I think it depends on the economy on your server.
On high-pop PvE heavy realms, gems do sell quite well (although only a select few do yield a profit), and I imagine the demand will keep growing as players obtain more stygia to buy the gem slots from Ve’nari.
As a jewelcrafter, I’ll admit it does feel really crappy buying cut gems on the AH because it’s cheaper than buying the mats and making it yourself (and if you’re a miner, you’re better off selling the ore).
I’ve also had success selling crafted mog items, toys, pets and mounts from previous expansions, so, I wouldn’t say it’s a “dead” profession.
I preferred the era of professions when they had relevance during early progression. Or specific consumables like potions and glyphs. I guess those were the days.
Cause having bis items coming from expansion launch, ruins any sense of gear progression. It becomes the same issue people bring up with artifact weapons and the heart of azeroth. They complained the slots are dead cause the item is bis always. So why do TBC crafted items (in this case) get a pass?
Replacing everything each patch/tier/season is bad but holding on to something for 2 years is bad as well.
You look in your bags and see you have enough herbs to make 5 flasks. You look at the auction house and see that you can make enough gold selling those herbs to buy 6-7 flasks. I don’t know what Blizzard can do about though, because it’s largely a player created problem. No matter what profession I have, it’s almost always cheaper to buy off of AH than to craft it myself.
While enginaeering hasn’t gotten much love the last few xpacs, it remains the best profession simply because many of the older past xpac items you make are still very useful, which is not something I can say for other professions.
Such a shame. Some of the gear I crafted with my JC in WOD I was still using at the start of SL. But I can’t remember crafting anything with my JC in Legion or BFA. I thought that the professions was supposed to be one of the selling points for SL. But I guess from what I’m reading it isn’t all that it was cracked up to be.
I was buying ilvl 168 crafted armor and is way cheaper to buy it from the AH then to make them myself with mats. Even as a lw, skinner is better just to sell my leather I got in the AH and buy the actually armor for my hunter.
Too many people crafting too few things. They made a big mistake allowing people to take two crafting professions in the first place. It duplicated effort far too much and made it possible for people to have a couple of alts to cover all crafting needs. Allowing only one crafting profession per person and having specializations would make it so people had to focus more on a single profession and rely on others for other things.
Plus only a few things really sell anyways and everyone is making them, competing on price. If there was more choice in the items then that would split the market up and remove some of the competition. For example, instead of a single cloth chest that provides certain stats you could have three or four with visual and/or effective differences between them. And I don’t mean random stats, that just encourages making a ton of items to get the “best” stats and then dumping the rest on the market.
A lot of people don’t enjoy the Maw and its restrictions, so they avoid it. If that’s where many of the gem slots are coming from, and they require rep and a lot of Stygia, then the need for gems is going to be low. Blizz has screwed over JC with their gear design.
I remember gems going for 200-300 gold throughout WOTLK and people had maybe 1/8 the amount of gold back then. Now I can get the best gems for like 50g or less
I mean Jewel Crafting was added as a profession back when socketing was abundant and a large factor of customizing stats. But every expansion they’ve decided to make less present. You would think if they changed their philosophy of customizing stats on gear, they’d also change their philosophy on jewel crafting’s purpose.
