Putting Markco back to the blogroll for finding Zeroauctions means that I have to reflect business nonsense. Did not have to wait long: "I get questions all the time regarding which professions a player should take based on class, based on other professions they have or any other countless deviations and permutations of variables. The second most common question on this topic I get is when to drop a profession. If you are considering dropping a profession and no other toon in your army of alts has that profession, the answer is simple: don't drop it."
Yes I get the question "which professions a player should take based on" whatever. And when I'm not in the "do not beg for hand-holding" mood, I answer, you should take any crafting professions you like. Each of them provides very balanced bonuses (with differences in the 0.01% region), each of them are good for making money (inscription, JC a bit better, but all provide more than you can spend), and you can buy their product on the AH, so there is no good answer for the question.
However there is definitely a bad answer: take all by leveling more alts. Leveling an alt up to 75 (assumed Cata requirement for top trade) takes about 100 hours. Even doing dailies or farming in that time would mean 30K opportunity cost. Not to mention that the time you'll spend making money on your new profession is a time not spent on making money on the old one. Considering that the G/hour of the professions is fairly the same, you make the same gold on your LW main as your tailor alt.
If you can't make gold as LW, chances are good that you won't make gold as tailor either. It's the same as the guy who does 2K DPS as a mage start to level a warlock "cuz mages sukk an lokks r cool lol". He won't be better, since he still sucks, just spend some time leveling. Business needs skills too, and can't be replaced by rerolling. Start reading, not grinding.
The only exception could be a skinner/LW lolkid who spill all kind of products below material prices "cuz itz free an i need bike b4 cata lol". This time a new trade can be profitable. But why don't you just drop the useless LW? Chances are high that arthasdklol's new main, detvinghuntagolbin will need master flying + bike + screenblocking flying whale mount, so the LW-spill won't end.
PS: several commenters claim that professions suffer from diminishing returns, so you make 500G in 20 mins but if you spend another 20 mins, you just make 300G more, simply because you already posted the easy items in the first 20 mins. Using n professions give you n*500 G in n*20 mins. That is true. However you make the initial 500G because you know your market. Simply leveling another toon and getting a new profession don't give you this knowledge. It will take lot of time to know where the unfilled niches are. Simple example: you see that flasks are 10G above material costs. You level an alt, max out alchemy just to learn that the market is dominated by a guy who keep 10G profit when no competition is absent, but ready to craft for 0 profit if someone undercuts him to drive him out. Unless your server is populated by M&S only you won't find green pastures, you will have to fight for every market and seek for every niche. That takes much more time than most people believe.
Yes I get the question "which professions a player should take based on" whatever. And when I'm not in the "do not beg for hand-holding" mood, I answer, you should take any crafting professions you like. Each of them provides very balanced bonuses (with differences in the 0.01% region), each of them are good for making money (inscription, JC a bit better, but all provide more than you can spend), and you can buy their product on the AH, so there is no good answer for the question.
However there is definitely a bad answer: take all by leveling more alts. Leveling an alt up to 75 (assumed Cata requirement for top trade) takes about 100 hours. Even doing dailies or farming in that time would mean 30K opportunity cost. Not to mention that the time you'll spend making money on your new profession is a time not spent on making money on the old one. Considering that the G/hour of the professions is fairly the same, you make the same gold on your LW main as your tailor alt.
If you can't make gold as LW, chances are good that you won't make gold as tailor either. It's the same as the guy who does 2K DPS as a mage start to level a warlock "cuz mages sukk an lokks r cool lol". He won't be better, since he still sucks, just spend some time leveling. Business needs skills too, and can't be replaced by rerolling. Start reading, not grinding.
The only exception could be a skinner/LW lolkid who spill all kind of products below material prices "cuz itz free an i need bike b4 cata lol". This time a new trade can be profitable. But why don't you just drop the useless LW? Chances are high that arthasdklol's new main, detvinghuntagolbin will need master flying + bike + screenblocking flying whale mount, so the LW-spill won't end.
- Your recipes (except for twink enchants) will worth zero soon. Cataclysm brings new, faster tradeskill leveling system. So you won't lose lot by dropping.
