ICC progression

A new permanent page regarding our ICC progression - primarily for those I run with, but feel free to browse.

Snowfall ink - stockpile or sell

A couple of comentators asked why I am stockpiling Snowfall ink.

Basically I am a contrarian investor.  If the hordes (even the alliance ones) say panic sell, I buy.  If players are panic buying, I sell.

I said that I am willing to sit on snowfall inks, up to a guild bank tab before cata, for selling later.  Lets actually examine whether my gut feeling stacks up.

What I know

• Snowfall historically sold between 7 - 12 gold on our server, currently listed at 6 gold, and falling
• Ink of the sea historically sold between 2-3g on our server, and after the patch, became unavailable, then stuck at 11g, now is down to 6g
• Glyphs are steadily selling
• Herbs are now available for sale, with falling prices. 11g (basic) - 18g ('advanced')
• Recipees that use snowfall ink.
• Levelling Inscription early using Cata herbs will cost a fortune.
• Recipees making blue quality items will provide multiple skill ups.
• Glyphs are still selling well enough.

Recipees (taken from wow.crafterstome.com): 

• Northrend Inscription Research : 3x Ink of the Sea, 5x Resilient Parchment, 1x Snowfall Ink
• Darkmoon Card of the North :3x Eternal Life, 3x Ink of the Sea, 1x Resilient Parchment, 6x Snowfall Ink
• Faces of Doom :1x Frozen Orb, 2x Ink of the Sea, 10x Resilient Parchment, 5x Snowfall Ink
• Iron-Bound Tome :1x Frozen Orb, 2x Ink of the Sea, 10x Resilient Parchment, 5x Snowfall Ink
• Master's Inscription(shoulder inscription) : 1x Snowfall Ink
• Runescroll of Fortitude x 5 :5x Resilient Parchment, 1x Snowfall Ink

What I think

• This blog and directly in game influenced the fall in ink of the sea prices (I bought a lot at 5g), pushing it down from 11g.  Either that or it was natural anyway given the prices and availability of herbs.
• Many herbs will continue to be milled for glyphs, creating a surplus of snowfall inks
• Scribes will be able to use runescrolls to level the first few points of Cata level inscription
• Many levelling worgen/goblins will want to make the above.  I assume this will be true of the above.
• Darkmoon cards will still be the 'easiest' of the trinkets to obtain for the 80-84 bracket.

Based on the above, I am not willing to pay much for snowfall inks, but do see a market for them post cataclysm.  I have the banks space, therefore will stockpile these while cheap.

This is speculation.  I am betting my gold and bank space.  Use your own judgement for your server, gold and bank spaces.

Glyphs missing and pricing

Looking at the patch notes from last night, it appears that the missing glyphs are still missing (writing this over lunch at work). Good news for me - I still have too many glyphs of mage armor.  I am currently selling these at 350g Alliance side, and 250g Horde side, subject to demand and supply.  At various times, I advertise them in trade "Glyph of Mage Armor in AH.  Very limited supply (Scribes can not make any more)".  Taking an each way bet about when Blizzard will fix this, over a 3 week period, it is my intention to only have 5 of these, selling the rest before Cata.

Herbs are now available.  Not at old prices, but getting there.  I buy ink (generally from Wek), but I am now squeezing him down to 2g50 per ink (either snowfall or ink of the sea).  He balked at the new prices, but that is where I think they are heading.  I have a moderate stockpile of inks (1.5 guild bank tabs), looking to fill up to 3 tabs with cheap inks between now and Cata.  On that note, remember to convert the majority of ink of the sea down to a mix other inks between now and Cata, as it appears that Jessica will only play nice until then.

I am planning to sit on the snowfall ink to sell after Cata, and will be content to carry up to one guild bank tab of them.

I am currently pricing inks at 5g (a small discount on the AH), with re-crafting costs of about 16g.  With a couple of exceptions I post daily with a 21g threshold 90g fallback, 2 each, 48 hours, no autofallback; pulling 2.5-3K in daily sales.  I intend to tweak this further.

I want to hit Cataclysm with 20 of each glyph - down from my pre-patch levels of 40 (the reason I still have mage armor), and I will be discounting some glyphs that have not sold down to replacement costs (at the moment 16g).  I really should set up high sales and no/low sales glyphs as seperate groups, but the Auction Profit Master UI for sorting glyphs is painful (as was QA3 before it). 

