Racial Diversity FTW

Why yes, I did roll an alt when the Cataclysm hit.  It wasn't one of the  new combos though.  I decided to re-roll my lvl 28 Orc hunter, and I'm actually really glad I did.  It all started in the Valley of Trials.

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Repost from PlusHeal: New LFG Tool

I haven't had a ton of time to use the random tool yet, but I was very pleased with it on patch day.

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Everyone's Greedy...

There's an article on Wow.com today about sharding etiquette. I was interested mainly because of the pug I did for ToC the other day (my first on Alterac).

I did 2 runs with mostly the same people. The first run it was just everyone greed, and it was hunky-dory. The second run, magically after the first boss when everyone had already rolled, I won the item and, as I usually do to preserve bag space, D/E it right away. The tank then declared that we would roll on shards at the end. I stated that I wanted to keep this one because I won the roll, and we could do that for the rest. He just repeated himself and said "if we're lucky, we'll all get one anyway". Oh, I see, so not only might I NOT get the shard I won, but I had no chance at getting more than one because they were going to use "top rolls". I didn't argue, and I was just going to jet with one regardless, but I won a top roll so it was a moot point.

I'm not sure why this bothered me. I usually don't care. Then again, now that I don't have as many people backing me for runs and throwing me stuff to D/E, I see myself actually *gasp* running out of mats. I want to be able to chant my stuff with whatever I feel like, damn it. I put a lot of time and money and effort into maxing my chanting out. At one shard a run that's going to be really hard. I'd rather gamble that I'll win one or more items with rolls TYVM.

So I'm going to try a new policy. Everyone greeds, and if they want something D/E, they can trade it to me after the run. We can do that now with the 2 hour BoP window. It'll make my life a lot easier in PuGs.

Crafting Cartel

I didn't have a whole lot of playtime this weekend for one reason or another, so I didn't accomplish much in-game. However, last night while I was hanging out in front of the TV I grabbed the laptop and started thinking about ways I could optimize the trade skills of the characters (now maxed out) on my main server. I decided to back this up by buying a two tab guild bank for my 7 minor alts to share mats and low level gear easily. Here's the plan:

Crafting
Tailoring - Zully
Enchanting - Zully
Alchemy - Yoka (the Warrior)
Jewelcrafting - Zan (the Shammy)
Inscription - Zan (the Shammy)
Blacksmithing - Zinz (the DK)
Leatherworking - Tul (the Rogue)
Engineering - Mar, Sri (the Hunters)

Primary Gathering
Herbalism - Yoka
Mining - Zinz
Skinning - Tul

Leatherworking, Blacksmithing, Skinning, and Engineering are basically just there to be there, or as a convenience for my low level characters. I doubt I will make much effort to level them since my 3 mains have pretty much no use for what they produce.

Mining and low level Herbing could be a problem. I'm going to need a fair amount of materials to level Jewelcrafting/Inscription on Zan, so I'll have to either buy or farm. Mining in particular will probably hit a cap where I'll have to buy everything because I don't plan on leveling my DK. It's much more convenient to gather and craft at the same level.

My hunter twink is going to be skin(already done)/engineer. My fun hunter is going to be engineer/mining so I guess when I'm playing around with her I can do some gathering that way. I don't see myself playing my warlock, so I offloaded her JC mats to Zan, and my bank toons are just that, so whatever they have is going to stay that way.

It would look a little weird to have a lumberjack out picking flowers anyway.

Shake your Money Maker

I wasn't much of an opportunist when the expansion came out. I was too busy hitting northrend to spend time thinking about money. I thought that my enchanting trick would still work, but it really didn't the way they changed chanting and my money source dried up. Well, this patch I'm ready to make some cash. I think my little scribe is going to be worthwhile after all, even if it's only for a few weeks.

I'm making something like 25-30g per glyph right now for herbs that cost a tenth of that. I was going to try to farm them myself, but I've been really busy this week so I haven't even been online. If they're still selling well this weekend I may just do a farming run. But damn, with just what I had sitting around in my bags I made about 800g on glyphs.

Maybe I'll get that Kirin Tor ring after all.

Fishing FTW

I got the achievement bug in me this weekend. I Holy Nova'd my way through the Deadmines and ran all the heroics in Hellfire Citadel with Krom and Auchenai Crypts with Aeth. Ran though a bunch of areas of the Eastern Kingdoms on my way to Stormwind, where I dropped my fishing line in to get the Fishing Diplomat.

