Gold Capped: The epic gem market in patch 4.3
by Fox Van Allen 
Oct 17th 2011 at 8:00PM
We've known for quite some time that epic gems would be coming with patch 4.3. It was obvious extrapolation. It's the last major patch of this expansion, and we didn't have access to them yet. The last major question was how we'd learn the cuts, and just yesterday, we got major news on that front: Patch 4.3 is bringing new jewelcrafting vendors loaded with epic cut patterns. Each of the patterns can be bought for five Illustrious Jewelcrafter's Tokens -- yes, a work week's worth of dailies. More thrifty folks can roll the dice and buy a Tome of Burning Jewels to learn a random cut, as that method will only set you back four tokens.
Without a doubt, this new vendor will have a tremendous impact on the jewelcrafting profession -- and, with any luck, a tremendous positive impact on your in-game bank account as well.
Jewelcrafting: Epic gem patterns
Let's be honest with ourselves: Most gem cuts are absolutely useless. There are only a few cuts that will see serious demand, such as the +50 strength Bold Queen's Garnet and the +50 intellect Brilliant Queen's Garnet. Others, like miscellaneous Deepholm Iolite cuts (the new blue epic gem), will see weak demand at best.
It's hard to predict exactly how the first few weeks of 4.3 trading will shake out, but I think we can make some educated guesses by simply thinking about how we play the game. If I'm a raider, the most important slots for me are going to be my red ones, since they offer my primary stat (whether it be strength, agility, or intellect). The next most important is going to be orange -- a 50/50 mix of my primary stat and the secondary stat of my choice (haste, crit, mastery, etc.). Finally, I might be looking for a purple gem to score an especially lucrative slot bonus, probably something with hit or spirit. I don't have much use for the other color gems.
It's safe to say that for the most part, other raiders are going to have similar priorities. And their jewelcrafting alts are going to act to meet those needs. Everyone is going to learn those red cuts first. If that's the case, then the price differential between a raw Queen's Garnet and cut Queen's Garnet will be relatively small. Don't get me wrong, these gems will be obnoxiously expensive, but 99% of that price will be a result of a shortage in gem supply as opposed to a shortage of people offering epic cuts. Simply put: The raiders who get the red gems will make the money here, not you.
The market for orange and purple gems, though, should be slightly different. There are a lot of different cuts for these gems, and most of them are viable for one spec or another. I might give my shadow priest an Artful Lava Coral with mastery while giving my boomkin a Reckless Lava Coral with haste. I might need a spirit gem for my resto druid and a hit gem for my mage. The cost in tokens is adding up at this point -- almost assuredly past where most casual players will have saved up. There should be a healthy price difference between raw orange/purple gems and cut orange/purple gems, a function of these epic cuts' being less prolific.
Green, yellow, and blue gems are going to be more of a gamble. There should be a decent supply of these gems on hand if the epic gems awarded in raids are perfectly randomized, since few people are going to want to put these on their gear. (After all, a desirable blue-quality +40 cut will beat an undesirable epic-quality +50 cut on the DPS and healing meters every time.) Unwanted gems have to go somewhere, and that somewhere is likely to be the Auction House.
Supply of raw materials for these less-desirable gems will be high. Supply of the cuts, considering their value in terms of gameplay, will be low. And customer demand of the finished product will be low as well. It all adds up to a recipe for extreme price volatility. Generally, I don't like taking massive risks with my gold making -- I prefer low risk, high return to low risk, unknown return. But if you notice in the first few days of patch 4.3 that there's money to be made here ... it may be worth dipping your toe into the market, especially if few others have.
What can I do to profit?
If it's not obvious enough, you'd do well to start stocking up on Illustrious Jewelcrafter's Tokens as soon as possible, if you haven't been doing it already. Each Tome of Burning Jewels will set you back four tokens, and there are over 60 epic gem patterns to be learned. It doesn't take a math genius to figure it out -- that's a lot of dailies if you're trying to learn them all.
