Alchemy mastery opinions for cataFollow

Watchya think about mastery for alchemy guys?

around raid time in wotlk i found myself switching to potions cause that was what i invested most of my herbs into.

WHile maybe once i get into the flow of raids i'll be making potions again, i'am thinking of going back to elixers since i shall be using a bunch of them and flasks. I doubt cauldrons are affected by mastery but do correct me.

I was thinking of transmute [as always] but when my luck i doubt i'll gt much out of it [though procing multiples of truegold does make one pause...like all wonderful elusive things]

so based on one's individual use and needs as usual :D

My xmute alchy is feeling positively cheated - I've done an xmute every day since hitting 525 and have yet to have a single proc of truegold or volatiles.

As a plus point though, the truegold sells in less then 24 hours (and I'm not the lowest priced one) and the volatile xmutes increase the profit margin nicely (along with making other tradeskills cheap).

Entertainingly enough, the stonefish oil is also a big seller - I'm dumping the oil for 10g each and no one's competed with me yet.

I'm making 2-3k a day off this. Also 3-4k from Truegold. So glad I didn't drop Alchemy when I was thinking about it in Wrath.

Remind me to rate up your next ten posts - I've made almost 5k in the past three hours doing this and my JC picked up 20 points from the misc blues the alchy didn't need.

Sadly, no procs for bonus shadowspirit gems yet (in fact, my alchy has yet to get a single xmute proc since the xpac released) but at just shy of 500g a pop I guess I'll just have to make due with a "miserable" 1k per combine.

Curious, what kind of a price of Elementium to Shadowspirit ratio are you all seeing? I'm making a profit, but it's not quite the one you all seem to be seeing, though that could be because I can't seem to get any of the red gems to save my life(Carnellian?)

Okay, but what are the shadowspirits going for?

a stack of ore is about 120 or so on my server with shadowspirit being 200-300g each.

its thanks to morons undercutting below the value of the mats needed to make shadowspirit. Hell even if you take the baseline value of the 3 gems of each type needed to make the diamond and not the high demand value of green gems [thanks to prof leveling] on the AH, these morons are still undercutting the diamond for less than its mats are worth.

Bah, ill just get a friend to cut them. Fortunately the cut meta's are at prices that havent been undercut to hell [the undercutters get purchased and reinserted for its true value immediately]

Edited, Jan 2nd 2011 10:50am by Tenjen

Sigh - my server just went stupid today with several folks knocking the gems into the 350ish range - still profitable but only just and don't want to take a chance on making a batch and then having another rapid reduction in price.

Edit - also did some number crunching on eternium cost to benefit ratio

Working off of ten stacks with an AH value of 130g (the stuff is ironically enough almost as cheap as obsidium - guess its from more 85s having more elementium in higher level zones) and I've consistently gotten enough greens for two alchemy combines of shadowspirit and usually had enough left over that on the second batch of ten, I'd get three or four combines.

For the blues, I used the average price of the lowest five on the AH and have been averaging 600-700g AH value, thus effectively halving the cost of the ore, meaning that at these prices (and with zero xmute procs) it effectively costs 130g per gem to make the low end average of 5 per 10 stacks on my server.

I really have to get around to comparing the value of the greens as I'm beginning to suspect that the raw mats created by the prospecting might be exceeding the AH value of the raw metas they create.

As a temporary bonus though, someone apparently went buckwild skilling JC today (or gearing up a guild) as the dozen plus on the AH last night are all gone so I've (temporarily) got the only 8 up there right now at 500g each.

I was worried about how I was going to pay for my alchy mount once I get the recipe via archeology but if the market can just hold for me for another week then my alchy will be able to purchase the mats on its own.

Edited, Jan 5th 2011 1:25am by rusttle

This is a good point. If you're going to be making at least 1.5k worth of any product in a given period of time, it's going to be worth it to make it all in a batch, changing specialty first. And with inflation, that's a lot fewer potions or flasks than it was in the days of LK.