Better Enchanting

I've been an enchanter on Innana for a very long time, and while I do enjoy the profession, the lack of support during Cataclysm made it a very frustrating experience.

Wrath wasn't too bad once Abyssal Shatter was added to the game, in patch 4.2 I think. But throughout Cataclysm, Greater Celestial Essences were the bane of my existence. They were necessary for so many enchants and yet there were quite difficult to generate, and there was no easy way to farm them. Even using the ore shuffle, the only way to reliably farm them was expensive, by sacrificing Carnelians which would be better served as Rubies through Transmutes.

Dream Dust was very easy to come by, and once we had an excess of Maelstrom Crystals, even Heavenly Shards weren't too bad thanks to Maelstrom Shatter. Greater Celestial Essences remained the production choke point for the entire length of the expansion.

Thankfully, Blizzard seems to be moving into the right direction with Enchanting for Mists of Pandaria. It seems like you will be able to move up and down the component ladder fairly easily. First off, here are the new items:

• Spirit Dust
• Mysterious Essence
• Ethereal Shard
• Sha Crystal

In addition, we have the following spells:

• Sha Shatter: 1 Sha Crystal = Ethereal Shard x 2
• Ethereal Shatter: 1 Ethereal Shard = Mysterious Essence x 3
• Mysterious Diffusion: 1 Mysterious Essence = Spirit Dust x 3

 And:

• Mysterious Essence: Spirit Dust x 5
• Ethereal Shard: Mysterious Essence x5
• Sha Crystal: Ethereal Shard x 5 (only once per day - basically a transmute like cooldown)

So to get one Sha Crystal, we have to do the following:

1 Sha Crystal = 5 Ethereal Shards
5 Ethereal Shards = 25 Mysterious Essence
25 Mysterious Essence = 125 Spirit Dust

The ladder is fairly expensive, but at least it's an option should we get desperate and have an excess of Dust (which we probably will) to move up. Moving down will cost us a lot of materials, but as excess builds up from grinding dungeons, we won't just be sitting on a ton of mats that are flooding the AH with no recourse. At least in the first few weeks and months, making Sha Crystals this way may be quite profitable I think, especially if the market floods with Dust or Shards. If Shard prices stay high, it might even be worth producing them for others to transmute into Crystals.

It's a lot better than the complete lack of options that we had in Cataclysm. This gives us some latitude in terms of how we produce mats for enchants and doesn't put any choke-points in the production line. Let's hope it stays this way from here on out.