WoW Rest Stop

One things I've been doing lately is leveling a hunter on the Icecrown server in a guild called WHU.  This guild is 100% made up on dwarven hunters and are currently capped at level 30.  I mainly leveled using the random battlegrounds and am having a blast.  I have stopped my leveling so that I can start working on the BIS (best in slot) gear so that I can total own the last 2 levels.

I got this information from Wowhead by filtering on marksman hunter (3/3 in Careful Aim so Int items are included) and a maximum level of 30. I've listed below the items I am looking at in order of my preference. (This list excludes the BOA chest, shoulders, ring, trinket, and weapons as I assume they all will be BIS or very close).

Chest
Dusky Leather Armor - Easy choice at level 30 made by leatherworkers.  Until then use Tunic of Westfall from a questline that starts with Bryan Stoutmantle in Westfall.

Head
Skirmisher's Cover - Long level 30 questline that starts with Inspecting the Ruins from Captain Vimes in Theramore.  You will need friends to complete this but this helm is worth it.
Tusken Helm - Drops from Overlord Ramtusk in Razorfen Kraul.
Pathfinder Cap, Tribal Worg Helm, Enduring Cap, Nightsky Cowl, Dobeki Hat, Insignia Cap - Hard to farm but you can find them on AH at a steep price.
Craftsman's Monocle  - Only for engineers.
Shadow Hood, Enchanter's Cowl, Azure Silk Hood - Tailoring BOE's.  Should find one of these relatively cheap on AH and it's better than nothing.

Cloaks
Tigerstrike Mantle  - Best cloak available.  Limited availability.
Parachute Cloak - Great stats with a parachute as well.  Only for engineers.
Watch Master's Cloak - Good cloak if you didn't get one from your level 19 twinking.  Questline starts with Sven's Revenge though be prepared to do a bit of running (be thankful for mounts at level 20).

Shoulders
Dark Leather Shoulders - Made by Leatherworkers.

Wrist
Barbaric Bracers - Made by Leatherworkers.  Save your small lustrous pearls and large fangs.
Drakewing Bands - BOE for additional hit.

Hands
Toughened Leather Gloves - Leatherworking gloves.  Need 2 Spider Silk and 2 Elixir of Defense to create so it might be a bit tough to find the mats.  I wonder if the guild has any flower picking elf-wannabes?
Prospector Gloves - You need to find items just outside the Uldaman instance for a questline that starts with Ironband Wants you.  A bit tough for level 30s so make sure you bring along some friends.

Waist
Highlander's Padded Girdle - PVP belt for 300 Honor at Refugee Pointe in the Arathi Highlands.  It is sold by Samuel Hawke.
Deviate Scale Belt  - Made by Leatherworkers

Legs
Triprunner Dungerees - Reward from The Grand Betrayal in Gnomeregan.  Given by High Tinker Gelbin Mekkatorque.
Dusky Leather Leggins - Leatherworking Legs you can use until you get your Triprunner's.

Feet
Highlander's Mail Greaves - PVP boots for 300 Honor at Refugee Pointe in the Arathi Highlands.  It is sold by Samuel Hawke.

Finger
Ironspine's Eye - Drops from Ironspine in the Scarlet Monastery Graveyard.
Protector's Band - PVP ring at 100 honor.  Sold by Illiyana Moonblaze at the entrance to Warsong Gulch in Ashenvale.
Signet of Argas - Starts with a drop of Diabolical Plans from demons Southeast of Splintertree Post in Ashenvale.
Monkey Ring - Quest in Razorfen Kraul from Willix the Importer
Ring of Precision - Blackfathom deep drop you can find on the Auction house.

Neck
Sentinel's Medallion  - PVP neck at 100 honor.  Sold by Illiyana Moonblaze at the entrance to Warsong Gulch in Ashenvale.
Darkmoon Pendant - As the Darkmoon Faire just ended there might be a few of these on the AH.  While it is possible for a scribe to get mats before the next event I'm guessing this would be quite costly to make.  Not sure the difference between this and the Sentinel's Medallion (+12 AP -2 Agility) is worth the gold/effort.
Amulet of Truesight - A good item if you have the gold since +hit items are hard to find at this level.

Trinket
Rune of Duty - PVP Trinket for 300 Honor at the entrance to Warsong Gulch in Ashenvale.  It is sold by Illiyana Moonblaze.
Talisman of Arathor - PVP Trinket for 300 Honor at Refugee Pointe in the Arathi Highlands.  It is sold by Samuel Hawke.

One Hand Weapon (dual wield @ 20!!!)
Thornspike - Drops from the first boss in Razorfen Kraul (Aggem Thorncurse - 67% drop rate) and allegedly can be solo'ed at 30 if you are an elite skilled hunter. :P
Sentinel's Blade - PVP weapon that costs 400 honor.  Sold by Illiyana Moonblaze at the entrance to Warsong Gulch in Ashenvale.
The Butcher - BOE that drops in the Scarlet Monastery.  Good if you are looking for more Stamina.

Two Hand Weapon
Armor Piercer  - Dropped in Razonfen Kraul from Razorfen Spearhide (50% drop rate) who guard Overlord Ramstuk.
Haunting Blade - 2 Handed Sword that drops from Deathsworn Captain in Shadowfang Keep.

Ranged
Master Hunter's Rifle - Quest reward from the godfather of all hunters (ok now it's his son).  You are going to need lots of friends for this quest line.  Can start it at level 28.
Shrapnel Blaster - Quest line that starts with Sergeant Yohwa.  You will need friends for this.  Starts at level 30.
Glass Shooter - Drop from a Gnomeregan rare mob.
Ironweaver, Chesterfall Musket- BOE drops for those with the money.
Outrunner's Bow -  PVP bow that costs 400 honor.  Sold by Illiyana Moonblaze at the entrance to Warsong Gulch in Ashenvale.

Hopefully I've limited the mistakes and I'm sure I've missed a few items but I think that is a good start to a BIS list. 

My strategy is to level to 28 in the battlegrounds then pay the 10 gold to stop xp so I can farm instances for the other items.  Once I have everything I want I'm turning xp on then heading to the battlegrounds for 2 levels of serious hunter pwnage.

The BIS PVP items cost 1800 honor (waist, feet, neck, ring, one hand, trinkets) so make sure you get that before you hit level 30 as it will be almost impossible to get honor after that point.  I also am considering switching to engineering just for the parachute cloak.

If you took a vote Karazhan would get the most votes as the most favorite dungeon.  I know many of my current guild mates name it as their favorite.  I'm the opposite - It is my least favorite and nothing else is even close.

My guild knew that the transition from 40 man raiding to 25 man raiding was going to be tough.  What we didn't realize was that we weren't going to see even 25 man raiding for quite a while due to Karazhan.  We tried to prepare by trimming our roster to about 35 members before Burning Crusade.   The goal was to level, hit Karazhan, get gear, and move on to the 25 man content.  We planned 3 separate 10 man Karazhan runs but we quickly realized that we didn't have enough tanks for 3 raids so we moved to 2.   Then we ran into another issue.  Our guild had a main raid leader and anyone that wasn't in his 10 man group felt they were on the B team.  Many ego's got bruised and we lost 70%  of our members over the next few months.  Many people that I had grown close to from Molten Core to Naxx were suddenly gone and only a handful remained to pick up the pieces.   The lowest point was about 2 months after the BC release when we realized we didn't have enough people for even 1 Karazhan run.

We filled our gaps and pretty soon our 2 - 10 man raiding teams started to make steady progress.  About 2 months later we finally finished the instance.  I didn't feel anything remotely close to the joy I did in Vanilla when we beat Ragnaros or Nefarian or would feel in the coming year when we beat Vashj/Kael/Illidan.  Karazhan was an test for my guild and it was something to be endured not enjoyed.  The bad thing is even though we had beat the place the defections meant we were so unevenly geared that that we were forced to form 2-3 alt raids every week.  I know I did at least 2 full clears of Kara every week until we were deep into SSC/TK.  The job-like nature of these runs stole any remaining fun in the instance from me.

I know many guilds/servers went through the exact same thing so I'm amazed the love that Karazhan gets.  There is no doubt it has some fun fights and inventive mechanics.  But I can never forget what that place did to my guild and the experience has left a bitter taste.  It's over 3 years later and I've never run it since.

I've been feeling pretty good about the game lately but sometimes a few asshats ruin everything.  Last night I ran Shribryn in a good ICC 10 PuG run by Chewy and was able to finish 8/12 bosses in ICC.  That gave me plenty of badges which I was able to get another tier piece for Shrib.  It was a nice relaxed run and everyone got lots of loot.

Fast forward to tonight.  I knew I wanted to run Henna and Delan in ICC tonight and figured since I waited that I was going to have trouble finding a decent group. 

