Valor of the Ancients - buff not enuff

I greatly appreciate this buff, it's a step in the right direction on behalf of the WoW devs. The VotA buff demonstrates to me how they understand and want to help the plight of the altoholics. Yet, I'm still struggling capping out 3 toons. After tracking my Valor Point progression across my lvl 90 alts the last couple weeks I've come to the conclusion that it's just not enough.

Currently I have 3 level 90s I'm playing regularly yet for the last couple week there I am on Sunday/Monday cramming trying to get that 1000 VP on the last 2. I've failed every week. The problem lays in the great end game divide between these characters progression. I raid on my main warlock which yields 5 or 6 bosses worth of valor, but I don't run heroics on him anymore and now that he's exalted with several factions I'm not doing as many dailies as I once was. For my 2 alts I have a Prot Pally and  Resto Sham, both do a lot of dailies still, run a lot of heroics for gear and get quick queues, but I'm not raiding on either yet so by the time the weekend hits all 3 of my toons are roughly about half capped. By Thursday or Friday one of them is usually in the lead by 100 points, but that still leaves several hundred I have to grind out before that VotA buff kicks in which has been leaving me just a couple days to work with. I'm sure I'm not alone in this problem. I have a simple solution though. 

Allow this buff to kick in once 1000 valor points have been accrued across all your characters. Bam! I see this buff lighting up by the end of the raid week every Thursday night leaving me most of the rest of the week to get these points capped without have to sweat it out. If the devs are going to offer a buff they need to commit to the spirit behind it and go full bore. Too many times I see interesting or helpful additions to the game that are executed in a rather half-ass manner. It's like a hastily applied bandage that only halfway covers the wound. Anything that's worth doing is worth doing right. It'd be great to see this buff reapplied so it actually treats the issue of excessive player grinding, because in it's current form it's only mildly alleviating the pain.

Random Complaints About Shadow Bolt

Image stolen from Cynwise

#1. Demonology is the only spec now that uses Shadow Bolt.

#2. Shadow Bolt should be a viable alternative for Malefic Grasp with Affliction.

#3. The Glyph of Shadow Bolt shouldn't be "required" for it's dps increase from more proc chances. 

#4. Why bother to redesign the animation of Shadow Bolt at the end of Cata when only 1 spec would be using it and that spec use the glyph that makes them so tiny you can't even see the animation in all it's glory? 

I'd be happy if they could just bring it back into Affliction. To me Shadow Bolt was always the iconic warlock spell. You start off with it on your bar there at level 1. It's evil ghostly purple and black skull was just the epitome of what being a warlock was.  I liked the glyphed effect of the 3 tiny bolts for awhile, but today it just seems like a less than epic experience after winding up that long hard cast. It complimented Affliction so well as it's filler too. I really don't like that my lock is basically looking and acting like a shadow priest now with it's Mind Flay, er... I mean Malefic Grasp... I don't care how well it's topping the meters.

It's petty I know, I miss my old big nuke.

The Lorewalkers - crying out for account wide achievement progress

I know I've clicked on you already!

I tried to stay true to the spirit of exploration in my Lorewalker progression. I was aware that by simply tabbing out and looking up a guide on where all these scrolls are placed I could easily, in a couple hours click them all to get exalted and have my own little hover-disc mount. But where's the fun and feeling of accomplishment in that? I knew eventually I would find them all, for I had discovered a bunch already just through normal questing. The problem is, they were all on different characters. To curb burnout and keep things fresh while leveling up multiple alts through Pandaria I skipped over many zones on purpose so I could hit them up later on alts. This does not bode well for Lorewalker rep achievements it turns out.

What I realized after "tabbing out", looking up a guide and then flying all over to fill in the blanks for these achievements on my main is that in fact I had done all this already, just not on the same toon. This bothered me. For I had in fact, though the natural course of questing and leveling found each and every one of these across my stable of alts, but I was at this point practically forced to exit the game and look up the answer to get credit for it. It would seem to me that Lorewalker rep is a prime candidate for account-wide progression tracking as it's very much in the spirit of "not forcing you stay on a single character just to work on an achievement". While we're at it, make Glorious! account wide progressive as well. I got about 90% of this list done while leveling the alts, but I had to track and kill most of them again at 90 to get the achievement. I would have rather left those rares up for leveling players who could much more benefit from the fight with their bonus experience gains, lower level gear drops and other goodies. 

My Cata Transmogrification Time Capsule - Paladin

Before my pretty transmog sets get ruined by all those MoP quest greens I decided to take a few pics to remember what my guys were rocking in the fashion department. For the most part I just used what I've held onto or could quickly acquire.

Valori - Blood Elf Paladin
*These caps kinda suck. I was going for a more cinematic shot vs. zooming in and showing off the good.
Starting off as a pretty straight forward "Blood Knight" set I swapped in a couple of non-tier warrior pieces during Dragon Soul to accent and update the look while staying in the black/red color scheme for a strong and bold look. Though the pixel resolution differences in mixing old and new armor models is very apparent I thought they complemented each other well enough and I was happy with the end result.
The best part about this set is it can be almost entirely put together through vendors! Everything on this paladin except for the iconic shield (quest) and boots (raid drop) can be bought with Justice Points. With MoP in full swing you're probably saving all your JP for lvl 90 gear, but soon enough after you've bought everything you'll be trying to figure out creative uses for that JP again and that's where our friendly old tier vendors come in.

