There is a non-WoW post today too (about biology), it may worth reading.
This post is not from me and definitely worth reading.
Now, on with the gold!
Since I'm jewelcrafter, I wanted to make some money from it (surprise). Unfortunately the gem prices are not really fire-and-forget friendly. An epic gem sells for 9G to a vendor. This means its 24 hours deposit cost is close to 6G. If I would post 5 of a type, driving the prices down, I'd pay 30G for nothing for long-long time. JC seemed to be a camper's paradise: you post one, 1c below the previous for 12 hours. If it's sold, or undercut, post another one.
Finally I found my niche where I can sell gems like glyphs. 48 hours auction, mass production, inactive mass-posting and mass-collection. High G/hour, acceptable G/week:
I don't have a single epic gem recipe. I'm buying rare gem recipes. My best-sellers are:
I made 3K in a week with less than an hour work, despite I just started.
This post is not from me and definitely worth reading.
Now, on with the gold!
Since I'm jewelcrafter, I wanted to make some money from it (surprise). Unfortunately the gem prices are not really fire-and-forget friendly. An epic gem sells for 9G to a vendor. This means its 24 hours deposit cost is close to 6G. If I would post 5 of a type, driving the prices down, I'd pay 30G for nothing for long-long time. JC seemed to be a camper's paradise: you post one, 1c below the previous for 12 hours. If it's sold, or undercut, post another one.
Finally I found my niche where I can sell gems like glyphs. 48 hours auction, mass production, inactive mass-posting and mass-collection. High G/hour, acceptable G/week:
I don't have a single epic gem recipe. I'm buying rare gem recipes. My best-sellers are:
- Enduring forest emerald
- Quick autumn's glow
- Rigid autumn's glow
- Lustrous sky sapphire (don't ask who and why buys that crap)
- Regal twilight opal
- Deadly monarch topaz
- Reckless monarch topaz
- Anything made of bloodstone (because Bloodstone is dirt cheap while Living ruby is expensive and Cardinal ruby is even worse)
I made 3K in a week with less than an hour work, despite I just started.
39 comments:
Lustrous sky sapphire would be bought by slacker healers (or morons) who are too cheap to buy epic gems >:-)
With this niche you have chosen, you re-entered a market most jewelcrafters have abandoned, because "epics is where teh goldz are" (even though that's also where all their competition is at)
I've tried it in my realm... Sovereign Twilight Opal seems to sell well, as well as Glowing Twilight Opal (I think?). Some of the green rings/necklaces also bring up a profit, like Bloodstone Band and Crystal Chalcedony Necklace (there are 4 of these).
When I was levelling, making Woven Copper Rings was profitable. I still kinda make them up to now if copper prices are reasonable. For some reason I rarely have competition for this item...
You can also try getting the Great Dawnstone Recipe. I forgot how I stumbled to it... For some reason, some people still bought it. There was also a time when Focusing Crystals actually sold for a profit. I stopped on this because Dark Jade and Shadow Crystal prices went up.
I'm trying to see if I can sell Emerald Chokers and Dream Signets since Titanium Bar prices went down... I still haven't sold out, but had already sold half of my stock.
Forgot to mention:
Blood Sun Necklace
Jade Dagger Pendant
Lustrous sky sapphire - in case you do not have replenishment it's not that bad gem for a healer.
Actually some people ARE M&S and they're also customers.
Seeing tanks socket orange gems and healers going for those blue gems while purple would be always better option... it's just sad. I'm really wondering should I keep to my "list of useful gems" or just buy the patterns for crap, because really I see people DO SOCKET str/def gems and such crap (why the hell you'd socket str as tank...).
I also dabble quite a bit in the rare gem market and find it very lucrative. As well as the cuts you've already identified, I find that the Solid Sky Sapphire is an excellent seller.
I personally keep my Scarlet Rubies for the daily transmute into Cardinal Rubies.
I also do really well with Meta-Gems, especially the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond, transmuting myself, (great now that the cooldown has been removed), cutting and selling for a large profit.
Good luck
~McRaffles
http://warcraftcasuals.blogspot.com/
Str as a tank would be for threat purposes. Mp5 is a decent stat for healers and helps on really mana intensive fights that last a long time. I know I'd have a lot harder time with the Northrend Beasts in ToGC w/o them.