Henna's ICC group had low dps and while I was able to keep everyone alive while everyone had over a 5.2k gearscore only a few could break 5k in dps and most were under 4k.  One bad thing is even though we had a vent server, the raid leader never joined it.  He is one of the rising problems for PuGs.  That being players that create a raid but have no support mechanism (vent) or ability/desire to actually call out strategies.  Most of these people say ... there's the boss ... hit it until dead.  You can get away with that on the first few bosses but not when you go further into the instance.  When we hit Saurfang I knew we where in trouble and the fact a boomkin had no idea how to do the fight made it even worse.  We wiped badly and when the group questioned the boomkin he had a sudden disconnect.  This boomkin never dps'ed the adds, had a 5.5k gearscore and did a little over 4k in damage while focused on the boss the whole time.  The loss of a raid member that far into an instance means a disband on that's what happened.  Result: 3/12 bosses down.... no loot.

Delan's ICC group looked pretty good at the start.  The dps on the trash was stellar but it is really hard to tell due to all the aoe's.  One issue I had is I've been working on improving my keybinds for Delan and when I got into the raid I fell back into my old keybind habits and stunted my dps.  I did well on the trash but on the first boss a hunter less geared than I outdps'ed my by about 10%.  I redid all my keybinds for the second boss but continued to struggle as my mind has half learned the old keybinds and the new keybinds.  As opposed to Henna's group this raid had vent and was talking non-stop during the first few bosses.  His favorite subject was about how much he wanted a drop from the 3rd boss.  DPS wasn't a huge issue in this group as even though I was struggling on Delan I was still hitting 7-8k dps with her.  The other hunter was in the same ballpark while a rogue was in the same vicinity.  No one really was really low although it was obvious a few people didn't know the fights that well.  We finish the 3rd boss and I actually lead dps on that fight even with my gimped setup.  The leader loots the chest and immediately says, "NOOOOOO!"  I had forgotten his earlier comments about wanting a piece of loot and it was obvious it didn't drop.  He passes out the loot and someone asks for a 2 minute break.  It took us 40 minutes to get through the first 3 bosses which was a pretty fair pace.  Then the leader comes on vent, "Sorry guys.  Step dad is making me logoff.  Gotta go...", and he's gone.  Weakest excuse ever.  The rest of us have to pick up the pieces but the rogue says... I need to go too and logs.  Keep in mind we have only been raiding for 40 minutes.  Most guilds raid for 4 hours straight for 3-4 nights a week and it is obvious that both of these guys logged because the bosses we could down didn't have the loot they wanted.  We decide to try to 8 man it but me and the other hunter are the only ranged dps.  I think it is a fools errand but we got him to 10% before wiping.  It was obvious that our 4 dps just couldn't pull it off.  It didn't help that me and the other hunter lead the charts despite needing to kite/kill mobs.  We all cursed the 2 players that left and left group.  Result: 3/12 bosses down.  No loot.

It is amazing how two bad runs like this can put a damper on the whole game.  I am pretty dependent on pugs for my gear these days and runs like this just make me want to never do it again.  I really hope that Blizzard 's new 10 man raiding focus will make things like this a thing of the past.  The key I think is to be in a guild that has lots of alts so I don't need to depend on pugs. 

May the asshats roast in hell.

I laugh at all the angst among the Horde about the coming leadership change.  Though the details are scarce it was said at Blizzcon last year that Garrosh is taking Thrall's place as leader and Cairne Bloodhoof is going to be killed by Garrosh.  This cause a wave of outrage from many Horde players.  Recently it was said that the Dragonmaw are going to ally themselves with the orc in Cataclysm now some people are upset all over again.

Honestly, I sometimes question the actions of Varian and Garrosh but does it make any sense that we've had fighting in Warsong Gulch, Alterac Valley, etc for years but the leaders are essentially pacifists?  I say bring on the hate. 

As far those that are upset at their leadership ... it is easy to take the facts we know and portray Garrosh as a hero.  Here's my quick attempt:

Varian decides after the fall of the Lich King to get back some of the territory lost to the Horde in WC1-3 and attacks Hammerfall.  While Jaina and Thrall are engaged in peace talks Varian attacks Tarren Mill.  He is surprised there by Garrosh and his small army fresh from Northrend and Varian's forces fall back to Southshore to regroup.  Garrosh calls for help from his allies but all but the trolls decline due to losses in the recent Northrend battles.  Desperate,  Garrosh sends an emissary to the Dragonmaw with an offer of general amnesty if they join his cause -- they accept.  Thrall continues to work with Jaina for a peace treaty but they are unable to get Varian from attacking Tarren Mill once again.  This time Garrosh not only to stops the offensive but regains all the lost territory when his new-found Dragonmaw allies attack Arathi from the South.  Varian is forced to abandon Southshore and retreat to his starting position.  Thrall is now discredited by his calls for peace so the orcs remove him as leader and put Garrosh in his place.  Garrosh's first act is to boldly march to Thunder Bluff and challenge Cairne Bloodhoof for his failure to support him at Tarren Mill.  They engage in single combat and Garrosh emerges the victor.  The Tauren install Baine Bloodhoof their new leader. When Garrosh returns to Orgimmar his first act is to banish all non-orc/troll from the city.  The war has drawn into a stalemate centered on Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley, Warsong Gulch, and Twilight Highlands but things are starting to settle down and talks are occurring again among the Horde leaders.  Then the Cataclysm hits....

I'm sure he will be arrogant prick the whole time but Garrosh would be a hero in this story.  I'm sure Blizzard's version will be much better but I think I think it is funny that people threaten a race change over lore that is unpublished.

I just looked at the changes in the resto tree and my mind is blown.  In my opinion, the current baseline druid build is this.  This level 80 build leaves 2 pts that most put into either Sublety, Tranquil Spirit, Improved Tranquility or Improved Barkskin.  

There has been massive changes to the talent tree in Cataclysm.  You can see the current tree  here.


The biggest changes I've noticed so far:

• Resto Druids are going to need to put at least 16 pts into Balance to get Nature's Splendor.  The issue is the third tier where there isn't an obvious choice after the 3 pts in Nature's Grace.  Most druids have gone away from this talent in WotLK.  This takes 5 pts from our most common build today.
• With the exception of Nature's Grace it looks like all haste related talents are going away (most notably the haste from GotEM).
• Naturalist has moved from the 2nd tier to the 3rd tier and replaced by Perserverence a 5 pt spell damage reduction talent (2% per level).  I'm guessing most druids will skip this and put 5 points into Sublety/Natural Shapeshift instead.
• 3 pt Intensity is gone in the 3rd level and replace by the 5 pt Naturalist.  While most druids skip the Naturalist talent today they won't be able to do this as it is the prerequist to Nature's Swiftness.  This takes 2 pts from our most common build today.
• Tier 4's Improved rejuvenation doesn't change it's 15% increase on Rejuvenation but adds the increase to Swiftmend as well.
• Tier 5's 2 pt Improved Tranquility loses the reduced cooldown but gains a 25% damage reduction per pt while casting.
• Tier 5's 5pt Gift of Nature (2% increase to healing per pt) has been removed meaning you will need to spend pts in earlier tiers to get to Tier 6.
• Living Seed has been moved to Tier 6. 
• Empowered Touch has been moved from Tier 6 to Tier 7 and has changed from an effect on bonus healing for Healing Touch (40%) and Nourish (20%) to a 10% improvement in healing for Healing Touch on targets under 25%.  The other change is 2 points in this talent will cause Nourish will refresh Lifebloom (!!!!).
• Tier 7's 3 Pt Living Spirit has been removed from the game.
• Tier 7's Natural Perfection has been moved to Tier 8.  It also appears that the increased crit chance has been removed but the damage reduction has been doubled.  PvP talent.
• Tier 8 adds a 3 pt Efflorescence which heals people within 15 yds of the target for 10% per point of your Regrowth over 7 seconds.
• Tier 9's 3 pt Revitalize now only effects the casts and restores 1% per point for regrowth or lifebloom crits.
• Tier 9's Tree of Life is now a periodic form for 45 seconds with a 5 minute cooldown.  It has lost the 6% healing buff to the raid and the 20% reduction to mana cost but now the buffs formerly in Improved Treeform are included (200% armor and 15% increased healing).
• Tier 9's 3 pt Improved Tree of Life reduces the cooldown on Tree of Life by 30 seconds and increases damage by 5% for every point.  
• Tier 10's 2 pt Improved Barkskin is unchanged with the exception of losing the 35% per point dispel reduction.
• Tier 10's 5 pt Gift of the Earthmother loses its impact on spell haste.  The improvements per point are a 4% increase in Tranquility on targets less than 25% health, 2%  increase in Lifebloom's bloom effect, and a 3% instant heal of the total periodic heal for rejuvenation.
• Tier 11's Wild Growth is now has a 10 seconds cooldown vs the 6 seconds it had previously.  The heal portion appears to be about 40% of the former affect (686 vs 1442).