You'll want to prioritize your purchases. It's unlikely that you'll earn a red gem through raiding on day one. That being the case, you may be better off skipping those cuts and just buying red gems pre-cut on the AH for your own toons. Go for the cuts you can make the most money off of in the first few weeks of patch 4.3, because that's where fortunes are truly made -- the first few weeks of a patch.
Pay special attention to those orange and purple cuts, since there's a lot of potential there. Check to see where the largest price differences between raw and cut gems are. Favor the cuts that you can use personally over those you probably won't. I strongly recommend buying specific cuts at the five-token rate at first. Once you've gotten the specific cuts that offer the greatest profit, you can fill in the gaps by buying the four-token Tome of Burning Jewels.
Finally, before you buy any cuts at all, do a quick price check on Chimera Eyes. These beauties tend to get extraordinarily expensive when a patch first drops, and many jewelcrafters will be looking to buy these with cash instead of tokens. It's very much possible that you'll make more money through purchasing five Chimera Eyes as opposed to working to earn profits from one specific cut. Research always pays off!
Maximize your profits with more advice from Gold Capped. Do you have questions about selling, reselling, and building your financial empire on the auction house? Fox and Basil are taking your questions at fox@wowinsider.com and basil@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Revynn Oct 17th 2011 8:23PM
Im still banking on the possibility that epic gems will be available in more ways than just raids. I get that Blizzard is trying to keep epic gems special and rare instead of just the next step up, but it's a complete turn from their ever increasing mentality that people shouldn't be forced into a particular playstyle. Raiders shouldn't be able to hold Arena players hostage by charging 2,000G a gem simply because they're the only ones who have access to them. Likewise, PvPers shouldn't be forced to raid to min/max their Resil gear.
Transmute spells for epic gems are already in the game. 5G says they backpedal on it.
Daedalus Oct 17th 2011 9:38PM
My guess is that the transmutes will be there. Prospecting, I'm hoping, but not much. But with the flask market taking a big hit from cauldrons, I could really see Blizzard wanting to add another revenue source for alchemists.
Plus, transmutes don't exactly flood the market. We're likely talking 1 gem a day; I doubt that will make a big impact.
Mal Oct 17th 2011 10:59PM
If it does happen, it'll likely be a weekly cooldown, Blizz seems bent on the gems' main source being raids.
Noyou Oct 17th 2011 11:34PM
One gem a day from transmuting? I have 2 max level alchemists and a 3rd that will be max capable in 3 levels. They are all transmute masters, which means they will have a chance to proc 1-4 extra gems at any given time. It won't flood the market, but if someone hits a +4 it will be an increase. Of course top raiding guilds and players with deep pockets will snap them up. Blizzard seems to love to contradict themselves lately, so don't be at all surprised if they are available as soon as 4.3 drops.
JoeHelfrich Oct 18th 2011 11:41AM
I'd bet on transmutes for epic gems becoming available, but only in an incremental patch, after the high-end raiding guilds have downed the bosses. Look for them in 4.3.2 or so.
Noyou Oct 17th 2011 8:28PM
Damn you Fox. Hopefully not many people will read this :p Very well put together. Although I did read somewhere that there were 51 recipes. Is that gem cuts only or is that the new PvP jewelery as well? I have 2 Jc's going right now collecting tokens. Although the one is just doing dailies that don't involve purple/green turn ins. He will be my Chimera guy.
If you are a person that plans on cutting gems for people in trade, you might want to pay attention to what cuts they are looking for. I made my money in wrath doing this. As much as I hate to even look at trade, you can make a ton of gold without having to shell out the gems and hope 10 people don't undercut you. Okay, no more tips. Shame on you Fox for writing such a good strat ;)
Shade Oct 17th 2011 8:51PM
I'm of the opinion that the raid-limited supply of gems was a design choice to mollify the hardcoar reaction to LFR. The LFR is undisputably clearable with only blue gems - that's the entire point of a lower difficulty level.
Thusfar, nothing text-based has proven to soothe the minority's rage over LFR. Lower iLvl, lower stats, and lower VP haven't filled the role of peace offering. There are four qualities of raid-limited epic gem supply that those other things don't possess:
1) Unique art. Every level of gem has a different set of icons, so inspecting someone's gear will tell you that they raid (arguably) better than iLvl would.