• Shield: Bloodforged Guard (quest reward in Shadowmoon Valley) *don't bother farming Heroic Rampants, this is much quicker.
• Helm: Jaw of Repudiation (valor vendor)
• Boots: Stillheart Warboots (Dragon Soul - Ultraxion)

The "Blood Knight" pieces: Inferno Tempered (chest, legs, hands, boots) along with the matching belt Girdle of the Protector can all be bought with JP from G'eras in Shattrath City.

1-handed Weapon choices: Find something you like, you'll be happier. This one pictured is actually a random Wrath green boe drop that I got off the AH for pennies. It has a red ribbon tied around the hilt that I liked. I originally used a couple of the Dark Iron Blacksmith weapons: Ebon Hand and Blackguard. They're small, subtle and I like the classic vanilla models. Once I got an actual Souldrinker I left it as is for awhile.

 Make sure to match your transmog with your mount!

Shado-Pan Wallwatcher - FIXED

No Mammoths Allowed

I'm really liking the new stone form mounts

I honestly thought my graphics card was glitching out for a minute. Then I noticed my debuff Chastised. Applied when you steal/loot the tribute on the shrine just north of Paw-don Village. All the little randomness in MoP keeping things fun and interesting.

WoW Brilliant Idea #219 - Dynamic Quest Grouping

Cross-Realm Zones is now a part of the game, whether you like it or not. I'm not going to get into the merits and effects of CRZ, that's a whole other post, but it's here and seeing so many more players out and about in the world while leveling has gotten me thinking.

Have an option for auto-detection questing groups. If you're the kind of friendly player who likes grouping up with people have an option you can click somewhere that will make you 'available' for grouping. When you're in an area questing this feature will monitor those who also have it selected, check for matching player levels, zone quest progress and then have a pop-up list of potentials you can group with. This can be briefly utilized for those "have to kill 100 mobs on your way to the back of the cave to finally kill the actual quest mob, then fight your way back out", kind of quests. You know, for when that other guy is heading into the cave at the same time and then you're both rushing to get to the mob first. Or that group quest you've had in your log for an hour but can't complete because you keep keeping knocked back and falling to your death. I'm looking at you Yetimus! Whether grouping for a single quest or finding a questing partner, consider it a virtual ice-breaker.

Back in the old days I'd just hit up the general chat channel /1: "just starting out  in Tarren Mill, anyone want to group up for some questing?". This actually produced good results way back when. Seemed like I was often grouping up with random players just to quest, but that was a different time and sadly through the convenience of Dungeon Finder and easily solo-able questing there's not much need for actual player interaction these days. I think Dynamite Quest Grouping could really help with that. All the people I first added to my Friends List were unknowns I met through questing. Some of them never got much further than Hillsbrad Foothills, but 1 random player I met all those years ago is currently the GM of one of the largest guilds on my server. So you never know who you might bump into out there and any feature that could help interaction amongst players could only help to make things better overall.

Or if you're like me and rather not deal with another player most of the time, just keep the damn thing off.

Hey Dooker! Mind if I hang out while you play WoW?

"Los Pollos Ardiente"

Never bring a single Phoenix Hatchling to a 3 Phoenix Hatchling fight.

He knew this day would come. It was inevitable. The world of underground pet battles is harsh, where sometimes even the victor limps away to die. There is no loyalty in pet battles, you serve your roll, you live or die, for the team. Most team mates don't even bother learning your name. Why bother, one of you will probably be dead by tomorrow. If you do manage to stay alive long enough though, you're bound to re-enter the circle with former foes and allies alike. It's just a matter of time. This was different though. This wasn't just some rag-tag band of brawlers Dave was confronted with. This was his former gang, "Los Pollos Ardiente". Deemed too small and too weak to a be a contender, their leader Rico had Dave "jumped out" right before what was supposed to be his first battle. Then to add insult to injury they had him replaced with an Ash Chicken. But that was many patches ago, way back in beta and time heals all wounds. Dave recovered, grew stronger and now was a whole level higher than his former brothers. Dave looked them each square in the eye. First Johnny, then the other Johnny before finally setting his stare on Rico. Dave could see it in his eyes... fear. He played out this fight over a million times in his head and he knew exactly how this was going down. Dave was ready. Ready for that sweet, sweet revenge.

My Cata Transmogrification Time Capsule - Warlock

Before my pretty transmog sets get ruined by all those MoP quest greens I decided to take a few pics to remember what my guys were rocking in the fashion department. For the most part I just used what I've held onto or could quickly acquire.

