What have you got to lose?

NOTE: I'm still looking for any info I can get about the enchant recipes for herbalism and advanced herbalism to gloves. They apparently don't drop from the same mobs since cata (they are all removed). However the same goes for mining to gloves, but I found that on the AH and I doubt it was hanging around somewhere. The only one I can guess at is molt thorn, a rare spawn, dropping adv herbby in swamp of sorrows. He was the only plant mob that wasn't removed from there and wowhead still ahs it on his loot table.


I'm writing this entry as an addendum to my entry called And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the shuffle nerf. This should clarify a few things that people are still up in the air about.

With the recent data mined bit on mmo champ about common gems vendor price being nerfed, a lot of people are saying that this won't ever happen. They cite such things as it being an experiment by blizz or the epic gem xmute in wrath losing the CD on it. But weather or not it happens, you should still make preparations. As the old adage says "hope for the best, prepare for the worst." Obviously I don't know for sure if this will or won't go live just as I don't know how epic gems will be introduced. But for all of you that are certain that it won't happen let me ask you this:

What have you got to lose?

This guessing game of predictions is one of the fundamental parts of the AH game, but in the business world this is know as risk analysis. Basically you weigh the potential risk against the potential gains or prevented losses. And with this change there is A LOT of losses to be prevented. First here are the potential losses if this change does go live and you do nothing at all to prepare.


Your stokpile of common gems are now worthless.

All of the rare gems that you thought were "free" are now quite expensive. These are almost all going to sell at a loss due to massive gem dumps that will go on for quite some time.

All of your enchanting mats will drop down to almost nothing. All of your enchant scrolls are now going to sell at a massive loss. All of them.

Tailoring dream of deepholm is going to rise in material cost greatly as the flood of VE is suddenly gone. Completely.

BS crafted gear and buckles will most likely go down in price. Less ore prospected means more bars will be sold, lowering the price.


So there's a ton of gold that can be lost to say the least. What do you have to gain if this goes live? Nothing at all. Prices will change and shuffle around and will eventually level off and stabilize once again. That's if you don't prepare or sell off what you can right now.

Now lets assume that you do take the necessary precautions and sell off your stokpiles of gems, enchanting mats, etc. Here's what you risk.


Losing a stokpile of common gems before a demand spike from new heroics for metas.
Losing a stokpile of enchanting mats before a demand spike from new heroics.
Flooding your bank with uncut rares that you'll use eventually anyway.
Flooding your bank with volt earth that you'll use eventually anyway.


Not that intimidating is it? No, I didn't think so. If you're good you'll be able to rebuild most of your stokpile of these things pretty easily and quickly when the patch comes. So at most, you'll only lose some of your stokpiles. The flood of ore will still continue and you'll still be able to do the shuffle just as before only now you'll have to do it a bunch up front. And all of the VE's you'll still use and sell and the same goes for the raw rare gems. In other words, you really don't have anything to lose at all.

So what exactly am I doing? I'm gonna go with the "go big or go home" mentality. I'm gathering a massive stokpile of gems and lowering my total stokpiles of enchanting mats. I don't want to get caught with my pants down when the scroll demand goes up with the heroics, but don't want to have a ton of over priced ones either. As for the gems I'm selling all of my commons to recoup the price on every rare that I find.

This means that my stokpile of rares will completely dwarf that of any other AH player on my server. I'll be able to sell low and buy up their stock forcing them into xmutes and having much higher thresholds than I will. This will allow me to really have a firm amount of control over the entire JC market for a long, long time.

In the end even if you don't think this change will go live I'd still say to pretend that it's gospel and prepare accordingly. Why do I say that? Because you don't have much to lose other than a couple of long nights of prospecting. And what you have to gain is a very valuable lesson that you'll have to learn the hard way at some point, everything burns. Everybody will come into a situation where one of their markets gets set on fire by blizz and is no longer a viable method of making gold. Preparing for the shuffle nerf will give you some experience in what to do in case that happens. You can just think of it as a fire drill.


Thanks for stopping by!