2) Purple text. What the letters/numbers say doesn't seem to be as important as what color they are when it comes to status symbols.
3) Exclusivity. There is no equivalent to epic gems in LFR content.
4) Profitability. Every gem is essentially a mini BoE.
As for PvP... from a programming standpoint, shouldn't it be easy to prevent socketing resilience gear with epic gems? Blizz already uses level restrictions on gems and enchants, so just change the filter from iLvl>X to resil=0. Yes that's an incredibly boring solution, but it's also the purest one. In this way, there is no reason for PvE players to grind Conquest for gems, nor is there a reason for PvP players to raid for them. If no PvP player has epic gems, the playing field remains even.
matt Oct 18th 2011 8:39AM
I bought up the PvP gem issue a few weeks ago here and there were a few responses that tried to solve the problem (and a few out and out flames) but all of the proposed solutions created new problems. The solution you came up with is perfect, no raiders PvPing and no arena junkies trying to raid.
Nice one!
Now, how do we get Blizz to see this idea?
Stilhelm Oct 18th 2011 10:07AM
Of course the LFR level of difficulty will be clearable with only rare-quality gems. So will normal and probably hard modes.
For example, my hunter in almost all 378 gear has 8 red gems. If I upgrade them all to epic quality gems, I get 80 more agi. Sounds like a lot, right? Not really, it's around 1% of my raid-buffed agi. That 1% of my primary stat isn't going to mean the difference between a kill and a wipe. I can lose far more than 1% just due to bad luck with RNG, or a couple of minor mistakes here and there.
Don't get me wrong, the epic gems will make a small difference. After all, that's why we gem and enchant our gear. But they're not going to make the difference between clearing the content and wiping.
Bellajtok Oct 17th 2011 8:55PM
If you really want to put in the research, check out some class guides and find out what gems (other than reds) people are using, and buy/cut those recipes. Reds will still be in high demand, but there's a good chance you'll be the only one making that one purple gem that happens to be perfect for, say, cat druids.
Peebers Oct 17th 2011 8:57PM
Hopefully I won't be too lazy to take at least a lil bit of advantage of this. I've got 96 tokens saved up over the last few months. And I've only been doing the cut dailies.
Meatdraw Oct 17th 2011 9:02PM
Did anyone else read "Iolite" as "LOL-ite"? As in: "LOL! blue gems!"
bjorn9486 Oct 17th 2011 9:15PM
... yes :(
Randomize Oct 17th 2011 8:59PM
One important thing to note is that, assuming that only normal and heroic Dragon Soul raiders will be receiving epic gems, some cuts will never sell. Ever. The people that buy really odd cuts, like 40 expertise or 20 Parry/20 Resilience, are not going to be the ones that get their hands on the raw gems.
The raw gems will be ridiculously expensive and realistically will only be going towards primary stats because raiders know better than to be using poor quality cuts. I'd say that once you buy up the useful cuts, just spend the rest of your tokens on Chimera eyes. They'll sell better than the crap cuts.
Revynn Oct 17th 2011 9:10PM
- "raiders know better than to be using poor quality cuts."
. . . You'd . . . be surprised. I have ocassionally had to smack around a couple other warlocks in my guild for gemming Int/Stam to match a crit bonus. Granted these aren't the sharpest bulbs on our tree, but they've been around long enough to know better.
Amaxe Oct 17th 2011 9:10PM
At this point, I'm figuring that it's hardly worth it for my JC to make the effort to get more than the minimum number of recipes. I'm not going to bankrupt myself upgrading gems from +40 to +50 for my other characters.
jeremy Oct 17th 2011 9:15PM
This guy should borrow me some of his 15k gold
Basil Berntsen Oct 17th 2011 9:18PM
┻━┻ ︵ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ︵ ┻━┻
Andrew Oct 17th 2011 10:16PM
@Basil: impressive.
@jeremy: ...?
Abbadon Oct 17th 2011 9:37PM
I'm still waiting to see 4.3 roll around and BAM, there's the ability to prospect pyrite after all.