Socket is the only way for someone to express himself in this game. We can't choose our stuff when piece X is so much better than piece Y (this may not be true for say shielded tanks), so what can I bring to a raid ? A hudge hit point puching ball ? Or something more ?
While you may get fun at some orange tank socket, I have fun at 30 stam tanks. Stam is not the world, stam is not the sun. Stam doesn't make coffe. Stam is NOT the answer for everything.
What stam is getting you ? This once again is a difficult answer. Depends on class, depends on spec. If you get stam multiplier in your tree, then stam may be good. If you don't, stam may not be the best answer. You play a class where parry/misses aren't anoying or do you play a classe where one parry over the fight is like a hudge drop in aggro cause you missed all your timers ? Can you afford not refreshing a buff for your raid ? Can you afford missing the first strike, and the second. Well I can't.
Now let's take a red socket with a 12 stam bonus. Will you loose these 12 stam just to get more stam ? Look at all the other possibilities :
- Str : means ap & block, so threat
- Exp : always usefull IMO
- ap : that would be silly
- dodge : Good one to get avoidance
- parry : Not the good one.
- Any of thoses with 15 stam associated
Socket is rather an art and depends more on when you socket than on what is the color of your gem. You may socket where your strong, to get stronger in there, you may socket to get a cap. Anyways, you always socket with your needs, not a stupid chart that tells you blue is full stam, red is dodge / stam and yellow is def / stam. Just look at the item and say, what is missing on this to make it the best item you ever had.
this is the way I socket my stuff, this is why i got a exp/hit gem in one of my red socket. Believe it or not, but i'm tanking everything in this game with an orange gem in one of my red socket.
"why the hell you'd socket str as tank..."
I've seen tanks get to a point where they've got so much avoidance and defense that it's going to waste. They hit 50k hp. So "now what"? Some of them benefit from damage-generated-threat. I would imagine this would be a case you'd want to socket str as a tank?
Not a tank.
In any case, on topic: I like this topic. I've been wondering if there was hope for my up and coming JC'er, and of course had my eye on the epic market. (Those big numbers are alluring.) I should've thought better (I make more money on my lower level tailoring goods than on the upper level stuff, why wouldn't this apply to other crafts).
Thanks for the post, Gev.
You can make more with epic gems (provided you cut those in demand), at least on my server. Gems go from 150 to 190g, and they come from 10k honor, prospecting, prisms and transmute.
Couldn't tell how much profit margin i have, but mining in WG is top1(taking the free honor when others are fighting for you) nets me usually 2-3 gems in less than 30 minutes. Not too shabby imo. Since transmute procs are random, it's usually just a (small) bonus from prospecting.
@Metamanu: and how does JC make money on your ideas? Transmutation master alchemy, or honorfarming: sure. Even mining you mentioned. But where is JC?
@Tarrke
Yup, I also kinda smirk at tanks that have +30 stam everywhere, except in 1 slot for meta requirements. Overriding every single +12 and +9 stam bonus is plainly stupid.
There is no encounter in game atm where you *really* need more than 40k unbuffed.
After that, you should go for avoidance & mitigation, since it reduces damage taken, thus makes easier job for healers. That extra stam and like 2-3% less avoidance you sacrifice for that extra stam just makes keeping you topped more stressful.
Even 50k unbuffed won't save you from these silly 0.1% chance "bad luck" wipes, like boss getting 3 x 25k hit in a row, while healers are distracted/disabled/not fully focused for a few seconds.
This is why you gear/gem for the 99.9% part of the encounter, not for the 0.1% part.
The jc profit is easy to spot, Gev, it's the difference between the cut and uncut gems he sells times the number he sells.
Back on topic, I find that the rare gem market is not as lucrative as the epic gems, but much less labor intensive. I can queue up my rare gems cut them all, then post them for 48 hours, and forget about them. When I come back to that toon there is more money to be pulled from the mailbox. (About 2k this week)
The money in epic gems is in the cutting, I buy raw gems, cut them, and relist them. Prospecting titanium is too slow and low yield, so I don't use jewelcrafting to acquire them, just to cut them.
@Gev : sorry, CRAFTED gems :)
Forgot to mention it.
My scheme requires me to be active thou. No half afk job as in glyphing. I guess you could call that a more "skilled" job.