So what does this all mean?

• Rejuvenation and Wild Growth got the biggest nerf with the change to GotEM and Wild Growth.  I've heard they are going to increase the mana cost for both to reduce spamming.  Moving Revitalize to Regrowth/Lifebloom from Rejuv/Wild Growth won't help mana either.
• The loss of Intensity/Living Spirit takes away our mana regen talents.  This is going to have to come from gear as revitalize won't be enough.  Mana reduction talents like Tranquil Spirit are probably going to be necessary.
• The change so that Nourish refreshes Lifebloom is huge.  With druids having a reduced capacity for AoE heals I can see the return of assigned heals by party.
• Lifebloom/Regrowth/Nourish/Swiftmend  is going to be a big time tank/melee combination from healing with Wild Growth thrown in every 10 seconds.
• Will Tree of Life become an enrage/spike heal?  Speccing into Improved Tree of Life will depend on how much they use the spike damage mechanic in the middle of fights.   The only benefit is being able to go tree every 3.5 minutes vs 5.  It really depends on the length of boss fights.
• Will the improvement to tranquility heals under 25% for GotEM mean that druids will be put into the tank group and the common mechanic for an enrage is to hero, pop trinkets, pop tree and tranquility?  If so the threat/damage reduction in Improved Tranquility may be a useful addition.
• What is the point of Fury of Stormrage?  It seems like a PvP talent but I wonder if they are they planning to change healing so that we will be needed to dps in Cataclysm.  I'd really like a good dps spell at the bottom of the resto tree but I know it will never happen as it would possibly unbalance PvP.
• Healing Touch still sucks.  With these talents the only real buff is forcing us to take Naturalist to reduce cast time to 3 seconds.  That is too long for effective healing in an emergency.  The only way I can see them saving this spell at this point is if they increase the mana efficiency or burst damage.  Even then problem will be similar to Vanilla/BC when it was continually sniped by a paladin casting Holy Light causing over heal.  The slowness will also cause deaths unless they change the burstiness of damage (which they have said they were planning).  Until I see more, I think Healing Touch will remain off our cast bars.

This is my current thought for the level 85 talent spec (16/0/56). 

It gives all the spells I think are useful and leaves 4 points for things like Improved Tree of Life, Improved Tranquility, Improved Barkskin or Fury of Stormrage.  I don't see any points in any other tree that interest me for a pure healing build.

An interesting dps/healing hybrid would be this.  I mainly did this for a healing Dreamstate build as it looks like they are really making mana regen difficult in the expansion.  The problem is there is no way to do this without losing at least 1 point in Revitalize (as well as GotEM and Wild Growth).  I'd need to do some math to see the difference and I'm not going to do right now.  I do like the idea of getting 4/5 Starlight Wrath and 5/5 in Vengence for the ability to do some real damage as a resto.

That's all my thoughts for now and I'm sure some of my thoughts are off.  Blizzard will change half of this before Cataclysm goes live but it is interesting to see where they are going.  I am sad to see Wild Growth and Rejuvenation get nerfed as bad as they did but I am really excited about the improvements to Regrowth and Nourish in conjunction with Lifebloom.

I'd write more but I'm off to buy a 20 button mouse.

When you are younger your thinking tends to be short term.  Life changes so much at that time that it is sometimes hard to realize that decisions that you make today can have a lasting impact on your life.  World of Warcraft isn't life but it mimics the real world in many ways.

I was in a 25 man raid on Sunday that had the makings of a great run.  Good healers, good leadership and good dps.  I was playing on my hunter Delan and as this was my first time playing a hunter in a 25 man I was a bit nervous.  As we entered the first room of Icecrown Citadel I immediately noticed that we were in combat.  I haven't been there many times but I knew that wasn't supposed to happen.  A few people died but we were able to contain it pretty quickly.  When someone asked how it happened no one seemed to know.  We start buffing and a minute later the mobs come at us again.  This time we are more prepared and we down them pretty easily.  Again the question goes out ... "What happened?"  Most don't know and are quiet but on Ventrilo one person claims that a rogue just ran up and attacked them then vanished.  No one was really sure and both rogues were silent and the leader just let it go.  We downed the first boss pretty easy and we roll for loot.  There wasn't anything for me so I moved on. 

After every fight I always evaluate the dps / healing on the previous fight.  This comes from my officer days but it really is a good habit.  These days I mainly check my performance vs others in my class and see if I can learn anything from them.  I was holding my own so I looked to see the dps of the group.  Ten of the dps were over 6000 which was really encouraging for a PuG but we had 3 people who were under 2000 including one of the rogues.  Of course a rogue ring dropped and he wins it.  No biggie.  We move to the next boss.

I was in full panic mode for most of this fight as the situational awareness needed is totally different than healing.  I did ok and we one shot him.  I was hoping for a bow to drop but alas it didn't so I got on the elevator for the next boss.  While I'm waiting for the loot to be distributed I review the dps and see that the results were similar to the first boss.  We did a bit better on that attempt but we had about 4 people that were really holding us back.  The bad thing is once you've gone past the first boss it really is impossible to get anyone to join since no one wants to miss out on loot.  While I am reviewing all of a sudden I notice movement on my Grid healthbars.  We are under attack.  I see 5 people die almost imediately so I feign death and wait to see what happens.  The tanks and healers quickly got the situation under control so I poppled up and helped finish off the mobs.  As soon as they are down, the questions begin ... "Who pulled?"  No one knows except one guys that says... I saw that rogue just run up and pull them.  Which one?  Pinkz.  The question is asked to Pinkz in vent and no response is given.  They ask in chat and still no reply.  Pinkz had done about 1500dps in gear that should have done triple that amount and now he had almost wiped the raid three times.  The leader thought aloud about replacing him but decided against it because of the difficulty of getting someone after 2 bosses.  We move forward.

The Gunship battle is pretty epic but it is also pretty easy.  We win the fight with no problems and get loot.  The agility axe falls and the leader asks for main spec rolls.  Pinkz rolls.  A few comments go over Vent ... "Pinkz you already won something, you can't roll".  This is a true statement and was explained a few times before the raid.  Everyone gets 1 Main spec Item and 1 Off Spec Item.  After that it was first come first serve.  The call goes out over Vent ... "Anyone else need?"  No answer so the axe is given to Pinkz.  The issue wasn't that he got the item as ultimately he would have gotten it.  The issue was he rolled when he shouldn't have done so.  Leaders rely on the honesty of the raid to avoid mistakes and Pinkz should have known better.  No big deal but a bit annoying.  We move on.

The 4 boss is Saurfang and the end for most PuGs.  This fight takes a lot of coordination but this group had really come together.  I was nervous again because the hunters are responsible for CC'ing the adds and I'd never done it before.  I was amazed how smooth the fight went and how much fun I had kiting.  The boss falls easily and we get the loot.  Two tokens fall (neither for hunters) as well as the best DPS trinket in the game.  Pinkz of course rolls on the rogue token but loses.  We are all laughing/screaming in Vent ... "Pinkz, you already won something!  You can't roll on that!"  That doesn't stop him from rolling again on the trinket.  This time he wins the roll against 8 others (including me).  At this point it was past silly and it was obvious that even though he was in Vent he wasn't listening.  Someone typed in chat... You can't roll on that.  You have won your Main Spec item."  Like before there is no response.  In fact he hasn't said a thing all raid and I'm really beginning to wonder about this guy.  The loot is given to the second highest roll (again sadly not me) and we move on.

As we move into the next room we fight the first few mobs and are getting ready to go after the optional boss when Pinkz makes his first comment, "Hey (Leader), I won that trinket!  You didn't loot it to me."  Now we are all beyond belief.  This person who has almost purposely wiped the raid 3 times, has gotten two pieces of 25 man loot, has pulled less than a third of the dps he should be doing, is now questioning the raid leader on loot that has been told to him at least 5 times before that he wasn't eligible to roll?  The leader says nothing so I made the comment in raidchat, "You really need to review the loot rules."  He says, "What are they?"  Another person adds, "They were explained in /LFG when you were recruited, they were explained at the beginning of the fight in vent and in chat,  they have been explained 3 times since when you rolled out of turn."  Someone else says, "1 Main Spec / 1Off Spec loot".  He responds, "I got it."  Two seconds later he drops group.  Since the rest of the instance is pretty unforgiving on dps, losing even Pinkz reduces the will of the rest of the raid to continue as finding a dps willing to join is very unlikely.  We make a halfhearted attempt at finding someone then call the raid about a few minutes later.

