Jewelcrafting in Mists of Pandaria

There's some exciting new things over the horizon for Jewelcrafters. Perfect Gems are shaping up to be more powerful than ever before their stats are now easily on par with rare gems. Although Auctioneers will be eyeing the new gem cuts, I'm even more interested in the future of Jewelcrafting mounts.

Mounts which, curiously enough, bear a striking resemblance to Voltron which is totally acceptable.

Making of the Jewel Onyx Panther

I should start this out by saying that this beast is going to be expensive. It’s created by combining several other mounts (Sapphire Panther, Emerald Panther, Dawnstone Panther, and Ruby Panther) alongside 5x Living Stone for each panther.

While the Onyx panther looks pretty sleek, the color on the other models reminds me a bit of a bag of neon skittles.

Considering what the vending prices are, we could be looking at a 500,000 gold mount. Ouch. Looks like some of us will have some saving up to do.

New Daily Quests

As expected with every update, there are plenty of new dailies to keep you busy. For Jewelcrafting, you will be slaving away to earn Zen Jewelcrafting Tokens. For every 3x Reckless Vermillion Onyx you turn in, you'll receive a token.

This template isn’t anything new (unfortunately), but dailys have never been very innovative. While the NPCs give directions to the Jewel Crafting trainer, the actual location (the Jade Forest) is still under construction.

There's going to be a lot of cool stuff for Jewelcrafters in the expansion, but I feel like we're at a time when Blizzard really needs to refresh some parts of their profession system. With every new update, it's largely the same thing but with new mats and stats.

Those (Overpowered) Gem Cuts

There's a huge assortment of new cuts available that have many players drooling and others scoffing. The problem? Many of the gems are as much as 4x more powerful than in Catacylsm. That’s a big difference in strength!

I don’t think the power boost is really surprising given Blizzard's history, but it is a little worrisome. Where do we go from here? Is there ever a ceiling for these ridiculous stat boosts? It also widens the PvP gap between rich and poor players who can’t afford the same benefits.

The good news is that it makes your profession more valuable than ever. Jewelcrafters have always rocked the Auction House (on well populated servers, at least) and I don’t see it changing in the new release.

With so many new mounts and bonuses, JCs are really being slathered in love right now. If you have a JC alt, it's definitely time to max out your crafting. At the initial release of the expansion, pretty much everything will have ridiculously high prices that people will be willing to pay due to the supply. Your best chance of capitalizing on this short time period (usually less than a week) is to level your JC as much as you can and stock up on as much gold as you can before the Pandarian debut.