- Choose professions that fits your gaming style. There is no shame in gathering professions and you can get 10-20K G simply while leveling to 85 with mining, herbalism or skinning. Also, if you don't farm for hours, just pick the nods in places where you are for other reasons, gathering has pretty high G/hour (low G/day though).
- Farming (spending hours looking for nodes) is low G/hour, but still higher than having the best crafting profession without business skills.
- No profession is sure-easy-moneyprint! Even WotLK inscription wasn't such, as we had to setup a huge addon-driven, 20K invested mega-factory before the 1-10K/day started to roll in, and it could end any time with the entry of a new competitor.
- Every crafting profession works the same way, obey the same market rules. If you suck with one, you should learn economics and not grind your 5th character in Hellfire Peninsula!
PS: several commenters claim that professions suffer from diminishing returns, so you make 500G in 20 mins but if you spend another 20 mins, you just make 300G more, simply because you already posted the easy items in the first 20 mins. Using n professions give you n*500 G in n*20 mins. That is true. However you make the initial 500G because you know your market. Simply leveling another toon and getting a new profession don't give you this knowledge. It will take lot of time to know where the unfilled niches are. Simple example: you see that flasks are 10G above material costs. You level an alt, max out alchemy just to learn that the market is dominated by a guy who keep 10G profit when no competition is absent, but ready to craft for 0 profit if someone undercuts him to drive him out. Unless your server is populated by M&S only you won't find green pastures, you will have to fight for every market and seek for every niche. That takes much more time than most people believe.
46 comments:
All professions are profitable. It depends on how you utilize them. though I no longer use Engineering and Tailoring to gain profit.
I have all professions and I make profit from all of them.
Of course as a botter I don't worry much about raw materials cost.
LW made good gold, I run a bot on my LW who is also a skinner to farm and skin beasts in Sholazar when I need Borean leather, When I need Dragonscale I farm Coldera, when I need Nerubian Chitin there is an area in Icecrown with plenty of skinnable undead. I make 245 epics and sell them though I need to buy crusader orbs from AH. And excess Borean will be made into green quality gear that will be sent to the Enchanter to disenchant and sell the mats in AH.
I have 4 other farmers all of them having both Mining and Herbalism. I assign 2 to gather herbs and 2 for mining. One herbalist to farm Sholazar where half of the herbs is sold in AH and other half sent to the Inscriptionist to produce Glyphs that I'm stacking for Cataclysm start and the other herbalist farm StormPeaks for Lichbloom and Icethorn which half is sold and the other half sent to the Alchemist for Flask of the Frost Wrym. All the frost lotus from both farmers are sent to the Alchemist. Eternal Life will be sold in AH
As for mining one will farm Borean Tundra looking for Cobalt and the other is sent to Sholazar for Sarnoite. Half of the cobalt is in AH and the other half sent to the Blacksmith to make green quality gear to be sent to Enchanter for disenchanting, half of the saronite is sold and other half along with titanium is sent for Jewlcrafter for prospecting, all gems are posted in AH even the epic ones although I have plenty of epic recipes. Eternal Earth is also given to the JC to craft green quality gear to be disenchanted. The rest of Eternals are sold in AH.
Well if you look at the variety of LW products compared to tailoring you can conclude that tailors have larger variety of products that can be offered to the public. And materials are easier and cheaper to obtain. Similar situation is with few other professions, exception is enchanting, Scroll of enchant weapon - Mongoose is a huge profit income for me these days. Btw Auctioneer is back.
on the other hand, if you have many alts (eg, too much afk time to raid), having multiple professions does increase both gold/hr and total gold/day. (extreme example...10 transmute master alchemists can make ~1k gold/minute...and alchemy is cheap to level)
In this post you say:
Choose professions that fits your gaming style. There is no shame in farming and you can get 10-20G simply while leveling with mining, herbalism or skinning.
Typically in your previous posts you tend to look down a bit on farming. I'm sure you'll not contradicting yourself here, but I think it would be informative to hear you expound on this subject a little more anyway.
