Death Knight

Death  Knight’s – despite being a melee class, are more or less self healing. The Blood Talent tree has several skills that either use runic powers to heal the Knight, or take stamina directly from the foe. You should be a VERY light user of potions and bandages.  Starting at level 55 is also a huge bonus. Meaning you can immediately set about 2 gathering professions with a real purpose. It’s possible to level Leatherwork and either mining or herbalism side by side up to level 300 in about 5 hours with a Death Knight. That’s a serious ability.

Druid

Effective damage coupled with good healing skills makes this a solid choice for low maintenance in terms of gold .However, it is one of the most complex classes to play given the very different roles a Druid can perform, and the importance of knowing what form to adopt – and when. Different forms also give a speed boost  – always a bonus for leveling and gathering.

Hunter

The long range attacks of the hunter, coupled (in most cases) with a pet to “tank” for them, makes this another low maintenance class if played well. However – they lack healing skills ( In real life every  hunter we know is about the best first aider we know as well – but Blizzard don’t see it that way) If played badly – or if mobs get in too close, a hunter can be overwhelmed pretty quickly. Our advice – play this class well, or not at all.

Mage

Paper thin melee defenses and attacks means this is another class that needs to play “at range” However, some specific perks can be brilliant time and money savers. “Portals” are the fastest way to travel to major centres, and can even bring in money if you ask for a fee to make them. We also love the Mage’s AoE skills – seeing 5 or 6 mobs drop in one go will make you the envy of other players..once you have the skills to do it.

Paladin

The ability to summon your own mount. Well this sounds great,  but given the falling cost of mounts to other players, this perk is losing its comparative value.Still it is worth it. The moderate healing and resurrection skills are also gold savers for you (and other party members) However, if you are thinking of sacrificing yourself (which Paladin’s can do) make sure you get something in return.

Priest

Priests are the main healers. If correctly specced they can out-heal any class. However, they come with very weak melee skills and melee defenses.  Leveling with a “Shadow” heavy spec, then swapping to a “Holy” spec for end game would be wise. The “Discipline” talent tree should be mixed in as appropriate. However, once you are end-game, your’ well honed healing skills will be very welcome . How often do you see the call” Healing required for HC”…all the time, that’s how often.

Rogue

Rogue’s are all bout speed and avoidance, If played well this should reduce the amount of healing and downtime required. If played badly you can get in serious trouble. “Lockpick” is a skill that is often in demand, and can make and save you gold. The ability to escape conflict is also useful, if not the most noble thing to be seen doing.

Shaman

As usual, healing is a very handy ability.  However 2 specific talents are worth mentioning. “Water Walking” can be very handy to get to hard to reach areas for gathering professions, and becoming a “Ghost Wolf” makes travel  40% quicker. (less time wasted – more time making gold)

Warlock

It’s difficult to quantify a Walock’s talents  in terms of Gold making. Warlocks are a pet class, with some healing skills (Healthstones) able to summon party members (handy for groups in end game) and have abilities to drain health from opponents. All useful. If you add all these skills up it becomes a very neat package – Making gold with a bit of everything when the opportunity arises is the way to earn as a Warlock

You need two accounts, or a friend you can trust to do this.

Bare in mind that 2 accounts will cost you twice as much per month, and a friend will probably want half the profit from doing this – so this method is not for everyone.

Tomorrow we are back to the single player gold guide, but for now, here’s the vid.

Mageweave Cloth ALLIANCE

26

24

28

31

33

35

35

21

Mageweave Cloth HORDE

44

45

51

53

67

66

44

29

Above is the data for the item “Mageweave Cloth” taken from European server “Anachronos” over a period of 16 days in August 2009. The prices are in silver pieces per individual piece of cloth.

This data in the Material master will give you some clues as to whether this item is a potential profit maker.

Firstly, the average price in Alliance auction house is 29.13 silver pieces per cloth
The average price in horde auction house is 50 silver pieces per cloth

So instantly we know that to buy from alliance and sell from horde gives us a very good average profit (the price difference is 72%)

Buying from Alliance and selling to Horde is a no-brainer.

The standard deviation is 5.22 on Alliance and 12.44 for Horde.

This tells us that buying from alliance to sell at a later date to the same market is not a particularly good choice. A standard deviation in single figures is a pretty good indicator of a low margin potential.

Horde however is a different matter. 12.44 tells you that buying low and selling high in the Horde auction house  is a great idea for  someone playing a single market strategy.

