Darkmoon decks are back in Cataclysm, and still very strong. So let’s see what we need to do to succeeed!
Standardized stats
With cataclysm stats are more standardized and every spec generally wants to stack their main stat. The 4 decks now cover the 4 major archetypes of classes, physical DPS, caster DPS, healer and tank. Generally the two DPS trinkets are the best ones, but it does depend on tuning. In cataclysm the trinkets are item level 359, putting them on par with raid loot, so I expect they will be very popular. Gearing guides are still sparse, but I have ssen chatter that the volcanic deck is really good for casters.
Crafting costs?
The cards in Cataclysm cost 30 volatile life and 10 Inferno Ink. These are analogous items to eternal life and snowfall ink from wrath. Now the important question is how quickly they can be farmed. Base on old wowhead comments you can farm a LOT more volatile life per hour than eternal life. I’ve seen Cata comments farming 200 volatiles per hour on wowhead, whereas wrath era commenters could farm about 8 eternal life per hour. That means based on old farming rates you now get essentially 2 times the amount of elementals per hour compared to Wrath.
Herb costs
On the herb side the cost is now 125 of the lower yield herbs or 77 of the higher yield herbs per card on average. This is essentially the same cost as we had in Wrath, and I expect similar dynamics to wrath, where the lower tier herbs are often the cheapest option. To calculate your crafting cost you can use this spreadsheet.
Darkmoon faire timing
We still have to turn the decks into trinkets at the darkmoon faire, as such getting finished decks ready for the first faire so you can stock up on trinkets will be very advantageous. The first darkmoon faire opens two weeks after launch, so there is a significant time gap. At that point players are unlikely to be fully kitted out, but some players may have graduated past the trinkets. On the other side this means we will have slightly less of a mad rush than we had in Wrath, where the first faire was very early.
More even prices
Generally speaking I expect significantly more even prices on decks compared to wrath where greatness was pretty much your entire profit. Either way I have made a profit calculator where you can input prices on the finished decks to figure out your profit margins. Do keep in mind that unless you trade cards very diligently you will likely experience a good amount of wastage through duplicate cards.
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