Item focus:The prospects of Titanium Ore and patch 3.2, 6 preparations you can make way ahead of 11 million people

Update, I just realised warcraftecon has also made a post about this, so for an alternative viewpoint, you might want to click here!



The Blue Post in question

From that particular blue post we can see the sources for the new epic gems, and it doesn't take rocket science for us to see that the ways to obtain them are almost identical and parallel to the current means of obtaining rare gems.

Well, what kind of epic gems will they be? The answer is that they have already been in the game files for quite a while and have appropriately epic sounding names, a list of which you can find in this wowhead link here



Some e.g. of the new gems include King's Amber (the yellow equivalent) or Flawless Ametrine (the orange equivalent) or Majestic Zircon (for blue) or Eye of Zul (for green) or cardinal ruby(red) or dreadstone (purple). Pretty spiffy names I should think!

In general, each epic gems has about 4 more stats than its previous, for example a runed cardinal ruby has 23, 4 more than the 19 of a runed scarlet ruby.

They share the same stats as the current stormjewels as well as having more variety (a greater choice of stats and including mixed color gems), but have the benefit of not having the unique-socketed attribute meaning they can be placed inside every single socket that you have replacing all the rare gems.

Whether you are a Jewelcrafter or not, I would think you might be interested in what this change might entail for you and also what preparations you should start making for it.

1)The easiest effect that you'll see as a result of this will be a devaluation of stormjewels, simply because they have the exact same stats, and that stormjewels have a unique-equipped restriction. I predict stormjewels will slowly start to drop from their 400 to slightly over 1000 gold position into a few dozen gold less than the prices of epic gems in 3.2 Following which people will purchase stormjewels as a cheaper alternative to fill up a slot, with stormjewels still remaining slightly more expensive than rare quality gems.

2)The next up would be its immediate effect on existing blue gems. Once again, it won't take a rocket scientist to say that blue gem prices will definitely drop. Personally, I see a rather small decrease in the range of 10-25% throughout the whole assortment. I base this using the previous time such a change happened in burning crusade, especially when the Sunwell Patch came out. To be fair however, gems appear to be much easier to obtain this time round, and Blizzard will very likely include some bottlenecks to stop a flood of epic gems into the market.

3)Similarly, this would also affect the market for Saronite ore, which will also dip slightly.

For all of the above items, I would advise you not to rush in liquidating them, but to start keeping an eye out and sell them when you see it can go for a good price. Their markets should remain relatively stable such that you can continue your current course of profit, but for stormjewels you would probably wish to rid yourself of them as soon as possible.



4)The core of the epic gems origins however, will lie in this very important ore:
Titanium ore, which takes the place of saronite ore in that you can now prospect it for all the new epic gems under a similar random number generation system. I've seen prices gradually increasing, but instead of asking you to buy buy buy, I would urge you to take caution. This is because I feel that the current methods of obtaining epic gems feels far too easy, and I suspect blizzard might spice up things a little. As a result, I would advise you to keep an eye out for titanium ore, and carefully purchase them when they hit below market equilibrium as they are wont to do on weekends and goldfarmer periods.

Similarly, if Titanium ore are to rise in prices, the joint commodities of Titansteel bars and Titanium bars would also similarly rise. Once again, exercise caution, and try to limit purchases to when they are severely underpriced.

As I see it however, Titanium ore have reached a new peak, rising from 100 plus gold to 180 as I am writing this. Let's see if the Gold Farmers will catch up with this development. It is clear however, that there is a prospective opportunity in prospecting titanium ores.

5)For Jewelcrafters, you might want to take note of this particular section.
In 3.2, Jewelcrafting Tokens will be the means by which you'll purchase Epic Gem Cuts, which means that you should start stocking up on all your JC tokens now, and it is probably expected that there will be a rotation between hyperinflation and hyperdeflation as Jewelcrafters fight for market share. A sizable number or raiders will be switching away from the Jewelcrafting professions however, so take that as you may. Also, while less important, dragon's eye would likely appear less on the AH, so you might want to stock up on a few of those right now.

6)For everyone else, you'll probably want to save your EoH instead of spending them on rare gems now, since they look to be an alternative form of currency to buy raw epic gems. The same goes for people looking to convert honor into gems, you might want to save your honor points as battleground tokens instead.

Bonus:
For the cunning ones in the crowd, you've probably noticed the heaploads of BoE ulduar epics, that also happens to have lots of sockets. While this is really for the long term, you'll probably want to keep in mind when choosing gear that the Best in Slot rankings will also be upset when epic gems are officially introduced.

