Now for all you folks that have been doing this shuffle for quite some time, you already have a good idea of the gold that can be made, and estimate your profit, correct? If you answered kinda, we are in the same boat....
Using this addon (or the spreadsheet that is floating out in the blogosphere, Stede at Venture LLT has a great one) takes 100% of the guesswork out of your profits, if you sell the uncuts, if you vendor, if you craft and D/E, if you transmute to Shadowspirit Diamonds, what-have-you.
Here is the addon. Not much to do, other than to enter in your cost, your # of stacks, then click "Do It". That's it. You are done. Total time, 2 seconds. Now there is a catch, you have to have your AH scan up to date. Either Auctioneer or Auctionator is fine, just do a scan and it will use the most recent information available. Ez peezie, right?
Now for the main gunk of my post. I had to find out how accurate it is to real-time. Now we are all aware that to get an accurate number is extremely tough, especially when Blizz has the "drops" or "procs" of prospecting is all based off random numbers (or RNG), so I can understand where this can be off, but I wanted to see how far off it is. Now this is not meant to hate on the program (I can only imagine how tough it is to program something like that, and how much time was invested), I just want to know how accurate it is. So here goes:
For my comparison, I used the magic number, 100. Not that it can disappear, or pull a rabbit out of it's hat, but just because it works. And just in case, I did it twice. Two seperate sets of 100 stacks prospected. Now you are probably thinking that's quite a bit, it must have taken a long time. Well, I was surprised when I timed it.....
100 stacks. Almost 23 minutes. Now it seemed like an hour, but it wasn't. So, I got a screenie, got a count, and started fresh with a new 100 stacks for Test 2.
Here are my results:
ROUND ONE
Inferno Ruby: 7
Demonseye: 3
Amber Jewel: 3
Ember Topaz: 7
Jasper: 91
Zephyrite: 103
Carnelian: 101
Nightstone: 97
Alicite: 106
Hessonite: 103
601 Greens
33 Blues
Now this is very close with what I have been estimating, 6 greens per stack, and 1 blue per three stacks. So nothing new here, and extremely close, give or take a few greens. So far, so good. 1st round, I call it a tie, what about you?
ROUND 2
Inferno Ruby: 5
Demonseye: 8
Amber Jewel: 3
Ember Topaz: 9
Jasper: 96
Zephyrite: 111
Carnelian: 80
Nightstone: 98
Alicite: 110
Hessonite: 104
599 Greens
34 Blues
Damn. Still extremely accurate. Now I am not necessarily looking at the exact amounts "here and there" for the greens or blues, but just going off the overall numbers. I am extremely surprised how close blizzard has this random number thing down. Fairly even across the board. Once again, I feel that round two is a tie as well.
Now I also did a comparison with the D/E'ing side of OreCrusher, and it was basically a tie as well, however I only compared Carnelian Spikes and Jasper Rings, so it wasn't a "complete" competition, so I cannot judge, however.....you guessed it, very close.
*Edit- Kammler, from Kammler's Korner updated some info in the comments below (to read his whole comment, check below):
"Also, the projected number of crafted items is not visible, and neither is the raw gem data except on the main page. For example, the data I just generated for 10 stacks of Obsidium suggests 9.6 Carnelian and 9.6 Jasper. The Transmute button says I should expect 6 Greater Celestials from the Carnelian Spikes (at a rate not disclosed per unit) for a total of 284g, and 2.8 Hypnotic Dusts (again, rate not shown) for 19.60g. Now I know the Carnelian Spikes take 3 gems each so I should produce 3 total. But it isn't shown in the data. It would be helpful to determine "what if" I sold the DE mats from two units at a high enough rate to get that return--then I could bank the extra 3 Carnelians for later.
Similarly, the Jasper Rings show a predicted 10.8 Hypnotic Dusts (total only, 75.6g) and 1.2 Greater Celestials (total only, 56.88g). I know it takes 1 Jasper per ring so that must be based on 9.6 rings. But the totals are not shown so I can't run any other models--its all based on the lowest price listed in the AH."
*Edit- Kammler, from Kammler's Korner updated some info in the comments below (to read his whole comment, check below):
"Also, the projected number of crafted items is not visible, and neither is the raw gem data except on the main page. For example, the data I just generated for 10 stacks of Obsidium suggests 9.6 Carnelian and 9.6 Jasper. The Transmute button says I should expect 6 Greater Celestials from the Carnelian Spikes (at a rate not disclosed per unit) for a total of 284g, and 2.8 Hypnotic Dusts (again, rate not shown) for 19.60g. Now I know the Carnelian Spikes take 3 gems each so I should produce 3 total. But it isn't shown in the data. It would be helpful to determine "what if" I sold the DE mats from two units at a high enough rate to get that return--then I could bank the extra 3 Carnelians for later.
Similarly, the Jasper Rings show a predicted 10.8 Hypnotic Dusts (total only, 75.6g) and 1.2 Greater Celestials (total only, 56.88g). I know it takes 1 Jasper per ring so that must be based on 9.6 rings. But the totals are not shown so I can't run any other models--its all based on the lowest price listed in the AH."
Now only one area that I seen was WAY off, the transmute Shadowspirit Diamonds....(I am sorry to say I did not get a screenie of the addon's estimate, but it was 74. I ended up with 64. Now that is a 2500g difference. Out of the 30 I did, only 4 procced as 3's, the rest were 2's. And yes, I am transmute spec, so I will be trying it again to see if proc's get more on my side...). With this round, we are about 15ish percent off. But I won't hate, because I think that I had bad luck there.
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Overall, this addon comes highly recommended if you are looking for an estimate of what prospecting will give you (at least for Obsidium- I cannot speak for the others). Now after adding and subtracting, I saw that there was just shy of 1200ish gold difference on the price it listed (for just uncut) between the two rounds, but 10ish percent is still close in my book, and it beats guessing.....this addon is definitely staying in my bag of tricks. If you prospect, I imagine this will be of assistance to you as well. Ok, now for some questions for you reading this...
Are you using this addon? What do you think? Are you as happy as I am with the results?