That leads me back to the title of this article.  I sent him a tell just after he left the group, "Just so you know, it isn't a good idea to get into a PuG then drop group when you get loot because it will affect your rep and will make it tougher to find a group in the future as people have long memories".  His response ... "LOL ...so".  My guess is Pinkz is a very young player that lives moment to moment.  Things in his world revolve around him and that is how life works when  you are young.  Unfortunately as we all get older we find that our actions sometimes have consequences.  Perhaps Pinkz will never be affected by his actions in that raid but I have no doubt that if he continues to think short term in his real life that he won't like the long term results.   I hope he figures this out before it is too late.

Everyone is up in arms about how the guild feature is going to work in Cataclysm.  I think Blizzard feels that 25 man raids just aren't do-able by the 95% of its playerbase and have decided to encourage everyone to do 10 man raiding instead which can still be tough but easier administratively.  The odd thing is they are doing this at the same time as encouraging bigger guilds through the new guild achievement feature.  I could be totally off base here but I think their ultimate hope is they end pushing everyone to guilds similar to AIE on Earthen Ring.  This guild is a loose confederation of 5000 people that the officers make no attempt to organize.  Their only job is to make sure that guild chat/forums is as free from drama as possible and repeat offenders and dealt with promptly.  I haven't seen the charter (if one exists) but I'm sure there is a general understanding by all that they want a guild that anyone would be OK to let their 10 year old join without fear.  In a sense it is an extended WoW family.  The downside vs a typical guild is it is left to the members when it comes to raiding.  Many people have picked up the torch and there are many raiding teams inside AIE.  Over time the guild has centered their raiding around 10 man raids as organized 25 mans raids haven't been successful.  This has discouraged many players who are hard core and these people typically only stay with the guild a while.  This isn't to say there aren't many great players in AIE ... they just realize that the culture of the guild is that RL > WoW and they have to adapt accordingly.  The nice thing about this structure is when it is time to raid there and only 8 of the people in the "core" team can make it, a call goes out to the guild - lfg channel.  That means many people who aren't on a raiding team can find a raid.  The great thing about this is because everyone in the raid is part of the social network, the conversations are much more polite than you'd find in a normal PuG. 

I was listening to the podcast "World of Warcast" the other day and the main discussion point was Blizzard has switched their focus from being a MMORPG to being more of a social network.  When you combine the recent changes with the fact that Battle.Net is going to link every server with one another it seems this concept quite nicely by encouraging the AIE setup.  This does not mean that every guild needs to be like AIE.  I am pretty confident that mega guilds will pop up that will be focused on raiding with no cap on what can be said in guild chat.  When you think about it the possibilities are endless.  I can see a day when there are mega-guilds of similar minded people be it by georgraphy, politically, or hobbies.  It certainly is possible for those things to happen to day but the changes Blizzard is pushing seems to be encouraging more of it in the future.

I have many toons but the one I am most comfortable playing is my resto druid.  The trick of playing a class well is knowing without any hesitation what action to take and then being able to have your keyboard set up so you can do this instantaneously.  Due to my countless hours spent raiding this is second nature to me.  The trickiest thing about playing a druid is the sheer number of heals from which to choose.  The funny thing is when the Cataclysm expansion was announced many druids were upset that we got no new spells.  We currently have Healing Touch, Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Nourish, Regrowth, Healing Touch, Wild Growth and Tranquility.  Today most druids only use Wild Growth, Nourish, and Rejuvenation.  When I saw that we didn't get an additional spell like other classes got I was relieved.  My feeling is we have plenty of tools in our arsenal but many of them are useless due to the way they are set up.  Every patch has seen different spells be powerful.  In Vanilla healing was mainly Healing Touch with an occassional Rejuv, Burning Crusade it was Regrowth and Lifebloom, and now WotLK is the spells I mentioned earlier.  We have plenty of spells, the issue is many of them just aren't as good as the others and Blizzard plans to fix that in Cataclysm.  A quote by Ghostcrawler confirms my suspicions:

To those players who say they don't want to cast a lot of different spells, I'm a little perplexed as to what you thought you were getting into with the Resto druid. Surely you thought there would come a day when we'd try to make those other spells attractive again or else cut them. :)

Putting on my prediction cap, I think Catacylsm will see the rise of Healing Touch as a main spell again.  This spell was the only thing druids used in Vanilla and things have sunk so low for it that I don't even have it on my cast bar anymore.  The biggest issue with Healing Touch is it is ideally suited to be a main tank healing spell except it's mana usage is a bit too high and the casting time is a bit too long when compared to a paladin's holy light.  Blizzard has said repeatedly that they want mana to be a consideration for druids when making decisions.  My prediction is they are going to make  healing touch an extremely mana efficient spell in Cataclysm and the total amount healed will be more than nourish.  That still gives Nourish a place in your arsenel as it will still be a faster heal which many times is preferred.  I will bet that the cost of rejuvenation and wild growth will be increased so as to discourage the spamming we saw in WotLK.  To make tranquility more effective I'd love to see it be able to be cast quicker than once every 10 minutes as that makes the spell ineffective as something to include in your rotation.  My preference on this spell would be to see some other effective in addition to healing like an increase to mana regeneration for your party/raid while it is being channeled.  Even better would be an effect similar to heroism as this spell will be way overpowered in Cataclysm if shaman are the only one's that can use it.  Even better would be to give heroism to all the hybrid classes (this seems more like a paladin spell anyway) as it would pretty much ensure that every raid would have someone able to cast it and not make shaman a required class for every 10 man.

Anyway ... I like where Blizzard is going with Cataclysm by recycling our old spells and looking to make our decisions tougher in the future.  Only players that know the class fully will thrive and it will be fun to try to use all our tools again.

I thought I posted on this before but realize that it was only in response to other blogs so I don't have a public record of my thoughts on how Blizzard needs to change raiding.  This is particularly pertinent today as Blizzard has announced the following:

• 10- and 25- man raids in Cataclysm will share the same lockout
• Normal versus Heroic mode will be chosen on a per-boss basis in Cataclysm raids, the same way it works in Icecrown Citadel
• 10- and 25- man bosses will be close in difficulty
• 10- and 25- man bosses will drop the exact same items
• 25-man bosses will drop a higher quantity of loot, but not quality
• For the first few raid tiers, our plan is to provide multiple smaller raids. Instead of one raid with eleven bosses, you might have a five-boss raid as well as a six-boss raid.
• Content will continue to be gated
• First Cataclysm raids will be tuned for players in dungeons blues and crafted items

This is a huge change and I like it in some ways.  The bad thing is there is only two things to do in the game once you hit max level - raid or run alts. 

Something that has arisen in WotLK is the rise of PuG raiding which will become a thing of the past in Cataclysm.  I posted today in "Warcraft Hunter's Union" the following:

I've been waiting a bit to post my results of the Darkmoon Gambit.  The main reason is I'm not completely done.  Here are the results so far:

I created 166 cards from the snowfall ink I accumulated.  This cost me 66.4 per card (0g x 6 Snowfall Ink, 2g x 3 IotS, 20g x 3 Eternal Life, and 1 Resilient Paper).  Note that I didn't put a cost on the Snowfall as they were basically taking up inventory space.  So to make 166 cards it cost me approximately 11,022g.  From that I got the following:

4 Prism Decks with 9 mismatched cards (41 total)
1 Noble Deck with 25 mismatched cards (33 total)
2 Undeath Deck with 26 mismatched cards (42 total)
2 Chaos Decks with 34 mismatched cards (50 total)

As you can see I had quite a few mismatched cards and less than ideal luck in terms of Noble Decks.

During the faire week I purchased cards to fill out the mismatched decks to create the following:

1 Prism Deck (for a total of 5)
4 Nobles Decks (for a total of 6)
2 Undeath Decks (for a total of 4)
4 Chaos Decks (for a total of 6)

This cost me an additional 5,438g and left me with 33 unmatched cards to sell individually  My total costs were 16,461g.

I posted all the cards and decks and have seen the following so far:

3 Prisms for 400g (2 in inventory)
3 Nobles for 3750g (3 in inventory)
2 Undeath for 800g (2 in inventory)
2 Chaos for 500g (4 in inventory)

I also have sold 16 of the cards for 800g and have 17 cards left in inventory.  My revenue so far is 15,050g

That means I am about 1,400 gold from breakeven.  If I am able to sell the rest of my cards for the same price I have gotten so far I should bring in an additional 16,000g.  That will mean the value of my Snowfall would equate to  about 14.7g (14,600 profit / 996 Snowfall used to make the cards).  That is much higher than I anticipated although I must admit the time investment was much greater than I would have liked.  The relisting costs were probably a few hundred gold as well which would take my profits down even further.

Still ... I am glad to be rid of all the Snowfall in inventory though I've gotten another 200 from making glyphs this month....