I averaged 25k in a month, farming about 30-45 mn 5 days a week. Not that impressive, good enough for me.
edit : i see what you mean, as i'm not maximizing my profits from JC as you are, and could attain nearly as much profit from selling raw gems... well, added benefit is i gear myself and my guild from jc. But you'll end up making a lot more money than me after one month, i bet :)
@ you tanks that socket anything other than stam, for anything other than your meta bonus:
Have you fought Festergut before? Also, good luck with Putricide, BQL and Sindragosa as well. All that expertise and strength (because stats are totally what get you threat, amirite?) will do you incredibly well. You should really stop and thank your healers, as well as the hunters/rogues that MD/TOT you nightly.
@1st Anonymous Poster
There is nothing inherently M&S about using rare over epic gems. In fact, if you've followed Gevlon's "blue raid" posts at all, you would know the utter ridiculousness of your statement.
I have stopped buying any epic gems on the AH. They're stupidly overpriced. It's far saner for me to spent 10 or 20 Triumph badges, or 10000 honor (I have quite a bit still stored from my PvP days) on an epic gem and get one of my generous guild mates to cut the gem for me. I'm not going to spend 1000% of the price of a rare gem for what amounts to 20% increase in stats.
In fact, I would conjecture that the mindset of flat out buying an epic gem every time you need one is more indicative of a moron than anything else.
@Tarrke
For socketing, I agree with you. Socketing straight stam is pointless and stupid. The rational behind it is that you increase your effective health well beyond what is needed so that you can survive X hits. The truth is that you just need enough EH to survive 1 hit. However, whether to socket Stamina or a blend gem for socket bonuses is dependent on the bonus itself. Stamina is about the easiest to compare. When the socket bonus is 12 stamina, putting a purple or green gem in is well worthwhile. It creates an overall better boost than putting in a 30 stamina gem. A Regal Dreadstone would give you 10 dodge rating and 27 stamina, while an Enduring Eye of Zul will give you 10 defense rating and 27 stamina. Even parry rating can be a good choice over dodge due to diminishing returns. However, one must keep in mind that the socket bonus is what determines if you go with that. For 9 stamina it become dubious on whether the value is good or not. You’re talking about losing 6 stamina instead of just three. I’ll sometimes socket for 9 stamina bonuses. For a 6 stamina socket bonus, I ignore it.
@Jana
Something that has changed with the ICC bosses that makes it more desirable to have closer to around, I would say, x1.5-1.75 of the EH necessary to survive the largest hit from the boss. Boss swing timers have dropped quite a bit. I believe the average used to be around 2.7s. Now we’re down to around 2 to 2.2s swing times with a good portion of the ICC bosses that are out (not sure about the new two bosses). From the perspective of a healer, unless I’m already casting, that significantly lessens the amount of time I have to react and get the heal off. Lag and other events could make this even less. After I eat that big hit, the healers need to get me to a health level high enough to survive a regular hit from the boss. If a boss’s largest single hit on me will be 30k and his regular hits are at 12k, I only need 30k + 1 hit point to be able to tank the encounter. However 42k+1 is most desirable. This is not a 0.1% chance occurrence. If I have a only a 44% avoidance in ICC, the occurrence is 56% IF I have less than 42k+1 hit points, or the HP I have left + heals in is less than the bosses hit.
There is nothing wrong with stacking straight stamina gems, if you know why you’re doing it. Of course, I could just be spoiled as a prot paladin. The problem is that people get tunnel vision and don’t think about why they do something and just do it anyway. For example, the DK tank in my guild complains about how his GS is being brought down by The Black Heart. It’s a good solid trinket. It’s not the highest stamina trinket (and only the Frost Badge [which is crap in my opinion] and Yogg trinket are higher in stam for a 10man guild). Frankly, I told him if he cares about his gear score that much, then he should just wear the Onyxia trinket and the trinket bought with Triumph badges. He didn’t much like that idea. Of course, I consider Glyph of Indomitability and The Black Heart as two of the best overall trinkets for tanking.
@Talderas
You spending 10000 honor points on a gem instead of 150g, doesn't mean you still 'spent' 150g on the gem. Otherwise you could've bought a gem, and sold it anyway, simple opportunity cost.
@Gevlon
I've done a crapload of JC on my server. It was definitely better when it was world-drop recipes as it was in TBC, and yea the rare/uncommon gems can be a bit fire and forget like glyphs are. That said, I've never really gotten glyphs to work well either.
