1500 Cinderbloom milled

On vent, there have been some discussion about what Cinderbloom mills into, with some speculation that drop rates may have changed.  So today, I milled 1500 of them, converting them into ink.  I now have cramped fingers and some real numbers.

The macro I used for milling is
/cast milling
/use cinderbloom

So the final results are available on my milling spreadsheet on the CinderbloomTest page, with

• 65 Burning Ember (becoming 32.5 Inferno Inks)
• 751 Ashen Pigments (becoming 375.5 Blackfallow Inks)

This gives 0.216 Burning Embers/ 5 herbs, vs an expected 0.25.
And 2.5 Ashen pigment/5 herbs, being the expected amount.

Tank you very much

A couple of days ago, I finally dinged 85 on my DK tank.  (Yes, last of the great levellers but you get that).  Tonight, I tanked the last of the normal mode instances. - Halls of origination.
I want to 'shout out' a great resource for these at Sword and Board:

• Blackrock Caverns, Throne of Tides.
• Stonecore, Vortex Pinacle
• Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, Lost City of te Tol'vir
• Heroic Deadmines, Heroic Shadowfang Keep

It doesn't matter if you are tank, healer, or DPS.  These sheets are great, and easy enough to copy/paste into party chat.

On a vaguely gold related topic, getting heroic rated gear is cheap enough - if you like PVP gear.  (I do not).  With my tank being a Dreani DK, the trinkets are nice, and the rings were levelling items.   (I have 529 JC yet no 'acievement' - vain, but I still want it).  All my gear is gemmed (where possible), and enchanted - using Northrend head and shoulders enchants before I get the rep for Cata enchants.

My prediction for the day : Prices of gems and enchants will go up as we start getting more 'real' gear, or as people start wanting to get through those heroics.  We will also get many many toons balking at the real cost of mats.

Tomorrow is a special day.

Merry Christmas, but for this post, I am thinking what this actually means.  I don't recall what happened the Christmas that Wrath was released, so this is pure speculation. 

Ok.  I expect a lot of boxes of cataclysm under various trees.  So - a lot more Worgen, Goblins and starter zones.  Whatever sold well the first time round should sell tomorrow as well.  Bags, maybe water breathing elixirs for Vashir.  Those that start tomorrow are likely to be kids, possibly with gold from wealthy benefactors, or well wishers.  Pets will probably move.

It is still festival, so there should be an additonal focus on completing the outstanding achievements.

Casual farmers/tradeskillers are likely to stop farming, so I also expect the auction house to be 'off' with both bargains and sales opportunities. 

Single players - especially teenagers, will be playing in the afternoon with a vengeance.  PVP gear and battleground supplies might sell OK?

Happy Winters Veil

Healing is easy right?

Umm.  Not so much any more.

I am an OK tank.  Not the best out there, but good enough to keep the agro of healers most of the time, and maybe even off the DPS too.  At the risk to an overblown ego, I might even be better than that.  However, I chose tanking, because of the 3 roles (ranged DPS, Healing and Tanking), tanking came hardest to me.  (Yes I started out as your typical wannabe DK 'tank').

I am not the fastest leveller, unless professions are involved.  I have 4.9 tradeskill professions at 525 (0.9 is because tailoring is 521), maxed cooking on 3 toons, but my tank is lvl 83, and my primary healer is lvl 82.  I will start working on my second healer's tradeskills once I run out of rested on my first two toons again.

My DK tank (Foolich) was first out of the rank, with Blackrock caverns, Throne of tides and Stonecore.  Tanking these, ... well it was tanking.  Nothing particularly hard.  Plenty of opportunity to use defensive cooldowns when DPS stand in bad stuff because the healers are struggling.  Being a JC/Enchanter, most of his gear is gemmed and enchanted - maybe with older stuff, but still kept moderatly well.  By the way - Blood is fantastic to level with.  I might not burn stuff down as fast as Frost/Unholy, but ... I need my 5 year old's help to die.  There is zero downtime.

My priest healer (Foofixit) has been neglected since I did TOC.  Now - for me - that was not that long ago, but still a few months.  Fixit's gear was a mix of 200's & 232's, with maybe a couple of 'recent' badge pieces.  But the last time I went healing, ... Yawn.   According to reports, other healers considered healing to be easy.

Last night I ran my first healing instance - (pug) Throne of tides as a level 82 priest.  Umm.  Hot keys not touched since TOC, no new spells, no practice.  Umm.  One DPS died due to mishealing, and a second due to standing in bad stuff while I was being thrown in the air by a boss. No wipes. Umm. Toto, I don't Think we're In Kansas Anymore.