The last two days my druid Shribryn has run the Culling of Stratholme instance for the daily heroic.  CoS used to be a very difficult dps race if you wanted to get to the extra boss with an extra badge and the chance to roll on the drake mount.  Most people usually just /afk'ed if they had the drake as it was one of the longest instances due to the NPC interactions.  Since 3.3 this instance has been pretty easy due to the change so the NPC don't get in the way anymore and the fact that our gear makes the instance a joke.  The Culling of Stratholme was one of my favorite parts of Warcraft 3 so I'm glad they made the place more fun to visit but ultimately it is your party members that make up a pleasant experience.  I definitely had to different experiences the last two days.

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It is easy in this game to get what I call - "Purple Fever".  This usually occurs when the loot screen pops up and someone needs an item. 

"OMG!!! OMG!!! OMG!!!"

That is what you usually hear when someone has an advanced case of purple fever as their new gear is so close they can almost see it on their character.  I have actually seen some reduced to tears when struck by "Purple Fever" but they are unable to get the items.

Blizzard is smart in the way they hook people into the game.  At first you get levels very easily and new gear is always around the corner.  By the time you hit max level you are hooked on the game but suddenly it gets tougher and tougher to get gear.  The best gear is mostly the Epic Purple items so that is where people turn their attention at max level.  And the only way to get the best purples is in a guild.

As I have mentioned before, the first character I played was Shribryn.  The night elf starting areas were amazing and even though there were enemies to fight, I felt safe with the capital of Darnassus nearby.  As I finished my last quest in Darnassus I knew I had no choice but to leave the safety of Nordrassil and head for the unknown mainland.  It is hard to imagine now but I was actually a bit nervous as I got onto the boat that would take me to Auberdine.  As we entered port I noticed the coastline stretched out as far as the eye could see.  Finding my way off the boat and onto the dock I was immediately greeted by a fellow night elf that had decided to start a guild.  His name was Shamanizer and although I didn't know him I decided to join up with him.  He made me an officer and through continuous recruiting our guild was soon the largest on the server.  We were all noobs but everyone was a noob in those days.  The main thing was everyone was having a blast.  The fun came to an end when we hit max level and suddenly there wasn't much to do.  We tried our hands at running the max level instances but our guild struggled mightily due to our noobness and broke up.  Shamanizer and I lost touch.  Fast forward a few months and I decided to switch servers and I find out Shamanizer had done the same thing. I messed around in a few guilds but he found a new guild called "Requiem" and wanted me to join him.  He and his wife love it so I apply and am quickly accepted.  Since they are short on healers I play my druid and they both are playing priests so between the 3 of us we are half the healing for the guild.  And the game is fun again.

End game at that point was Molten Core and we made slow but steady progress through the instance.  Shamanizer, Concertina (his wife) and I made our own chat channel so we just healed and talked all night long and things were perfect. At some point during Molten Core our guild leaders had a major fight and the result was half the guild quit and I was asked to be an druid officer.  When the priest officer quit a few days later I convinced the leadership to promote Shamanizer.  Since we were on the winning side of the "revolution" everything was great but storm clouds were on the horizon in the form of Concertina.

CC (as I called her) had a bit of a temper and was a bit of a conspiracy freak.  I enjoyed talking with her more than just about anyone else in the game but it seemed like I spent a lot of time defending her to other people.  It wasn't too bad until a few months later when she accused another officer of stealing guild funds.  I talked her out of making a big deal about it because I was 99% sure her accusations were wrong.  She promised me she wouldn't say anything but when I came home the next day I found a post on our forums with all sorts of accusations from her.   The other officers had already responded in anger but I convinced the other officers that the best thing to do was delete the thread and I would explain it to her.  Tempers cooled.

I felt for Shamanizer at this time because as he had access to the the officer forums he saw some very direct comments about CC.  As her husband he had little choice but to defend her honor and ultimately he decided to step down as officer.  Sham/CC and I still had our secret chat channel for raids but it was no longer nearly as much fun because on one hand I am seeing the officers bash CC in officer chat and CC bash the officers in our private chat.  I tried to play Switzerland but it was to little avail.  I know one thing -- I wasn't having fun anymore.

Things were bound to come to a head and they did about a month later when the rants CC made in our private channel started seeping into guild chat.  I told the officers I would talk to her about but a few days later after that she put up another inflammatory post on our forums.  The next time I logged I was informed that there was an officers meeting after the raid.

I don't remember much about the raid that night except that I was miserable because Sham was constantly asking me what the officers were saying.  The officers weren't saying anything in officer chat but I was sure they were conversing in whispers.  All the while, CC defended her actions and was planning the next step in her war against officer tyranny.  I remained quiet through the whole thing and only gave vague responses to direct questions.  I could do little else because frankly the officers weren't talking to me.  I do remember that CC saying that they were untouchable because the 3 of us were the best healers in the guild (which was pretty much true).

After the raid was over we had about 3 things to cover.  I don't remember the first two items on the agenda but the third was whether we needed a guild shakeup.  We had gotten stuck at the beginning of Blackwing Lair and we all agreed that something needed to be done to re-energize the guild.  Every class officer discussed the pro's and con's of each member and majority ruled.  At the end we had a list of 4 people that we were going to kick.  We hadn't discussed the priest class because we only had 2 - Shamanizer and Concertina.  The GM brought it up and said ... "We discussed Sham and CC before you logged in and have decided they are out."  I tried to defend them but the other officers were in 100% agreement that they had to go.  When I mentioned that kicking them put me in a bad position since they were my friends, the other officers responded that they said they understood and would understand if I felt it necessary to leave as well.  I was stunned.  I told them I needed some time to think about it.  They told me that I had until the raid the next night to decide.

As you can imagine Shamanizer and CC asked me a bunch of questions after I logged off Teamspeak (!!).  I told them that I really didn't want to talk about it and logged off and on to an alt that no one knew about.  I remember it was like 2am and I was just running in circles around Ironforge thinking about the decision.  I remembered leaving Darnassus and meeting Shamanizer for the first time.  I remembered the fun we had leveling.  Then I remembered how lost I felt after our guild broke up and I changed servers.  In our 4 months with Requiem I had gotten some of the best loot from Molten Core and I was now one of the leaders in an up and coming guild.  The bad thing was my best online friends were now being asked to leave.

Finding your place in an online world is difficult.  Nothing is physical and much of the game occurs in your mind.  People come and go from guilds and servers much quicker than you'd ever see in real life.  Occasionally you meet people that you want to meet in real life.  Shamanizer and CC were two people like that for me.  Now I was being forced to choose between them and the only true guild I'd ever known.  I thought back to the time I mentioned earlier when I first hit max level and Shamanizer's guild broke up.  We spoke occasionally but it wasn't the same.  If I left the guild there was no guarantee that I'd ever find one that fit me as well as Requiem and no guarantee that be able to get in one with Shamanizer/CC.  If I stayed with Requiem I would have lots of power and access to the best loot in the game.  I decided to stay.

The only person that was online when I decided was our raid leader, Modhne.  I told him my decision and he was happy that I had decided to stay.  I asked him if I could be the one to tell Sham/CC that they were out and he agreed to tell the other officers.  The next night I logged in and asked Shamanizer and CC if they had a few minutes to chat in our private channel.  They agreed and before I could say anything Sham said, "We're out aren't we?"  I said yeah.  The officers had booted a few other people during the day and rumors were flying about the meeting from the night before.  I told them that I was staying in the guild.  Shamanizer said he understood but CC lost her temper and called me names.  I told them both that it was a very difficult decision and I'd hope they understand.  We could always be friends.  To CC's credit she quit the guild without a scene but she also left our private chat channel.  Shamanizer did the same thing a few moments later.  I never spoke to either of them again (I heard they re-rolled horde on a different server but I really don't know).

I felt bad about my decision for a long time but the effect on the guild was pretty amazing.  We revamped our recruiting process and got a new group of players that helped us conquer Blackwing Lair far quicker than any of us thought possible.  When we beat the final boss and I held his sceptre in my hands I felt justified in staying with the guild.  But as time has passed I feel less sure that I was correct.  In the new world of pixelated rewards and transitory friends nothing is certain.

Ultimately the question of friends vs guild has no right answer.  Only two paths filled with the regret of a choice you'd rather not make.

The glyph market on my server has been pretty tame since last fall.  There's about 3 of us that post a few times a day and with the average posting price of about 15-20g we are all making money.  One of the things I did to let my competition "win" was to stop posting/reposting 3 of every glyph and focus on the top 75 best selling glyphs.  This gives them a bit of profit which reduces the chance of a price war while giving me great profit (at least 1000g/day).  One other thing is because there are 3 of us posting at all times of the day it is like we are camping the Auction House without one of us needing to be on our computer 24/7.  This has discouraged anyone else from entering the market so peace has reigned --  that is until "NewScribe" (not his real name) entered the market.
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Rinda's scribe journey

When WotLK came out, I decided to change one of my rogue's profession from tailoring to inscription. I didn't know much about the profession but I had every other profession covered and it sounded interesting so I leveled it to max soon after patch 3.0 came out.  Fast forward a few weeks and the actual WotLK game was released.  Stacks of herbs skyrockets to 100g and since I was cash poor I decided to stop glyphing altogether and abandoned the profession.  I mean everyone already had their glyph and they never expire so in my mind the profession was basically tapped out. 

