Dark Horse in Darkmoon Faire: Darkmoon Card Death

You can view Part 2 of the Darkmoon Series here
And Part 3 here for people who don't wish to spend so much or are low in level


It has been a few days since the darkmoon faire has been out, and its time for those people with decks saved up out there to get your hands upon the actual cards and finally place them in your trinket slots! But for the rest of you who don't require a trinket, there is actually a gold reserve hiding deep within this week's Darkmoon Faire!

The card in question is DMC: Death, and its been in the game for quite a long time, but has been steadily buffed each patch. Currently, what it does is to give 85 critical strike rating and has a proc that shoots out an additional shadowbolt that does not go onto GCD (global cooldown), but has an ICD (internal cooldown). It doesn't share an ICD with say Greatness deck however, so both of the darkmoon trinkets can proc together!



If you don't raid or pvp, then you might want to skip the following section or two and go straight down. But if you're interested in why Darkmoon Card: Death is a up and coming monetary opportunity, read on!

PvE
Due to the crit rating on it, it works well for many players as a starter trinket until they get better ones. The critical bonus works for both physical and caster attacks. For melee players, its competition is Bandit's Insignia, and for casters, Extract of Necromantic Power.

Its value lies in being BoE, as well as a solid trinket in its own right, making a great fit for people who just dinged 80 and entering naxx, or for people levelling alts and needing a great boost. It is also within a reasonable price range, hovering around 1000 gold on most servers, making it a popular choice for those above-mentioned new 80s. (the obvious comparison would be the 5000 gold and up nobles deck that gives you DMC greatness)

PvP
Combat with other players, be it arenas, battlegrounds or wintergrasp, is where this card really shines. Its the second best trinket for many many combinations and specs, and thus equivalent to a Best in Slot trinket. (Since you have two trinket slots so you would need to put a BIS and a 2nd place BIS in them)

The shadowbolt basically fires off in the first few instants you throw upon your target, giving that extra 2k to 3k (if it crits, yes it can crit) to your burst window. It also plays almost exactly like clockwork, and you can probably predict each proc of the trinket according to a stopwatch or addon.

The arena and BG players I've seen toting this Darkmoon Card around the most has been rogues, death knights(the proc seems to be affected by their own buffs) and retribution paladins. And if you arena, especially in 5v5s, you would probably find glee in proccing multiple shadowbolts upon the focused target and bringing the person from 100% to 0% in one or two gcds.

Fun Fact!
For those of you dutifully doing your argent tournament dailies, more specifically those where you equip your lances on horseback, DMC death has the very unique effect of proc'ing on your mounted attacks, giving you a slight but noticeable damage dealt to the opponent. It works to about 2000 damage each time it procs, and you would probably see it once or twice per fight at the very least, meaning it gives you an extra attack or two if you have this trinket equipped.

It is also the only way in the game at the moment that you are able to attack mounted opponents outside of the standard mounted attacks and a friend attacking your opponents.

Obtaining and flipping the card
In general, most players go about collecting all 8 cards slowly before forming the deck. A good way to go about this would have been to slowly pick out low priced cards one by one over a long period of time, to greatly lower the average price per card from the eight. Generally, the completed deck sells for ave price per card x 8 + a small markup (about 50-100 gold). Assuming that each card costs 100 gold, and the deck sells for 900 gold, to heavily discount the cost of purchase you can do the following trick.

Check once or twice every day for the Undeath Cards, for me I go to the AH and set it to search for undeath, with the rarity value set to rare so I get to skip all the junk items on the AH and go straight for the cards. If you buy even 3 items at a greatly lowered price, say when the AH is flooded and some cards sell for 50 gold. Following which you just snap up the rest of the cards at the price they go for in the market. Then your eventual cost price will be 3 x 50 + 5 x 100 = 650 gold, which is 250 gold less than if you were to buy a completed deck by another person.

You can also buy cheap cards for trading later, in case the market runs out of the card you bought at a cheap price, so you can trade for a more expensive card with another player willing to trade. (sounds like pokemon, i know)

Advanced
Now that you have an idea of what the Darkmoon Card Death is about, I will share with you a trick that most scribes and card watchers have been doing since Day 1 of Darkmoon Cards becoming Bind on Equip.

You basically get your hands on 2-3 decks on darkmoon faire week at a cheap price, and then you hold it. If you're lucky your auction house will be filled with people looking for immediate gratification and flooding it with lvl 80 darkmoon cards that are very cheap. Following which you wait a week, and after that a few more days for the trickle supply to dry. AND THEN, you place it back in the market.

I normally list it in the AH for a 50% markup or more, for example: DMC death for 1500 (when i buy it for 650) and then broadcast in trade chat, stressing that they WILL NOT BE ABLE to get such a trinket until the darkmoon faire comes about in a few weeks time, which can be very long for people trying to gear up for naxx and then jump straight into ulduar. I have also seen people purchase DMCs from me to jump straight into Arenas. Naturally, this is a very capital intensive venture, and if you start now you might get burned if you do not know your server well and some scribe suddenly pops in with the same idea. Also, if you start buying cards at this time, if you are unlucky there will be gougers on the AH buying up certain numbers to force a monopoly.

The best thing about this is that you don't have to be a scribe, although the whole strategy is much more risk free if you can make your own DMC. If you have the capital and long term view, you can probably make yourself and extra few thousand from selling DMCs a few days to weeks after the darkmoon faire has come and gone.

Tomorrow, I'll be continuing on some other tricks you can pick up on while the darkmoon faire is still in town. If you intend to try the above Darkmoon Card trick however you might want to bookmark this page for future reference after the darkmoon faire is over.