Finally, keep an eye on inks other than Ink of the sea.  There are not many around, but every so often I see good prices for 'lesser' inks, buying them when I do.

Post patch blues??

Has anyone else been running around and noticed various post patch 4 issues?

I bet you have, I bet you need a new keyboard or close to it now.

These are mine...

Well lets look at the BG's alone for now.


That is 2 alterac valley runs I have been in over the CTA, if you cannot see the importance this is not a "look I'm on top" chart, its a holy s##t there is 41/43 horde in a 40 man????

I had this is in a WSG run as well with 17 horde but failed to screenshot.

Is anyone else experiencing any other interesting post patch blues? Or simply seeking a blue post patch?

Since patch and a week before I started a druid, hell no point using 1 of my 4 80's with raids at a close and inevitable ripping a sunder. So I started anew for a class I have always been keen on. Now I have my druid on the way up, and looking forward to the 2 sets of gear for 4 specs that will be cataclysm. While I'm not an expert on anything, by any means and I choose for it to remain that way, when you look at wow, there are people that know less about there toons than the character creation pane and with blizzards new healing zones the exact opposite of what we have been forcing down the throat of PUG's, you will find people instinctively running from efflorescence and so on. The void zone war is now a healing zone vs void zone war, hopefully not a great learning curb, but with blizzard as it is who really knows, they went from mana galore to healers doing DPS, and AOE weakening to threat nerfs, and so on. What will cataclysm hold apart from raiding pains, healing pains, and tanking pains?

HOPEFULLY SOME FUN!!!

Hell all spells are level based, half the stats you needed a degree to work out the effects of, and now we have it easy. Game has been made new player friendly (the people haven't) the raids are normalized for smaller guilds, and heroics are hard??? We will see, but as with Wrath it started hard and then gear made it a laughing matter, where you tried to see what heroics you could solo. NO SERIOUSLY!! there is a guy who was soloing FOS normal, no kidding.

The raids, the dungeons, the classes, the spells based on level, and the guilds...

Anyone else having fun with Cataclysm so far... you know before cataclysm...

Of course I have been eating lag, downloading over my limit and raging at the fact my instant spells take minutes to show up and my addons are in the virtual bucket...

But hey, you win some you lose some and then you get a GIANT FREAKING DRAGON KILLING YOUR WOMAN AND EATING YOUR CROPS!!

NOW WHAT WILL SHE COOK!!!

That's insane

http://www.worldofraids.com/wow-blue-tracker/us-forums/27401643624-blizz-the-insane-and-cataclysm.html

Insane in the Membrane is a feat of strength, not an achievement. Feats are things that you can't be guaranteed to complete, which is why they're feats and not achievements. ... It's possible that in some very specific situations where someone has completed the reputations which are being removed, but not others that will still be in the game, that it can still be completed. But it's something we're waiting for clarity on, and will let you know as soon as we do.

If you are running for Insane - have a look at what reputations will be removed when cata drops, and concentrate on them first.

If you supply to the 'Insane' crowd, point them at the above thread, and encourage them to quietly panic, and buy lots of stuff.

A strange trip

I am not always 'productive' in WoW.  We might like to think that saving 5k on fast flying is good deal, but I strongly suspect that my gold/hour from achievements is aweful.

One of the first projects I had was to collect cooking recipees and eat and drink all the samples of food, on my first toon on my own account (Foosecond)  So, off to Brewfest I went (before the days of 'achievements'), and then to Pilgrims festival, as well as a bit of pottering around.  I completed last years Brewmaster to get brew of the month, but didn't bother much with Hallow's End.

Then when Pilgrims festival turned up (more cooking recipees), I decided to look harder at a long strange trip.  Tips I have picked up:

• WoW Insider has a great resource for all of the festivals, it makes it a lot easier.
• Keep an eye on upcoming festivals and prepare what you can ahead of time.
• The AH is your friend, both as buyer and seller.
• I do respec/glyph for PVP, but apart from that, I largely fail at PVP.  While I am achievement hunting in a BG, my only concern is that achievement.  Once I have it, I will finish the battleground and attempt to work for the group.  It is well worth oranising a PVP if you want the PVP achievements.
• Random Number Generators can be 'mean', but given enough opportunity will play nice.