Six months go by and I'm listening to a podcast called "How I Wow" and the guest is Markco of Just My 2 Copper.  He is describing how to make money in the game and he says the best way is inscription.  As someone who rarely had more than a few thousand gold I was very interested but I have a hard time believing his claims of massive profit.  I researched his claims and soon realize that the way he made the 30k gold in a day was due to a special circumstance when Blizzard allowed dual specs.  That meant that on the day of the patch, a large population of people needed 6 glyphs immediately.  I knew the circumstances from that patch would never be repeated and I'd missed another opportunity but as I studied I realized that you could still make plenty of money in the profession.  The main reason was the higher barrier to entry and once I realized this I immediately leveled my rogue's inscription to max and started listing glyphs.

Scribes can make many things but glyphs are the basis of the profession.  Currently there are 345 glyphs in the game and you can learn 138 by training (40%), 64 by minor research (19%), 83 by major research (24%), 3 by bought vendor recipe (1%), and 57 by reading a BoE Glyph Book (16%).   Many people getting into the glyph game buy everything possible from the trainers and learn everything they can from the glyph books meaning they now have the ability to make 198 different glyphs or 57% of all the recipes in the game.  This is a bit misleading.  First, of the top 80 glyphs sold, only 29 of them (or 36%) are learned this way.  That is just the start....

Scribe Barriers to Entry

1. Low price of trained glyphs - As mentioned earlier there are 29 trainable/book mastery glyphs that sell in good quantity.  The problem is the low barrier to entry on these items means the price of these glyphs are perpetually below cost as there are always people leveling the profession.  This gives the impression that there isn't any money to be made in inscription.
2. Bag Space - A player that has trained and used book mastery is faced with the prospect of making 200 glyphs.  Each glyph takes up one slot in your bag up to a stack of 20.  As a player with maximum normal bags has about 100 slots that means you have to fit glyphs on your character in addition to all your armor/weapons/food/flasks and anything else you happen to be carrying.  I have found that is is almost impossible to make glyphs on an active character for this reason and if you want to list all glyphs you need to use Inscription bags and 3 different characters.
3. Listing issues - You've made an alt to list your glyphs but you need to list 200 glyphs x the number you want to list.  Profit on glyphs at the beginning are only 1-2g each and demand is sporadic so the key is in being able to post 4-500 glyphs at a time.  Without help of a mod this is almost impossible.
4. Knowing what to produce - An alternative to producing all 200 glyphs is to pick a lesser number of glyphs and make only the most popular glyphs.  The problem is how do you know what people are going to buy as most people only player 1-2 characters and don't know what glyphs each class considers mandatory. 
5. Time Investment - Milling a stack of herbs takes about 10 seconds.  Creating 6 Inks from that stack takes another 20 seconds.  Creating 6 glyphs from that ink takes about 20 seconds.  So in 50 seconds you have 6 glyphs.  Obviously this is best case scenario but lets use this 8 seconds per glyph as the standard.  A good scribe will sell about 100 glyphs per day.  If you make 100 glyphs it will take you almost 14 minutes (8 x 100 = 800 seconds).   Keep in mind that this doesn't include the time to figure out which glyphs to create, buying inks from the ink trader, buying parchment, the time to list glyphs, getting all the unsold glyphs from the bank, and  all the associated running to do all these things.  Assuming you take 3-4 minutes for each of these activities you are looking at another 20 minutes to list your 100 glyphs everyday.  When you consider that you can do 2-3 dailies in the same time frame it is hard to justify inscription.
6. Time / Cost to learn the reseached glyphs - Leveling inscription isn't cheap but it is just the beginning.  Once you get to a skill of 75 you have the ability to do Minor Inscription Research.  Every day at a cost of 1 Moonglow Ink and 2 Light Parchment you can learn 1 of the 64 minor glyphs in the game. Once you hit a skill of 385 you have the ability to do Northrend Inscription Research which cost 1 Snowfall Ink, 3 Ink of the Sea and 5 Resilient Parchment to make 1 of the 83 researched major glyphs in the game. It will take any scribe a minimum of 3 months to learn all the glyphs at an approximate cost of 2200g.  This can be daunting considering that inscription isn't very profitable when you first start.
7. Constant competition in the Auction House - As I have mentioned earlier, inscription isn't very popular but the 5-10 people that focus on it will undercut within an hour of posting.  For a player that isn't expecting it, the constant posting/reposting is maddening.
8. Low percentage of sales - I usually sell anywhere from 10-20% of what I post but I only post the best sellers and a new scribe doesn't have that option.  Using the 100 glyph example from before, I'd imagine a new scribe would sell about 5-10 each time they post and have total revenue of about 40-50g vs their startup costs and time/cost to make the glyphs.

So the prospect is this -- you are working in a profession that is initially unprofitable, takes quite a bit of time, has lots of competition, and takes a long time to master.  Is it any wonder that most people drop out?

On the other hand I laugh every time I see someone post on the forums about how there isn't any money in inscription.  I like that line of thinking as it is lessens competition.  My scribe has made over 300,000g (1700g/day) in the last 6 months and I only list 80 x 4 glyphs per day.  On an average day I post 3 time and sell anywhere from 80-120 glyphs at a profit of 10-20g.  Of course all this is dependent on competition.  The key was understanding that the profession was still profitable and then getting the right tools (mods/macros/) to maximize profits.  Because once you have all the glyphs, know your competition and have streamlined your production process, making a glyph is like printing money.

If you haven't read my mini-strategy on how the 7 stages of inscription you should take a look. Not only should it help you understand the frustration of inscription but I included a mini guide at the bottom that is essentially how I overcame the barriers listed above.

This is a post I did for the JMTC forums about a new scribe thinking of getting into the trade.
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I've been doing inscription since it was introduced and the biggest reason it is a huge moneymaker is because no one thinks it is a huge moneymaker (at least people that don't read jmtc).  If someone is told that inscription is the best way to make money they go through what I call the 7 stages of inscription:

 * Excited Scribe - You heard somewhere that that inscription is a huge moneymaker.  You quit your old profession and become a new scribe.  You invest all your money in herbs and start milling.

 * Disappointed Scribe (2 weeks) - You realize that leveling inscription is expensive and have to start farming and doing dailies to get enough gold to continue to level the profession.  You've done all the training, created a bank alt, bought all the books and made a few cards to get the profession to max level but sales are slow and creating/posting glyphs is taking quite a bit of time.  Where is the money I was promised?!?!?!?!

 * Resilient Scribe (1 month) - You notice that you most of your glyphs are selling for less than 2g and the glyphs over that amount are undercut the next time you log in.  You notice that the same names are undercutting every time.  You do a little research and find the mod Quickauctions.  You also start tracking your sales with Beancounter and researching the most popular glyphs on WowPopular.  You start a second bank alt because 1 toon isn't enough to post everything.  You are going to make inscription work if it bankrupts you.  Your raiding buddies begin to wonder where you are....

 * Experienced Scribe (2 months) - Money is starting to coming in and your glyphs are starting to sell.  You've set up all the mods and are beginning have configured them.  You add a third bank toon as you are now making 300 types of glyphs.  You have stopped raiding altogether.

 * Wizened Scribe ( 3 months) - You know all the patterns.  You know what sells.  You have all the mods.  You know your competition and may have even started getting hate mail from other scribes.  The money is coming in fast and furious and you mock people that don't put epic gems in their heroic gear.  You buy epic flying for some of your raiding buddies alts just so they remember your name.  That doesn't stop them from removing you from active raiding status for inactivity.

 * Jaded Scribe (4 months) - You are on top of the inscription world.  The money is still coming in but you wonder to  yourself... "Didn't I start this to make money to get gear, gems, enchants so I could have more fun playing?"  You reduce the number of glyphs to focus on just your best sellers and use just 1 bank alt to post.  You start hitting the 10 mans with your guildmates on their offnights to gear your toons.

 * Retired Scribe (6 months) - You've passed the the gold cap but the money continues to roll in.  You ask yourself, "How much money do I really need?"  You've got the raiding bug again and apply for reinstatement as an active raider -- the donation of 1000 flasks helps your cause immensely.   You've got more than enough money for the foreseeable future but your are confident in the knowledge that inscription is always there if you need it.

Now here's the thing - 90% of scribes stop trying when they hit the Disappointed Scribe Phase and probably another 9% quit during the Resilient Scribe phase.

