Making the most of your professions

Every day you can transform raw materials into your profession's crafting materials. In your garrison profession building, you can submit similar raw materials as work orders, which are then converted into crafting materials as well.

The question is, what do you do with the crafting materials?

Most of the professions offer 3 choices:

1)  Use 100 to create an epic piece of gear (iLvl 645). These generally do not require too many other mats and sell for anywhere between 2500-5500 gold. When WoD first came out they were selling for much more, but the market is saturated and so the price is depressed.

2) Use 150 to create an upgrade for the epic gear. Most of the armor gets upgraded from 645 to 655, but trinkets get bumped up to 670, I believe. These patters require 15 Savage Blood and 30 Sorcerous [Element changes based on recipe], in addition to the Profession's crafting mats. Savage Bloods can be bought in your garrison for 50 Primal Spirits (gotten from gathering skills as well as the level 3 Barn) and generally sell for 700-800 gold on the Auction House. The Sorcerous materials are generated by work orders at your profession building and sell from anywhere between 10-70 gold each, depending on the element.

3) Use 200 to create the higher level upgrade for the epic gear. Not sure what it goes to, 665 or 670. These patterns also require 15 Savage Blood and 40 Sorcerous materials.

So what's the best choice? In #1, the crafting materials are worth ~25-55 gold each. In #2 and #3, you have to (potentially) spend gold on the Savage Blood (~11-12,000) and the Sorcerous matierals (1200-2800). So you're if you're spending somewhere around 14,000 gold to even produce the Upgrade, then how much do they sell for?

I have found that the upgrades from #2 and #3 generally go for between 20,000-30,000 gold in the Auction House, depending on what profession it is. I've sold a couple Inscription upgrades for the higher end of that, but there were a lot of Leatherworking upgrades in the AH over the weekend so that one only went for 20,000.

Even considering 14,000 gold to produce the upgrades, you're talking between 6-16,000 gold profit. If you only make 6,000 then you're looking at a value of 40 gold per Crafting Mat for the #2 upgrade and 30 for the #3 upgrade - this is still higher than the value of the lower end of gear. On the higher end though, you're getting 80-107 gold per crafting mat. That's anywhere from 2-4 times as much profit - a massive difference!

Obviously you should do a little research beforehand in case prices of the materials change drastically at some point, but I think the Upgrade materials are the way to go.