The last item I needed was the Sinister Squashling pet, and will confess to being concerned about the drop rate (rumour said 7% of the HH instance, 1% from an inkeeper treat, and 1% from putting out the fire in small town).

However yesterday afternoon after fulfilling my duties on the volunteer country fire fighter service, the pet dropped.

I'm done.  Goldshire can burn to ashes

Secondary markets are being ignored

I've been ignoring them.  The markets we used to play in in our free time.  Profitable, but not on our radar.

I've been hard enough pressed with respec's, regems, runeforging, rotations, rerolls, revelry and of course glyphs (couldn't think of how to start glyphs with an R, and I'm using poetic licence to declare that lvl 80 toons are re-rolls).

They are harder to post, as you need to press a button.  Whether it is the button press or the above distractions markets have been abandoned.

I still have 20+ Glyphs of Mage armor, so (with the prompting of Breevok), I shifted 1/2 to my horde side toon, and I am now selling - with advertisements - at 350-400g.  Only a few sales so far but at that price - thats all I need.  My horde toon had nearly a dozen alliance cooking recipees in his bag (vendor ones), so I did an auctioneer scan to see what they were currently listed for. 

Most of them were not listed.  Normally there are 3 different players in the market.  From conversations with a couple of others on our server, they have concentrated on 'core' business too.  Core business, by definition, is where you get the majority of your gold, but it does mean opportunities are being ignored.

I am assuming that most readers are catching up with their activities, or will soon.  If you have not yet played in the 'off markets', or have abandoned them, now is a good time to look.  The things that generally slip under the radar are:

• Cross faction recipees, out of the way cooking recipees (Also stockpile these for Pilgrims Festival - new cooks).
• Pets (even vendor ones).
• Outland/old world Engineer Repair bots (for making jeeves)
• Inscription offhands and runescrolls. 

Predictions for Cata glyph prices

Yesterday I posted about how glyph stocks were running down, and how inks and even herbs are still expensive.  Today I predict what happens next. Like all predictions take them with a grain of salt.  The chickens may have different entrails on your server.

Things I know:

• Inks and herbs are more expensive than they have been in a long time.
• Many inscriptionists are worried they will be left with unsellable stock.
• Many inscriptionists are selling out of popular glyphs.
• Cataclysm will drop 7 December 2010
• Pre-made glyph stockpiles are getting smaller
• No one will be farming northrend come cataclysm
• You can't trade down Ink of the sea come cataclysm
• There are XP gains for levelling toons gathering herbs.
• Players are re-evaluating what classes/roles they like
• New races means a wave of new alts all needing glyphs

Things I think:

• Many players have only got those glyphs they need.  Players currently need raid glyphs.
• Most of these players will swap to DPS spec/toons come cataclysm for levelling. They will want more glyph
• Part time professionals (who are in it for the buffs) will consume a huge amount of herbs
• New glyphs covering new spells will be released (needing herbs)
• Most levelling toons will be 'gogogo' and won't bother to read up on the XP bonuses.

Based on this, and yesterday's post, my predictions for Cataclysm are:

• On the first week of cataclysm, a single cataclysm herb will cost your first born lvl 85.
• For the first 3 months of cataclysm, cataclysm herbs will cost about 60g/stack.
• Ink of the sea will drop in price due to selling of stockpiles - about 2g/INK again (pre-4.0 levels)
• All other inks will be in short supply.
• Type 1 glyphs that were previously best in slot will sell well below replacement cost (See yesterday's post/Breevok's explanation)
• Type 2 glyphs will raise in price - especially for DPS spells of tank/healer classes.

My predictions are mine.  I am betting my gold and stockpiles on it.  Use your own judgment as to whether these strategies will work for you.

Falling stockpiles of glyphs

I am in no rush to sell down my glyph stocks.

I made 40 of each glyph type before 4.0 hit (with the exception of some charred glyphs).  Some of these are now down around the 20 glyphs level, others have not sold at all, and this is fine.  I missed out on much of the first mad rush of Glyphmas due to patching issues, stuffing up with pre-posting, and stuffing up using the armory AH. Small change in comparison to some others, but still more than worth doing.

With all of that, I still am doing OK.  I got some of the spike, and am still making about 1.2-1.5k (and rising) / day in glyph sales, and I am thinking about how/when to restock.

