Greedy Goblin

Friday, May 28, 2010

Transporting primordial saronites

One of my new businesses in the ganking guild is buying Primordial Saronites at ally side (8-900G) and selling it on horde (1000-1100G). While the profit is not spectacular, it's steady and very safe. If I list a PS, I can be sure it's sold in 24 hours. On the top of that by doing so, I can get money in horde side that allow me to transport lot of items to ally that are missing completely or terribly overpriced, therefore saving me the 15% AH cut. So it's about 300G profit/PS.

This business is not just open to everyone, but also it's a class of items: high-end BoE. You can transport crafted or dropped ilvl 250+ items (there are 35). To understand this market one must ask: "why the high-end BoE sells higher on horde?". The answer is surprisingly: because horde is more progressed in raiding.

This is completely counter-intuitive, as more progressed means higher supply of such items, and lower demand since no one spends 5K on an upgrade if he can get it on the farmraid easily. It seems like the allies who have little access to these items are valuing them much lower than the hordies who get it easily.

The solution is seeing that such items are mostly vanity. If we compare the ilvl 264 shaman healer boot (crafted from 5 PS) and a ToC25 normal drop ilvl 245, we see about 20% stat increase in one slot out of the 16. So the overall stat increase is about 1.5%. For 6K gold. It's not something that anyone needs, besides hard mode raiders, but they get equal or better loot easier so their time is much better spent raiding than making gold. It's maybe a good buy for a low-geared goblin who wants to get into raiding and upgrades some blue or 200 epic stuff, but that's a small niche.

Vanity is bought by socials who want to keep up / ahead of the Joneses. The progressed side have higher geared Joneses. If you have simple triumph badge gear with a few frost items, you are a "nicely geared" player on ally side and a "lol get som gear nub" on horde who can't do the weekly raid because "LFM OS10 weekly link achie and 5.5K GS". So the horde side socials want BoE much more than the ally side ones.

While the progression difference of the sides is not so large in most servers, it exists on all and provide price difference = profit.

38 comments:

Eaten by a Grue said...

Come on, WoW is a game of little increases, so yes, upgrading only the boots may not make sense, but people always want to make upgrades, and overall, the little upgrades add up.

(It seems these people can't win with you. If they don't upgrade, they are the S and M&S - slackers - and if they do upgrade to be the best they can be, well, they are just social and keeping up with the joneses!)

Maybe the hordies just dont want to gamble on random drops and die rolls and would rather purchase the item they want.

Maybe crafted 264s are more expensive because the primordials are more expensive, and not the other way around. And maybe the primordials are more expensive because lots of people are trying to forge the legendary sword, whereas on the alliance side, there is no chance for this.

Maybe the crafted 264s are cheaper on alliance simply because they have no gold to spend.

You are just picking the one conclusion that correlates with your social-bashing views and proclaiming it to be the correct one.

Bloodshrike said...

Hey Gevlon,

Have you ever had any of your transfers taken enroute by a canny goblin who just camps the neutral AH?

I've had it happen occasionally, so I just thought I'd share some tips that you might incorporate.

1) Do a /who scan on Tanaris, STV, and Winterspring to look for any level 1's that might be in that zone. If there are some, either do the transfers later, or be exceptionally quick with them.
If you do notice level 1's, put them on your friends list on your regular transfer toon, so you'd be notified if they come online while you're in the middle of a transfer.

2) If you have dual monitors, put your Horde and Ally toon screens up together. If using just one screen, minimize them so you can see both at once. Trying to switch between full screens takes a few seconds, but that can be the few seconds that you lose the Savory Deviate Delight recipe that you bought for 500g on Horde side, and just sold to someone for 1 copper.

Gevlon said...

@Eaten by a Grue: most items are more expensive on ally. For example primal fire cost 3x more. All enchanting mats, rare gems, leathers, ores, bars are higher at ally.

People should upgrade. But not at any cost. Paying 5-6K for something you can get easily is silly.

Secondly, I always told skill > gear, so I never really cared about anyone's gear (unless it shown stupidity like SP hunter, no gem, no enchant)

Tenko said...