@Anonymous: I Improperly used the "farming" instead of "gathering profession", text fixed.
I get your point, so assuming that the person is capable of making a reasonable return with whatever profession (ie. not an idiot), then isn't the answer to the original not drop any professions, which then gives you the most flexibility to react to changes in the market?
eg. If somebody enters and starts heavy competition in Enchanting scrolls, then as you have another profession already competitive, then you just switch focus?
@Botter
The use of bots isn't the same thing as maximising your g/hr through understanding your professions,it's simply cheating.
It would be akin to having a real life discussion about making money whereby you dismiss the need to study because you rob banks to gain collateral.
I´m already done with that decision. I´m starting into the Cataclysm with my JC & Mining DK, giving me a basic support for my enchanting / engeneer paladin. I´ve got too many toons (2 further 80´s 1 75) since I´ve changed factions at the start of patch 3.0
I hope the incoming gold by using JC will be as nice as in the start of WotLK. But as told I´ve got some backup with the oter toons, as I´ve got a blacksmith, alchemist&herbalist, tailor&scribe (since the inscription-mats fell into almost npc-ventor price last week)
But at all I´m not into changing my first rising char´s professions into JC / BS even if it has better support for my dps-spec. It would rip off my independence in farming and would bind me to the cataclysm-starting enormous ore-costs at the AH.
I think gathering professions got their extra value in every starting new main-content.
'If you can't make gold as LW, chances are good that you won't make gold as tailor either'
Therefore if you can make money with LW get tailoring too and make more. The money making in Wow is not complex and does not require time to specialise in one area. Once the tradeskill is learnt it is there for the length of the game a permanent investment.
Just nitpicking, but "Your recipes (except for twink enchants) will worth zero soon." might not be universally true.
I'm tanking ICC HM with Glove Reinforcements (+240 armor, from BC era) because they are simply better than +18 stamina with current endgame tanking gear. (+719 EHP vs +494 EHP on me specifically)
Also, profession bonuses - i'm tanking with BS and Mining that give me +60sta and +2gems. If I wasn't too lazy and/or felt like i really needed that little edge, I'd level engineering because 645 (885-240) armor beats 60 sta (+1933 EHP vs +1656 EHP on me specifically).
The overall increases in EHP in these cases are respectively 0.16% and 0.2% which doesn't sound like much, but that's just poor logic. Same as skipping a gem altogether would only cause 0.6% decrease which is no big deal on its own.
The change in increase from the particular option (glove enchant choice or profession choice) is respectively 45% and 17%. These are the percentages that count when making choices, because all those little choices add up. The more of them one ignores the bigger a slacker he is.
(which makes me a light slacker - probably why i still don't have a LK HM kill under my belt)
@Bobbins: not really, as you must always level all your alts up to be able to learn the latest recipes. This take time. Time spent on not making gold on your main.
@Grim: Glove reinforcement is a trainer-taught recipe, so all LW on your server knows it. So dropping YOUR LW doesn't stop you from getting them. Also, I talked about crafting professions instead of gathering ones. Mining is significantly worse than Engineer. JC is insignificantly worse.
@Gevlon
What about BS? Its a crafting profession that gives a bonus of 2 gems. For tanking purposes 2 gems = 60 stamina = mining
Also, JC gives 63 extra stamina (the trinkets are obsolete) so its just 5% better than mining for a tank (compared to ~17% engineering).
I don't know about healers or dps, as I never paid that much attention to my offspec, but are tanks really so special?
Just playing dumb for some lines.
The idea to start with two crafting-professions (skill 450) and get the needet resources to get 490 (as far as i know the "cap" for wotlk products) pre cata.
But I´m a bit sceptic in the part 490+ to go for 525. When you´ll try to get the material per AH in the first days, the usual farnmer will lvl up their main, so only few will spell their materials into the AH. The demand will be emormous and the supply will be... ...lamost zero (speaking of day one or two I don´t care about week two, I got myself some vacation and will be raiding at day four or five).