Last night and this morning, since I was already in Terokkar Forest anyway, I decided to spend a little time looking for Mr. Pinchy.

And I got him! AND I got the Magical Crawdad Box on the first wish!

I think I'm just going to carry on with the achievements today. Head over to Ogri'la and do the dailies there, do some more exploring, maybe Holy Nova my way though Wailing Caverns and Blackfathom Deeps.

And tonight I'm throwing myself a birthday party at Claimjumpers because I'm out of food and could use some serious leftovers.

Nerd Rage

I got mad this weekend. REAL mad. Break my headphones spiking them on the floor mad (this will be remedied at Best Buy after work today). I think it's been so long since I had a new max level character as my main I forgot that Heroics are hard. Let me repeat that. Heroics are hard. Difficult. Frustrating. I think I need to find something soft to put on my desk to chuck so I don't break stuff I need again.

I tried to do 3 heroics this weekend. Zul'Drak we didn't even get the first boss. Violet Hold, we tried it 3 times. Wiped on the second boss twice and the last boss the third time. Got through all the bosses except the last one in the Nexus.

Thinking back on it, maybe I shouldn't have been so mad. We did pretty well considering. But I wasn't really as upset about not being able to finish as I was that I wasn't able to heal as well as I thought I should be. I wasn't sure if it was spec, I am using that Grace and Spirit build I talked about last post. Oh yeah, next time I feel like respeccing, Grace is gonna go. It's annoying. Basically, it's just a weird HoT that needs to be refreshed every 4 seconds, which kills the 5 second rule. I guess I didn't realize how second nature the 5 second rule has become to me until I started worrying about the timing of my heals. I think I'd rather have the extra 4% to all heals from 2 more points in Spiritual Healing. It fits my style better. The rest of it seems pretty good, my normal GH hits for around 6500 and my crits are hitting for 10k+. Tanks are running around 22k right now, so that seems decent. Maybe a little on the low side, but pretty good for a hybrid. I do miss reflective shield for questing though.

Anyway, it was after the failed heroic on Sunday night that I declared (over TeamSpeak) that I would not be doing any more heroics till I had better gear, and proceeded to break my headset. The next morning when Zon came on we did an 80 level heroic, Halls of Lightning. He didn't get the sword he wanted, but I picked up Volkhan's Hood and Raiments of the Titans, both of which were pretty significant upgrades. I put a +12 int gem and a +8 mp5 chant on the robe.

I'm up to 6 pieces of Moonshroud. I'm a little surprised that I've been able to get so much. So far I've paid between 200-350 per piece, which for 4 days worth of play time seems reasonable. I'm resisting the urge to buy up the cloth regardless of price. There's one guy that seems to be trying to set a high price, but I'm hoping if I hold out and only buy it when it's below 350 bid or buyout things won't get ridiculous. Only 2 points of tailoring till I can start making it myself! Looks like I'll have all the Moonshroud I need by the time I reach the tailoring level needed to make all this stuff.

My enchanting is up to 431, which means I got to buy some of the really cool recipes from the Dalaran, namely the top level Attack Power enchants. I've got all the warriors and hunters drooling over the Massacre enchant, but it requires 6 Abyss Crystals. So they're just going to have to wait. Or find some magic source of level 80 epics. I also made my Runed Titanium Rod. Don't need it yet, but I want to be prepared.

Moonshroud... I think they make it from pure gold

So now that I'm 80 and my questing is mostly done, I'm looking ahead to my heroic and crafted gear. Heroic stuff is just the luck of the drop, and also depends on me getting more that 5 minutes online at a time. The crafted gear I should theoretically be able to make at my own pace... right?

Well I found out recently that not only do I have to be 425 tailoring to get my Moonshroud specialty, I'm about 15 points short of that, but the cooldown for the cloth is... FOUR DAYS. Are you kidding me? The Moonshroud Robe alone takes eight pieces of cloth, the Moonshroud Gloves are 4 pieces, and the Aurora Slippers take one piece. So if I were to try and make all three items myself, assuming I remember to make the two pieces of cloth exactly every four days, it would take me 26 DAYS to make the set. Um, how does NO strike you Blizzard?

