The Obsidium Shuffle: Heating Up or Winding Down?

On this lazy Saturday night as I sit here cutting and vendoring an obscene amount of Zephyrite I have to wonder. Is the Obsiduim shuffle still worth it?

With ore prices dropping to rock bottom on many servers (many believe because of an increase of botting activity) you'd think the shuffle would be more profitable than ever (although my sore gem-cutting fingers may disagree with you). Is it still worth the time to do 'the shuffle'?

The Problem
Now I'm not one bad-mouth 'the shuffle'. It has been mighty good to me for the last month or so. Somehow I get the feeling that it will get less and less profitable as time goes on.

The reason it was so good was that at least 2 or 3 of the gems we prospected sold in the 20 gold range. The others often sold for well above vendor value. The three that were involved in the JC daily could sell on a good day for 25-35 gold each.

The problem is that they aren't selling for that price anymore. I feel the dirt cheap ore has pushed the prices of almost all the green-quality gems down and profit margins are shrinking.

Even rock star sellers like inferno rubies are dropping into the 65-70 gold range as cheap ore brings cheap carnelians.

State of the Union.

My fear is that it will get to the point where we are simply prospecting, cutting and vendoring all our gems. While this may bring in SOME profit it is an incredibly laborious process and I may have to start evaluating if the time spent is worth the profit gained.

The Silver Lining?
The one thing that dirt-cheap ore prices may bring for those JC who are dedicated and don't mind spending time semi-afking is the obsidium ore price floor.

What is the obsidum ore price floor? What is a price floor? Because the cut green-quality Cata gems vendor for 9g each if you prospect, cut and vendor all the gems you will make an average of 54 gold.

This the price floor. This is the least you earn by prospecting one 20-stack of obsidium ore. That means if ore is selling for less than 54 gold you have zero risk of losing money by prospecting. Worst-case scenario your gems don't sell and you cut and vendor them.

This was a great safety net back when green-quality gems were selling for much more. Now it may be the ONLY way to make money via the obsidum shuffle.

The Alternatives
There are other things to do with green-quality Cata gems. One is transmuting meta gems. Meta gem transmutes take 3 of each of the 6 green-quality gems. 3*6=18 total gems. Each gem cut would vendor for 9 gold. Thus for metas to be profitable they would have to sell for at least ((18*9 gold)+5% AH cut) = 170.52 gold.

Dirt cheap ore...dirt cheap metas?

With metas selling for 60 gold uncut on my server it makes me wonder if people are aware of how much they are losing by creating them.

Clearly at the current prices metas aren't a good option for me.

What about creating jewelry and disenchanting it? Well lets take a look at that. In my experience I've only done this when I needed mats for my  enchanter to blow through.

Lets be scientific and use the addon OreCrusher to see if doing the JC/DE shuffle is worth it. Below is a shot of the current AH prices for Obsidium (note many are below the 54g price floor) and the OreCrusher Disenchant recommendations.

OreCrusher DE Recommendations

From the image above the only thing OreCrusher would have us DE is Carnelian Spikes (which DE into Greater Celestial Essence). While this may be a good idea we first need to see if we would be better to put our carnelians to use by transmuting them into inferno rubies. For that we check the OreCrucher Transmute Values against the Disenchant Values.

Comparing DE to Xmute Values

It looks like the values are very close on my server at the moment. If they were further apart I would simply choose which ever was more valuable at the time and do that.

You can't see the rest of the OreCrusher Transmute values but all were recommending to auction the raw gems which means transmuting (even with transmute specialization) simply isn't worth it.

So besides a few examples of carnelians being able to be sold for a profit it seems we are either going to be selling them raw or vendoring them.

The Bottom Line
If we see our profit margins for 'The Obsidum Shuffle' shrink we will have to adapt and change with the times. I blame botting for the continued drop in our bottom lines. While it's exciting (at first) to get mats at dirt-cheap prices I feel that it does irreparable hard to the economy as a whole and loses us all money in the long run.

You simply can't compete with a machine. Bots never sleep. They never eat. They don't have families and real lives. They only thing that will stop them is being banned.

If you buy from someone who you know for a fact is a bot please stop. Please report any accounts you suspect of botting. It is not a lost cause. We have seen some success in our community with getting botters banned. (See "AH PvP Record: 1 - 1" at Nerf Faids) Don't give them your gold. Don't continue to let them pollute the game.

All the information in this post is related to my server alone. However, I don't think it is too far off by what I've been hearing across the community. basically it's time to check your 'shuffle' to make sure the music hasn't stopped and you're swaying with yourself all alone on the dance floor.

Talking Points

• How has 'the shuffle' been treating you lately?
• How are you planning on adjusting to the lower price of ore?
• What profitable uses have you found for cheap ore?

Happy Fun Time Math Bonus!

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