However, take care to handle all of these with a generous grain of salt, as the PTR has not even been out yet, and as the GM says, everything he wrote is still as yet subject to change, even up till Live.

Exclusive Update: Buy Rare quality Gems with Honor Points

If you came here looking for pvp gear to purchase, you can see my list of honor gear prices here

Apparently Blizzard has started listening to the people who were objecting to the 75k honor cap, especially since there was no way to liquidate the honor once you were already at the cap. In order to solve this, blizzard has made a change that was not mentioned anywhere, until now.




They have given the jewelcrafting vendor in the Orgrimmar (alliance will have their own equivalent) the ability to sell you blue gems for 10,000 honor points. Yep, you heard right, at the honor cap, you'll be able to buy 7.5 scarlet rubies and either sell them straight away or cut them and sell. It is a pretty good way to deflate the market however, especially since a lot of people predict that gem prices will slowly skyrocket when season 6 begins and ulduar easy mode enters farm stages and people grab tons of new gear with sockets.

For the horde, you will be able to buy them from lady palanseer



It would be best to slowly sell half your stock at the highest possible price you can fetch, and then keep a watch out for the next gearing phase of 3.1, likely within a few days to a week. So for those of you who are honor capped and have nothing else to buy, do so now! You might want to spread this knowledge out to your friends as fast as you can because when word gets out (like if it makes it to wowinsider) another horde of gems will start flooding the marketplace!

You might also wish to check out how to turn your wintergrasp tokens into gold here!

5 items you need to sell before 3.1 (for BoE epics)

While still relevant, this post is slightly outdated. If you wish to read about patch 3.2 preparation, you can click here.

With the ulduar patch coming in a few weeks now, I've been asked by several people on which items to sell while they still can. Today I'll cover the bind on equip gear, since these are the items that costs anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand gold. Some of you probably have some in your bank, or you have to find some way to liquidate your guild bank before patch hits. Today's post will show you 6 items you need to release back into the market before 3.1 hits.

Basically, the items that will be the worst hit will be those that have an immediate BoE ilvl 226 or ilvl 219 upgrade from ulduar. People looking to gear up their mains or alts, will hold off buying the following items, since it would be more cost efficient to purchase the higher item-valued slot piece instead of buying a ilvl 200 item only to replace it a few days later.

Another criteria for selection, is the exclusion of any future ilvl 226 BoEs that require runed orbs. Requiring 15 Emblems of Conquest, runed orbs will likely be an expensive commodity for quite a few weeks to a few months following patch release. Each crafted BoE will require about 5-6 runed orbs, which would be about 90 emblems. That would be almost enough to buy t8.5 head and chest piece. As such, I highly doubt that runed orbs will reach equilibrium prices anytime soon and will remain overpriced and expensive.

While some of the following items are still a decent placeholder for a newly minted 80 starting to gear up, come 3.1 there will be a disparity between these epics and the highest tier ilvl available, seriously devaluing the amount by which you can sell them for.

Thus, without further ado, here are the items that needs to go into someone else's inventory:

1) Anything that goes into the wrist slot
That is, basically any Emblem of Valor bracers that you have.
The key reason you should sell them off now, is because
a) more and more people now know that there is no further use for valor tokens, and the next thought that goes through their mind will be to convert them to bracers and sell it off, increasing your competition. And to make it worse, they will be willing to sell them at any price, driving it down to perhaps 500-800 gold each.
b) the week ulduar comes out, guilds will rush through ulduar-10 to ensure extra gearing up of their raiders, not to mention a large army of people waiting to bite their teeth into ulduar through pugs or small guilds. Ulduar-10 drops a plethora of ilvl 219 bracers, meaning that people gearing for bracers will be looking at the ilvl 219 wrist slots, and not your EoV bracers.
For a more detailed run-up of the bracers, check out my previous post.

2) Jewelcrafting:

Titanium Impact choker will be replaced by
-Nymph Heart Charm

and Titanium Earthguard Ring by
-Signet of the Earthshaker
although druids might still go for the Jewelcrafting ring

3) Tailoring:
Deathchill Cloak, Wispcloak

Will be replaced by
-Asimov's Drape

4) Blacksmithing

Spiked Titansteel Helm, sell it before
Iron Riveted War Helm appears on the AH

and the same goes for Titansteel Shield Wall
before people go for the ulduar 25 shield Northern Barrier

5) Leatherworking:

Get rid of Giantmaim Legguards, since Darkcore Leggings will be dropping in ulduar 25


With this list in hand, its time to hit the AH and trade channel and sell them off before their prices depreciate!