However, there is an issue. Closer examination of the data shows that we have a “rogue” figure.
7 of the 8 data points for horde are between 44 and 67 silver pieces per cloth. One point is however 29, silver pieces per cloth.

This low figure is capable of skewing the figures quite a bit. However, if you replaced that figure with the average of 50 would give you a standard deviation of just below 10, and an average even higher at 52.63

These are still great figures for either a single market or a cross market selling strategy.

Okay, to normalize the figures and obtain a price index take the following steps.

•   Work out which is the “Buy From” market  – in this case Alliance.
•   Take the worst buy price from this market (i.e the highest price) – In this case 35 silver pieces.
•   Give this 35 silver pieces the Index rating of 1.00 (one point zero zero).
•   Rate every other price as a ratio of this price

Another option is to take the average price and give that an index rating of 1.0. You would use this if you were comparing prices across servers, or comparing PvP servers with PvE for example.

ALLIANCE MAGEWEAVE PRICES		26	24	28	31	33	35	35	21
ALLIANCE MAGEWEAVE INDEX		0.74	0.69	0.8	0.89	0.94	1	1	0.6

Once indexed, here are the Alliance prices. Below are the Horde prices. Remember they are indexed as an average price over time across BOTH factions auction house readings.

HORDE MAGEWEAVE PRICES		44	46	51	53	67	66	44	29
HORDE MAGEWEAVE INDEX		1.26	1.31	1.46	1.51	1.91	1.89	1.26	1.43

The top row of each factions data set shows the actual prices, the bottom row the “price index” As you can see 35 silver pieces is rated as 1, every other price is a ratio of this price. In this way you can compare item against item, even server against server without worry.

Below is a video we have added showing the Material Master spreadsheet. This will be a download on this site once the serialization of the Advanced Gold Guide is complete.

The standard deviation bell curve.

You can work it all out for yourself..or the “Material Master” spreadsheet that comes as a free gift with this guide can do it all for you.

Above, the average price is 10..in terms of mean and model average.

The item HAS sold for 2 – and could sell for 18.

No guessing when you should buy and when you should sell then.

So what to have in your portfolio. Here’s how to decide which items
To trade in.

Ok, here’s the bit you were dreading. The maths. We have gone out of our way to make this as simple as possible.

Good items to trade in a single market have a large range "standard deviation" of price.   
Standard deviation is a measure of how much an measured item deviates from it’s median (average) price over time.

So here is Lesser Healing Potion. We measure it’s price 5 times over 5 days. The prices were (in silver pieces)

        80s
        77s
        82s
        79s
        83s

This gives an average price over the 5 measurements of 80.2 silver and a standard deviation of 2.39 (roughly 23.9 percent)
    Is this any good ?

Well, copper ore gives these values over the same period

        45s
        140s
        84s
        47s
        85s
This has exactly the same average of 80.2 silver. However the standard deviation is 38.6  or 386% variation from the mean

Standard deviation is a vital statistic for checking the price volatility of an item. In simple terms :

The greater the deviation, the greater the profit potential of that item.

It means that an item price varies wildly. These are the items you need to watch.

Included with the Advanced Gold Guide is a spreadsheet we call “The Material Master”

With this we have been tracking the price volatility across many servers and over a long period of time.

To ensure that we are dealing with a consistent set of set across all the servers, we use a method known as “normalizing”

As we mentioned before, the prices vary wildly across servers, to simply add all the prices together would be to overvalue some servers and to undervalue the data from others.

If you use the “Material Master” you can see that it does not have prices in it at all, it has the variations of price from an index.

Here’s how price indexing works.

•   First use an add-on or manually  check the selling price of items at a particular time period
•   Next note the selling price of each item at that time period.
•   Repeat this process over at least 8 times. Deliberately choosing different times of the day, days of the  week etc. NB. This is not a true random, as we are actively making decisions when to collect the data. Choosing  holidays, weekends, Patch days etc to measure the effect.
•   Index the results. This means
•   Nominating the faction with the lowest average price as the ”Buy”  faction
    Using the HIGHEST PRICE FROM THE “BUY” faction AS THE INDEX, AND GIVING IT THE VALUE    1.00               (one   point zero zero) then measuring all other prices as a ratio of your index price.
•   Putting all the prices in a row against the item in date order.
• Taking an average of the price for Alliance, and comparing that with the average price for Horde

Use this method of indexing whether or not you are considering cross faction trading. There is no point struggling for profit in the wrong market place.