Wouldn´t it be more of an profit to farm your own materials when you´re leveling anyway and respecc your farming profession when status quo is back again (farmers at max level).
Just asking down at the basics for someone who´s into feeding the server-first aiming raider´s demands.
@Visalyar: you are playing dumb very good! What you farm is not free. If you have problem paying the AH prices, than you should NOT level your own crafting but sell the materials you farm on the AH for the high prices.
So, if I understood you correctly, you have three objections to the idea of covering all professions via alts:
1. Leveling an alt takes time that could otherwise be used to earn money.
2. All crafting professions provide comparable gold/hour anyway, so there's no advantage to be gained by having multiple professions.
3. If you just suck at making money, no amount of profession-changing will change that.
Some thoughts on this:
1. The time and money spent on leveling an alt and maxing out his professions is not a waste (like grinding Insane in the Membrane or saving for a motorcycle). It's an investment that will pay off at a later point, by giving you an edge over those who did not see fit to make the same investment.
In this regard, it's like Inscription. Yes, buying all those glyph recipe books costs money; yes, spending cooldowns on research means that you miss out on other profession cooldowns (since, during all those weeks, you could be making specialist cloth and transmuting gems instead). However, once you have all glyphs, you have a very distinctive advantage over freshly minted scribes who only have access to trainer recipes - an advantage that can be used to make money hand over fist.
Furthermore, it makes obvious sense to level said alts now, when the opportunity cost of each hour spent on leveling instead of gathering/dailies is less than it will be in Cataclysm. Just like it made sense to buy glyphs well in advance of patch 4.0.1.
Of course, all of this is true only if having multiple alts with different professions actually increases the cash flow. So let's move on to Point 2:
(Character limit reached - to be continued)
2. With the exception of gathering and grinding, all other gold sources in WoW suffer from diminishing returns.
For example, a hypothetical Blacksmith can spend 20 minutes making and auctioning belt buckles to make a net profit of 600g. This means that Blacksmithing has 1.8K/hour income rate. Or does it? If our Blacksmith decides to spend 10 hours per day making and selling buckles, will he be able to make 126K by the end of the week?
Obviously, he won't. No server's market can consume all those endless buckles day after day, so most of them will end up unsold. Another limit is imposed by supplies; not many Auction Houses have thousands of Frost Lotuses or multiple pages full of Titansteel Bar stacks for sale every day. Therefore, it would be more accurate to say that Blacksmithing has 1800 g/hr rate before DR; that is, up to a point where either market becomes saturated or supplies dry out, causing the profits/hr to drop off sharply beyond it.
Dailies suffer from the same problem. Yes, you can make 250 g/hr by doing Icecrown dailies, but you won't be able to make 2500 gold by doing them for 10 hours in a single day on the same character. Once all easily accessible dailies are done, diminishing returns kick in.
Of course, this is not a problem if one's play time is low enough so that DR does not become an issue. So if your alloted moneymaking time is limited to 30-40 minutes per day, then it doesn't make sense to level multiple alts. However, for those who have the ability and desire to go further, diminishing returns pose a very formiddable obstacle.
Having access to multiple alts and professions alleviates the DR issue quite nicely. One can spend 20 minutes making and selling buckles, then relog to an alt and spend another 20 minutes making and selling bags, then log onto a third character and cut some gems, and so forth. This way, he will make far more money (by milking each individual segment of the market to its particular point of saturation) than he or she would be able to do by sticking to a single profession. And in a pinch, there's always an option of doing dailies on multiple maxed-out characters, as well.
Furthermore, diversification allows you to react swiftly to temporary market imbalances. Sometimes, either due to M&S stupidity or to Blizzard's oversight, one profession may temporarily become far more profitable than any other (for examples, see the recent glyph harvest, or 3.2.2 stealth-herbing in Freya's room, or the Engineering clouds in Howling Fjord that had a 10x respawn rate during the first 24 hours of WotLK). Having a character with every profession allows you to capitalize on such opportunities. On other hand, external factors (ranging from patch nerfs to a major guild alliance transfering away from the realm) may cause a given profession's gold rate to plummet. Having multiple professions means that you'll only lose 10% of your income, instead of 90%.
