Patch 3.3.3 is just around the corner and with it comes a whole slue of changes, I have previously posted my predictions of what the majority of the market impacts would be and we’ve already seen major shifts in items like frozen orbs and frost lotus.
There is another change I haven’t touched on yet but given my new indulgence in jewelcrafting I couldn’t help but think of how gems are sourced and what changes that are occuring in patch 3.3.3 can affect the supply and demand of gems.
As you all know epic uncut gems can be bought with 10,000 honor, players rarely grind honor just to buy epic gems as you can only make around 1200 honor an hour which would take 8 hours for one epic gem which is horrible gold/hour.
However Blizzard is releasing new changes to the honor system as they feel that the rate that players gain PvP gear has lagged behind the rate that PvE gear is attained. They are fixing this situation by making the following changes:
- The amount of Honor awarded for an Honorable Kill has been increased by 100% for characters of all levels. This change will effectively double the amount of Honor received from Honorable Kills, or for completing Battleground and Wintergrasp objectives; however, the amount of experience gained from completing Battleground objectives and the amount of Honor rewarded for completing each Wintergrasp quest remain unchanged.
- Bonus rewards will be offered for choosing the Random Battleground option.
- Winning a Battleground using the Random Battleground option for the first time in a day will award players with 30 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency and 25 Arena points.
- Winning additional Battlegrounds using the Random Battleground option after the first random win will award players with 15 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
- Battlegrounds will no longer award Marks of Honor.
- Players with existing Marks of Honor can still turn them in to their respective faction’s quest givers, including individual marks for those who may have more marks for one Battleground than another.
- Items which previously required Marks of Honor will have their costs adjusted to remove these requirements.
(Source)
I highlighted some key points here. I believe the drop in epic gem prices will only be temporary but it will be a significant drop. Currently it is more economical for PvPers to save up their marks of honor for the “For Great Honor” quest turn in that awards 1,489 honor which equals 248 honor per token.
Under this new system you can turn in single marks of honor for 185 honor each, players will turn in all of their remaining marks come patch 3.3.3 which will be a huge rise in honor.
Rise in PvP Activity
With the new random battleground feature players will flock to see what it’s all about and give it a try, just like the random dungeon feature. This will cause a lot of honor being gained by players.
One thing to keep in mind is we are only half way into the the Arena season so most players haven’t finished their gear sets, but in a few weeks time they will have all their pieces and their honor gains are going to be much higher than they were post 3.3.3.
So the question is.. will honor now be gained fast enough to make grinding it for epic gems viable? You’d have to be able to get closer to 5,000 honor an hour for this to come close however I know people just enjoy to PvP even after they have all the gear and now since they’ll no longer be able to stock pile honor up before a reset by hording up marks they’ll just have to get rid of the honor immediately into gems.
How To Profit From This
It is tough to say whether you should sell off most of your gems now at the higher prices or hold onto them after patch 3.3.3 because demand usually goes up with the spike in playing. One thing that I am going to do is start buying up epic gems the week of patch 3.3.3 when people dump their honor into gems. I’m sure the prices will bounce back eventually after everyone has run out of marks to dump and everyone had a chance to do the random battleground a couple times.
What are your thoughts on the impact of the sudden dump of marks into honor and honor being gained faster?
It is an interesting tought, tho I also see a possible, money pit here. With the increase in pvp activities, it will most likely highten the demand for resi, gems. So maybe get a few of the Epic recipes for PvP, og the recipes bought from StoneShards.
Just my toughts
1st I thought one could grind Marks of Honor by running BGs your faction commonly wins to get gems easily. But then I started counting..
It’s not economic because 10,000/185=54 Marks (almost exactly) per gem which means 18 successful BGs required in a row. Let’s say 15 minutes per BG, that’s 4.5 hours per gem. So I’ll just save the ones I already own.
But I realized the gem price drop won’t be that much. Even if you have all BGs Marks at full stack (100 each) and lets say some in the mailbox you will get 2 gems per BG only. There are 6 BGs, so from the Honormarks you will just get 12 gems at all.
Day 2 after …
I’m still at work right now but yesterday and today morning no price drop of gems (I only saw 3 uncutted at 60% which could have been posted for some other reason).
But discovered price for frozen orbs doubled.
Can you tell me what service do you use for your blog? Looks really neat
WordPress
Spaming your jc macro in trade will prob generate alot more gold when patch hits aswell.
I suspect that this will be a long term increase in supply, and as people shift less and less toward raiding in the end game, I expect to see lower prices in the long run.
If this was a one time thing, then I imagine it would be like the frost orbs now: a short burst of high supply, followed by a longer period where the number coming into the market is about the same in the long run. Since this affects the amount that will be generated by all casual players until the end of wrath, I think it will have a more lasting impact.
.-= Euripides´s last blog ..Can Survival Raid? Pshaw! =-.
Yea, the combination of the demand slowly going down (from less raiding activity after lich king) and PvP awarding more honor I think will contribute to lower epic gem prices.
However I’ve seen a lot of people in trade “WTS [insert epic gem here]x21″ or some other high amount, they obviously just dumped their honor into a bunch of epic gems and are looking to sell it all. You should expect to see more people like this in the coming days.