Jewelcrafting Shenanigans...

During preparations for the recent gold-making exercise I was exploring options for using up raw materials and I took a look at Jewelcrafting.

As it happens, earlier in the expansion, I had a JC plan!

It took so long to manufacture each gem at the time that they sold very quickly, sometimes selling out completely on my server, and prices remained consistently high.

So my plan was increase gem production to keep up with this demand and not miss any potential sales.

How do you do that?  Get more JCs!
I switched 5 or 6 alts over to JC, bought a boatload of ore from the AH and distributed it between them.
They were all starting from 1 but that didn't matter, they just sat in the garrison doing the daily CD and filling work orders.

I maintain that it was a good(ish) plan but for a couple of drawbacks:
1.  Shortly after I put the plan into action there was the patch that brought visitors to your garrison.  The Ore Trader allowed everyone to produce more gems if they wanted to.
2.  It was really boring.  I just got tired of moving ore and common gems from char to char.

So the JC-world domination plan was abandoned before it really got off the ground.

Well... I was looking at getting back into JC and checking out the Epic Gems.
You can't learn the recipes for them from a trainer, you have to actually go out into the world and find them!

Awesome!

This is an amazing idea! 

Actually having to play your character, maybe even going... outside your garrison!

The disappointing part was that I had to go to Wowhead to find out where the recipes dropped, why couldn't Blizzard put in quests for them? 
It seemed like such an obvious step to me, to continue the mini-questline which took you to the Gemcutter in the first place.

The recipes come from:
Versatility - Free one given automatically.
Critical Strike - Iskar in HFC (any difficulty)
Haste - High Sage Vyrix in Skyreach (Mythic only!)
Mastery - Rank 6 Brawlers Guild
Multistrike - Tanaan Arrakoa rep
Stamina - Rukhmar (World boss)

Ok... sounds easy enough.
So who is my best JC?
Oh dear... the only to make it all the way to 700, or anywhere near 700, was...

Warlock!

This was my free boost to 90 back in MoP, fumbled his way to 100 by virtue of having his own personal tank, failed the Proving Grounds, and hasn't moved since.

Oh dear.

Not to worry... back to Preach!

I was a Demo Warlock and they were gutted so Demon Hunters could have all of their abilities...

By the way, is this the most blatantly cynical move that Blizzard has ever pulled? 
Nerf Demo locks so heavily that they are not viable in any form of organised content.
All Warlocks switch to the other two specs which are both incredibly powerful.
Give all Demo abilities to Demon Hunter.
Any complaints? 
Well, the data says that nobody was playing Demo anyway.
No shit, Sherlock!

(also see Marksmanship Hunter/ Lone Wolf)

Anyway...
I have switched out of Demo, I hadn't enjoyed playing it much anyway to be honest, and decided to have a go at Affliction.  A spec so complex at one point it had it's own tailor-made addons to make it remotely playable.

Worth a go anyway.

It's not that complex these days... snapshotting has fallen by the wayside so it's more of a plate-spinning exercise trying to keep up dots on multiple targets.

Single target is very simple... keep up 3 dots, add a 4th dot when the Ember procs, fill with something else, pop CDs with trinket procs, summon and sacrifice Demons...

See, really simple! :-s

I'm off to practice in front of the dummies and hope I can get TMW to make some sort of sense out of it all, will let you know I get on!