WoW Economist

Arena Season 5 starts today! What are you gemming?

Dec 16, 2008 Arena & Battlegrounds, Class Specific, Crafting, Investing, Patches, Resources

Another late post! No more slacking from me, I promise!

I just got done watching my server slowly count down to shutdown. You know what that means? Arena Season 5 with lots and lots of new gear! A few dozen sets of gear, at least!

Just like Season 4, I hope you stocked up and prepared for enchanting and jewelcrafting because they’ll be hot, hot, hot over the next week or two. Last season, our readers together earned hundreds of thousands of gold profit. Enchanting materials (dust at least) didn’t seem to do as well as expected, but essences sold quick. What sort of surprised me was how much was made from leg armor and spellthread - huge profits in these areas. I stocked up on Frozen Orbs with plans for Icy Prisms, but I may start crafting the new spellthread instead.

Jewelcrafters did well too since most of the gear needs socketing. In Wrath we have some new, unique cuts designed specifically for PVP. I’m hoping to see these gems take off in price. If you’ve been running heroics over the last few weeks and you have a small pile of Stone Keeper’s Shards, go grab the new Jewelcrafting patterns from your Wintergrasp quartermaster - most of them are just 12 shards a piece.

Now, before you run off trying to be the first to login and buy up all the mats on the AH, let us know what race and class you play mainly and what gems you’ll be using for raiding, arenas, and battlegrounds. I can’t be an expert in all classes, so your recommendations will help us all invest properly with a wide variety.