People that are scribing today have two other things that are causing them to quit -- 1) Spring Fever and 2) Expansionitis.  Spring Fever should be self explanatory as many people don't want to play as much when they could be outside.  Expansionitis is what happens 6 months before a WoW expansion as many people stop raiding as the gear they can get will be replaced by greens in a few months.  That is a good time to level alts or just find something else to do with their time.  Blizzard knows this and usually makes a few token changes in PvP and some lame sidegrade content to try to keep people interested.  It works to a degree but what really brings people back is beta testing.  This does little to help the "real" WoW world but it does keep people paying their monthly subscriptions.  What brings people back to the game is when they release a patch about 2 months before the expansion with all the expansion's new class abilities.  It's pretty smart on Blizzard's part as they get to beta test on a large scale and it brings excitement back to the game just before the release of the expansion.

What's this mean for scribes?  There will be less players in the coming months but with that comes less competition.  The good thing is when people stop raiding some will change focus to creating alts as now is a good time to switch mains.  Some may fear that the additional alts will increase competition but the barriers to entry listed above will still occur for alts as most won't have the knowledge or will to make it work.  So we are headed into a period with less competition but little drop in glyph demand.  The only wildcard is if Blizzard decides to make massive changes to inscription in the expansion which is a huge subject all by itself and you will make tons of money long before anything like this happens.

The bottom line is now is a great time to become a scribe.  My tip for beginners is level your toon to 400+ the cheapest way you can find then get Quickauctions and learn it.  Create a bank alt and equip him with 4 Bags of Endless Pockets.  You should also goto Wowpopular and click on the glyph toggle.  Make a list of all the Major Glyphs on the page and also include the top half of the Minor glyphs.  This will give you about 50 major and 30 minor glyphs on your list.  You will notice that you can only make about a third of the list with only training/glyph books so you should go into glyphs by class and add a 4-5 of each so you have a good list of glyphs to create (Skip this additional step if you are cash poor).  Now mill herbs (use a macro), create inks (afk nap time!), and use QA, ATSW, or Skillet to make 20 of each glyph on your list and send it to your bank alt with a focus on streamlining your production time (I make my create list in QA on my bank alt and then create my glyphs in QA with my scribe).  Make sure you have Quickauctions configued and install Postal/Mail Opener to streamline getting mail.  You can post and cancel all day long if you'd like but the key period is starting around 6pm server to about 11pm.  Make sure you cancel and repost during that time at least once.  The glyphs you can not make from your Wowpopular list are learned from daily research so make sure you do this every day.  There are 64 Minor and 83 Major Glyphs to research so in 2-3 months you will have the full list.  Make sure to watch what glyphs are selling and eliminate the slow sellers as you learn new ones through research (I use Beancounter).  Also make sure to watch the patch notes for any upcoming changes. 

If you follow this and have enough tenacity you will hit the gold cap long before the expansion arrives.  I just hope you aren't on my server as that would suck. :P

I haven't really posted much on the subject but about half my gametime these days involves playing the auction house game.  The fact that I have 6 80s helps me quite a bit in this area.  For instance my druid is an alchemist/herber, my pally a blacksmith/miner, my hunter a leatherworker/skinner, my mage a tailor/enchanter, my rogue a scribe/engineer, and my deathknight a jewelcrafter/miner.  Since all these toon's professions are at max level I have everything covered.

Currently my bank account is sitting at 190k gold which is probably higher than 99% of the people that play the game.  I got into the AH game last summer a bit by accident as I was trying to gear out all my toons but was continually frustrated because I was running out of money.  The only solution was to get smart at making money.  I originally focused on inscription as I had heard that it was a great way to make money but soon realized that the easy days there were over and it was going to take a long time for my toon to learn all the recipes to put the theory to practice.  So while I worked on that I maxed out everyone else.  My toons focused on the following:

Kelyn	Enchanter	Various enchanting scrolls based on market price
Kelyn	Enchanter	DE'ing random greens
Kelyn	Tailor	400g every 4 days for Spellthread, Ebonweath, Moonshroud
Shribryn	Alchemy	100g for an epic gem 1 Epic gem
Malla	Jewelcrafting	50g for turning epic gem to crafted gem
Rinda	Inscription	Took lots of time / little profit
Henna	Blacksmithing	Create various blacksmiting items for DE if mat price low
Henna	Blacksmithing	Create Eternal Beltbuckle
Delan	Leatherworking	Create Drums and Leg Enhancements

I started to slowly accumulate gold with this strategy but as I watched and learned the auction house I realized that there were 100s of opportunities that I was missing.  I got heavy in to speculation in November before the 3.3 patch at the same time I learned the final few inscription recipes.  Suddenly my moneymaking went to the next level with inscription taking the lead and I was making about 3-4k g per day after expenses.  The bad thing I realized was I was that while I had geared out all my toons with epics I didn't have time to play them because I was spending about 2 hours playing the AH instead of the game.  Now that inscription had taken off I picked my 80 best recipes and focused on them and cherry picked / speculated for the rest which got my time down to about a half hour per day while still making about 2k gold per day.  This has worked well with one problem ... it is virtually impossible for an scribe to get rid of all their Snowfall Ink.  Scribes make their ink by milling herbs and for WotLK that means milling mainly Icebloom or Adders Tongue.  For every 6 glyphs I make I end up with 1 Snowfall ink.  Since I sell about 600 glyphs a week that means I have 100 Snowfall Ink need to get rid of every week.  The problem is demand.  There are only 4 ways to get rid of Snowfall Ink: sell them, make offhand weapons, make scrolls of fortitude or make darkmoon fair cards.  Offhand weapons can usually get rid of a maximum of only 5 per week and Scrolls a max of another 20.  That means I need to sell at least 75 snowfall per week to break even.  The problem with selling them is since there is only 3 things the people can do with them so 1) I am either selling them to my direct competition making cards/scrolls/offhand or 2) selling them to people leveling inscription and increasing my future competition.  The bottom line is I've slowly accumulated 1,100 Snowfall Ink and it is growing.  It's really a no win situation and ultimately it is almost better to think of Snowfall Ink as worthless and figure out the easiest way to get rid of them.

A year ago the best way to get rid of Snowfall ink was easy and very profitable - Darkmoon cards.  The reason is that every time you create a darkmoon card you have a 1 in 4 chance of creating a Nobles card which make a trinket called Greatness.  The Greatness card is by far the best purchasable trinket in the game and at one point it sold for around 10k gold.  This decreased as better content was released to today's price of 4-5k gold.  The problem with this trinket is with the release of Icecrown Citadel there are trinkets out there that are actually better.  These trinkets aren't attainable to people other than raiders but that leads to the other issue.  Greatness is level i200 and there are many other trinkets that are easily attainable that are i219-i232 so the perception is that it is inferior.  So sadly, the only people that really understand how good the card is are the ones that have other options. 

Last month I created a Greatness card and it took me almost a month to sell it for 4k so the demand is very small.  Still I need to get rid of these because the Snowfall ink I have are currently taking up 55 slots in my inventory and it is growing so I have to do something.  That brings me to the title of this article .... The Darkmoon Gambit.

Since Snowfall Ink are essentially worthless I'm thinking of doing something crazy but first I need to figure out the bottom price I can do this and still make money.

	Qty	Each	Cost
Snowfall Ink	6	0	0
Ink of the Sea	3	2	6
3 Eternal Life	3	20	60
Resilent Parchment	1	0.4	0.4
Min Cost of Card			66.4
Cards for Greatness			x 32
Cost of Greatness			2125

What this is say is if I make 32 cards I need to sell my Greatness Deck for 2125 gold to pay for the non-Snowfall mats and this assumes that all of the other cards are worthless.  The truth is I should be able to sell the other 3 cards for about 100g each and I'm pretty confident if I deep undercut the current market to 3k that I would get almost immediate buyer/resellers.  If that were to happen I would have a profit from my Snowfall of 1175g or 6.1g per ink (1175 / (6*32)).  If I listed my Snowfall in the Auction House today at 6g all that would happen is my competition would match the price and none of use would sell many.  Of course there is risk with this plan as there is no guarantee that I will get the number of Greatness cards I expect or that i will be able to turn them into full decks.  But if the math works I am looking at turning my 1100 Snowfall ink that is just taking up space into a minimum of 7k in gold.  I have a feeling I will do a lot better than that.  Time will tell.

