If you are in legendaries or planning to be in the legendary market for 9.2 now is the time to start investing.
Material price bottom
Material prices for legendaries spiked significantly with 9.1.5 and covenant swapping. At this point they are very unlikely to decrease significantly more before 9.2. The general trend for Shadowlands has been large increases in material prices for patches as new ranks of legendaries require a lot of materials.
Double legendaries and multispecs
With double legendaries and covenant swapping being available in 9.2 I expect legendary demand to be higher than ever. Many players will want to get 2-4 rank 7 legendaries as soon as possible, so they can perform optimally inn all forms of content.
What to buy
The main materials that have potential to increase in value are the ones tiedf into legendary crafting. It makes the most sense to invest in these if you are planning to craft legendaries yourself, as the AH can easily run dry if the sale rate is as high as it has been. flipping for profit is riskier, but did pay off in 9.1 and for 9.1.5.
Elethium Ore, Heavy Callous Hide and Lightless silk are the main ones, alongside the zone specific ores for Shadowghast ingots. I would not invest heavily in essences, rather buying up extra Elethium ore, which is more flexible based on what sells fastest.
But what’s the right mix?
We don ‘t know that yet. There’s still not enough info out on things like class changes to get an idea of what specs or legendaries will be meta. Generally I think tier sets will change the preferred legendary slots significantly, and I think rings and necklaces will be less popular this time around. The big armor slots will be chosen whenever possible as they give your character the highest amount of power.
Leveling legendaries?
I would suggest waiting a bit with leveling legendaries. You want to prioritize the high value slots, getting every legendary to rank 4 is likely pointless, as there will probably be slots with no ore very few relevant legendaries for them. Once class changes seem finalized we can do a tally of suggested slots to see what the best recipes are likely to be.
How much should I buy?
That depends on your risk tolerance and gold stockpile. I am currently slowly buying and preparing intermediate materials. I don’t have any specific goals, but you would need to set up multiple bank alts to store materials if you wanted to even get close to buying too much. I talked about this in episode 160 of my podcast, so if you haven’t checked that out you might want to give it a listen. I am up to about 20k Shadowghast Ingots so far, and I’m planning to get a lot more.
Happy investing and good luck!