Saying that the crafted BoEs are pure vanity is just not true. The crafted, specially the pants, have awesome itemization and some of them are even better than Heroic ICC 25 loot. For example, melee leather pants have 100 ArP, and 3 sockets that can be used to gem more ArP, getting to a total of 160, which makes them an incredible upgrade for Combat Rogues. The only possible upgrade are the pants that drop from Heroic Festergut 25, and only if you have enough ArP in the rest of your gear. Caster mail pants, too, have a huge amount of haste, which is very sought after stat for both Elemental and Restoration shamans. Tank leggings have an armor bonus, making them the best choice if you're aiming for EHP.

These perks make the crafted BoEs significantly better than similar items of the same ilv, and that's not just for hardcore heroic mode raiders.

Of course, that's probably just the way I see it. Random Joe from the PUGland probably just want the red numbers in his gearscore.

Gevlon said...

@Tenko: but if you are not hard mode raider, you don't NEED the good itemization. Having such legs for a rogue would only turn a 7 mins Saurfang kill into a 6:54 Saurfang kill. That's vanity.

hound said...

I think Gevlon is just pointing out that it does not make sense to spend big money on an upgrade that is less than 2% better than what you are wearing.

To do so really is just a vain attempt to keep up.

The whole point of many of Gevlon's recent activities is to prove that the raid content can be accomplished with very little gear advancement at all. Just because the developers make it available does not mean you have to have it all to keep going. That belief is a social endeavor.

Chopsui said...

I agree with Gevlon here. I've never felt the need for these items unless either I was catching up gearwise with the guild I was in (or felt I had to show some dedication by gearing up myself), or because it was a BiS needed for hardmode raiding.

A friend of mine asked me for a loan to make the frost-crafted boots for his tankadin. I know he has the capacity to earn gold and has done so in the past, so this was just laziness asking. Worse was, when I asked him why, his answer was "it's such and such an upgrade". When I asked him what content he was going to be tanking, the answer was "Toc10, ICC10, maybe ICC25". He already had ilvl 245 boots, the intended ilvl for ICC25 normal mode, and he had no intention of doing heroic mode just yet. This seems like a perfect example.

Chopsui

Anonymous said...

Also another reason for crafted items is 10 man only raiding. If guild decides to be 10 man only, crafted items are ussually BIS even counting hard modes. Crafted items also provide boost while you can spend your badges on another gear so you can use them for faster gearing. Also and this is not marginal. Because most of players do not sell ingame gold and it rains down of the sky they just do have excesive gold (which does not have value) and can get something with small value from item.

Money doesn't have any value by itself. You can’t eat money, you cann't use money to build a shelter. Their value is in the stuff you can buy for them.

Kristine Ask said...

Please stop equating players wanting gear upgrades with moronic e-peeners.

There are many ways to determine accomplishment in the game. You have been one to front the idea of being successfull at goldmaking as an alternative to raiding, proving that you can have success in more then one way.

Just like completing content or getting achievements are ways of succeeding - having good gear is another one. Some actually prefer to spend hours pouring over Rawr and spreadsheets in order to maximize their gear, rather then spend equal amount of time browsing, scanning and posting on the AH.

As a request I would like more wellargued posts about rational play, and less of the recent "This is how I play the game, and therefore others should play it like that too".

Anonymous said...

@Last Anonymous
You REALLY don't need itemlvl 264 for Icc10, even if it's BiS.

Gevlon said...

@Kristine Ask: sorry but I won't.

A world top 10 rogue who spammed trade chat before ICC that "as soon as you can earn frost badges from dailies, put it away, buy a primordial saronite and sell it to me, I pay 20000G each" is NOT a moron, since he was aiming for world first.

A hard mode doing guy who is saving his DKP for weapon and also wants to impress the recruiters of more progressed guild paying 10K for it now is also a rational solution.

A normal mode doing guy buying these is making a mistake, because the time spent getting the gold is surely less effective than time spent learning his class or time spent browsing recruitment posts.

A guy who just want gear to have gear is by DEFINITION an E-peener, since E-peening is taking pride from gear. Of course you can claim that E-peening is not moronic, but I doubt if you can convince anyone.

Harakan said...

i formed a guild aiming for 10 men hard modes progression, and the boots you posted happen to be the Best in Slot for Holy paladins and Caster shamans (nothing from icc10 heroic surpasses them).
so, while i guess i understand your point of "random players get crafter epics just to look good" i think you're underestimating the value of people with different progression level then what you consider "hard core raiding".
6/7k gold for an item you will not be changing up to cataclysm isn't much, and you will probably go for that if you have a basic knowledge of the game.
i'm pretty sure also raiding alts from the best pve guilds on your realm buy a lot of those stuff, since the raiding attitude is that you don't want to be carried, not even on a fresh 80 running an alt run, so you grab every BoE you can before raiding with him.

