Cata professions

From the Ground Up update: I just finished getting all my my gear purchased and gemmed and such. I hit 80 today and waltzed into a shower of shiny purples. You can check out what I managed to acquire from 1-80 here.


Even though I won't be around most likely, I thought these changes were significant to warrant speaking on. Granted nothing is in stone and can easily change tomorrow, but the general ideas are already laid out. You can read the full Blue post at mmo-champion.

Done reading all that? Good. Here's my take on it.

As far as leveling up professions goes, I expect a ton of gold being wasted for a while. Why? Because people just love big numbers and getting more for their money... even if it's only in their mind. I expect a good many to try to make expensive items just to gain an extra skill up without bothering to compare the cost. Granted most items won't me 100% worthless like they are now, but you'll still swear every time you craft something ...of the whale. What does this mean to you, the non-moron, you may ask? It means that with people crafting items with a large amount of materials needed, the demand for said materials will be going up even more than the expected amount. Translation: buy bank tabs stuffed to the gills with assorted crap!

Granted Blizz has stated that the amount of skill ups will be planned to be proportional to the materials needed. But that being said, I highly doubt that they keep a close eye on material prices across all servers. On my server, iron and mithril are extremely pricey, but thorium is almost free. On your server it could be entirely different, but people will still aim for the big skill ups rather often so keep a close eye out.

The gear professions are completely losing their specializations such as axe mastery or elemental LW. An insignificant change as they were already obsolete by a new expansion being released. However the big change here is the PvP starter gear they can craft. It won't be the basic garbage that we have now but will be, in a matter of speaking, 2 tiers behind the current welfare epics. Sort of like the blue pvp gear you can make now, but in the context of when WotLK was first released. In other words, if you want to get into pvp 6 months after Cata is released, you won't have to walk into the honor grind with nigh worthless pvp gear. Go walk into a BG now wearing savage saronite and see how long you can last.

So this stuff will be in demand for sure, but only at the start of each arena season when it gets upgraded which is when new recipes will be available I believe. I'd assume because with new arena seasons means new honor bought epics. So people that didn't grind it all out the previous season will get in on it for the current one and need some gear to help them along. It would work well to craft an entire set of it and sell it in /2 for a hefty mark up. When people go to buy the pvp gear, even when it was sold in this expansion, they'd always get the entire set all at once or not at all.

Also in Cata we'll be seeing the return of primal might in a new and improved form. A basic crafting reagent that is an xmute exclusive. Even more reason to take up xmute mastery if you have an open profession. However! There's always a catch isn't there eh? Elixirs will be 75% the strength of a flask, so taking two will make you 50% over a flask. So expect this to be the market of choice if you have a lot of progression guilds on your server. Otherwise most people will be taking the cheap way out and sticking with flasks. Also there will be a staggering amount of people that won't even know about this for 5 months and 3 raiding tiers into the expansion. Educate these people and then profit from them. Unless flasks give you more money of course, then keep it hush-hush! This is another time where you need to really know a bit about your server and the types of guilds that are there. Not everything will work the same from server to server.

Enchanters get a nifty pet they can make and an ass ton of new enchants. And I don't just mean upgraded versions of what we have now, but a ton of variety. I expect enchanting to over take every other profession (even jewel crafting) as hands down the BEST money maker in game. With so many options going for such high mark ups and profit margins, especially when people will always trying out different stacking/proc ones, wow. Think glyphs but several hundred gold a sale. If you don't have an enchanter, get one. Now.

For all of you gatherers out there, keep an eye out for volatile air. Volatile _blank_ is the new primal/eternal reagent. Every thing can be found with every gathering profession EXCEPT airs. With limited supply from UF's comes great prices. In the first month of release I'd keep a close watch over these and expect to be able to flip a good number for a huge turn over price.

With so many skills changing, so many glyphs will as well. In addition, many minor glyphs are being added in. Expect to see a whole smorgasbord of cosmetic changes and a fist full of minors that are actually useful. Inscription will remain the top dog for massive demand spikes and consistent sales. If you don't have a scribe... trust me you want one. The rush for glyphs in Cata's release will be just as intense and HUGE as when dual spec was released. Mark my words. Glyphs will make you rich over night on release. The potential for such insane profit here is very exciting.

As far as DMC's go, keep a close watch. They may easily wind up being as amazing as DMC: Greatness was at release. Hell they still sell for 4k per deck, but during t7 content they were easily double that at times. If the price is right and materials aren't needed elsewhere, make a few cards.

Lastly, basic cloth will be worth a lot more than it ever has before because first aid will be a much more useful profession. I mean lets be honest, after you hit the level cap how often do you bandage. Seriously. The top end bandage will require 3 pieces of cloth instead of the normal 2 that we've been accustomed to so demand will increase due to this and the change to how band-aids actually work. But in Cata bandages will be on a cast time and then put up a hot that ends on damage. If somebody gets low and doesn't have a heal coming you can "cast" a bandage and go back to what you were doing and not have to spend 8 seconds channeling.

All things considered, there will be many new markets opening and many more opportunities for us AH players to make a killing. Enjoy!

Thanks for stopping by!