JC has me depressed. =[

So I kinda figured gem prices were going to drop, but I didn’t know it was going to be so bad.

So bad where? on my low pop server. and why is it so bad? because of patch 3.3.3. I was used to collecting about 1k a day on average (and spending only about 30% of that on more mats) from my JC profession last year. this was pre 3.3.2. I had gems flying off the shelves. but as time goes by, my high pop server has turned into a medium pop server. not only that, but since patch 3.3.3, people have found an alternative to buying gems. they farm BG's, or have already farmed BG's and have a billion stone keeper's shards and honor out the ears, and end up buying epic gems with honor. they either sell that, or have it cut for a tip (usually 10-15g). done. so rare gem sales (and ultimately, prices) are dropping as well as epic gem sales.

I was a little apprehensive about doing JC in a low pop server, but I figured that it shouldn’t be so bad. people will still need gems, and people will always be gearing up new alts. what I fail to realise is that gems are not really an option until outlands. and even then, there's very few items that needs to be gemmed. some people don’t even gem (even with the low level gems, although my mage/priest/druid/lock all had runed bloodstones on everything, AH cost is about 2g a piece, every affordable for the leveling toon), so I figured I may have tapped into a dying profession. maybe what I need to do is collect recipes (I do the dailies, but am not 80 yet so I cannot run the instances for some of the other cuts) and wait until enough people get fed up with the gem market that they quit. I can then step in and sell various gems. I do not think I'll offer a wide selection as in my previous realm. what I think I also need to do is keep gems selling slowly, and when I finally hit 80, I can actually learn to cut the epic cuts. I will have a list of rare gem cuts that I think will sell well (usually red/yellow, and one blue) and the rest will have to be epic cuts. this will cut down on my spending tokens on useless cuts. some cuts sell for as little as 6g. that results in a sale, but I've also seen 6g cuts come back unsold. srsly.

so, my plan for gems is this: save up JC tokens to use on epic recipes. made due with what I have now. upon reaching 80, I can then run instances for the rare gem cuts. also, I will purchase the random world drop recipes with gold. that’s my plan with JC. Now since manders is done farming herbs, we can finally, finally do some outland instances and quests. Manders is my friend from my old realm that had to switch. so I switched with her and are slowly progressing towards level 80. she spent several days just running around azeroth and flying around outland picking flowers in order to level her alchemy. with sungrass going for 60g a stack, and other herbs going for the same ridiculous prices, we're better off farming our own herbs or mining our own ores. im still making decent change from Adamantite ore and Cobalt ore.