Yum. Epic Gems.

A friend of mine is in the process of gearing up a new level 80 character. So what does that mean? Yep. Lots and lots of heroics.

I don’t need gear from heroics for Cassandri. That doesn’t, however, mean that heroics are a complete waste of my time. I’m bringing in quite a bit of gold from looting, disenchanting mats, stacks of Frostweave Cloth and even the occasional Book of Glyph Mastery. It also helps that I quite enjoy running them.

I’m also accumulating a lot of Emblems of Conquest. I’m guessing approximately 6 per hour (I know it took us 25 minutes to do Heroic Trial of the Champion today because I had the oven timer on cooking my lunch before we started).

Assuming you don’t need gear purchasable with Emblems of Conquest, Valor or Heroism you have two options to turn those into gold:

• Buy epic gems
• Buy Runed Orbs

Runed Orbs can sell for about 150g. However, demand is incredibly low. Most players have skipped over the Ulduar crafted boots and belt items. Those that are interested in having these items crafted most likely will prefer to spend their gold purchasing the other components (harder to farm) than the Orbs.

If you can sell a Runed Orb you’re looking at 18 Emblems of Conquest for 150g. That’s 8g and change per Emblem.

You can also convert your Emblems of Conquest into epic gems. You’ll need to exchange your Emblems of Conquest for Emblems of Valor and then exchange those for Emblems of Heroism. The exchange rate is always 1:1 so if you have 100 Emblems of Conquest to spend, you actually have 100 Emblems of Heroism to spend.

1. Primary coloured (blue, red and yellow) epic gems cost 20 Emblems.
2. Secondary coloured (green, orange and purple) epic gems cost 10 Emblems.

Note: All the Auction House prices are averages across all servers, from wowecon.com. Prices on different servers will vary so it’s a good idea to check out where the action is on your server.

Primary Colours

• Blue Majestic Zircon – 20 Emblems – AH 140g – 7g per Emblem
• Red Cardinal Ruby – 20 Emblems – AH 160g – 8g per Emblem
• Yellow King’s Amber – 20 Emblems – AH 145g – 7g per Emblem

Secondary Colours

• Green Eye of Zul – 10 Emblems – AH 125g – 12g per Emblem
• Orange Ametrine – 10 Emblems – AH 135g – 13g per Emblem
• Purple Dreadstone – 10 Emblems – AH 140g – 14g per Emblem

Unless you can sell a primary colour gem for double or more the going rate for the secondary gems, it’s generally better buying and selling Ametrine, Dreadstone or Eye of Zul stones. The exception is, of course, if you discover one particular cut gem that sells for double that of any cut orange/purple/green gem on your server.

Cut gems are about 15g-20g more expensive than the rough gem. This saves the buyer from finding a Jewelcrafter with the right design recipe and tipping them for their services. If you have a friend who is willing to cut gems for you in order to sell them then it’s definitely worth your while to buy a stack of gems and have them cut into some popular, or rare, gems prior to listing them on Auction House.

Lets look at some of the most popular gem cuts selling on Auction House. Each cut is listed with the volume sold (over 7 days, I think) across all servers and the average sell price.

The popular cut gems that return the most gold for your emblems are:

1. Glowing/Purified/Shifting Dreadstone – 200g for 10 Emblems – 20g per Emblem
2. Vivid Eye of Zul – 198g for 10 Emblems – 19g per Emblem
3. Reckless Ametrine – 190g for 10 Emblems – 19g per Emblem

However, I think any secondary colour gem is a good investment. Aside from Runed Cardinal Rubies (a bad Emblem investment) I use quite a lot of Potent Ametrines and Purified Dreadstones. These are the gems I like to convert my Emblems into. That way I can stockpile some in the bank in case I get a new item, and sell the overflow on AH.

Are you sure that belt is made out of cloth?

Did you spot the difference? Have another look at me down there on the bottom right corner of your screen. That’s right. I’m not longer dressed in last season’s fashion and now I finally fit in with the trendy Tier 9 crowd. You probably think I’ve just been a bit too lazy to update the website, but you’re wrong! 20 thousand DKP for four piece Tier 9.5, a belt and a necklace in 2 days. How’s that for fast?

I know you can’t tell that I’m a Priest just by looking at my avatar anymore and that makes me a little sad. I guess I’ll just have to stay in Shadowform more often. At least then I won’t look like all the Human Mages and Warlocks running around the place. Perhaps I should Photoshop some shadows on to my HoTs & DoTs screen avatar until this phase in Blizzard Tier Design has ended.

News Flash: I’ve identified an emerging armor design trend. It’s not just about the giant, spiky, flaming shoulders anymore. It’s not about the helms you can’t actually see out of (ok, that’s still around in next season’s collection). It’s about the belt. Have you seen the belts in Trial of the Crusader and the belts being modeled with the Tier 10 gear? A little over the top don’t you think? No, I have not been taking too much sugar with my tea. Cassandri is not pregnant. But I’m sure even the current WBO heavyweight title holder would be impressed with the size of my new belt.

Actually the armor model for my belt is slightly misleading – and not just in size. The model only shows one glowing gem on it. But it actually has two sockets. Three when I add an Eternal Belt Buckle. Three! That’s a lot of extra spell power right there.

The reason my belt has so many jewel sockets is probably because it dropped in 10 man ToGC. Heroic versions of the 10 man items (and perhaps this is true of 25 man heroic items, too) tend to be exact replicas of the normal versions with 1 extra gem socket thrown on. And the gear in regular 10 man ToC tends to have sockets on it already. So that’s even more sparkles in whatever flavour you like: spellpower, critical strike, haste, you name it. I like it.

After my recent vow to gear up a bit more quickly I started to accumulate a significant number of gems from honor and Emblems and stored them in the bank. Now I have only one Runed Cardinal Ruby left. The Shadow Priest gemming rule up until now has been:

1. Chaotic Skyflare Meta and 2 Spellpower/Spirit gems to make it work
2. Spellpower everywhere else

Simple huh? But I didn’t have enough orange gems!

I find that I’ve been choosing Spell Power/Crit gems more and more often for my yellow sockets to try and bring my Critical Strike chance up a bit (up to 23% now). I still feel that is a little low for my gear level.

I suspect I might end up completely re-gemming my gear set when Patch 3.3 is released. I think the changes to apply Haste to DoTs will make a significant difference to how we value different item stats as Shadow Priests but I’m waiting for someone cleverer than I to work that out. And I’m not going to take anything seriously until we’re close to releasing the Patch on the Live servers.

Anyway it’s almost raid time, I’ve had the most awesome day (started it with ice cream for breakfast and filled it with lots of sunshine, friends and a great movie) and I’ve just got this feeling that tonight we’re going to get Heroic Twin Val’kyr down tonight. I’ve even stuck a special post-it to my computer monitor to remind me to cast Shadow Word: Pain!