Anonymous said...

> A guy who just want gear to have gear is by DEFINITION an E-peener, since E-peening is taking pride from gear.

You are wrong. Check the definition of e-peen, e.g. here: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=e-peen

Internet slang for ego, pride, or attitude in the virtual world.

"I just slaughtered 28 people in that game of Battlefield 2 and never died. Man my e-p33n feels huge."

I don't understand why aiming for the world first and being gold capped in a computer game are honorable goals, while obtaining BiS gear is not. Makes no sense.

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon's "A normal mode doing guy buying these is making a mistake, because the time spent getting the gold is surely less effective than time spent learning his class or time spent browsing recruitment posts."

I hope you do realise that most of the "normal mode guys" looking to buy this kind of expensive BoEs are alts, and not people who just recently bought the game and levelled their first character. I doubt people from the latter group would have enough gold for that to begin with, and for them it stands true that their time would be better invested into other activities to improve.

Now imagine me levelling a 6th or 7th character to do some alt raids from a different perspective. I have enough gold from past activities and nothing to spend it on, besides the truly useless vanity items like mammoths and choppers. Between levelling 1-80, running couple of dozens of heroics, a few easier raids and spending 30 mins on EJ reading about the basic class mehanics - you still think that there is much space left for "learning my class"?
While getting ready to do even normal mode ICC raid and replacing the levelling greens, I'll rather do, say, 30 heroics and cash out a few thousand gold to fill in 4 slots with crafted items, than run 70 heroics to fill all slots and "learn my class", about which i know almost everything by now.

Actually, I remember one of your own posts which was quite funny, about "failchievemts", signs by which to recognize M&S. Many of them were in the fashion of "ride a 20k gold mammoth while wearing a blue item in a slot where a high level BoE epic is available for your class/spec".
Taking that into account, you're putting both the people who spend their gold on vanity crap, and people who spend it to actually improve their character, in the same basket.
I wonder which way of utilizing gold you would approve with, since obviously however one spends it you consider it a mistake or moronic. And not everyone gets excited about pilling up gold to some stupid cap, even if we engage in some goblinish gold making now and then.

Kristine Ask said...

Gevlon said: "A guy who just want gear to have gear is by DEFINITION an E-peener, since E-peening is taking pride from gear."

No.

e-peen (plural e-peens)

1. (Internet, slang, vulgar) A technology-related item or status used as an embodiment of one's superiority over others.

You are again reducing gear to a simple need to lord ones own superiority over others. Not saying it dont happen, but for someone who brings it up so often (why people care about gear) you are excluding other viable explanations.

Having a wellequipped character does not have to be about showing off to others (which is what e-peening is about), or to get confirmation of own status from others.
It can simply be the challenge you set yourself within the game. Aka: What is the best possible gear I can get with X effort?
The X can be anything from hardmode raiding to logging on once a week.

It is not different from "How much money can I get with X effort?". In both cases they are virtually generated values, and the most valueable one is the one that gives the most meaning to you.

You can argue that gold can be traded for RL currency, but if RL currency is the goal in the first place - you should log off WoW and get a real job.

Gevlon said...

@Last anonymous: I guess you have missed "It's maybe a good buy for a low-geared goblin who wants to get into raiding and upgrades some blue or 200 epic stuff".

@Before last anonymous and Kristine Ask: No, getting the best possible gear is NOT a challenge, because it does not contain any element where you can fail. You CAN do a 5-man. Surely. Then you can do 300 to get 600 badges to buy everything from the vendor. You CAN do a daily quest for 15G. Then you can do 400 to get 6000G for the BoE.

A task being challenging is usually proven by pointing out that most people have not done it. Lich King heroic is challenging, since only 436 10-man guild (about 6000 people) did it out of 10 million.

Getting gear on the other hand is TRIVIAL, since by the design of the game, EVERYONE who cares to log in and do some GRINDING will have gear. By the time Cata comes, everyone will be above 6K GS.

Fake Nils said...

"Getting gear on the other hand is TRIVIAL"

If it's trivial, I challenge you to get the BiS gear for one of your characters.

Anonymous said...

