Grimmtooth's Troops

Note: due to the somewhat volatile nature of the subject matter, it is entirely possible that I will update the info therein after it posts to the RSS feed. If you are reading via RSS (and who isn’t?) then for once I suggest that you go to the actual article on the blog, because the RSS feed will not update content once FeedBurner caches it.  I promise, I won’t try to sell you gold services if you do.

Although the overall Inscription series was a bust¹, there is still a real need for one bit of information that was coming from it. Namely, what glyphs are sticking around? Or, more to the point, which ones are going away?

In typical Blizzard fashion, I imagine that a bank full of Prime glyphs will become a bank full of gray items. Blizz may also, in typical fashion, grant them a sell-off value that far above what you can get for it on the live servers, but don’t count on it. Unfortunately, they’re playing that one cagey, and I have no good data on what the “complementary” value of a grayed-out Prime may be. The upshot is that they may only offer vendor pricing, which, as you probably know, is pretty miserable. ²

The “smart” money, therefore, is on getting rid of what you have that will NOT be viable when the pre-expansion hits³.  This consists of, for example and not surprisingly, almost every Prime – though some are being “demoted” and retained in the constellation of available glyphs. Another group of glyphs that are going away are those that removed a material cost for some skill or another, such as the one that removed the Light Feather material component from Slow Fall.

There are also a ton of glyphs that defy classification – but the ability or the need for the glyph is going away, so, therefore, is the glyph.

With no hard and fast rules, then, a brute-force approach has been required to sort it all out.  But I think I have a handle on it.

When to Dump

A huge chunk of this list consists of glyphs that never sold very well – or for a decent price. Therefore, getting them onto the market and sold for whatever you can get for them is the priority. I wouldn’t fuss over mat costs or anything at this point. If you can get a whole GP for each glyph, take it. I doubt that you’ll get that much for a grayed one in the 5.0.4 world.

Others, however, continue to sell well, despite the fact that they’re going to be useless when the patch drops. If you’re making 150-300 gp per glyph, when do you give up the gravy train and stop sinking ink into them?  “Smart money” says right until they stop selling, but that will leave you with a pocket full of grayed glyphs if you don’t time it exactly right.

“Safe money” says, don’t take chances. Once you start dumping, dump it all.  Use that ink on glyphs that will be available after the patch drops.

It’s been said before, and I am still thinking that the time of release for the pre-expansion patch (5.0.4) will probably be around mid-September, and probably two or so weeks later, the expansion.  With that in mind, my sell-off is going to start at the end of July.  This gives approximately six weeks to unload everything and get the house in order.

If 3.0.2 and 4.0.3 were any indication, we will lose the ability to use Blackfallow Ink to purchase lower level inks when the patch drops, and we won’t have the ability to make the new ink⁴  until we get to explore the new zones. If that’s the case, conversion of your Blackfallow into lesser inks (especially of the Sea) might be wise – either to sell off for a handsome profit, or to continue making glyphs – especially new ones, if we’re permitted to do so⁵.

What to Dump

Following is the list that I have managed to extract. If a glyph isn’t on this list, it is either being retained, or I mistaked.

You should be aware that mistakes are probably common, considering, and also the list may be changed by Blizz.  The change lists from them or WoWHead are rarely accurate or complete, WoWHead offers no API for independent data mining⁶, and brute-forcing it would mean the list never got published. I choose to publish now rather than hold out for perfection and not be timely.  For the record, that makes this list current as of July 19, 2012, and no later.

As before, I am not providing WoWHead links to everything in this list, because, like, that’s actual work.

1. I blame Garrosh. [↩]
2. If anyone knows for sure, drop a note in the comments, please. [↩]
3. 5.0.4 is on the PTR now, by the way. [↩]
4. Ink of Dreams. [↩]
5. Do note, however, that many of the new inks require Ink of Dreams directly – something I approve of, from a game design perspective, but which is damned inconvenient for those trying to get out of the gate early! [↩]
6. In fact, they’ve made it harder to programmatically extract data from the site, despite making soothing noises on their forums. I have a bad feeling about this. [↩]

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 21st, 2012 at 10:58 am and is filed under Beta, Crafting, Expansions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.