What do you do when you aren't having fun? I've been playing this game for over 5 years now and I've noticed it is starting to be a bit stale. When I first started the game everything was new and it was fun even though I didn't know what I was doing. One of the best things about the game at that time is I banded together with a bunch of other people to form one of the biggest guilds on the Khadgar server. We were all learning the game, exploring and just enjoying playing the game. The problems arose when we hit max level (60 at the time). My first toon was my paladin Henna and I distinctly remember hitting 10 man Scholo with the guild and getting owned. The issue was we were a bunch of noobs but didn't realize it so our guild slowly fell apart as we figured out that we all wanted different things. It was at that time that I started leveling Shribryn again who I left at level 37 when I started leveling Henna and decided because our guild was lacking in dps to create both Kelyn (mage) and Lemhi (warlock that I've never been able to get to max level - now at level 54). This happened to many of us in the guild and we soon found that we were spending more time with people outside the guild so we slowly disbanded. After I gquit I focused mainly on getting Shrib to 60 then realized that now that every guild was concentrating on Molten Core so I started working on getting my Wildheart set. I tried to do the same thing with Henna but soon realized that 1) paladin dps was terrible 2) paladin tanks didn't exist 3) Paladin healers weren't accepted 4) buffing 15 people every 5 minutes sucked and 5) the competition for plate armor was tough. On the flip side no one was playing druids at the time so it only took me a month or so to get my tier 0 armor (Henna never got a single piece). Now I was ready for the big time and i bounced from guild to guild never really finding a good fit or any fun. When the option to change servers happened in January 06 I decided to take the opportunity to jump ship and move to Eitrigg. Moving to a new server is always difficult but it was a bit exciting because it was a new beginning. My first guild didn't work out because I found out pretty quickly that they left their previous server because everyone hated them. They were working on a similar rep on Eitrigg so I joined some friends from Khadgar in a guild they had just joined called Requiem at the beginning of March 2006. I had finally found a home of likeminded people.

I have been in Requiem for 4 years and in that time I was a main raider in Molten Core to an officer in Blackwing Lair/AQ. I went back to raider for a short time until we started Gruul Lair then was a recruiting officer from that point through Sunwell. After 3 years raiding I decided to take a break when WotLK was released and have spent the last year PuGing and focusing on increasing my money. At this point I'm sick of PuGs and I'm well on my way to hitting the money cap but no desire to spend any of the money.

I've been waiting for my desire to raid to come back but I think it is gone and may never return. I do know that I'm not having fun and it makes me wonder why I continue to play. I think it has something to do with the fact that this is one of the first persistent world games I've ever played. It's not like when I finished Baldur's Gate that I had anything to do. The bad guys were beaten and I moved on to the next game. With WoW that will never happen and the treadmill gets to you after a while. There is no doubt in my mind that helping put a team together that did a server first kill of Vashj and Kael then being the only guild in Black Temple for a few months was the most satisfied I've ever felt in a game. The thing is the game moves on and raiding is stressful.

So what to do? I'm really not sure. If I'm not having fun I really shouldn't play but I worked pretty hard to get where I am and I'd hate for the time investment to feel like it was all for nothing. The thing is I know that is irrational as I've spent a lot of time in other games and had no problem walking away. I am thinking of moving a few toons to another server/guild to see if that helps but if things keep on the way they have lately my days in WoW are numbered.

One thing I hate about WoW is when you are off your game. It's really silly because the game really is all about pushing the same 5-10 buttons in some sort of sequence over and over. You'd think with practice that after a while your performance would be consistent. On my hunter for example there are some days I crushing the charts with 5k dps and others I struggle to hit 4k. It has been a problem in the past and I'm not really sure why it occurs. The reason is probably similar to why a pro athletes have streaks. I know that in the past when playing golf or shooting hoops I get into a zone where my mind tells me ... "I can't miss" and my play is markedly better. The power of positive thinking is a huge advantage when playing any activity. The issue is reverse when you have doubts and that happens to me whenever I switch between one of my 6 80s. I've always hoped that playing these other classes that after a time I'd get to the point that I could switch back and forth seemlessly but to no avail so far. I do seem to have less issues switching between my druid/pally healer but my method of healing is very similar for both so that isn't a very good comparision. DPS is another matter altogether and that is where I run into issues (my advice is to stick to a max of 3 80s -- any more and it is just too difficult to switch back and forth).

I've played my deathknight for the last 10 days and have gotten decent at playing that class. Deathknights are fun to play in some respects, especially as an off tank that can dps. Still I have come to the conclusion that the class just isn't for me as it just feels boring after a while. So I've decided to stop playing the DK and switch back to the dps classes I enjoy - hunter and rogue. Unfortunately both have been unmitigated disasters that I can only attribute to my lack of attention and poor play.

A good example - this morning I decided to run my hunter in a random daily. I know the hunter class better than 95% of the WoW players due to playing the class quite a bit along with lots of reading. I hit a dps plateau about a month ago as I had mastered all the 5 man content but knew I wasn't ready for 10 man content. Part of the issue is a few gear upgrades but the main issue is that I've always been a mouseclick caster as a hunter and knew I needed to change it. I have gotten away with it in the past because I knew all the content and picking a target then mouse clicking on a button was good enough. You can't really do this in 10/25 man content because good dps has to watch their threat along with watching the fight so they can't divert their eyes for the 1-2 seconds it takes to mouseclick. I overhauled my keyboard to use it to cast all my spells and I'm in the middle of learning where I've put each of the functions on the keyboard. This morning's run was against Azol'Nerub .... an instance I know very well. As soon as we are summoned the paladin tank is running down the hill towards the first mob. As a hunter I've always hated the first few mobs because they are made up on 3 types - a named watcher, a caster, and a melee. I'm the past I have usually just focused on the tanks target and dps it down until all 3 are dead. This morning I start to do this and almost immediately pulled the mob off the tank. "Dammit!", I said to myself. "Forgot to misdirect." I quickly look at my new keybinds at the bottom of my screen and find the misdirect button is now Q. As I'm looking for my focus button to cast the spell I see the rest of the group finish off the first group and head for the second group. I find that focus is set to H so now I have my misdirect working so I cast it then start dps when I realize my pet is sitting next to me. A quick look at my key set up and I've send my pet in to attack and then put him on defensive. I am starting to settle down into my rotation when someone yells for a tranq shot on the skirmishers. Now I'm off to look for where I bound my tranq shot key when I am wrapped in a web. I now have plenty of time to watch the fight and I see the tank has aggroed 2 other mobs and I see the message "Tranq!" in chat again. I try to find the skirmishers but have trouble targeting them before the other dps has killed them. During the encounter, 2 of the other dps died but the tank decided (or accidentily) pulled the boss. I cast misdirect and fire off two quick high powered shots when I see my abilities are all greyed out. I look at my mana .... damn ... all gone. I click (yeah I mouseclicked) on my Dragonhawk/Viper macro and went back to dps'ing the boss. The other dps came back into the instance and we downed the boss about 30 seconds later.

I look at the results - my dps was about 3.5k while a mage was at 7k and the warrior was at 4k. The pally tank and priest healer were under all of us. I was surprised at my dps because I felt out of sorts on every phase. I'm sure that being able to AOE a bit helped my damage. I start going through my post fight checklist when the priest says .. "WTF hunter?" "Ever heard of Viper?" I look at my mana and it is still at 0 and look at my aspect and it is still on dragonhawk. Then I remembered that on bad thing about my Aspect macro is that the first time you press the button in an instance it goes to dragonhawk no matter what aspect you are in currently. The priest goes on, "Where was the tranq shots, hunter?" "Do you know what the FUCK you are doing?" I had answers for all these questions. I know the instance better than 99% of the playing population, I'm just not used to my new keyboard setup and it is not only killing my play but my ability to think positively and proactively. I thought about it a half second and realized that someone as abrasive as that on the first boss of an easy instance didn't want a bunch of excuses so I simply typed, "Sorry guys. I'm having issues and I'm sure you will find another dps quickly. Good Luck." and left the group.

I wasn't really pissed when I left the dungeon because the priest brought up some valid points. The points are still valid right now. The thing that annoys me is I need to change my style of play if I'm ever going to make the transition from click casting to key casting. The only way to do that is to practice until it is second nature. The dungeons that have been created for learning is the 5 man heroics which is where we were. Certainly my hiatus to Deathknight for a week didn't help me as my fingers were used to a totally different keyboard setup. The thing that makes people successful in WoW is the ability to set up the next attack/shot/heal and I was totally lacking in that area. Having said all that, I am really tired of people not being patient in heroic dungeons and wish that Blizzard did away with the frost badge daily heroic as it seems to do nothing but cause issues.

I have found myself looking back to the Vanilla days of WoW alot and thinking about how much better the game was back in the day. I am quite aware that Blizzard has made many improvements to the game and know they want to give people an incentive to run heroics so that they aren't empty. The bottom line is that when you put a level 80 in greens/blues doing 2k in damage with current raiders at 8k+ in damage there are going to be issues. That means the content that is meant for people to learn to play eventually will lead to a high end raider telling them they are playing like a tard. And that isn't fun.