(continued further)
(continued from the previous three comments)
3. Yes, this advice doesn't work for M&S. But then again, the same is true for any other advice, so that's not really a relevant arguement.
My personal impression of Markco's post is that of a suggestion for already successful players on how to improve their profits further, rather than a miracle pill for the mammoth-riding, elemental-grinding "Arthasloldks" of this world. Of course, he's not my archrival, so I may have overlooked certain subtle themes that you've noticed.
P.S. Cataclysm in general appears to be far more alt-centric than WotLK, if only due to the raid lockout changes (which effectively impose a cap on how much one can play a given character per week). So levelling a few extra alts to level 80 would be a wise investment for all players with sufficient play time, even without considering professions.
Hopefully you've picked professions you are comfortable with to begin with. I do agree you should pick what fits your playstyle.
There's no harm in dropping them, but you also have the opportunity cost of the time and gold it takes to level a new profession. Sure it's not 30k, but probably 10k (include time and gold spent on mats if you are powerleveling to 450).
Plus, by leveling professions you have on alts, hopefully you are even further diversifying, which has the potential to make you more gold in the long run than dropping the profession.
@Ephemeron:
1: on this we agree on this, if #2 is true than leveling is a good investment
2: crafting is not just pressing the "craft all" button at some random product. One must know the market well. In your example the Blacksmith spends 20 mins for 600G profit, 1800G/hour. Obviously if he'd spend just 10 mins, he'd have something like 350G profit, 2100G/hour. In 30 mins he'd make 700G maybe, 1400G/hour. Why he chooses to work 20 mins? Because he KNOWS this market. He may has CoD deals with miners, knows when people buy more buckles and so on. He knows when people buy enchanting rods, which lowbie crafted plates/mails have market. This knowledge built up over long time and an important gold-making factor.
Our Blacksmith will make more money in his third 10 mins than he would do with LW in his first 10 mins, simply because he is noob in LW market.
Theoretically one can learn more than 2 markets, but that needs so much time that is out of interest of 99.9% of players.
3: people always believe that the M&S is someone else. The average player can always increase his income by learning the market more than by leveling an alt. Again: there are a 0.1% exception who knows the market enough, but usually the time is much better spent on learning than leveling.
"you are playing dumb very good!"
-Thank´s always good at that point... (I´ll cut the selfironic here.)
"If you have problem paying the AH prices, than you should NOT level your own crafting but sell the materials you farm on the AH for the high prices."
-Yes, that´s the none-brain-stupidity in my post, by farming your own material it´s logic in thinking the next step, a) selling the stuff you farmed at the AH b) selling the crafted items depending on the maximum profit and not faming for materials if you could use the time buying them up and "reselling" them as crafted goods. Bonehead basics.
At the point of 200k+ gold you´d invest in the materials instead of farming, planning that way ahead (2 crafting professions). I got that point, just playing stupid... ...hoping not to be. But now for the interesting part I noticed in WotLK day one to four (until the human or scripted farmots hit 77) the supplies for crafting professions were mouch more expensive than the crafted goods. Simple economic reason, everyone wanted to hit 450 at their profession and nobody wanted to sell their materials, not because you could make decent money with the level 78 / 80 items, just because they wanted ti hiz 450 (M&S thinking). So there got a massive flood of crafted 70 to 80 Items for 30-50% of the auction house material costs.
I´m clear of the point, that the whole process turned up into a balanced system at day 5 or 6.
But the speedy upraising M&S sold out all of their products just to get rid of them and didn´t even think of profit.
Hope I covered the whole thing got to check up some books from that days...
I suppose it boils down to the question of target audience.
If we assume that the post in question was written for an average player, then the advice contained therein isn't particularly useful. Pretty much like Paragon's tips on how to do LK25HM with 0% buff wouldn't be all that useful to an average "Marrowgar10weekly lolgroup".
If, on other hand, it was written for those 0.1% who have already milked their market of choice in WotLK and are looking for ways to maximize their profits in Cataclysm, then it's a good and reasonable idea. And 0.1% isn't that small of an audience: it equated to about 200 savvy goblins per realm.
