Alchemy has almost always been a strong goldmaking profession. The ability to craft consumables is great, as players need more of them every week, guaranteeing continued demand.
Recipe types
As usual alchemists can craft flasks, elixirs, potions and do transmutations. Wrath also adds the BoP alchemist stone trinkets. These can be useful for initial gearing, but overall play a very small part.
The best gold will always be in potions and flasks, as these are the most popular consumable types. In general the consumables used by DPS players are the top ones, as this role is by far the most popular one.
Alchemy specializations
As in TBC you can pick one of three specializations: Elixir, Potion or Transmutation. All of them give you an average of 20% more per craft when you craft recipes in the respective category. Transmutations are limited by 24 hour cooldowns, which makes it much weaker than the other two in my opinion. You will on average most likely spend way more on materials for and sell way more potions or flasks than transmuted items. I’ll probably go potion mastery for max volume, but elixir should also be good.
Recipe acquisition
In Wrath the main method of getting recipes is through the Northrend Alchemy research. This is a craft with a 3 day cooldown that will discover a recipe you don’t know yet. Now there’s a good chunk of relevant recipes that come directly from the trainers, including armor potions, flasks and transmutes for Titanium and meta gems.
The major DPS potions, as well as certain elixirs are locked behind research however. This makes getting the right recipes a bit of a crapshoot. You are hoping you get lucky and get the top DPS potions early, as the elixirs will generally not be preferred over flasks, the advantage of persisting through death is just too big. Research also unlock the various element to element transmutes, that may be relevant.
Lastly the resistance potions are drops from specific mobs out in the world. These are BoP, so you have to farm them yourself. I would suggest focusing on the frost one first, as it can be useful for Sapphiron.
Notable recipes
The main recipes to focus on will be the flasks, alongside the two main DPS potions: Potion of Wild Magic and Potion of Speed. Sadly they are both from research, so you have to hope you get lucky. There’s no way to speed them up. The only little trick you can do is running your transmute before you do your research, as transmutation has a chance of discovering transmute recipes. This will narrow down your pool slightly. The indestructible potion is the most notable trainer taught recipes. It’s used by tanks, and potentially DK dps with the Bladed armor talent.
Use smart stacking
I have had great success utilizing smart stacking for alchemy. I generally like to sell alchemy consumables in every possible stack size from 1-5. This has consistently enabled me to sell my items for more than the material cost across a wide number of expansions, even selling the items for more than the average price. Players are surprisingly willing to overpay per item to save time clicking the purchase button, so take advantage of it. I’ll be Sharing my TSM setup when the game is out, but I can’t make it until the pre-patch is out at the earliest.
Hey, got that tsm string yet for the herbs? Thanks !