Disenchant

*Results in disenchants will vary from Armor to Weapons
*Based on Item's Required Level, Quest Level, & Dungeon Finder Rewards

Item's Level Bracket — Disenchants

Classic —- | (Pre 4.0)
///-14 ——- (///-15) Lesser Magic Essence
10-20 —— (15-20) Greater Magic Essence
///-24 ——- (///-20) Strange Dust
///-23 Rare (///-20) [item=10978]
16-24 —— (21-26) [item=10998]
21-29 —— (26-30) [item=11082]
21-34 —— (27-35) [item=11083]
20-30 Rare (26-30) [item=11084]
26-34 —— (31-35) [item=11134]
31-40 —— (36-40) [item=11135]
31-44 —— (36-45) [item=11137]
24-35 Rare (31-35) [item=11138]
31-40 Rare (36-40) [item=11139]
36-44 —— (41-45) [item=11174]
41-49 —— (46-51) [item=11175]
41-54 —— (47-55) [item=11176]
35-50 Rare (40-45) [item=11177]
41-50 Rare (46-50) [item=11178]
51-60 —— (56-60) Light Illusion Dust
46-54 —— (51-55) Lesser Eternal Essence
51-60 —— (56-60) Greater Eternal Essence
45-53 Rare (51-55) Small Brilliant Shard
51-60 Rare (55-60) Large Brilliant Shard
///-60 Epic ——— [item=20725]

The Burning Crusade
57-70 —— Arcane Dust
57-66 —— Lesser Planar Essence
63-70 —— Greater Planar Essence
58-70 Rare Small Prismatic Shard
64-70 Rare Large Prismatic Shard
70 Epic —- Void Crystal

Wrath Of The Lich King
67-80 —— Infinite Dust
67-74 —— Lesser Cosmic Essence
73-80 —— Greater Cosmic Essence
68-77 Rare Small Dream Shard
72-80 Rare Dream Shard
80 Epic —- Abyss Crystal

Cataclysm
77-84 —— Hypnotic Dust
77-84 —— Lesser Celestial Essence
81-84 —— Greater Celestial Essence
78-83 Rare Small Heavenly Shard
80-85 Rare Heavenly Shard
85 Epic —- Maelstrom Crystal

Currently you can have an "disenchanting" alt where you can send all your greens etc and Disenchant them into stackable, storable enchanting materials for future use/investment.

However, in the next patch (2.0) and in TBC, Blizzard is implementing an Enchanting level requirement for disenchanting items. For Example, a level 60 green may now require level 225 enchanting to disenchant.

One of the biggest affects will be on high end shards. Not only common practice for "hackers," a lot of raiding players will occasionally pick up level 1 enchanting to DE their old/retired gear for the valuable large brilliants and nexus shards and then relearn their previous profession like herbalism which is somewhat easy to level.

For beginning enchanters: disenchanting is basically how you get the profession moving. Disenchant the non-valuable greens and blues you acquire until you're no longer leveling enchanting from disenchanting items, and then you can begin your skill ups with enchantments.

As for the poster above, I do put the disenchant icon on the bar of my "enchant bank" but I don't have it there for my main. If you need it, you can just hit your spellbook key and its there = ) I guess it really depends on how much stuff you have/want to have on your action bars.

Advice for beginners: Grind your levels up purely by using the Disenchant ability until you hit level 50-60 or so of enchanting. At that point you should have enough materials to grind higher by making actual enchants. The reason to just straight grind off of disenchanting for the earlier levels is that it will save you materials.

And for those who may be curious, I can verify that you can get to at least level 66 by disenchanting. That's how high mine got before I started grinding on trash enchants, but that was because guildies were shipping me trash greens.

Also, don't bother putting time into selling enchants that are below level 140 or so unless they use a shard (and even then, a lot of people aren't interested).