Looking at dungeon finder times, there is still a shortage of tanks? I can only assume that this comes because a lot of previously 25 main raids are running 5 mans.  If I recall :

• 5 man dungeons need 20% tank, 20% heals, 60% dps; 
• 10 mans take 20% tank, 25% heals, 55% dps, and 
• 25 mans take 12% tanks,  25% heals, 63% dps.

Some DPS standing in fire will die.  Some healers will become discouraged.  (Some tanks will remain arrogant - but I think arrogance will be roundly beaten out of healers).  I expect that with the same quality of loot dropping from 10's as 25's, more 10's will be run (but 25's will still happen for more loot), and this is worth considering.  Guilds - while you need your tanks now, look after your healers - you will need them later.

Milling spreadsheet

As what might come to an absolute shock to regular readers, I have been playing with glyphs.  (Ok absolute shock might not be the right term).  Some of you may have read that I converted a lot of Ink of the Sea into other inks before patch 4.0.  I am running out of some of those inks, and in the main, blackfallow inks are still to expensive to trade down.

So, I have been buying older herbs and milling, for fun and profit.  I had an instinctive feel for how much to pay for northrend herbs, but very little 'feel' for older herbs, and blackfallow inks are still expensive.  So like any good min/maxer, I wrote a spreadsheet for milling.  It is written as a google docs spreadsheet.  If you use google docs, you can 'make a copy'.  If you use Excel or OpenOffice, you can download it.

Auctioneer's milling values seem to be based on the value of pigments.  Pigments are rarely traded at a reasonable value.  Consider selling the odd pigment for a 'reasonalbe' value.

Enter 'your' values for herbs, pigments and inks.  If the 'markeup' column is green (high profit), mill it.  If it is red (loss), avoid it.  If the markup is white (no profit) or yellow(small profit), consider it if you must.

This spreadsheet is still to be considered 'beta' quality.  I am still finding a few mistakes in it, but as a whole it works for me.

Have fun

Buying for the future

At the moment a lot of players are madly levelling up tradeskills.

For example, and enchanter I know has 520 skill, trying to get to 525.  The mats are costing him about 500g per point, and he can only sell the scroll for 40g.  This is only sustainable while tradeskills are being levelled.

One day soon, there will be less toons levelling enchanting.  As I didn't pay much attention during the start of Wrath, I dont know how long this rush of tradeskill levelling phase will last.  What I do know is that in the long term, either mats will come down, or the cost of the scrolls will go up; probably both.

I have always been a contrarian investor - sell during panic buys, and buy during panic sells.  On average this has worked well.  I advocated hanging onto snowfall ink when the price fell to a few gold each.  On my server, snowfall ink is now selling for 13g.

I don't know what the long term prices of items will be, but it does seem that some items are currently oversold, and that oversupply will dry up. 

It may be time to go shopping.

Volatile Air

We all want to have 525 tradeskills, and be working on paterns for heroic dungeons.
And I am sure at the top for some professions there will be gold to make.

However, to make those high end patterns: (A) toons need to get to 520 (or near enough), and (B) someone needs to make the underlying mats.

So much relies on volatile air: Engineers need electified ether, I hear that blacksmiths need it too.  Tonight I used my Alchy transmute to ensure I made volatile air.  Bought the mats for about 200g, paid 20g for a teleport to Theramore and flew down to Uldum (my alchemist is still 80, with no cata quests except cooking and fishing).  Aparently transmutes of volatile life in Uldum guarantee air.

The transmute netted 16 air, which I listed for 200g each.  Within 10 minutes 12 had sold.

This is a market worth watching, especially if you have an alchemy alt you are happy to park in/near Uldum.

Out of traction, back in action

I have been spending too much, for too long, and not earning enough.

I have to purchase gear to for a single evening of attempts at lich king, tradeskilling up, purchasing cheap old world mats (my banks are still bulging at the seems), and generally acting as if I had bottomless wealth. 

I still have gold, but have hit a point where I am uncomfortable.

Problems/opportunities:

• In glyphs, I still have too much stock and not enough sales.  That is an easy thing to fix.
• My Auctioneer suite (Enchantrix I think) does not know what cata gear disenchants into.  There is a beta download of the suite at http://auctioneeraddon.com/dl/?dl=Preview/AuctioneerSuite-5.10.5043.zip
• Market imbalances.  They are all over the place at the moment.  There is money working out what is needed alliance/horde side, converting scraps -> leather -> heavy leather, smelting, prospecting, milling, disenchanting, lesser <-> greater enchanting mats.