On my server, Ink of the Sea (Iots) is sitting around 13g ea, Snowfall 6g ea.  Lower value northrend herbs can be picked up for about 30g/stack.  Back of a napkin maths says a stack cheap herbs make 5 Iots, and 0.5 Snowfall (caveat emptor - I dont do a lot of ink making), making 5 * 13 + 0.5 * 6 = approx 65g.  Ink making seems profitable.

A lot of inks are being made as shown by the pitiful price of snowfall ink (used to be 12g).

A standard glyph - taking 3 inks + 1 parchment - call it 40g in cost, selling for 25g+ means that making glyphs from ink is a bad deal.  Making them from herbs will still cost 18g means that 25g glyphs are marginal, and you may be better of with stopping at inks.  However, 40g+ glyphs are worth making, and I will restock all of these as needed.  Have a look at Breevok's explanation of type 1 (vendor taught) & type 2 (research based) glyphs. I think there is a further breakdown - those glyphs that were 'best in slot' (and therefore don't need to be re-bought), and those that have been re-worked into 'better' glyphs.

Most glyphs are not worth making yet being sold in huge quantities, and more than just levelling glyphs, ergo stockpiles are being consumed; most likely because players believe that glyphs won't be 'sellable'. 

My predictions on the cost of inks between now and just before the Cataclysm:

• Type 2 (reasearch based) glyphs will recover in prices, especially those that were not previously best in slot
• Type 1 (vendor based) glyphs will fall way below replacement cost as all the part time scribes dump stock, especially where these glyphs were 'best in slot'
• Herb prices will largely stay where they are, with both more supply and demaind; rising in the fortnight before cataclysm
• Ink prices will be server dependant.  They should fall based on herb prices where you have enough goblins in the market.  If not, they will rise to re-crafting of glyph prices.

My cure for gogogo

I just dont get gogogo DPS players.  They wait 20 minutes in a DPS queue, then want a 3 minute dungeon skipping as much as possible.  The bonus 'xp' for a levelling dungeon is about 1 mob.  Oh well, I will try to run as fast as I am capable.

Last night I had Mauradon purple on my bear tank. I had gogogo warrior dps, and newbie warlock, and a favorite pocket healer.

As a bear tank I still need more rage.  My main is a DK tank, so I am used to multiple button spamming, which just does not work ok a mid level bear.  I have Enrage on cooldown, and carry copious rage potions.  I keep an eye on what agro the healer has, and whether I am picking up loose extras.  This is all so much easer if I have rage.  The easiest way to get rage is to be hit, meaning I want to be the targetted player.

Last night, after the first mob where the DPS rushes in front of me, I tried my 'I can go faster if you let me get agro' speach.  Response (as some of you predicted) was 'Not gonna happen'.

Problem: My stress levels trying to hold agro, with toons actively sabotaging it.  Then inspiration hit.  Why get upset?  I have no fear of being kicked.  Near insta requeue as a levelling tank.

My solution?

Yup. I popped cat form, /follow healer, said in party pull whatever you like, and told healer I was going afk (and I mostly did).

After one particularly hard pull entire party stopped for a drink.  I was fine, posting auctions on a second account.  I offered to tank again if I had the support of the DPS. "QQ" was my reply.

A little later Mr Warrior dead on the floor, I pop bear form and get all agro.  Someone resurects Warrior (grumble grumble healers grumble).  I continue tanking, we pick up speed, and Warrior no longer fights me for agro.  In all honesty, Mr Warrior was OK at holding agro.  But if he wants to tank he should queue as one.

The newbie lock was trying his best, cc'ing all over the place.  Kept one sattire banished and another enslaved most of the instance.  Appreciated being told that a second banish 'frees' a mob to be killed.  A couple of other tips were also appreciated, and he asked to re-run another instance. I requeued as soon as Warrior dropped group, for a mostly smooth run.

It kinda bothered me being a 'jerk'.  But it bothered me far less than fighting for control.  I will still start instances correctly, and if things get uncontrolled offer a polite reminder that they queued as DPS not tanks, and I run faster if I get hit.  But after that cat form is so less stressful.

TL; DR
If you are tank or healer, and DPS refuse to play nice, tell them why you need to be hit. Failing that /follow works well.  It is in your interest to be kicked rather than get a deserter debuff.