Being a Draenei Finally Pays Off...

I've never really paid much attention to the racial perks.
  I've almost exclusively played on Alliance so missed the exciting ones like Berzerking. Even my human rogue barely used his Every Man For Himself as I've never been much into PvP.


Suddenly, and quite surprisingly, in Legion I have found myself incredibly thankful to be a Draenei!
I lost count of the number of times I used Gift of the Naaru whilst levelling, it without doubt saved my life countless times against rares or bad pulls. I still use it now while I am out doing WQs to reduce downtime and even in the raid for a free, instant-cast heal.
Gift of the Naaru is not the real reason I am thankful to be a Draenei though, can you guess what is?


+10 Jewelcrafting!


Yep, that's right. +10 JC has been incredible for me!


The profession overhaul has been met with mixed reviews... personally, I love it!
Fun little questlines and amusing NPCs add some depth and flavour to the usual grind to the next cap, do daily cd, gather recipes etc.
Jabrul crashing his way into the serene JC shop in Dalaran still brings a smile to my face :-)


With the usual start of expansion drain on raw materials, having two crafting professions (JC/ENCH) on my main made it extremely expensive to level them. Enchanting wasn't too bad in the beginning, having HFC raid gear meant every drop and quest reward was disenchanted for the first few levels.
Jewelcrafting though, was a bit of a nightmare.
The new prospecting method meant that you often didn't receive any gems at all, just some practically worthless Gem Chips. With the price of the ore at 20g each for Leystone and 75g each for Felslate, it was quite an investment for potentially no gain.


Two things then happened at roughly the same time...
First, I decided to throw some gold at prospecting to see what the returns would be like. I wanted to work out what was going on with these gem chips and see just how many of the rare, valuable gems I would produce. So I spent around 100k split between the two types of ore and prospected it all away!
Second, my GM asked me to craft a load of gems and enchants to kit out the poorer members of the raid team. The guild would pay for me to level my professions!


GM: Hey mate, would you mind crafting a load of gems and enchants for the raid team? Take the money out of the guild back to buy the mats.


Me: (YES!YES!YES!YES!)... I'll see what I can do.


A captive market for my JC experimenting! :-)


I didn't make any profits from my own guild of course but using their gold to buy mats meant I could level up essentially free of charge, I even made them a little profit on the side selling the surplus.


All was good until my JC hit 780.
There were no (none. zilch. zero) recipes left that could increase my skill.  I thought it must be a bug, tested out a couple of recipes with no luck, and scoured the internet for the answer.
There are 11 class-specific 815ilvl necklaces. The recipes were grey for me but, apparently, at rank 3 they were green... and the only way to level from 780 to 800!


These recipes were all hidden around the world or gated by long rep grinds and, even if you managed to find one, the materials were incredibly expensive.
I studied the list, the mats and the various drop places, until 1 stood out. The Druid neck recipe dropped from Shade of Xavius in Darkheart Thicket which I was running daily for the BiS trinket anyway, and the mats were predominantly the blue gems! Fantastic!
Nobody wants the blue gems anyway!


It only took me a couple more runs to get the recipe and it had by far the cheapest mats. By cheapest, you have to bear in mind it is all relative. It would still cost around 10k per craft and it would probably take around 40 (or more) crafts for those 20 skill levels.
400k for 20 skill levels!
And that was the cheapest one!


As it happens, I only needed 14! They only took me to 790 but the racial was enough to make it 800 and, at 800, is the holy grail of jewelcrafting... the Saber's Eye epic gem cuts!


Still expensive to craft, mats roughly costing 5k direct from the AH, but they sold almost instantly at 14-15k each!  Even now, weeks into the expansion, they are selling for 10-11k each (albeit not quite as quickly).
The only reason I can think of to explain the price staying so high is the difficulty and expense of those last 20 levels. 
People must not appreciate the riches that await you if you push through to the Saber's Eyes and it must seem like a huge obstacle.  I hope they continue to shy away from it so the gold can continue to roll on in.


I may have to put up with weird hooves, tentacles on my face and my tail sticking through my cloak, but being a Draenei has finally paid off!