Malestrom Crystals

They seem to run for about 3k on the AH.  Cheapest way to get them still seems to be a matter of crafting epics and DEing them.

Bump.

More people were asking about this today.

These crystals have seemed to be on more and more peoples minds lately and for good reason. The more we raid and people get gear, the greater the chance we're going to be getting these crystals, especially considering we have 15 in the GB right now. Malky and I were briefly talking about them last night, I thought they were only for enchants, but supposedly there's crafted gear/patterns that require these as well, which I wasn't aware of.

Personally I feel enchants should be the first thing we worry about...everyone can use enchants as opposed to only select classes/spec being able to use gear. I say get the enchants in the guild first, meaning get active enchanters (By this I mean people who are on reliably) the patterns. Once we have all the enchants in the guild, then either worry about other patterns and such or people actually having the enchants put on their gear.

All of what I mentioned is quite obvious, but we need to determine the hows and whos of handling the crystals. Do we want to charge GP for them? Treat them like saronites in Wrath (You repay 20% of what you borrow...you would borrow 5 saronites, you repay 6)? Charge gold for them? Or some other idea...like performing sexual favors. The big problem I see with the crystals are they're nothing like saronites were. We KNEW we would get a saronite in a raid and could even buy them with Frost badges...these crystals are pure RNG, relying completely on loot that drops and if anyone in the raid can use it. Also consider the only way people can 'repay' them, if we're going to work on a loan system is by getting lucky in Baradin Hold and winning a D/E roll, crafting epic items and D/Eing those or buying them off the AH for anywhere from 3-5k...again these crystals are FAR MORE rare than saronites were in Wrath.

Hmm, I was unaware of them being used in crafting stuff too.  As for enchants, it takes 5x crytals to buy the enchant and then 1x crystal to actually do the enchant.  It wouldn't surprise me if there are crafting patterns that work in basically the same way too.  I'll look it up after church, unless someone beats me to it. 

In any case I'd suggest though that we probably have enough crytals in the bank to essentially buy a complete set of enchants for the guild.  Then people should just buy their own crystals for their enchants.  Yeah, 3k is expensive. 

Sell all the maelstrom crystals you have and bank the cash for future purchases.  Once 4.1 ships, the Maelstrom crystals market will crash from the flood of disenchantable epics in the new heroic 5-mans, and you'll be able to buy them back for "coppers on the gold", as it were.

I don't think the lack of a top-tier enchant or two is holding any of you back from killing bosses right now.