Everyone remembers the Lariat mania of 10.0, and with 10.1 there’s a new king in town when it comes to embellishments.
The balance has shifted
There’s a new optional embellishment added in 10.1 Called Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch. As of right now it is simming as the best embellishment in single target for pretty much every DPS spec in the game. This obviously means that this item will be immensely popular. It is stackable, which means it’s on the region wide auction house.
A blessing and a curse
On one side, being on the region wide AH obviously means that competition will be high. As we saw with items like the new Spore Tender enchant prices can go down very quickly. The recipe for the Armor patch only drops from the raid however. This will mean that players will not be able to easily compete with you, if you get it. You will have to get lucky on the AH to get one day 1, or be willing to pay. How much is anyones guess.
My thoughts
I think this item will be massive. Every DPS player in the game will want at least one of these ASAP. You can’t target farm or increase the drop rate of the recipe, and there will likely be very few available the first reset. Obviously we don’t know how the recipe will be priced, but if you are the first one in your region you will be printing gold. I can easily see players paying 100 000 gold for this, at volume. Shadowlands proved there are TONS of players willing to pay that amount of gold for marginal power upgrades.
The build
The Shadowflame patch has a difficulty of 360. It does not look possible to guarantee quality 3, so you are going to be going for an inspiration build. Due to inspiration, it is possible that quality 2 will be practically equivalent to quality 3 in terms of max quality proc rate on the crafted item, but I don’t really expect most customers to consider that, so q3 will be where the gold is. You can find a sample build below that shows the most important nodes, that give bonuses to this recipe.
How much is the recipe worth?
Obviously we don’t know. If you want to splash gold you have to do it as early as possible, to get in on the first sales when competition is really low and prices are high. The cutthroat nature of the region wide AH means it might be more profitable to sell the recipe if you end up looting one, but you should be following the AH closely.