Patch 3.2 Implications On Your DE Mats Business Means You Need To Make Some Changes

Change is the name of the game when it comes to World of Warcraft.  Nothing really stays the same over a one year period.  That’s why it is important to stay up to date and why we work here at DYS to keep you abreast of the changes that have the most significant impact on your game-play in WoW so that you can continue to Dominate.

With that in mind, there are some changes you need to make in the way you use enchanting in patch 3.2 to keep the gold rolling in.  DE mats have always been a cornerstone part of our gold making, and the patch signals a major shift in where the profits are in that aspect of the game.  Any good investor knows how to spot trends and move to new strategies – and it’s no different in WoW.

We told everyone not too long ago that the 3.2 patch was a serious re-do of the way people were going to play once they hit 80.  And you can see it in trade chat almost every 5 seconds: “Healer LFG Daily Heroic.”  The number of folks running the dailies and regular heroics for emblems has gone through the roof as people collect Conquest and Triumph emblems for all the sweet new loot.  This massive shift back to the heroic dungeons also trickles down to DE mats on the auction house.

With thousands of heroic runs every day comes a far greater number of worthless loot drops, and by default, the volume of items being disenchanted.  Greens drops going to an enchanter will almost always get the axe, as well as the BoP blues and Epic items.  People simply don’t have a need for many of them any more.  The Dominate guild has used the heroic runs to bolster our own collection of Abyss Crystals and Dream Shards – and even guys in pugs are using the items for DE on a level never before seen.

All of this points to a big increase in supply of all of the DE mats in the 350+ enchanting range.  On the low end Greater Cosmic Essences and Infinite Dust will see some increases, and the supply of Dream Shards and Abyss Crystals will be significantly higher.  You may have already seen prices dropping on the latter mats on your server.  as a result, it has, or will, become increasingly harder to find items for DE on the AH that will give you a profit on the mats themselves.

Traditionally, it takes far longer for the price of items to drop than mats.

On Fenris, the price for Northrend greens runs around 15g or so.  These items had a DE value in the 20g range for the Infinite Dust and Cosmic Essences, but with the price on those mats dropping the margins have already begun to disappear because the 15g price on the greens just hasn’t dropped yet.  Typically, non enchanters will post a green a couple of times at market value and then vendor what doesn’t sell.  This depresses the supply of those items and keeps the price roughly even over time.

It’s even worse for the blues and epics.  Prices for those items has dropped fractionally, but not nearly as sharply as mat prices.  Dream Shards had been in short supply before the patch because of the changes in enchanting recipes in the previous patches, but with all the new blues dropping every run the Dream Shard market has seen supply come far closer to demand – and this despite people enchanting new gear like crazy as they replace significant portions of their gear sets.

So in spite of demand for enchants rising, supply of mats has risen far faster, and that means it’s time to make some changes in what mats you depend on in your DE business until the market stabilizes over the next couple of months.  You’re’ just going to have to live with lower income from your DE operations for a while, but that certainly doesn’t mean it has to stop entirely.

For the time being; concentrate on different item levels for your DE purchases and mat sales.  Set your SearchUI Disenchant module custom levels to 125 Minimum and 275 Maximum.  That means item levels between 41 (requires level 37 to use) and ilevel 108 (requires level 66 to use). This will give you everything from Nether Essences to Arcane Dust and Planar Essences (which are selling very well these days) but none of the Northrend mats.  Tes, you’re going to end up with a bunch of dream dust (which is a hard sell most of the time) but you will still be able to turn a tidy profit from DE even while the top end of the market crashes and recovers if you move down the food chain a bit and concentrate on the market segments that haven’t changed.

It’s a quick and easy fix that should take you about 10 seconds your next visit to the AH, but it should keep your DE business doing well without having to worry about beating a sagging market.  Eventually the supply and demand curves for the Northrend mats will even out and you can turn your SearchUI back up to 375 Maximum.  But for the time being you should drop your sliders to the levels mentioned above.  It will keep the gold rolling in – and you Dominating.