HUGE Imbalance in the 8.2 crafted items

Gameplay Professions
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I wanted to see what the cost of the various crafted items were and compare them with one another. What I found was staggeringly imbalanced. I did not consider gathering and used just the buyout ah price so as to be able to properly relate the total costs with one another. The totals are for crafting all three stages of the gear (i.e. 410, 425, 440 ilvl). The prices taken were from the undermine journal and were based off of the Proudmoore ah. This is a high pop server and so all prices per mat were, on average, 59.94% cheaper than the US mean. Here is the net cost of crafting the various items as of 6/28/19:

Alchemy trinket: 89,752.20 g
Blacksmith belt + pants: 113,506.95 g
Engineering helm: 75,399 g
Jewelcrafting ring: 991,670.64 g
Tailor gloves + pants: 21,713.6 g

Yes, you read that right. In comparing the cheapest to the most expensive item, it is nearly 46 times more expensive to craft the jc ring than it is to craft two tailoring items. In comparing the most expensive non-jc items to the jc ring, it is still 8.7 times more expensive to craft the ring than it is to craft the two bs items.

This jc ring is such an extreme outlier, I cannot even fathom how this was considered to be “balanced” and released. From the data shown, you can see that to even bring this in line with the other crafted items, the TOTAL material cost to craft all stages of the ring (12 eyes, 120 green and red gems) would need to be reduced by a factor of 10 (1 eye, 12 green and red gems). In that case, the ring would still be the most expensive single item to craft at 99,167.06 g.

Another possibility would be to make new shrines in the new zones, akin to what we have in the base zones, and let us use the jewelhammer’s focus to farm green/red gems each day. This would at least bring down the ah prices. Without something like this, even 2-3 months from now when people have heroic and mythic bosses on farm in the new raid, these gem prices will still be quite high, just like they were in bod before the jewelhammer’s focus was released.

A final possibility would be to allow alchemists to transmute the blue quality gems to epic quality gems (without cooldown).

Note: I did not do this for inscription as they only have a single trinket or for leatherworking because I was not interested in the leather. However, if you are interested in the leather, it will fall somewhere between tailor and blacksmith.

TLDR: The jc ring is so blatantly imbalanced in its cost vs the other 8.2 crafted items, that something must be done to bring it back in line. Three solutions were proposed: bring down the total material cost by a factor of 10, introduce new shrines that award epic quality gems from using the jewelhammer’s focus, or allow alchemists to transmute blue quality gems into epic quality gems.

20 Likes
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Prices are set by the playerbase, not Blizzard and the goblins controlling the AH want to milk jewelcrafting for as much as they can.

While Blizzard could have adjusted the rings to use more colors of gems in smaller amounts and avoid the same issue we had in the 8.1 patch with the crafted rings, they intentionally chose not to do so, likely as they wanted the crafting of a “perfectly” itemized ring to be significantly more expensive. In other words, working as intended.

2 Likes
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Since all data given in my post were from ah prices, they are all, in fact, relative to one another. The prices that are set by the playerbase are a function of the rarity of the various materials. The rarity of the materials are set by Blizzard. Therefore Blizzard, by way of controlling drop/spawn rates/location/density do indeed indirectly control the price of profession materials on the ah. The only true variability is server population as it relates to the total number of people available to generate resources.

This makes no sense. Stat for stat, a crafted ring gives, on average, the same identical dps boost as the other crafted gear (not counting azerite gear). The rings give less overall dps boost than the crafted pants, but more than the crafted gloves. So if I was a tailor, I could craft 23 gloves and 24 pants trying to get the “best stats” for the same price as 1 ring with the “best stats”. To think that there is nothing wrong with that and that it is “working as intended” would just dumbfound me.

When you look at the data and the other variables, it is clear that this ring is a gross outlier and really should be tuned to be brought more in line with the other professions.

9 Likes
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Not in this case.The problem is the drop rate of the Azsharine and Sage Agate.

8 Likes
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Exactly, the drop rate needs to be either much, much higher (which is very doubtful) or there need to be alternative ways to get drops, ala shrines or transmutes. That is, if Blizzard will be refusing to change the material requirement.

3 Likes
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Going to be really hard to craft those rings. I’ve prospected 2 or 3 stacks of ore and have only gotten 4 Azsharine so far.

2 Likes
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I’m giving this a bump because it’s absolutely true. You get 1 gem per 5 ore. Even with perfect luck (impossible) that’s 450 ore to craft the 440 version against 400 to craft both blacksmith items. But you compound that with the fact that your chances are more like 10% to get either a red or green gem since they seemed to have nerfed them since they aren’t used much outside of the rings and thus not in as much demand, and you have multiply that number by 10. Brings you up to around 20 stacks of ore to prospect for a single roll at a 440 ring.

Blizzard, please add osmenite ore itself to the recipe and greatly lower the gem amount needed. Part of the problem now is that yes, only a portion of that ore (450 out of the 4,000 or so needed to acquire the gems) technically goes to the ring and the rest of the gems we either use or sell, but that 4,000 ore to get the 450 that happen to be useful is way too much ore to realistically be farming up for a single attempt at it.

If we have to farm up more than a blacksmith and end up using some of it for other things, fine. That’s part of being a Jewelcrafter and dealing with the damn RNG. But 20 stacks is absolutely ludicrous.

Another option is simply to make red and green gems as likely as the others. Sure, that leaves us back with the long term problem of red and green not being worth much later on, but it brings us back to a reasonable point. If our chances are 1 in 3 of getting a gem for the ring, that still makes it about six stacks of ore. Not great, but I’d certainly take it over 20.