I still am not planning on selling northrend many mats, there are just too many in the market; and I will wait for the inevitable re-rolls that will come soon, as classes lose/gain favour, and toons get to 85 and are 'sufficiently' geard (whatever that means).

Weekend observations

On Caelestrasz, herbs are now cheap enough for me to mill for fun & profit (and levelling inscription and alchemy), specifically Cinderbloom and Stormvine, at a significant profit margin.

I am mildly envious of both those who have time &  lack of distractions to play during the day, and the focus not to succumb to distractions.  My most advanced toon - Foolich, is now level 81. 
That said, I have Alchemy at 525, waiting on one more JC daily before nudging it up, and am 1/2 way there on Inscription. 

Transmuting alchemy seemed to be the most economical way to level it, with the resulting products being the same (or higher) value that the source materials.  I am not sure I want to play in the potions, elixir or flask markets at the moment, (though some flasks & elixirs seem OK).

Inscription has a forged document for me to level with.  I ... am not sure this is ethical.  Walking up to an NPC, with 'proof' that he gave someone food poisoning, and aksing to be paid off seems ..., well it is not 'nice'.  I can be 'not nice', Taking advantage of an NPC = good, while taking advantage of a game mechanic = bad? Mmmm.  Oh well, off to slay a few thousand pixelated people.  With Inferno ink selling for 200g+ each, I want to be sure I am not throwing thousands of gold away for a few points, so foofixit's conscience may just have to be paid off.

JC dailies are OK.  I've heard concern about the cost of doing the dailies, but it does not seem as expensive for me - possibly because I started a few days later.  Prospect your own ore, moving up to Elementium ore as soon as you can.  (If I recall, Saronite ore was almost always cheaper than Cobalt ore).  It also seems that vendors like cut green quality gems more than the AH.

On the guild front; after hints and concerns (both mine and theirs), I joined Breevok's guild - More than Raids, and have tanked a grand total of 1 instance (Blackrock Caverns).  In fairness to More than Raids my concerns were 'Oh my goodness, I don't have control'.  When I blogged about this, it immediately set up a red flag on their behalf as well.  I still don't have control, but so far that's OK.  The guild seems to be a good fit.

Readership, a Glyph update, and the illusion of independance

Readership

We all are a little distracted at the moment. It happens. The quality of posts on gold blogs is down, as is readership:

Website	%Change Month to Date	%Change Week to Date
foo-wow.blogspot.com	+2%	-17%
network.phase3profit.net	+11%	-11%

So, for both of you that are still reading blogs, ...

Glyphs
I do not understand what is happening.  Where are the purchasers?  Where are the sellers?  For me at least, Glyphmas part 2 has not happened. 

Possibly this is due to setting prices in the 50-100g bracket (I only want to sell best profit glyphs at the moment).  I split my glyphs into 3 groups : Best sellers, OK sellers and poor sellers.  At the moment my previous Best selling glyphs are not even being listed; thats OK, lots of competition explains this. 

Some of my OK glyphs are being listed, without sales.  Most of my poor selling glyphs are being listed - with very little - if any competition, but still not selling. Mmm.  Distractions.


Maybe that is it.  So many distractions and players are not bothering to either list or purchase glyphs. 

The Illusion of independance
As I have said before, Blizzard is discouraging both micro-guilds and running a majority of out of guild 5 mans and dungeons, so I have been guild shopping. I didn't realise that I was so fussy.

• Family friendly.
• Large enough to keep regulars busy, and get various forms of guild achievements.
• Small enough for me to invite toons yet still know everyone.

Last night I left Death's Head.  The gulf between a guild for primarily 17-23 year olds and family friendly seemed too large.  I have a standard of behaviour that I expect.  I am happy to run with any of them, providing the attempt is made.  My thanks to the players that tried.  In regard to a few of the players, absence will make the heart grow fonder.

I think I have found a guild that I should be compatible with.  They have an active blogger that the majority of readers here will be familiar with.  However, from our conversation last night, it is clear that I will not have the autonomy that I am used to, especially in terms of inviting toons.  In reality I don't invite a lot of strangers to guild, and the majority of players I do invite want to raid more than once a week (hence only having a few raiders in Arozcaldo).  The truth be told - I am feeling 'gun shy'.  Right now, I wish Blizzard did not implement the guild changes.  Let's see if I move beyond asking questions and join this new guild.