The thing I do with epic gems atm is just when I come home from work (~7pm) I see if there are any cheap gems, and look at how the prices of my epic gems are looking. I mostly have high demand epic gem recipes so I'm reasonably sure I can sell a couple of them a day, but as you said, with these deposit prices it's campers heaven. Anyway, I take note of current prices which are ~30g over my max raw gem buying price. I prepare max 3 of those gems, list them at approximately 7:30, and half of them are generally sold at 8:00. It's raid-prep rush hour on my server then. Same goes for raid-end time.
I'm not sure about my gold/hour doing this, but I've definitely haven't had any gold problems working the JC market for over 3 years now.
I actually just about a month ago started actually paying attention to my JC. I have made over 45k in that time. Funny since my glyph profits are down to 300g a day, my gems are what is carrying me now.
Rare gems have been my best market for some time now. While it isn't 100% fire and forget (due to the steep deposits as you mentioned) a few gem cuts are. Namely forest emeralds. I get those for 6g and sell them cut for 34 each regularly.
I never expected bloodstones to sell cut or leveling rings, I'll have to try that out.
Sure you can find a lot of campers, but mass undercutting tends to get rid of most of them just like with glyphs.
And yes, I have no clue why Mp5 gems sell, but It's not my place to question, I'm just a merchant.
I gem for socket bonuses about 90% of the time, regardless of class or roll (5 80s, 3 can tank, 2 can heal, 2 pure DPS).
That said, not only have I stopped going for epic gems (unless I transmute and get it cut for free), I've stopped going after blue gems on most of my alts. The difference between +12 and +20 strength is minimal, and I'm already pulling aggro from tanks with my warrior. If I were to update all my gems to epic quality I MIGHT gain a pitiful 100 - 200 DPS, but it would cost me 800g.
So I am one of those people that feeds Gevlon's pockets (or would be if he were on my server). And since I sell the ore I mine, I'm feeding his pockets TWICE. And I'm OK with that. :)
The Scarlet Ruby cuts (Bold, Bright, Runed) sell high and fast on my server, though I can't say the idea of using Bloodstone for anything but Jewelry->DE had struck me prior.
I'd also suggest trying out these:
Brilliant Autumn's Glow
Smooth Autumn's Glow
Thick Autumn's Glow
Solid Sky Sapphire
Inscribed Monarch Topaz
Etched Monarch Topaz
Sovereign Twilight Opal
Glowing Twilight Opal
As far as Forest Emerald, I found that the volume at which even the most popular cut (Enduring for me) sells did not justify the number that would end up coming back in the mailbox, and the low profit margin, as prospecters post the uncut gems only slightly above vendor price. Your would-be customers seem prone to buy the uncut instead and go to a JC friend, if they're going to bother with the gem at all.
Cutting and vendoring them for 4.5g/ea has a comparable return.
My favorite part of the blue gem market is that production of the gems via Prospecting usually generates enough green gems, which get sold for the JC daily or turned into Jewelry to DE, that the cost of the Saronite Ore is generally made up for before you even start looking at the blue gems, so you can profit with some pretty fierce undercuts.
could you please go to your html editor and add this line, it makes all your wowhead links have tool tips
script src="http://static.wowhead.com/widgets/power.js"></script
How do you fix the mats for the gems?:) buy them from AH?
@Chopsui
Not exactly. The point I was making was that it's far more efficient for me to spend honor or badges on epic gems than gold. Typically, the honor and badges come during other activities, meaning that I don't have to take away from my most liquid asset (gold) in order to purchase an uncut or cut gem. This leaves me the opportunity to use gold in something that cannot be bought via honor or badges. Otherwise I would be left with less gold but have badges that I wouldn't otherwise spend. Opportunity cost goes both ways. Gold can be used directly on far more things while badges and honor will require me to purchase a good that will need to be converted into gold to be used towards many things.
Honor, like badges, are just an alternate form of currency. The problem is that both currencies cannot be traded with other players. They must be first converted into other goods in order to do so, but even then the player can never turn traded goods into honor or badges.
Since honor and badges come in addition to the loot of heroics, it makes perfect sense to use badges or honor to buy uncut gems you will use, unless there will be a reason for uncut epic gem, or cut epic gem prices to jump up severely. In which case, if prices will be going up, you buy now with gold to use then sell badge/honor bought gems later. If prices are going to drop, then you use honor/badges to buy and sell gems now, then use your gold to buy gems later at the lower price. If the market is staying stable, then it doesn't matter which way you go.
