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.
Arena Season 4: How did you do?
Jun 26, 2008 Arena & Battlegrounds, Auction House, Investing, Patches
It looks like the economy is beginning to settle down after the initial rush for Season 4 gear. I’m sure there’s a bit of fluctuation left to go before I’d consider the market stable again, so no need to rush getting rid of everything you invested in for the new arena season. You still have time.
I found it interesting that the motes and primals went up quite a bit more percentage-wise than Void Crystals and Greater Planar Essence. I still have a few stacks of Void Crystals to dump and fortunately the prices are still high enough to make a good profit after AH fees. I was a little frantic before Season 4 trying to gather up all the cheap enchanting materials and took about 2k gold in loans from friends. They’re all paid off and I’m sitting at about 2,300 gold and double that in items to sell. It was a success for me and I did well considering it was the first time I’ve taken advantage of the new-area-season inflation.
How did you do with Season 4? Leave a comment and let us know how much profit (or loss, but I sure hope not) you ended up with. We’d love to hear!
Arena Season 4 is right around the corner
Jun 11, 2008 Arena & Battlegrounds, Investing, Patches, Professions
June 24th! Not only does this mean new, badass gear for the hardcore PVPers (Spartan helmets, anyone?), but new gear for the casual guys too. With the Season 2 sets purchasable with regular honor points, we should see many more regular players running around with Tier 5 equivalent gear and guild progression should pick up a bit.
We economists know what new gear means! The demand for enchants, cut gems, leg armor and spellthread will be on the rise. So it’s time to start hoarding for a week or two while we wait for Season 4 to roll around. I just started on a new server about a month ago so I’ve been working hard on earning as much gold as I can to stock up on the materials needed to buff all the new gear that’ll be floating around.
It’s probably not safe to buy out the AH, but definitely watch the trade channel and keep tabs on auctions throughout the day. Try to snag as many deals as you can on all of the high-end materials needed for the gear buffs mentioned above. Just hoard em until Season 4 starts and sell at your discretion.
On an unrelated note, I’d like to apologize for the lack of updates lately. Will, our main writer, has been very busy lately and hasn’t found the time to post. I’ve been working on some exclusive tools for WoW Economist readers (yea, that’s you!). They’ll be in their beta stage in the next week or two, so keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime, I’ve got a lot of ideas (with the help of your suggestions) for new articles so I’ll be sure to write more often. If you’ve got any ideas for a post, just leave a comment below and let me know so I can take note of it.