Of course the high level BOE/crafted items do have real value to some people. Gevlon is not wondering why they are people buying these, he's wondering why the prices are more elevated in the faction which has much more supply on these.

The very generic rule price=demand/supply answers him "it must be because of big demand",

BUT why there is big demand on these, when the Magtheridon-EU Horde side has many guilds that farm icc25? Ok there are 10man only guilds, alts etc, but is their number so big that makes such a huge demand that corresponds to the 10 times higher supply and availability than ally's?

Therefore, a really good assumption is the fact that many players who are not supposed to buy them(they are not in progression guild, they are not trying to raid icc25, they are not in a icc10 only guild) are buying these stuff too, resulting in higher bids and less BOE gear rotting in the AH, holding the prices steady in high levels.

I only assume these, i may be 100% wrong.
But it's what my mind is whispering to me as the most logical to conclude.

P.S. I r not gud in englich, excuse any mistakes.

Your friendly Anonymous

Kristine Ask said...

Getting gold on the other hand is TRIVIAL, since by the design of the game, EVERYONE who cares to log in and do some GRINDING will have gold.

c what I did thare?

Anonymous said...

I think you're overlooking something that you yourself brought up a few weeks ago. People value gold differently. High end raiders who also have a rational or goblin-ish side know that having gear isn't as important as WHEN you have the gear.

A high end raider who doesn't want to rely on RNG for their drops is going to go out and buy these boots. Because let's face it, after you get your epic flyer + weekly raiding consumables there really isn't much to sink your gold into. If gold comes easy to them, why wouldn't they spend it on something as pragmatic as better gear?

Gevlon said...

@Kristine Ask: you did nothing. I never questioned that every moron can grind gold. Just stand in Dalaran and you can see them parading on mammoth or bike.

My whole site was about how to get gold without GRINDING for it.

For the same reason I do NOT find goldcap a huge achievement exactly because every moron can grind it.

The Gnome of Zurich said...

Maybe the crafted 264s are cheaper on alliance simply because they have no gold to spend.

This seems most likely, but transporting these items to horde side works to alleviate that somewhat. Gevlon is willing to consistently pay a higher price for these items than a pure alliance player so that gives some gold to the economy (or at least means that his other cross faction operations to bring various mats to alliance from horde, take less gold away from the alliance economy).

Unknown said...

How much time is 6k gold? 3 hours at the AH?

I just ran a three hour ICC-25 regular PUG last night and got exactly 0 drops. And I'm not guilded or geared to the tooth. Additionally, I can't try again until Tuesday.

If I were just judging by time spent, I could probably prove quantitatively that I'd be BETTER off just playing the AH and gear completely off of BoEs rather than by gearing up through raiding.

I haven't purchased any BoE crafteds mainly because I, like you, have some weird sort of personal epeen fascination with seeing the ridiculous, pointless number next to the gold nugget grow steadily, but I certainly have entertained it from time to time.

Kristine Ask said...

Gevlon said: "My whole site was about how to get gold without GRINDING for it."

So it's an achievement/challenge/meaningful if you dont grind for it?

But then, if you use non-grinding methods of gaining gold and buy BoEs cuase you care about gear rather then gold, you are not grinding are you?

Sorry Gev, but I cant get over some glaring contradictions here. Further more, the niche of how to play "the right way" without being and m&s is getting dangerously small.

hound said...

Kristine Ask is missing something. I am not sure what, but I will use myself as an example:

I recently got my main to 80. Took me the whole expansion cycle to do it. I missed almost every opportunity to find a decent guild or gear up for heroics.

My choices now are to either quit and wait for Cataclysm, try to do pugs where my gearscore is unwelcome, or buy some gear.

I've chosen to set my sights on the top-end crafted plate dps gear. I need approx. 30k gold worth of materials, I only have about 2k over all of my characters.

I can grind it or play the auction house, or set my sights lower.

Lower would be optimal, but I want the epics. That is epeen. That is a social endeavor.

Tobold said...

What is a great achievement for you, Gevlon?

Cirian said...

I think what you are missing on occasion here is that you are playing a game. The nature of a game is that it is not required and therefore people only play it when they are getting something out of it.

For example, in my case, the enjoyment I get from the game is from the growth of my character. World of Warcraft already has one of the most limited systems of character growth out of all MMORPGs out there at the moment as it is. There are no avenues of alternate advancement. I much prefer the EQ system where they basically have talent points like WOW that provide minor boosts etc, but rather than getting 1 per level, you have to earn them seperately.