(Made a typo in the previous comment; should be "20 goblins per realm". The point still stands)
I absolutely agree that someone doing 2k on a mage will do about same on a lock.
However not all professions are created equal. Inscription is profitable as you level it. Blacksmithing isn't. At very least blacksmithing requires some time investment in order to see what sells for a profit, whereas in inscription about 4/5 leveling glyphs sell for a profit, or at least they did when I leveled it.
I would agree that at max level, all crafting professions can be very profitable, but for someone rerolling on new server, I'd say pick inscription over blacksmithing.
Having a lot of different professions may also be fun. You can have a flying carpet as a tailor, and engineers get some nice gadgets. Sribes get zilch though in terms of cool stuff, neither do blacksmiths/leatherworkers. Sure the buffs from professions are nice, and it's possible that someone likes the idea of making armor.
This game is an RPG, and pen+pencil RPG's are played for fun, computer RPG's should be played same way. If it is fun for someone to have all different professions, it's not something they should be ostracized for.
Having said all that, I absolutely agree that someone with maxed out crafting profession is making a mistake, if they feel they can make more money if only they level a new alt.
A couple points:
1. Leveling up a new toon through bg's and LFG is MUCH more fun than dailies/gathering/AH PVP IMHO.
2. Gevlon, you forgot about the fact that money saved is money earned. After I leveled up a JC and alchemist, I saved a massive amount of money on epic gems.
I think what you talk about in your article Gevlon and what Markco is talking about in his are two different and unrelated things.
On one hand he is touching on the topic of having more than one character and diversifying.
There's only so much you can make with any profession.
Take inscription for example, even if you make 3k each day from selling glyphs, and you spend 30 minutes listing, crafting, and picking up mail, you cannot double the money you make by doubling the time spent on it. Or triple. Or quadruple. It would be silly to say that because the calculated gold / hour is 6k with inscription, you'll make 30k each day if you spend 5 hours on it.
What you can do instead if you wish to make more gold each day than what is possible with a single profession is have more professions, say tailoring, blacksmith and engineering and list many more different things in AH to sell. Diversify.
At this point you spend 30 mins on inscription and make 3k, spend another 30 mins in tailoring and make say 2k, and so on. Now you can realistically spend 5 hours between all your alt professions and get 30k gold each day from the mail.
This is where having alts with more professions helps - and I feel what Markco is talking about - but it's not for everyone, not that you suck at making money with one profession so you pick another - and this is what you talk about in your article.
There's also the synergy between professions, where a product from one is the input for another, and the end product is sold in the AH. Think of the saronite shuffle where it was a synergy between Jewelcrafting and Enchanting, and there are a few more synergies like this.
Gevlon, you mention faster trade skill levelling system in Cata... any more concrete details about this? First time I hear about it!
Detvinghuntagolbin indeed !!! Gevlon, I am so grateful you write during my nighttime so I can read your posts first thing in the morning - I will be laughing all day at that name!
@Anonymous
Don't beg for hand holding, read the forums and Blue posts, I'll just give you a hint: you will be gaining more skillpoints per craft.
@Grim,
All the engineering tinkers have been buffed+nerfed in the latest patch.
Buffed, because they now stack with regular enchants, but nerfed to generally take away the enchantment part, leaving just the cool gadgety part behind.
For example, nitro boosts still give 5 sec of rocket speed, but no longer give crit rating. For tanks, the reticulated webbing for gloves is now just 250 armor instead of 885 (which you can stack with the +240 glove reinforcements if you want).
@Ydraisa: I mostly answered this to Ephemeron, but I will (when I have time) add a paragraph to the text to clarify.
@Ydraisa: I think the outcome ist pretty clear, to make more gold by using more professions, you have to invest more time.
4 hours spend on 4 charakters with 8 crafting professions might give you 16k
1 hour spend on one character with 2 professoins will get you 4k just ignoring the individual professions quality. You get 4k/h either way... ...sinergy not includet.
you don´t change the gold per hour, you increase the maximum effective time spend.