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Overall prices for item materials are in large part set by Blizzard through material requirements and drop rates.

For example, I’ve prospected over 300 osmenite ore - enough for two of the bop blacksmithing items - and gotten two, count them, two red gems. Essentially Blizzard is requiring 30 times as much material for the rings as for the plate items.

At a minimum, Blizzard needs to adjust the red and green gem drop rates to match all the other colored gems. Even then, a single ring is still going to be more expensive than both of the items from any other type of crafter. Alternatively, cut the number of red and green gems required per item to 1/5 or 1/10 of what is needed now.

2 Likes
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Rerolling sets a floor under the price. Since the BOP rings were introduced, the prices for red and green gems have never dropped below that for blue and purple, or even orange, gems.

Blizzard shouldn’t be trying to match drop rates to demand, anyway. That’s what pricing is for.

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  • Rings have higher demand, since 4x as many players use them compared to other item slots. This drives up ring prices, which in turn drives up mat prices.
  • Ring mats have other lucrative options for crafting, like gems, so there is more demand for the mats, driving up mat prices further.
  • Literally every toon in the game has the gathering profession for tailoring mats, ie. “looting”.

The only way to force the gem market prices down is to make gems, and by extension JC, as useless as the armour professions. That seems like a BAD idea.

Look, if you have a Miner/JC, you can:

  • Mine ore and sell it.
  • Mine ore, prospect for raw gems, and sell them
  • Buy ore, prospect for raw gems, and sell them.
  • Prospect gems from mined or bought ore, cut them, and sell them.
  • Buy raw gems, cut them, and sell them.
  • Take gems from mining/ore buying/gem buying and craft rings to sell.

That’s… counts TEN different ways to take your time and/or money and turn it into profit. Figure out what the ROI and turnover is for your market, and do the one that makes you the most profit.

Why on Azeroth would you EVER expect a market like Jewelcrafting to behave like other professions?

1 Like
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You obviously have no jc.You can’t craft rings to sell with the new ore,the only rings you can craft to sell are 310 ilevel.These gems that you seem to think are so lucrative are quickly dropping to the pre 8.2 prices of the previous tier of gems,which ended up being barely more than vendor items,unless the gems that were selling for 8g didn’t sell and you had to relist.Right now the new gems are in the 100g to 400g range on my server. And mining ore and selling it is what miners do,not jcs.We are just asking for a little parity with other professions.We can’t make higher than 310 BOE rings,how many times does this have to be said?

4 Likes
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More complaints about this here:

Blizz, you need to fix this.

6 Likes
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You know, it’s funny you say that. Because currently as it stands for every single 440 ring that gets made, 180 of each of the other color gems enter the market. One way or another, to get those 440 rings crafted, prospecting has to happen. You need 45 of each for the 440. You get 4x as many of the others as you do of those. It’s 120 of them just to make your first 440. That’s nearly 500 of every other gem per jewelcrafter that goes that far. To speak nothing of attempts at one with the right stats. We get several more mainstat gems than we do the ones for rings as it currently stands.

The way it stands is one of two things happen. One is Jewelcrafters don’t go through the trouble of crafting their ring. At least not in any timely fashion, if ever. It simply takes too long and too much effort. The other is gem prices plummeting to rock bottom prices as every jewelcrafter is drowning in them as they work to get their rings.

Which, funnily enough, the second one still wouldn’t make crafting our ring cheaper, because those would be the only gems anyone cared about at that point, keeping their prices high while everyone tried to offload more stat gems than they and their entire guild could possibly use before the end of the expansion.

4 Likes
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Why is it that some people always feel the need to defend what is clearly an indisputable issue. The stat gems are all going for under 100g a piece on Stormrage while the red and green sit at about 1500 a piece. The drop rate for them is too low to make crafting a 440 ring worthwhile unless your endgame is making gold.

3 Likes
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This has nothing to do with the topic and much of is wrong anyway.

1 Like
16

5 anchor weed for one flask is crazy also.

1 Like
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I was about to write a topic about JC imbalance but you captured it.
When 8.1.5 came out, it crashed JC price to the ground due to an overflow.

In 8.2, by requesting 35 green gems and 35 red gems for the JC crafted ring, the raiders looking to create it, sitting on millions of gold, will prospect thousands of ore causing the other colored to go in overflow AGAIN.

So, not only JC crafted items are hugely imbalanced but Blizzard destroyed the market for the new gems before it even started.

5 Likes
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Technically it is set by Blizzard because they are the ones who decide on their rarity. The JC item is so expensive because the gems are so rare.

3 Likes
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Meanwhile, they’re nerfing the new gems, too.

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The imbalance has little to do with demand imbalance, and nearly everything to do with the rate they can be acquired. The pain involved with crafting a JC ring is off the charts. I have as of tonight prospected 2,000 ore, giving 400 chances for 1/6 color of gem. Simple avg =66.7 if rates were equal. I’ve gotten 20 red, 20 green and absolute loads of the other colors, including more Leviathans than green or red. At this rate to get the 120 of each I would need to prospect 12,000 ore. This is wildly, unambiguously imbalanced. Note that in addition bad stats may force a reroll of the 440 item. By comparison I skinned up enough leather in 90 min to level and craft two 410 items, pants/boots, and another hour to acquire enough leather for the 425 and 440s. I have no idea how many hours I have mined.

7 Likes