Still, you go for what you can, and once you are level 80 the only other avenue of character growth IS gear.

Conversely, you value 6k gold over a minor upgrade, while on the other hand pointing out how incredibly worthless gold IS in WOW. Once you are 80 the ONLY things available to spend your gold on IS these sort of items.

Hoarding gold for no reason has even less value than spending that gold on an overinflated item that would provide a very minor benefit. This is not real life where you should be saving money for emergencies, future contingencies like school for your children, etc. This is a game, and not only just ANY game, it is a game where the developers seem dead set on giving everything to you so easily that there is absolutely no reason to restrain yourself at any time.

Andru said...

Whoa, look at all this knife-waving.

Last time I checked, WoW was a RPG. Most, if not all, modern RPGs are about growing the power of your character through whatever means possible. This has not changed for WoW.

Secondly, gear is easily measured. 'I went a bought a thing from AH and now I'm 1% better than before' is easily measured. "I went and learned a new trick from EJ and now my performance raised by (1.66666+pi)^e%" is a lie.

How good you are at playing your character is not only subjectively perceptive, it also requires fuzzy logic to evaluate.

On the other hand, gear can be measured.

Thirdly, forget what I just said, since it's a non-issue. RPGs are about increasing the power of your character. If one route is painfully obvious and other is obscured and arcane, any rational person on the face of the planet will apply Occam's razor and gravitate towards the easier solution.

Besides, what else is there to buy that buying gear is such a huge opportunity cost? Even with moderate AH-farming skills, one of these pieces is like 6 hours of play time. If they're pro (like you) they'll do it semi-AFK while reading on their class and increasing their character's power through both means. Why wouldn't this be rationally efficient?

And all this 'You don't need BiS.' argument is pretty weak. No one needs it. Want, yes. Why is it wrong to want it? It's a goal that can be attained. Maybe some guys find the thrill in 'getting all pieces BiS' more interesting than 'kill LK HM'. Sure, maybe it's grindy and not challenging, but why not let them? Denying them their fun by saying that they're morons is not only uncharacteristically social by exerting peer-pressure, it's also an exercise in futility.

If you, personally, don't find it an achievement, is only a personal opinion. Some persons find stamp-collecting fun. So what? It's their personal fun factory.

Wilson said...

@Hound-

As a fresh 80, it is not surprising that you don't have a lot of gold on hand. This is normal. Obviously buying epics for 5k a pop is not an efficient way for you to be gearing up. However, most people are people are in a very different situation than you. They have multiple 80s and an excess supply of gold. If they want to raid on an alt this summer, then buying crafted epics can make sense - gearing up through emblems and drops is slow, and time is growing short. Meanwhile, gold is cheap - if you don't buy gear with it, then it just sits in a pile gathering dust. E-peen has nothing to do with it, just rational decision making.

Don't let the fact that you are late to the party discourage you. For starters, run heroics - yes, a few ignorant jerks may bitch about your gearscore, but the overwhelming majority won't care (or even notice). Meanwhile, this is the time that guilds run into trouble filling their raid slots, as they lose members to summer and pre-expansion burnout. A bit of effort could easily get you a spot in a raiding guild, if that is what you want.

Unknown said...

As Kristine Ask quoted, Gevlon said: "My whole site was about how to get gold without GRINDING for it."

I don't grind because I don't enjoy it. BUT... Isn't the whole mantra of "Goblinism" not specifically to avoid grinding, but to maximize profit/time? If some situation arose where it was a given that a particularly tedious grind was the most lucrative gold/time, wouldn't a true Goblin do it?

csdx said...

@Gevlon "A task being challenging is usually proven by pointing out that most people have not done it. "

Actually, you need to do the hardmodes to get BiS gear, so wanting BiS gear is equivalent to beating the hardmodes.

Fetzu said...

I have gold lying around that I do not "need", I have epic flying on all my 80s, my main has all it could need from gold, I have tons of flask mats, gems and ench mats lying around. Shouldn't this dead gold be turned into something useful? How much is gold worth if you do not spend it on anything, but horde it like a dragon?

I will likely drop 4-5k on a pair of trousers for my priest, it will be an item level 245-264 jump and the character is unlikely to see a comparable pair drop in a raid instance. Should I sit on my gold pile and growl at anything I could do with it, or use it to make one of my characters gain in power?

