Powerlevelling Inscription

I feel that the time is right for my shaman alt to take on Inscription as a profession. Yes I've missed the boat on the glyph market and darkmoon cards and it would've been much better to do it before 3.1 came out. This isn't the goal though, its the ability to produce cheap vellums thats the attraction.

I have never been interested in making an opportunistic quick buck. Sustainability is my game, preferring to list auctions and then go off and spend the time productively e.g. raiding, rather than sit in trade and watching the AH.

Whats the current trend? I like to delve into cheap but in demand enchants like Icewalker, +8 stats to chest and enchant bracer greater spellpower. Previously I've been purchasing vellums from the AH to test the market. Now, by cutting out the middle man and producing vellums in-house production costs should fall increasing profitability. So the shammy has dropped her rarely used herbalism profession for something a little more productive. At a price of 2k gold to powerlevel, Inscription is relatively cheap compared to the gold vacuum of blacksmithing.

Inscription prediction

When Inscription originally came out, as a concept where the bread and butter income was glyphs I hated the idea. What good is a profession (or any business for that matter) where you do not have return customers. You have a business where what you make is of such high quality that it never breaks, never becomes outdated and therefore never gets to be replaced.

Compare that with enchanting and jewelcrafting, gear gets replaced and at that time, you return to your friendly JC or Enchanter for a recustomisation of your gear. Better still, a new piece of gear might throw out the balance of your other pieces so you regem or re-enchant your other pieces to suit!

What I would like to see is either some kind of fuel made by inscribers to power your glyphs or a time decay that degrades the glyphs over time (say a month). That way it encourages repeat business and keeps inscribers in a job. Strangely enough the impact of dual specs has made inscription worse. Sure there was obscene profits when 3.1 hit but once everyone had their new set of glyphs then what?

For example pre 3.1, if you were a a pure dps class say a PvE rogue and you wanted to do arena for awhile with a PvP spec, you could respec and reglyph. In 3.1 you just switch specs whenever you please. No need for new glyphs, great for the average wow player, really poor outcome for inscribers!

Its not all doom and gloom for insribers though. Hybrids potentially need three or more specs e.g. pvp/arena spec, pve spec and an off spec. My guess is that long term, the ongoing demand for glyphs will be driven by hybrids so when making glyphs keep this in mind. If the devs bring out tri-specs Inscription will be largely killed off.