But since you invest time into leveling toons you have to subtract this. if as Galvon said, you´d spend 100 hours upraising a toon you´ve got to make doubled amound of money for 100 hours. I know that this is a bit of "in a nutshell".
The time spend leveling your profession and your toon should also be calculated by time = money. If you´ve got nothing better to do it´s your alternative for rading or serious pvp. But if you spend time leveling your toon instead of earning gold, you´re loosing gold.
@Anonymous: That information is out there for several month. you will get more skillpoints for crafting expensive epics and blues. search the cataclysm profession changes it´s somwhere that way...
Excellent post, Ephemeron. You should start a wow-blog blog.
But yes, Marcko's point was simply that diversification is important for the already-successful tycoon. Moreover, Gevlon's contention that you won't make money in the new profession is very wrong. Learning a new market in a game as simple as wow hardly takes a couple minutes every day for a few days. At that point, you have just diversified, have less DR effects, and much more importantly, you are protected against investment risk. Undercutters and free-farmers can't affect your bottom line if you can temporarily switch production when they undercut a market.
I've been making a lot of gold with JC lately, which was pretty much expected since every ArP-filled melee, myself included, had to regem their whole sets. What really surprised me is that I've been making quite a bit with LW BoEs too. At this point of the expansion, people are still buying iLv 264 epics that will be replaced with dungeon blues in a few weeks. And these are not the hardcore raiders who need every extra bit of stats to perform well, since those bought their BoEs a long time ago. Who's buying this stuff?
Not that I'm complaining, I surely enjoy the extra gold on my pockets.
Got myslef to the end of that line... ...just needet some seconds without my boss creeping up to me.
I just get the needet materials for 450 in BS an drop my mining when it gets less profit than BS. Just takes some of my stockpile an I can enlist enchanting materials for upcoming goblin twinks.
/solvet and thanks for the needet shove.
"For example, a hypothetical Blacksmith can spend 20 minutes making and auctioning belt buckles to make a net profit of 600g. This means that Blacksmithing has 1.8K/hour income rate. Or does it?"
Making buckles doesn't require being a blacksmith. I get buckles made and sell them, usually paying some blacksmith from trade or that I know around 1-2g per buckle.
being a blacksmith saves the 1-2g per buckle (avg profit per buckle for me after paying this is still around 5g), and makes it easier to make them afk.
If that's the only thing you do with BS, it's hardly worth spending the time and gold to level it, IMO, and I certainly wouldn't drop another profession for it unless it was for other reasons (raiding bonuses).
In general, I'm split between Markco and Gevlon. I don't think it's a good idea to drop professions, as you never know when some of the recipes you have could turn valuable. That said, I agree with Gevlon that leveling an entirely new character is a *huge* cost. If you don't already have alts that you have leveled, or would level anyway, it probably makes more sense to switch professions on an existing character. or to not switch at all.
As some have said -- if you can't make a profit with crafting prof A, are you *sure* that you can make one with crafting prof B?
Why not try to gather mats, get stuff crafted in trade and sell it first.
Then you can judge whether it saves enough time and tips/payments to have the profession yourself.
I would absolutely say this: Do not drop a profession in order to take up another for goldmaking purposes, unless you are actually making gold with the new profession through trade crafting and can justify the leveling cost with known extra profits (from reducing the time and expenses of finding and paying other people to craft for you).
I would not level alts JUST for professions but there is a lot of synergy in making money between professions. Like my Alchemist transmutes Rubies and my JC cuts them to more valuable Bold Cardinal Rubies. There is some nice synergy to having access to all professions.
@thehamster
Your point #2 is invalid. If a cut gem cost you X on the AH and you instead transmute and cut it yourself for your own use, you cost yourself the profit of what you would have made had you sold it on the AH. It may be a wash, but a wash is not savings.
Tenko said: "Who's buying this stuff?"
People who are switching mains. In my guild there was a huge shake up with the patch. Hunters specifically have had their ranks decimated due to changes, but other classes as well as burnout sets in. My guild continues to raid despite the fact that the challenge has long passed, and yet many feel the need to be geared to raid on their "new main".