As a full-stam tank, I have to interject here in order to clear up the stam stacking issue.
There are two reasons why many good tanks go full stam:
1. Stam is not affected by diminishing returns.
2. Stam mitigates ALL damage, not just physical damage like avoidance and mitigation does.
Especially in icecrown citadel with the -30% dodge debuff, it makes stam more appealing because diminishing returns for your reduced dodge are at the same place they would be without the dodge debuff; to get to 30% dodge with chill of the throne, you need an exponentially increased instead of a linearly increased amount of dodge rating then you would need to get to 30% without the debuff.
Armor also shares the diminishing returns problem, although to a lesser extent then dodge and parry. On a purely physical fight like Saurfang, armor stacking is better then stam stacking up to a certain point, but again most fights are not purely physical damage. As a blood DK tank, I can't comment on block but I would imagine that it shares the same problem as armor. There are some specs that avoidance stacking wins out in- unholy tanking comes to mind- but I prefer to stack stam once I have enough avoidance to use rune strike almost every melee attack for it's dependability.
Dodge also decreases how powerful my trinket (Glyph of Intomidability) is- right now I gain about 7% dodge when I use it versus the 4-5% I would get if I was avoidance stacking.
Plus stam stacking increases the amount of health I get from Vampiric Blood and the healing from Death Strike.
I haven't had much success with the blue gems market on my server - too many players and not enough demand equals losing money from AH deposits.
I only have one epic cut for each type of gem - the one that's the most stable and profitable. I buy titanium ore below my snatch price, cut the epics and sell them along with the raw blue gems and titanium dust for a decent profit (~3k week depending on ore supply). I can also usually make good money DE'ing jewelry made from the green gems, but that takes a lot of time (you have to prospect, then craft jewelry, then DE) so I don't usually do it.
Some of my best sellers are raw gems for meta cuts, but of course those come from my Alchemist, supplied by my JC prospects.
@Deathturtle
While I agree with the basic premise that stacking stam is very worthwhile, I have a few minor quibbles.
Firstly, stamina is not mitigation; mitigation is the amount of raw damage reduced by armor (and block, where applicable). Your effective health is a function of your total health pool and your mitigation, and in all likelihood I suspect this is what you meant.
Secondly, Chill of the Throne exist precisely because avoidance levels reached levels higher than originally planned, and as such works off the assumption that any tank in Icecrown will have a high "raw avoidance" level outside of the instance. Avoidance stats are still valuable, though I'll concede that socketing avoidance will have a rather minor effect, as most of your avoidance will be unavoidably (sorry, couldn't resist) acquired via your natural gear upgrades anyway. Choosing pure stam or threat gems will indeed have little impact on your total avoidance.
Lastly, yes, mitigation per point of armor gained is diminished, but time-to-live per point of armor gained is not. In fact, it is precisely because of the diminishing nature of armor's mitigation that time-to-live doesn't increase exponentially per point gained. This is admittedly a bit of a heady subject misunderstood by many, if not most, players, but if you care to look at the math, Satrina has done an excellent job archiving the various formulae at work. The collected works can be found here.
Stamina stacking is simply superior on almost every fight outside of Anub hard mode add tanking. Single target threat is not an issue for any class. There is tons and tons of magic based and unavoidable attacks going around where only a big health pool will save you. The vast majority of heals on the main tank are overheal anyhow so avoiding attacks isnt really that great. Armor and stamina are the way to go unless the fight has special mechanics (stacking debuffs, extremely fast swing timers, etc).
If you need less hp to survive the fight (say jaraxus main tank), then you should just wear more and more dps gear to increase your initial threat and dps.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/13866/rankings/players/
Saying stamina stacking is bad is like saying stacking armor penetration is bad. Its simply ignorance of the mechanics of the fights and the importance of giving the healers in your group more breathing room.
For the record, I had a 95% avoidance set for Archimonde back in the day and yes it was extremely effective, but with the diminishing returns on avoidance today, it is no longer worth it.
Farming honor for roughly two hours to earn a 150-180g gem.. nice deal!
I heard 75g gold per hour was hot stuff in vanilla wow.