So my basic goal is to spend all my money buying moonshroud on the auction house. It really sucks too, because I need to buy stuff for enchanting too, but it's only a matter of time before the moonshroud cloth is priced even higher than it is now. I think I've planned ahead a little more than some. I fully expect to see it at 500g+ at some point in the future, but so far I've gotten 2 pieces for around 400g. i have a bid in on another piece for 325g, I'll probably lose it, but whatever.

Breaking Stuff

Breakfast Topic: Are you leveling your Professions?

You better believe it, WowInsider. Then again, I've pretty much given the thumbs down to the Death Knight for the time being. It would be pretty rough leveling from 1 at level 55.

Zully is a Tailor/Enchanter like most healy type priests. That primal mooncloth/whitemend set was, and for the moment still is, the shizzle for raiding. And seeing as you don't have to 'gather' tailoring supplies so much as kill a bunch of humanoids, enchanting is the natural choice for getting rid of all those useless greens leveling tailoring produces. Tailoring is kind of like engineering in a way though, it costs more money than it makes because all the good stuff is boe, and the rest has pretty much no market. This applies even once max level is reached.

Enchanting for me is a huge money sink while leveling, but ends up paying for itself plus a little in the long run. Being able to disenchant greens has its upsides and downsides. Early on, greens are a great way to make a little extra cash either on the AH or as simple vendor trash. As an enchanter, I just break every green I find. At first, I thought I'd be able to sell the mats for profit like I used to do, but it looks like the market is a little dry right now. I think it's a combination of enchanters having plenty of greens to break to level and the lack of people seeking the new enchants. Until people start getting settled into their blues, pvp gear, and start raiding the enchants for sale market won't really take off again. So for now, free enchants for everyone!

Fishing is easy for me to level, because I'm a dork who likes to do it, and also I own almost every bit of pre-wrath fishing buff you can get, so it goes fast. First aid I just level to say I did it. I can't remember the last time I really used a band-aid with Zully and it actually helped. I may have used one or two in arenas, but usually by the time I remember about them it's too late. Cooking goes along with fishing, and being able to make good buff food is handy. I'm not a big fan of the "cooking award" system of buying recipes, but oh well.

I've been getting a lot of requests to disenchant stuff. I ought to start saying no, at least to strangers, unless they're offering a tip. It cuts into my profits!

Wild Mustard and Rhino Dogs? You're kidding, right?

The expansion is a lot of fun. Duh. How could it not be? I took a few days off work to get some good playtime in. I would have just been thinking about it all day anyway if I hadn't. I got Zully to 73. Not bad considering what a slow leveler I am. I am thoroughly enjoying the Howling Fjord. Those level designers deserve a pat on the back. Everyone's complaining about not being able to fly in Northrend, but I'm jumping off cliffs and leaping over stuff with my new Armored Brown Bear like nobody's business, and I love it. Also, the starting zones aren't very big and there's lots of little towns with flight points to stop over at, so it's not a real burden to get around like it was in Outlands before flyers. I'm also very VERY glad I saved up some gold before the expansion. I dropped from over 4k to around 1.5k training all my professions, buying up some greens for enchanting, and yes, I dropped 500g on that bear. It's SO worth it.

Unfortunately, despite being home to play and all the fun new stuff to play around with, I was a little out of my mind this weekend. I talked Danny's ear off about it already. All of a sudden at least 5 people I can think of off the top of my head just poofed back in out of nowhere after months of being gone. Some I'm happy about, some not so much, but generally I feel annoyed that we were struggling to get it together and do end game stuff and people started leaving. Now all of a sudden when we're back at the beginning again, we're full again.

I'm trying real hard to think of this as an opportunity to pull in people for the eventual end game that we're going to get around to in a few months. I also know there are a lot of reasons people leave, and a lot of reasons people return. I shouldn't generalize, and I shouldn't get so upset about it. Some of it too is that I wasn't an officer when all these people were around and now I am. So if they cause problems, now I have responsibility to do something about it. There's a million "what ifs", and that's my downfall in pretty much anything important in my life. I spend too much time worrying about the bad things that could happen and forget about the good things that do happen.

Oh, and Mal appeared out of the blue on Sunday. I was really happy to see him, we ran around the Fjord ganking Allies and generally being jerks for about an hour before I had to log. I don't think he's going to be playing regularly, but I hope to see him once in a while. I still don't like his new hairdo. LOL.