You seem to be intimating that Markco said that you should spend time leveling alts to get all professions.
All he said in the quote was that if you ALREADY HAVE multiple alts, having unique professions represented is excellent utility, and likely outweighs the benefits of having any particular profession on any particular class.
Your argument that choosing professions based on what you like to do is excellent if you only play one or two chars. But having 4 max level alts all with LW/Skinning because you like it seems quite M&S to me.
While any profession can be profitable. When they are most profitable will vary. People tend to jump onto the most viable professions and as a result being in the other markets takes less time to turn a profit.
I don't agree with your reasoning though. A person can 'suck' at one class but excel at another. Likewise if someone doesn't enjoy a profession they may have a harder time being sucessful at it. If you have a profession relevant to your character class it gives a better understanding of what crafted items are useful.
A non-raider would have to do more research to understand the raiding market to compete there for example.
When Cataclysm launches many people will level alts and once boredom with end level content sets in some of those alts will reach a high enough level to max out professions. Those who want to see all the content will level an additional 2-4 characters and you only need six characters to cover all the professions it actually isn't too painful to acheive this.
"Excellent post, Ephemeron. You should start a wow-blog"
I tried that (a blog named "Mark of Sargeras" written from Nathrezim's perspective), but it failed miserably. Pretty much nobody ever commented, and I couldn't keep up an active posting schedule. :(
Maybe I should start another, this time with less RP.
@Trelocke:
Actually it is valid for 2 reasons:
1. Often the price of gems on the AH is above market. Just because the cheapest reckless ametrine at a given time is listed at 250 gold doesn't mean it's going to sell (and 80% of the time it won't b/c someone will undercut it in at most a few hours).
2. Many people, like myself who accumulated a lot of gold since wrath began, don't even bother with doing our daily epic gem transmutes anymore unless we feel especially motivated. Needing some gems for my main toon will motivate me to log onto my several toons with maxed alchemy to make gems.
I realize professions will give more skill pts for creating epic/rares... but who the heck ever creates those anyways??? Even if they gave 3-5 points, creating 3-5 cheap greens is almost always cheaper.
So to those who say do research on faster profs: no, you do research. They said NOTHING about easier prof levelling besides the higher pts for rare/epics which is completely useless.
When you skill engeneering or BS up to 450 what quality-items are you crafting in the part 420-450?
rare or epic, I don´t think that will change. Tey only change that you wouldn´t have to craft 30 but 10 or 15.
@thehamster:
1. Pulling random statistics out of nowhere doesn't help your argument. I'm an Alch/JC and I consistently sell gems without ever having to relist...it simply requires knowing your market and posting at the appropriate times.
2. *You* choosing not to transmute, cut, post and sell a gem does not nullify the existence of the opportunity. By failing to take advantage of the opportunity, you are costing yourself profit.
Look, I'm not concerned with your specific reasons for not generating profit that is obviously available. I'm not even saying you're wrong to use your professions in whichever manner you choose. It's your preference. I'm simply stating that you saying you're "saving" anything by transmuting and cutting for yourself is a fallacy. The facts of the matter are: you *could* transmute everyday, you *could* cut it, you *could* post and sell it on the AH. Your fat bank account, lack of motivation and/or lack of acknowledgment doesn't change those facts.
@trelocke
Your point would be correct if we were dealing with a large and "perfectly efficient" economy. On most wow servers, you will not be able to consitently sell a specific type of cut gem (or especially a glyph) by simply listing it as the same price as the lowest such gem on the AH. Frequently they are priced above market and/or the AH is being camped.
Regardless though, that was never my original point. For those of us that got bored with the AH, or never liked the AH in the first place, it's easy to save lots of gold by simply having alts with all the crafting professions.
I have every crafting profession covered on an alt, and hence I never need to buy anything except raw mats which are cheap. Of course I probably would have made more gold by continuing to work the gem and glyph markets during that time instead of leveling up alts. But which one is more fun?
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