Bread and Butter

One of my favorite Enchanting niches back in Wrath was the "Everyone actually needs this all the time" niche. It does not make any sense logically, but for as much Enchanting competition there is on the AH, everyone independently assumes the (max level) starting enchants are covered. In Wrath, for example, the +28 spellpower to gloves was something every single spellcaster would want for every set of gloves they ever got. Moreover, the mats were ridiculously easy, leading to some pretty crazy profit margins as I was able to consistently sell them for 120g+ despite it costing barely 15g to make.

Welcome to Cataclysm:

Pictured above is +15 Stats to chest for 180g, +50 Mastery to gloves for 195g, +50 Haste to bracers for 144g, and +50 Haste to gloves for 249g. These four are just a representative sample, not an exhaustive list, although Mighty Stats in particular is the de facto enchant for basically everyone. So unless Greater Celestial Essences are selling north of 270g apiece on your server, chances are that you can make a serious margin peddling bread and butter enchants that will always have a deep pool that consists of anyone who gets gear above ilevel 318.

One unforeseen complication of the Maelstrom Gambit I was talking about a few weeks ago that I wish I had foreseen is the dearth of non-dust enchanting materials. No, seriously, I am talking about Heavenly Shards consistently at 100g each. Greater Celestial Essence is also high, but less so because it is part of the Shuffle. It makes sense that there might be fewer people running "normal" heroics and thus less shards coming in, but I also think the other half is simply the sort of Gambit I am engaging in. Power Torrent, for example, takes 8 Heavenly Shards each. All it would take is a few people doing some high-end scrolls to chew through the entire AH supply, just like what happens to Volatile prices anytime a JC takes a gamble on the crafted rings/necks. As for the Gambit itself...

Not anything hugely impressive. If you math it out, that is a revenue stream of 16,419g minus 6,000g for the Maelstrom Crystals to purchase the patterns (haven't sold Windwalk scrolls yet), leaving 10,419g split among the five scrolls, or 2083g per scroll. Based on TUJ's current numbers, Landslide would cost 2257g to craft while is Power Torrent 1947g and Windwalk 2563g. In all likelihood, I ultimately broke even on the Gambit on Week 2 after learning the patterns. Going forward, this will be an additional revenue stream, although obviously I was aiming for a bit of a killing before prices reach their future lows. We shall see.