Wednesday, October 17, 2012

More on professions

I put a lot of thought into structuring my professions for this expansion. Harmony is the new paradigm for crafting, and the only way to get it is for the crafting character to play the game. I know plenty of people who think Harmony is the worst thing ever, but I don't think it's terribly unfair to restrict what is possible to do on a character who just sits by a mailbox and crafts. It's a different way of thinking too; you don't buy Harmony, so the word profit does not apply, it's about converting it to gold, and calculating the most efficient way to do so.

Syrannia is a Blacksmith, which for the most part means milking the cash cow which is Belt Buckles. There are a couple of other miscellaneous items, like the Shield Spike, which are profitable mainly because I'm the only person bothering to sell them. I've been using my Harmony to purchase the crafting patterns for entry level PvP and tanking gear. Going back to the idea of Harmony to gold conversion, these patterns are a total no-brainer because there is no restriction on how many times I can produce and sell the item. As long as the item is profitable to sell the gold conversion for 1 Harmony spent on a pattern is theoretically infinite.

Ghost Iron Dragonlings are the gift Blizzard gave Engineers this expansion. This trinket sells amazingly well; there are few enough BoE trinkets to choose from, and this one is useful for every class. This item also finally creates a mass market for the previously Engineer-exclusive Cogwheels.

Coreus is the clothie cliché of Tailor Enchanter. Tailoring in my experience only has limited production value; I've yet to really look into whether there is anything profitable in there. In the past I've found crafted epics tend to be more profitable later in the expansion once the material price has dropped and the competition has forgotten about them.

Enchanting on the other hand, is doing very, very well. With the exception of a few "newbie traps" all the new enchants sell for a very healthy profit. Blizzard did a really good job, in my opinion, in removing "lesser" enchanting Essences and for smaller DE values just giving Dust, five of which can then be converted into one Essence. Player ignorance [I have to assume] of this feature means that a single Essence actually sells for up to double the price of the five Dust that any Enchanter can use to make one. It's even profitable most of the time of the time to down-convert Shards [from Rare-quality gear] into Essences; the sell price is that inflated.

Tashraal is the master Engineer and a learned Scribe, both important facets of his character. Darkmoon cards have been selling very well, and if I'd realised that the daily CD mechanic meant that one scribe could produce one card per day I would have trained up a second one ahead of the expansion to take more advantage of this. I've sold a few glyphs, but as we all know this market is heavily contested, so sales are relatively proportional to how often I can be arsed cancelling and reposting them.

I need to correct what I said earlier; Blizzard actually gave Engineers two gifts this expansion. The second is not one, but two new flying mounts. These use 12 Harmony each to make, and I predict they will be by far the best gold conversion rate in the long term. These mounts are also the saving grace of having redundant Engineers; because one mount is restricted to each specialisation, having Engineers to cover both is extremely convenient.

And on the toons I don't play, I have a Leatherworker Transmute Alchemist, Miner Transmute Alchemist, a Jewelcrafter Transmute Alchemist, and a Herbalist unspecced Alchemist, likely to go Transmute... but I'm waiting to see if making my own elixirs will be worth doing. :)

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