So I dinged 85 on my first 5 man team...

[Zub]

So I Fawoooosh-Doooonged 85 on my first 5 man team...

i like it

[Xraptorx]

One team down, many to go!

I'd consider running dailies, as a team to let you "buy" alchemy on each of them.
And would recommend leveling a few more teams, and also doing alchemy on those.
The passive income is much larger earlier in an expansion or content patch, but it still is consistent gold much better than farming.
.

Ualla, what level do you need to have Alchemy at to make it worth while?
Secondly, how do you suggest making money with Alchemy? Buy what and then transmute into what?

[Narij]

When my priests hit 85 I tried queuing as a team, but this late in the expansion and with limited resil (sub 1000), I just got destroyed. Instead I queued and unless it was AV/IoC, I only took one or two in. It may seem slower to gear the team this way, but if you consider that bgs usually follow a 50/50 win loss regardless of your participation, it turns out to be much faster than losing on the whole team.

In between the bgs, participate in TB and do the Grizzly Hills dailies. 250 honor of the course of the week is almost a piece of gear and is much faster than the time it take to do a battleground. I started queuing as a team when I hit 2500k resilience and was able to contribute to the game.

[MiRai]

what level do you need to have Alchemy at to make it worth while?

Usually you level up your professions to the level of the current content. Most people aren't buying level 70 stuff when they're
level 85.

[Ualaa]

Ualla, what level do you need to have Alchemy at to make it worth while?
Secondly, how do you suggest making money with Alchemy? Buy what and then transmute into what?

If your toons are at least level 75, you can have the same skill cap as a level 85 character.
I believe that is 525 currently.

I think "Transmute Elements" is 450 skill.
It's somewhere around that area, maybe 475.
Once you reach the point where you can learn that skill, you don't need to do anything else for the alchemy.
Transmute Elements will take you to 520 skill, before it greys out and won't take you further.

Transmute Elements takes 15 Volatile Life (the cheapest Volatile), and changes it to another type of Volatile.
If you do the spell in Hyjal, you get Fire always.
If you do the spell in Uldum, you get Air always.
If you do the spell in the Water zone, you get Water always.
If you do the spell in the Underground zone, you get Earth always.
Anywhere else, and you get a random element.
If you're Transmute spec'd, the "proc" or "extra" stuff is random irregardless of where you do the transmute.
Air is usually the most expensive of the Volatiles.

Ideally you park 4 of your 5 toons, at the summoning stone for Vortex Pinnacle.
The fifth toon is on the same account as your AH mule, and is bound in Stormwind or Orgrimmar.
The AH toon buys 75 Life for each team, and mails that to the AH account toon, who is in SW/Org.
That toon receives the instant (same account) mail.
The other toons at the Summoning Stone, summon the toon there.
You distribute the Life to the others.
Do the transmute.
Collect the results.
And hearth back to SW/Org.
Then mail the results back to your AH toon.
Log the team off, and log on the next batch > Rinse & Repeat.

I did this procedure with 37 alchemy toons, for most of 4.0.3 through 4.1, basically a 3 month period.
With that many alchemy toons, the process was around 45 minutes a day.
I'd then use Auctionator, to post Volatile Air in 5's, 10's, 20's, 50's, 100's, 200's, 500's and 1000's.
Over time, I would gradually accumulate more Air than I was selling... but taking a few days off from transmutes would allow the surplus to sell.
Auctionator can set posting guidelines, things like default time, maximum amount (if no one else is selling it), undercut amount (I had this set to 1 copper), minimum amount (how low you'll pricewar to, until the addon reverts to maximum amount).
I set minimum time, so my stock would become available sooner for reposting... and also for a lower auction fee.
Initially I would cancel and repost; after a while, I'd just repost and leave the initial auctions up to expire on their own.
Roughly 5 minutes at a time, spaced three or four times through the day... log in, and post your auctions (which undercut the current lowest price).
Overall, an hour a day to maybe an hour and ten minutes.

Ideally, you monitor the price of Volatile Life.
And buy in bulk, when it is cheap.
You don't really want to buy or sell, until you have an idea of what things are going for.
I had a few people who would send me "x" Volatile Life, CoD in the mail system.
That was easy and steady supply.

To give you an idea of the potential...
I entered the expansion with 250K gold.
I power leveled my alchemy immediately, while herbs were insanely priced.
I also purchased the PvP starter sets and 5 crafted weapons for two different teams early in the expansion while things were expensive.
That put me a little under 100K gold.
The alchemy brought me up to the 600K range.
I also bought Vial of the Sands x5, for my Pally / DK team, which was 200K.
Factoring that in, and three months of an hour a day equated to 700,000 gold.
That's not religiously doing transmutes every day (but I did them most days), nor is it constantly watching the AH to always be the cheapest priced seller of Volatiles..

[turbo92]

Why must we call it a DING!?

It's more of a Fawoooosh-Doooong anyways.

gonna make a macro out of that and click it every time i level up from now on