem for free." -Pause- "Hey, why are you jewelcrafters so uncooperative?")
- posted by Tobold @ 9:06 AM Permanent Link
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I don't really understand why a green gem is considered useless.
eg a 'green' red gem is +7 spell damage, and cost maybe 5 gold, whereas a 'blue' red gem is +9 spell damage, and cost 80 gold.
So for +2 damage you pay 75 gold.
Even if you have 10 slots to fill, you are only going to be down +20 damage. Considering the average Warlock might be expected to have +1200 spell damage, that is less than 2% damage difference, and yet if you have green gems you are considered a noob.
2% damage might make all the difference for the Leet guilds out there, but for the rest of us, is it really worth the cost?
eg a 'green' red gem is +7 spell damage, and cost maybe 5 gold, whereas a 'blue' red gem is +9 spell damage, and cost 80 gold.
So for +2 damage you pay 75 gold.
Even if you have 10 slots to fill, you are only going to be down +20 damage. Considering the average Warlock might be expected to have +1200 spell damage, that is less than 2% damage difference, and yet if you have green gems you are considered a noob.
2% damage might make all the difference for the Leet guilds out there, but for the rest of us, is it really worth the cost?
# posted by 
: 20/3/08 16:23
: 20/3/08 16:23
Orange gems are actually quite sought after as well. Most casters use some variant of them, either spell hit and damage or spell crit and damage.
Yeah, the orange hit/agi gem is also a favorite with us rogues.
Perfectly balanced.
Perfectly balanced.
# posted by : 20/3/08 22:07
: 20/3/08 22:07
I decided that the rare ('blue') gems were worth the cost. For my shadow priest, the current number of gem slots is 18, of which I've gemmed 17 rare red spell damage gems and a rare red/blue. That's +33 spell damage of the 1089 shadow spell damage bonus (PvE gear) total maybe not significant by itself. But I view that as part of a complete package of top enchants on every gear piece (except soulfrost), and the top faction head (+22) and shoulder (+12) glyphs, and the top leg spellthread (+35). As one unravels a character, and backs out rare gems for uncommon, faction glyphs for head and shoulder, enchants and leg spellthread, shadoweave tailor crafted gear, gathering mats and tipping for other crafted gear, etc., then one sees that while considered separately these categories might not be significant, the cumulative effect is.
If I back out the rare gems for uncommon, I lose 33 spell damage, or about 3%.
Back out the cost and effort of Scryers Exalted and I lose other 12 spell damage, down 4% now.
Back the spellthread out from epic to rare, another 10 spell damage lost, and down a total of 5%.
"Significant" is relative.
I don't remember having any terrible problem with quests and normal instances at level 70 before I had any epics, or glyphs, or rare gems.
On the other hand, now normal instances are basically like a run-though, because of my VE healers get bored between bosses and mana isn't a problem because of my VT, and for example I can control the adds on normal BM with nothing extra other than to pop two or three of the Skettis escort mana pots (a single SW:P will take out the whelps). And I was offered a blind invite from the #3 guild of my faction when they needed a shadow priest and one of their officers saw me by the flight master, so attention to detail can open a door of opportunity.
And to the question of JC, I always tip a minimum of 10g for any level-70 crafting, and include that in my "LF" message. I never have much problem getting a crafter.
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If I back out the rare gems for uncommon, I lose 33 spell damage, or about 3%.
Back out the cost and effort of Scryers Exalted and I lose other 12 spell damage, down 4% now.
Back the spellthread out from epic to rare, another 10 spell damage lost, and down a total of 5%.
"Significant" is relative.
I don't remember having any terrible problem with quests and normal instances at level 70 before I had any epics, or glyphs, or rare gems.
On the other hand, now normal instances are basically like a run-though, because of my VE healers get bored between bosses and mana isn't a problem because of my VT, and for example I can control the adds on normal BM with nothing extra other than to pop two or three of the Skettis escort mana pots (a single SW:P will take out the whelps). And I was offered a blind invite from the #3 guild of my faction when they needed a shadow priest and one of their officers saw me by the flight master, so attention to detail can open a door of opportunity.
And to the question of JC, I always tip a minimum of 10g for any level-70 crafting, and include that in my "LF" message. I never have much problem getting a crafter.
# posted by : 21/3/08 16:06
: 21/3/08 16:06<< Home
