Inscription has typically been a decent gold making profession with some flashes of absolute amazing periods. The darkmoon decks are typically the biggest money maker by far and players can get rich purely off of this market.
Recipes and ranks
Once again we are still in the dark on how and where the recipes are obtained. As we get closer to launch there will likely be more updated information on this note.
What can Scribes craft?
Inscription in BfA will have most of the crafts you are used to. Vantus runes, glyphs, raid buffs, talent tomes, decks and off hands. In addition a new contract item is used for deciding reputation gains.
- Raid buffs/Vantus Runes
- Contracts
- Talent Reset Tomes
- Darkmoon Decks
- Glyphs
- Off-hands
This list only contains the items that can actually be traded as we are focused on the gold making aspects of the profession.
Raid Buffs/Vantus Runes
Vantus runes were fairly decent in Legion and I expect them to be a good market in BfA as well. Anything that gives buffs in end-game content will always sell well. The Raid buffs seem to be consumables that can replace one or more class based buffs if you dont have them available. I doubt they will sell too well, but they could be useful for mythic+ dungeons as the meta might not favor actually bringing classes that have all the buffs.
Overall I think these items are solid, but unspectacular.
Contracts
Contracts are a new type of consumable item in Battle for Azeroth. Scribes can make contracts for each faction. You consume them to decide which faction you want your world quests to give reputation with. These items will be in demand and will be necessary to get rep effectively. I don’t think players will swap these too often, but all alts will want some of the contracts, and mains will typically want all of them.
I think these will be decent sellers and will remain relevant for the entire expansion.
Talent reset Tomes
Talent reset tomes were GREAT in Legion. The volume was absolutely amazing and you can move a ridiculous amount of these items. Players will typically bring a lot of these with them to easily swap talents on the fly. In Legion the tome version was vastly more profitable than the codex and I expect this trend to hold in BfA. You can expect to sell hundreds of these per week if you repost consistently!
Darkmoon Decks
Darkmoon Decks have been one of the great gold makers of Inscription. These trinkets are often pre-raid Best in slot for several specs and I would not be surprised for this trend to hold. The market is typically capital intensive with high barriers to entry as you need to craft thousands of cards to be competitive and get a decent number of actually finished decks.
This is a great market to get into early and it will typically hold strong for most of the expansion.
Glyphs
Glyphs were the typical main point of Inscription, but they have diminished in effects over time. BfA has at least three new glyphs, all of them tailored at druids. I would be very surprised if they did not add more glyphs than are currently in the Wowhead database.
Glyphs are cutthroat market with low sale rates, but great margins. If you are already in glyphs you will obviously want to add these, but outside of that they will typically not be the best gold makers in the game.
Off-hands
In BfA scribes will once again get access to crafting off-hands. These are only useful for casters. It’s unsure whether off hand + main hand weapon or staves will be optimal for casters in the game. This could be either quite good or very underwhelming. Overall I think these will bring in some profit, but they will not be on the level of crafted weapons or crafted armor in terms of demand.
Overall Impression
Inscription is looking quite good in BfA. The main stays are going to be here again, with darkmoon decks and talent reset tomes being the most exciting items.
That being said I don’t think you can make a lot of gold with this profession without going heavily into the darkmoon decks. This requires quite a bit of capital and time, as well as early rank 3 recipes so if that does not fit the bill for you I would avoid inscription. If you want to dive into the decks however they can be incredibly fun and rewarding, not to mention profitable!