Fire Prism: Is it worth your time?

Let's take a look at jewelcrafting today, specifically the Fire Prism. This is JC's daily cooldown, which converts 3 of each uncommon cataclysm gem into 1-3 rares and potentially chimera eyes. The math gets a little complicated, so let's dive right in...

Fire Prism: Gambling with Jewelcrafting

Fire Prism requires 18 total uncommon gems, and nets you 1-3 cataclysm rares. This one is a bit odd in that, you'll only ever get between 1 and 3 gems, but if you look at drop rates its about a 40% chance to get each rare per prism. Some rough math puts this at an expected value of about 2.4 blue gems per prism. This will vary WILDLY day to day, but if you look at a 10 day average you should "expect" 4 of each rare gem.

You should also expect a 12% drop rate on the Chimera's Eye, or 1.2 of these over the same 10 day period. So after 10 days, our expected return is 24 blue gems, and 1.2 Chimera Eyes.

Our investment is 180 uncommon gems, including 30 nightstone and hessonite, two very valuable JC levelling gems. Jasper, Alicite, and Zephyrite are also required for the JC dailies, making their value slightly inflated as well. The only "useless" uncommon gem, ironically, is Carnelian. This has its uses, mostly in transmuting to an inferno ruby, but that's for another time. Essentially you're turning 180 gems, of which 150 have immediate, high value, into 24 blues and 1 epic.

This is where the math gets iffy. To do a TRUE calculation of the expected cost of this, you'd want to find the price of each uncommon gem, the price of each blue/chimera eye, and multiply it by the chances to evaluate. Because I'd like to keep this simple, I'm going to be generous and assume a cost of 30g on average for each raw gem (you want to check this on your server!). This brings our cost for one fire prism to 540g, or, over a 10 day period, 5.4k.

Now let's take a quick look at the upside. The big draw here is the chimera eyes, but some of the more popular rares like inferno ruby are also a draw. Assuming a 40% chance at each gem, I will be generous and assume each uncut gem to be worth 100g - on my server this is a bit too generous, inferno ruby are going for 100-120g each, and every other uncut is far below this number, with dream emeralds and ember topaz lingering closer to the 40-60g mark.

Assuming 2.4 gems per fire prism, this gives us a rough expected value of 240g in blues per prism. This leaves us with a 300g gap to cover with the remaining 12% chance at a chimera's eye. Throw in some more quick math (x * 0.12 = 300g) and you're looking at needing chimera eye's to sell consistently at 2500g to break even on this, and that's assuming you're getting 100g per blue gem and buying your greens at 30g each. If you're lucky, and greens are lower or blues are higher, these values might change.

The message I'm trying to illustrate here should be simple by now - Fire prisms just aren't worth it. Even if you strike gold on a Chimera eye, you still have to unload it for a hefty premium to even break even. These might be more valuable down the road when common gems take a dive, and epic gems are released, but for now - stay away!

Some better alternatives

Let's take a look at what those same 18 gems a day can get you when we put them to alternative use.

First up is alchemy transmutes - this one might not be immediately attractive because it requires you to have a JC and an alchemist, but the profit margins here are a lot more attractive. There are 6 alchemy transmutes, each taking 3 uncommon gems and 3 of a particular herb:

Transmute: Ember Topaz - 3 hessonite, 3 cinderbloom
Transmute: Inferno Ruby - 3 carnelian, 3 heartblossom
Transmute: Dream Emerald - 3 jasper, 3 stormvine
Transmute: Ocean Sapphire - 3 zephyrite, 3 azshara's veil
Transmute: Amberjewel - 3 alicite, 3 whiptail
Transmute: Demonseye - 3 nightseye, 3 twilight jasmine

Your mileage is going to vary per server, here, but each is worth investigating. Of particular interest on my server are the inferno rubies - heartblossom is cheap enough and rubies sell very, very well.

Finally, of direct comparison and with far less lengthy math involved, I present the Transmute: Shadowspirit Diamond alternative. This takes 3 of each gem, much like the fire prism, and instead turns them into 2 shadowspirit diamonds. This is a very attractive option because it gets rid of every gem type. With the above options, you're likely not going to be able to unload every gem reliably. On my server I can only use 1 transmute effectively enough to make it worth my time. But with this you evenly use up a supply of every gem color. What's better - this is a lot easier to calculate. If you're selling the raw, uncut gem alone, simply compare the price of a chimera eye to a shadowspirit diamond. Regardless of the cost of the green gems going into this, your output is directly related to one another. Remember that you only have roughly a 10% chance to get a chimera eye - you're guaranteed to get 2 diamonds each time! And then if you bring your JC into the picture and sell cut versions of the gem - you're likely to get even better returns.

Can you shorten that a bit, please

Wrapping this up with a "TL;DR" version, I'd state it as the following, fairly simply:

Unless your server places an extreme premium on the value of chimera eyes, and green gems are at very low costs, and shadowspirit diamonds don't sell well uncut, and you cannot cut any meta gems yourself, and you don't have an enchanter to shuffle jewelry - then the fire prism likely isn't worth it for you.

I'd highly encourage putting this on the wait list for now. Come back to it later when green gems tank in value, but even then i'd suspect shadowspirit transmutes on an xmute alchemist to come out ahead.

What are you doing with your green gems? Do your experiences differ with the opinion in this post? If so please let me know!