Farming badges takes 2-3 heroics that will keep you busy for an hour not counting queue time; think about it, it's another bad deal (again 150g per hour? terrible) but it's not over; who in this game keeps only one set of gear? badges offer so much potentially useful loot for your offspec which would need even more badges to be acquired and gemmed... a really vicious circle made of sucky pugs and grinding.
If you can't find an efficient way to farm gold just carry your ass to the argent tournament and do 10 dailies there in half an hour.. it's still more efficient than the honor/badge-->gems conversion.
Regarding gemming with epics to gain "JUST" 200 dps; the fact that you don't see a problem with it means that you don't clear not even remotely challenging content or are being carried.
let me expand:
- assume a 5minutes fight (300seconds)
- 200dps comes to be 60.000 more damage dealt
- a 10 man raid usually has 5 dpsers so 200more dps for each damage dealer comes to 300.000 more damage dealt in the same 5 minutes encounter
- for a 25 man raid (2 tankw - 6 healers - the 200dps gain for each damage dealer is a staggering 1.020.00 more damage dealt
I know my 10man raid would have gladly taken that "insignificant" damage gain on each dpser when we wiped last week on putricide 10man with 160k hp left on the last attempt availlable for that week.
Most of the comments here have been typed by M&S and I don't know why Gevlon didn't filter them out.
PS I'm not another "gear will fix it" guy, but in a world (of warcraft) where some bosses have strict enrage timers you can't kill them even with perfect knowledge and execution without barely sufficient gear.
Funny how I've opened a pandora box with those orange gems (I'm THAT Anonymous).
Thing is, my tank isn't +30 stam everywhere, I use purple gems in red sockets and green gems in yellow sockets.
Thing is, if you need avoidance why would you socket str instead of dodge? If you need threat, did you check first are you expertise softcapped?
Tanks don't struggle for threat if they're on the same gear level as dps and both tanks and dps know how to play. If they struggle for threat, str gems are not the answer.
All I've seen str in tank gear was for pvp prot warriors, but they went from str to armor pen and now I'm not even sure are they stil pvping in prot after the nerfs.
Same for pure spirit / mp5 gems, the purples spellpower + mp5 / spirit are better option for any healer who might gem for that. Exception are Holy Paladins, but they could gem mp5 + int in blue socket if they really want the socket bonus.
Many people are uninformed though or want to be "original" in their gem choice. Being original for the sake of original is typical "social" mechanism, it gives no measurable profit except some emotional delusion.
The peak of the iceberg with "uninformed" people are those who socket prismatic gems in belt buckle "it's prismatic socket you nab I have to put prismatic there ofc" and socket pure yellow / red / blue, never using 2-color gems even if it means +30 stam gems on rogue.
And yes, you can profit on M&S and I guess many of those M&S will buy cheap gems because they're cheap and don't want to be "laughed at" for empty sockets.
Honestly?
I've been selling gems & glyph since the release of LK now and always had perfect gems up before epic ones were added, they sold some times but not very often - so I stopped when epics were introduced.
After your post I tried to revive my business, crafting and listing pretty much 1-2 of every green gem that could potentially sell - I didn't sell a single gem so far, and often perfect gems are listed cheaper than the common ones.
Blue ones sell great as ever - I usually sell Bold/Runed/Purified/Rigid/Smooth/Delicate ones and today added Sovereign/Intricate/Quick. While Bold Sc. Ruby is my absolute topdog, I can absolutely recommend the latter, though some of them require a random drop pattern.
So thanks for the hint on Quick Autumn's Glow and possibly the Lustrous one but as for the greens I think I'm gonna drop them really soon if they don't start selling - I don't see anyone socketing them on my realm anyway.
PS: How much do you list greens for? On my realm they're 3-10g with the exception of Runed Bloodstone, which costs 15-20g
@Rob: the prices are correct, green gems are 4-6 G with some selling for 8-10. Wait until weekend before you drop them. Casuals and alt-levelers are the main buyers.
@January 21st, 16:20 anonymous:
Exactly. I would resocket/re-enchant every piece of gear that I have for a boost of "only" 200 dps- in fact, I'd do that for a difference of 20 dps. I suppose it's fine for people who aren't progression raiding to not min-max, but if you are doing any challenging content at all EVERY raider has to be at their peak.
