Fire(lands) Sale

[Edit: Avenger's of Hyjal as a rep is from the Firelands trash up to the tail end of honored (11,999/12k) and thereafter rep gains come solely from boss kills. When I wrote this post I was assuming said rep came from the dailies even though I should have known better already. The rest of the points still stand.]

So... yikes. I was all prepared to write about my weekend cross-faction AH shenanigans when I realized something startling: we may see a cratering of Darkmoon trinkets and other BoEs soon. As in, within two weeks or so. It seems so obvious in retrospect with 4.2 coming out, but if the full scope of the changes slipped my mind, it is possible it slipped yours as well.

• Everything on the Valor Point vendor will now be purchasable with Justice Points.

Duh, right? But consider what this means, slot-wise. T11 can cover chest, legs, and hands. Then you have cloaks, wrists, and feet (still BoE by the way). There are also rings, relics, and trinkets. When you look at what BoE 359 epics are available, they come in these slots: cloak, chest, feet, finger, head, off-hand, weapon (all types), neck, shield, shoulder, trinket, and belt. Or after you remove the redundancies... head, off-hand, weapon, neck, shield, shoulder, and belt. Maybe this comes across as more obvious than I originally thought (liquidate 359 gear before the new hotness of 378 comes out), but if you are still holding out hope for that Blauvelt's Family Crest to sell, you might want to reconsider a lower price-point before potential customers simply buy Band of Bees.

• The Avengers of Hyjal faction offers amazing 378 gear at each reputation level.

You can see the actual rewards on MMO-Champ, but what I want to get across again are the item slots covered: cloaks at Friendly; belts at Honored; trinkets at Revered; ilevel 391 rings at Exalted. Following me so far? No one will be hitting Revered with the Avengers overnight, of course, but given time every endgame player raider will have access to trinkets for both slots (and see below). As a person with gold, I have no particular compunction against twinking out a toon or two - who really wants to grind out heroics and weeks of dailies with green trinkets from questing, amirite? - but the simple fact that said "twinking" would have a shelf-life of however long it took me to do dailies farm raid trash to 11,999/12k and get one boss kill and/or get 1650 JP dampens how much I would be willing to spend. To other more frugal players, it may straight-up remove them from the market entirely.

• There are other Avengers of Hyjal vendors that offer even more gear than normal.

First off, why doesn't MMO-Champ have a single location for all this 4.2 stuff? It's dumb. Anyway, you can check out the specific vendor lists in this post. You should already know about the Blacksmithing weapon patterns that covers everyone. What you might not know is that belts, hands, feet, fingers, off-hand, relic, and goddamn trinkets again are also covered, depending on class/spec. Actually, only plate-wearers get belt options for example, but that is a rather huge market share cut out of what would otherwise be a very nice empty crafting slot.

• Don't forget about all that lovely new 378 Valor Point gear and new BoEs

Slots covered by VP this time around are the standard chest/legs/hands, followed by Thrown weapons, wands, relics, rings, neck, and wrists. In the updated MMO-Champ list, it appears that wrists are the only definitively BoE item. I would talk about the BoE raiding drops, but it will absolutely be profitable flipping them no matter how many comparable items exist. I will also pass on talking about the crafted profession items to much, considering they require Living Embers which are likely raid drops. That said, they appear to cover boots and hands.

Summary
There will be three two reasonably easy trinket options (and a third for raiders from rep) for players to choose from without even considering Darkmoon trinkets: one from Justice Points and two from the Avengers of Hyjal faction. Even worse for Scribes is the fact that someone doing the Avenger dailies will likely get access to both rep trinkets simultaneously - I imagine grinding 125 Marks of Lazy Design will easily get someone to the start of Revered. What plate DPS* would give a second look at Hurricane when they can get Dwyer's Caber and Essence of the Eternal Flame from dailies? Nevermind License to Slay.

As for the other items/slots? It appears Blizzard is doubling-down on the "tier helm/shoulder being drops" design, so I fully expect epic BoE helms and shoulders to retain and/or increase in value heading into 4.2. Of course, with T11 content being nerfed by 20%, this otherwise consistent demand may be tempered by a new supply of farming guilds/pugs churning out BoEs, so keep your head... or sell it, as the case may be.


*I understand from the forums that some of the T11 trinkets are better itemized than the Avenger's trinkets and even trinkets from Firelands itself. My point is less about raiders in the market for BiS gear (who likely already got it months ago), and more about the people interested in getting epic trinkets right away.