Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Trouble With Transmutes

The past few days, I have spent trying to figure out the most lucrative manner in which to blow my transmute cooldown. As a half ass gambler, I wanted to use my transmute in a manner that produces the greatest amount of gold, based on the least amount of luck (or procs).
The way I see it, there are only four widely used ways of burning one's transmute CD.

1. Buy all mats for Truegold, transmute (hope for procs) and post on AH.
2. Offer your Truegold transmute to the masses, for a fee (including procs)
3. Offer your Truegold transmute to the masses, for a lesser fee, keeping any procs for yourself to put on AH
4. Transmute: Living Elements in Uldum and post Volatile Airs on AH.

We're going to look at these four methods with Wowhead's Prices and Average Prices from my server

First Wowhead


1. Truegold Mats include 10 Volatile Fire @ 17g/each, 10 Volatile Air @33g/each, 10 Volatile Water @ 4g each and 3 Pyrium Bars @ 24g/each. For a grand total of 612 gold. Wowhead lists Truegold at 927g. Bringing our total profit to 315g (927-612).
315g x 7days = 2205g/week
1 proc = 3132g/week (likely)
2 proc = 4059g/week (probable)
3proc = 4986g/week (unlikely)

2. The average transmute CD giving away procs sells for between 250-300g. We'll assign it a total of 275g.
275g x 7days = 1925g/week
Price remains same regardless of procs.

3. The average transmute CD for Alchemists who are non-transmute specced or keeping their procs is between 200-250g. We'll assign it a total of 225g
225g x 7 days= 1575 g/week
1 proc = 2502g
2 proc = 3429g
3 proc = 4356g

4. 15 Volatile Life @ 8g = 120g
15 Volatile Air @ 33g = 495g
Profit of 375g x 7 days = 2625g/week
* Calculating Procs gets more tricky as blue posts have stated the proc is in now way related to the zone you are in. Therefore I am using a composite average of the five volatiles, which works out to be 14.2g
1 proc = 2838g/week
2proc = 3051g/week
3 proc = 3264g/week


Clearly using Wowhead's data choice one is the way to go. The data however changes slightly when using the average prices found on my server
Fires 27g
Water 20g
Air 48g
Pyrium Bar 44g

This totals the mats to be 1082g.

Truegold is valued at 1336g. Making a profit of only 254g

Where as Life is valued at only 9g x 15 =  135g Making Transmute Living Elements profit = 585g

Choice 1: Buying mats and selling Truegold.
1778g per week
1 proc = 3114g
2 proc = 4450g
3 proc = 5786g

Choice 2: Selling Truegold CD in trade with procs
Remains the same 1925g/week

Choice 3: Selling Truegold CD in trade keeping procs and listing them on AH
1575g per week
1 proc 2911g
2 proc 4247g
3 proc 5583g

Choice 4: Transmuting Living Elements in Uldum for Air
4095g per week
*Avg. proc = 24.6 * 15 = 369
1 proc = 4464g
2 proc = 4833g
3 proc = 5202g

What this data all boils down to is whether or not you think you will proc at least three times in a single week. My own personal experience is that I proc once, maybe twice a week. Therefore on my server, I'm sticking with choice 4, and marching my butt to Uldum every night.

Cheers - Brouck

2 comments:

  1. Excellent post! This is something I occasionally struggle with on my alchemist: truegold or living elements? It's especially tricky since the prices for Volatiles on my server are, well, volatile. I've usually been sticking with Living Elements because I know it's almost always going to sell. I haven't posted Truegold in a while (stockpiling for the alch mount), but when I was, I noticed they didn't sell particularly well and I was undercut rather quickly.

    So that's something else to consider. Even if Truegold gave you a better ROI, if it's not selling, it's not doing you any good!

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  2. Another option:

    Instead of Transmuting for a Fee while giving them the procs jus trade the finished product for their mats. Then you can trade them a sinlge truegold for their truegold mats.

    Once they are gone, you can do the transmute and keep the procs for yourself. Thats what I did for months when epic gem transmutes were popular.

    Using this method you can trade the mats for the finished product more than once per day, if you have some stocked up.

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