I don't think they'll introduce new salvage materials until the expansion. It seems like a lot of additional development work for no additional revenue. Tweaking skills requires testing time, but the coding is generally trivial. Developers are expensive, testers not so much. Admittedly, the more interesting tweaks they make, the more money they earn in RMAH fees, but that can't really add up to too much since many of those new RMAH sales would just be cannibalizing sales that would've been made in their place.

My biggest concern isn't when the patch is, but when the announcement blog is. I've found that the effects of hype on the speculation market is more powerful than the actual patches; for example, look at brimstone prices around the legendary buff patch. The biggest gain was immediately after the announcement, if I remember correctly.

What @Jhonka said. I'm stockpiling my brims until they make an announcement on what the changes to them will actually be. I recall brims being worth about 10k then jumping up to around 90k within hours of Blizzard saying that sometime in the future they will add a new use for brim. Since then they seem to have settled back down to around 35k on speculation alone and they don't seem to be dropping. I expect them to jump high again on the day we find out what they are planning with a possible second jump on patch day. I expect to see prices at or above the 90k mark being reached again even if only for a day or two. Not a bad investment of my gold seeing as how I'm not playing a lot right now either.

The problem is that everyone is now waiting for that jump.
So Brim is currently being stockpiled by pretty much everyone. So when they announce the new use for Brims the price might not go up because everyone will be trying to unload their brims.
I think there is even a chance of the price going down just after the announcement. Because lets face it, there are hundreds of brims being created right now with no outlet.

Damn, I missed it. =\ I was salvaging for brimstone just the other day.

pretty low priced now, with the recent status update and no mention of legendary plans

fingers crossed after 1.07!

I'm hoping the previous inference to having the Blacksmith be more viable will add options such as:

1) Add socket to item (2 socket max): 500 Brimstones
2) Add primary stat to item 50 - 200: 500 Brimstones

Something like that will definitely make Mr. Blacksmith someone I visit for other than salvaging.

Not to mention the cost of FB's will SKYROCKET...

Posted by Khan at 01/02/2013 11:26 AM

I'm hoping the previous inference to having the Blacksmith be more viable will add options such as:

1) Add socket to item (2 socket max): 500 Brimstones
2) Add primary stat to item 50 - 200: 500 Brimstones

Something like that will definitely make Mr. Blacksmith someone I visit for other than salvaging.

The only thing I'm worried about is a new kind of material other than Brimstones coming into the game for that kind of purposes. All the invested money on Brimstones would go to waste.

The one thing I'm trying to figure out is the steady increase in Flawless Square Amethyst prices. They were averaging around 300 Gold for weeks and suddenly they're knocking on 500 Gold average. I track Gem prices pretty closely to find opportunities to score a quick 300k Gold on a Flawless Star gem craft which happens every so often. There aren't enough plvl 100 players out there to be pushing the prices up this much.

Posted by RaRuMs at 01/03/2013 01:38 PM

The only thing I'm worried about is a new kind of material other than Brimstones coming into the game for that kind of purposes. All the invested money on Brimstones would go to waste.

Possibly. But I doubt it. If they did, they'd still utilize brimstones as it would then be the second highest material so prices would go up accordingly. Currently there's no item that only utilizes brimstones so I don't see it happening with other legendaries.

@ecocd.

My guess may be somebody looking at investing for PVP .... just a thought.