This week I found the new Uncanny Combatant’s gear in the wowhead PTR database after a reader tipped me off. So let’s take a look at how this market might look in 8.3
Armor and weapon crafting has been great
So far in BfA armor and Weapon crafting has been my favorite way to make gold with professions. I have sold a ton of Honorable, Sinister and Notorious Combatant gear. Of course these pieces have never been the best item level gear available, but they have offered a very cheap way to get some quick item levels on a fresh level 120. Before we take a look at how they stack up this time around, let’s do a quick rundown of what you can craft.
The items we can craft
Of course we only care about items that can actually be sold to other players. The Uncanny Combatant’s gear covers the waist, Legs, feet, wrist, hands, cloak and weapon slots. You can get armor for all armor types as well as a wide variety of weapons. The items are essentially exactly the same as the Notorious Combatant’s pieces before them, just upgraded to item level 400.
I like to craft up to about 10 of each to get a decent split between the different random stat variations, and I suggest you do the same. With the items being the same I would personally rate Blacksmithing and Leatherworking as the best ones, then comes tailoring, and finally inscription and Jewelcrafting with their assorted off-hands and staves.
How do they compare to other gearing options
8.3 also adds a BoA token based catch up gear mechanic. This is a system Blizzard has used quite a while and 8.2 had the Benthic Tokens that started at 385. Back then the crafted gear was ilvl 370, so the token gear was a 15 item level increase. I still sold a lot of 370 gear.
In 8.3 the token gear will be item level 410 and 415, so the advantage will be similar as in 8.2. Depending on how easily people acquire these tokens they represent another avenue for gearing. If recent experience is any indicator they are not a complete replacement for purchasing gear as buying gear will get you higher at a faster rate and can allow you to queue into LFR or just to get higher item level gear from world quests.
Overall it seems like the Uncanny gear will fill the exact same niche similar items have in earlier BfA patches, which means I expect them to sell and sell well.
Materials needed
The crafting costs are very similar to crafting costs for Notorious combatant gear. There is a slight increase in the amount of materials needed, but it is not particularly large. For plate armor it is typically in the 5-10 Osmenite Ore more per item. As such it will increase demand for ore slightly, and together with the massive amounts of gems needed for the new BoP JC rings I expect ore prices in particular may see a bump. That being said the future is hard to predict. Either way it makes sense to stock up on some materials ahead of time. The table below shows the rough ratios you need for each of the professions for the various materials. How much to stock up is up to you, but this will give you an approximate ratio at least. The ratio varies a bit between items of course, so as you see what sells you can change it up as needed.
The items also require a ton of Expulsom, and to get an idea of how much you should pre-stock here you can check out my post from 8.2 as we are looking at the same number of recipes.
Good luck!
‘The table below’…was there supposed to be a table above?
May be a stupid question but are you crafting these at rank 1 or grinding super hard for rep early on?
It’s typically been very profitable at rank 1, and the higher ranks have been locked behind marks of honor, which you can farm agead of time if you are so inclined.
What profession level do you need to learn rank 1,2,3 of uncanny combatant’s gear?
So it will be worth making this in the next patch? I used your pvp gear guide at the start of bfa and it made me a decent amount of gold. Then IRL kicked me in the butt and I haven’t been able to work on gold making for a while and I’m now down to 1 more token and I’m broke.
If it’s not too much trouble, can I get a suggestion on what to do with the professions on my characters? My main is Alch/Ench and my Alt is Tailor/Ench. My alt has enchant cause of bag space it was a pain in the butt to mail all the bracers to my main to DE, plus I started raiding with him so he’s been DEing all the gear he doesn’t need. But I thought of switching to Tailor/LW on him to double up on the pvp gear sells, and maybe craft raiding gear if either of them need it, but that always sucks for a character you actually raid on. My main has Alchemy cause I got vial of the sands, but unless I farm the mats myself it never makes a profit. But it took so long to get the recipe I don’t want to lose it.
Yes I think this will be well worth it.
I would never run double enchanting in BfA personally. Tailoring/LW is strictly better. I would definitely never switch out alchemy if you have Vial of the Sands. For met it’s been extremely profitable, even when purchasing materials, but of course your realm might differ.
According to TSM, if I buy all the materials off the AH then I’d make 15k profit. But part of me isn’t sure how reliable that is since I think it goes off market value and not what the stuff is currently going for on my realm.
So I’ll drop ench on my Rogue for LWing. Then I can make 2 sets of gear for him to sell. Do you know what else is decent for LWing profits? I know some people say those leg armors, but I have never been able to sell any. Though that was when I was on KJ, now I’m on Area52.
Leatherworking for me has primarily been about the combatant type epics. You can also do the bracer enchanting shuffle if profitable, particularly the one using rank 3 honorable bracers to get veiled crystals can be interesting.
As for the crafting cost in TSM, the value of materials is valued at dbmarket, which is a weighted average over the las 14 days. This isn’t always accurate for Vial materials as the price can fluctuate. You can go and manually change the material cost to a more stable one like dbhistorical to get a better idea. The finished item is valued at the current minimum buyout, so there is a discrepancy. You can often find materials for less than dbmarket, and you can also often sell items for more than the current minbuyout, at least if it is below the market value. There’s nothing wrong with farming the materials, but if it’s not profitable to buy the materials and crafting something you are better off just selling the raw materials you farm, rather than crafting.
Yeah I saw your post about the bracer shuffle for crystals. According to the spreadsheet, all my materials for the LWing stuff is twice what he has, and my enchants sell for less then on his realm. So that’s not really profitable. I got LWing leveled up on my rogue for the new combatant gear. Then I realized, the only piece of pvp gear I’ve ever really sold were the capes and thats not gonna sell with 8.3 from the legendary cloak.
I went to see about making the Vial, at the current listing price yes the Vial would make me about 20k profit if I buy all the materials. I go and look, none of the materials are on the AH. Not even the Volatiles.
Trying to make gold is stressing me out so much. I literally have enough gold for one more token for my sub, and I’ll have 1k gold left over.
The new gear is not pvp gear. It is essentially catch up gear that is useful for anything if your current gear is worse than item level 400. I’ve seen some pretty impressive sales on twitter already so that would definitely be my top tip for 8.3. My own experience in BfA is also that the combatant gear has been the best seller by far.