True story: Yesterday we wiped on Festergut at 3 million hp. I hearthed to the auction house and spent about 3000g on extra consumables for the raid (potions of speed, indestructible potions, the spell power/crit potions, the well-fed food for each class that's better then fish feast like dragonfin fillets, spiced mammoth treats for classes with melee pets, and flasks for the 6 people who didn't have them) and the difference caused by the increase of about 60 EAP/ESP on each raider was enough to down him on our next good attempt.
Let's assume that your gear has 10 gem slots and are socketing only strength. With rare gems you gain 10x12=120 and with purples it's 10x20=200, a difference of 80 strength. With 5% strength from talents that's (80*.05)+80 = 84. With blessing of kings it's (84*.1)+84=92.4 strength. With the 2 AP per STR ratio, that's 184.8 extra AP. For me every point of attack power is worth about 1 and a third dps, so the difference is 246.4 DPS. With the anonymous I quoted's damage done increase x (246/200)it amounts to a difference of 1254600 raid dps, which is enough to avoid a wipe.
the only forest emeralds selling for a good price are the jagged ones, you get the design at revered with the oracles
Actually the rare gem market makes alot more gold than the epic gem market. Because alot of the sellers have left it, you are left with a bigger pie. Most of the time, the cut to raw prices can be like 20g+. And with the low AH cut, you would be pulling more gold from the rare cuts than the epic cuts.
The best rare gems to sell
Solid Sky Sapphire - You can sell a ton of this each day.
Purified Twilight Opal
Runed Scarlet Ruby. Actually the fractured version use to sell pretty well too
Lovely advice!
I think "hot" selling patterns depends on server but I just found out some that give very nice returns:
Fractured Scarlet Ruby (It's a drop from valkyrs in storm peaks)
Glowing Twilight Opal (Ebon Blade rep.)
Mysterious Twilight Opal (It's bought for WG shards)
Runed Scarlet Ruby (Kirin Tor rep.)
Stormy Sky Sapphire (again WG shards)
Wicked Monarch Topaz (Ebon Blade rep. again)
Solid Sky Sapphire
(I don't have all patterns since I stopped buying blue ones when epic came out.)
I just found out it's not good to "save scarlet rubies for epic transmute", epic red gems sell on my server only SLIGHTLY above other color gems (maybe 20g more) while eternal fire price is high, and cut scarlet rubies sell sometimes for 50-60g while other blue quality gems sell for 10-20g. It's much better to sell the cut rare ruby for 60g and transmute something else which is much cheaper in mats. Then you sell a gem for 180g that's 20g worth of mats instead of selling the red one for 200g while mats cost up to 80g, 60g if you're lucky with both eternal fire and the raw gem.
OK so the thing about stacking stamina as the way forward in progression raiding.
When approaching new content you want to maximise your health. Specifically, one uses a metric titled "Effective Health", which also factors in damage reduction from armour. (For specifics go to tankspot.com, in the guides section EH is derived for those who are interested).
Basically, more health means a larger buffer for the healers to work with. With the damage:healthpool ratio that blizzard is using for current fights, and with the huge avoidance values attainable, tanks need to be hit VERY hard to be in danger of dying. You end up with a boss that hits like a truck, and a situation when a boss can deal your healthpool+quite a bit in the space of 4 seconds. If the tank has more health, the healers need to heal less for the tank to survive the next swing, which could land 2 seconds after the first one. In this scenario, avoidance does not matter: the boss is inevitably going to land two hits back to back sometimes; i.e. when avoidance does not work. The only values a tank realistically cares about are stamina and armor, until blizzard make healing effectively (while conserving their manapool) mandatory.
You mentioned festergut as an example of a threat boss. He is, however ~every 10 seconds the tank gets a stacking debuff that lasts about 2 minutes. This debuff increases the tank's personal damage by 10% per stack, up to 90% (the tenth stack wipes the raid, so you swap tanks at this point). when a tank is running at 4-7k dps the last thing even the most tps hungry dd will be worrying about is pulling aggro. My full stamina gemmed paladin tank (except 9 and 12 stam bonuses) averages 6k dps(about 16k tps) over that fight, while topping 10k dps (would be about 27k tps) during bloodlust. Our warrior and feral tanks can also push out the tps on this boss, it is not just paladins being OP and all that.
Believe me, tank aggro is not something that gemming will change much. you can be full 30 stam + 1 agi/stam for the meta and out threat any dps, and you can get MD/ToT in vary rare cases when a dps gets close.
/ontopic: spell power, strength AP gems sell well for me.
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