The game is about improving your character. I can go out and raid heroic ten man ICC or 25 man ICC and hope that 1. the trousers will drop and 2. that I win the /roll; or I can spend an hour fishing per day (instead of watching tv while afked in dalaran so I would not be spending more time actually online) and get the cash for the saronites within a week.

I can tell you which feels less grindy, which will take less time and, ultimately, which will be more profitable. Heck, I would probably make a profit by overshooting my target.

Anonymous said...

Gevlon is in his Undergeared mode...so just face it at the moment BiS BoEs is just a waste of gold for him right now.

Anonymous said...

Gevlon, isn't you making gold in the game, which you'll never spend, even more 'pointless' than spending gold to get a piece of gear that is only 1.5% upgrade?

All your gold is a 0% upgrade, except in the one stat a 'goblin' cares about --- gold.

Its just a different form of measure, but accumulating numbers is a nul feat regardless in WoW.

Ironically, the only thing worth anything in WoW is either 'enjoyment'... but isn't that a 'social' measure?

Ryan Barker said...

Do you use epic gems in your equipment? Why not use the cheaper enchants and save yourself some gold? Do you flask every attempt? Do you eat food? Why? You obviously don't need it to progress since you can do it in blues.

The answer is that there is a social contract in all high end guilds. Everyone is expected to be fully geared, gemmed, enchanted and buffed for every attempt. This is to make sure that everyone is putting equal effort in to the raid so that those 2% wipes are kills.

Just this week the 5% ICC buff went in and our raid sailed through all of the previous fairly difficult fights. Huge mistakes were made that would have caused wipes in prior weeks and yet we cleared the entire zone, 9/12H ICC including 1 new hard mode kill in only 5.5 hours. 5% more hp, damage and healing is a huge buff! Most of the time, you can't rely on Blizzard to give you this 5% buff. You have to do it yourself by making sure every single member of the raid is making all the neccessary 1% upgrades that they can get.

So now that the social reasons for explaining why buying a best in slot is good for the raid, how about the goblin reasons. The answer is that buying BoE gear allows you to save your DKP in raids for slots that you can't just buy BoE gear in. This gives you an advantage over players who won't buy their upgrades and lets you get geared up faster. There are only 12 bosses in ICC and only 3*11 + 4 = 35 items are guaranteed to drop each clear. This means you should gain 1.4 pieces of gear a week assuming no RNG and perfect gear selection. In reality, if you don't buy gear out of the AH, you will by always slightly behind the DKP of those who do buy gear and it will take you a much longer time to get the rarer gear slots (trinkets/weapons).

Anonymous said...

Gevlon needed to reach gold cap for the blog to attract visitors.

Bobbins said...

The price differences between the factions show the utter failure of the neutral AH. Nice in theory cross faction trading but it doesn't work.

PS I don't consider using the neutral AH to transport goods as trading but more as transporting mechanism.

@anom above
to reach the gold cap is more persistance than skill. just as a dps has a rotation to make money from the ah you rinse and repeat using a set strategy. reaching the gold cap is nothing it is how you are able to get there that matters. identifying and knowing areas that you are able to exploit for profit is what makes a gold blog good.
also surprised this wasn't edited out as of no relevance to the subject?

Antivyris said...

There is a second reason Gevlon, you are missing the alternate currency in play. DKP.

I will (and have for those exact boots since they are near BiS for elemental) always spend gold instead of DKP. By buying a 264, that nets me a good 250-350 GP saved keeping my priority hight in EPGP.

It's the same reason I bought a hilt. I 'could' use any of the easy to get weapons that are OK for elemental and lose 400-800 GP dropping my priority way down, or spend 8k on a very well itemized weapon that doesn't get replaced until LK.

For that same reason, I use gold to gear alts instead of DKP. If I buy the 245 Chest and Bracers, the 264 legs and boots, 2pc T9 (gloves/shoulders), Badge 245 Helm, badge trinkets, Hilt weapon, that leaves 2 Rings, a belt, and a necklace that I need to farm heroics for to get my alt ICC-10/25 ready, pretty darn near hardmode ready, and I didn't need to spend a bit of priority for it.

This is a massive bonus when joining a new guild with a new character, since you can now pick and choose your upgrades rather then having to roll on everything only to end up with tablescraps.