Evilest - Forsaken Warlock
Interestingly my lock left Cata looking pretty much the same as he did starting out. What I refer to as the "Lord Godfrey" set, but Space Cowboy is another way it's been described. Pretty much every clothie early in Cataclysm wore a least a few of these pieces in either red, purple or white and typically all three colors at the same time which kind of ruined the simple elegance to this set. The various pieces were pretty ubiquitous through the launch content found in quest rewards, rep vendors, 5-mans, and even crafted through tailoring.The problem in coordinating these sets in terms of fashion was that it lead to horrible itemization. If you wanted a full red or white or purple set of this armor you were wearing pieces with +spirit +hit +resilience. Not exactly the kind of stats you want when tackling WoW's revisit to difficult heroic 5-man dungeons. My following transmog set will clearly illustrate how bad of an armor set you have to put together, just to look so good. Links and stuff below the photo.

• helm: Helm of Temperance (Earthen Ring rep) or Vicious Fireweave Cowl (tailoring)
• shoulder: Vicious Fireweave Shoulders (tailoring - *this is the only purple colored shoulder)
• chest: Robes of Orsis (Ramkahen rep) or Vicious Embersilk Robe (tailoring)
• gloves: Bone Fever Gloves (Dragonmaw rep)or Vicious Fireweave Gloves (tailoring)
• belt: Vicious Fireweave Belt (tailoring - *this is the only purple colored shoulder)
• cloak: Shadow-Cloak of Dalaran (drops off Moroes, 2nd boss in Karazan, easy farm)
• weapon: Lightning Rod (Heroic - no transmog needed!)

* yes, I swapped out my Dragonwrath for this xmog set, I just think the heroic Lightnight Rod works so perfectly having such a complimentary hue and when that Power Torrent flame turns purple, it's like BAM!

I've never been 100% on this cloak TBH, I've held on to it for years and it seemed to match well, but I'm sure if I put some time in I'd find a cloak that I feel better about. Pepe's Shroud of Pacification (trash drop in Battle for Mt. Hyjal) is a more flashy option, but a little too "peacock-ish" for my tastes.

 Make sure to match your transmog with your mount!

Oh the lagmanity!

Pre-Mop launch the Alliance guild Onitall on Nordrassil-US wanted to come by and hang out in Orgrimmar one last time before heading off to that misty island. Level 90 guards be damned, they hung in there a good hour.

WoW Brilliant Idea #461 - Invisible Xmog Gear

They can call it "Emperor's New Armor Set" or something like that in reference to the classic tale of The Emperor's New Clothes. The concept is simple, a Replica set similar to the old tier sets made available at the Darkmoon Faire but instead of adding a new model it just removes the model altogether. Bam! Still got your gear and all your stats, just no graphics. I've heard many complaints about shoulders specifically spoiling the overall transmog look people have been going for. Mostly from those whorish Belves, but with this new set of "invisible treads" players will have a whole new level of customization to perfectly tweak their toons.

DMF Vendors Need More Stuff

I'm currently sitting on almost 1000 Darkmoon Prize Tickets across all my alts. I have 2 Dancing Bears, a Forest Strider and at least 1 of each pet, most alts have the little monkey with the fez because it's a little monkey with a fez! I've even redeemed some tickets for the Replica tier pieces, but it's been months since I've claimed a prize at the Darkmoon Faire. So where's my motivation to keep visiting our wandering band of carnies and merry makers?

Yes, I have a lot of alts, but I'm not hardcore about the Faire at all. At best I hit up the Faire once on half my toons while it's in town mostly for the +5 cooking and fishing quests and to turn my Grisly Trophies in. Those first couple months after the Faire's relaunch I collected and turned in all the dungeon/battleground quest drop artifacts for the achievements on my main. Since then however when I get a Mysterious Grimoire, Captured Insignia, etc... they all get put on the AH. At any given time I have 20+ Soothsayer Runes littering my toons bags. They don't sell for squat so often I just have to type in DELETE to get rid of them. I've learned to NOT click that first raid boss just so I can avoid looting another one of these things.

Last December I wrote about how grand and awesome the DMF redesign was and that's where my issue lays. I still think it's a beautiful and magical zone and even after 6+ months the mini-games are still kinda fun, but in this game it's gear and rewards that drive players to keep chuggin away at same content again and again. And in a relatively short amount of time, even just casually enjoying this content I've realized that there's no reward left to pursue and keep me coming back. Most of the time if I'm at DMF I'm fishing not playing. Love that Darkmoon Firewater! Gear, toys, goodies, etc... drive players to keep playing. I'm sure I'm not in the minority of players here who have exhausted the gifts DMF offers and that kind of seems like a shame.

So for now, I'll still be casually enjoying the Faire, hording up those prize tickets and crossing my fingers that at the very least those heirloom pants that were data-mined so long ago at least end up at the vendor here.

WoW Brilliant Idea #274 - Gold Sink Account Stashes for Your Alts

I want my own Guild Vault or Stash. I want a central bank, storage, etc. that only my alts on my realm have access to. The convenience of not having to look through my altoholic tabs/pop ups and see which toon has what materials then log in and out and mail various stuff to the one character who needs those items would be a major quality of life improvement in the game for me. I even briefly had my own guild just for my 10 alts on my main realm for this vary reason and it was grand. No more hopping from alt to alt to get stuff. No more struggling with what alt should hold on to my herbs, one of my 3 alchemists or one of  2 my herbalist? I traded in the perks of my recently broken up lvl 25 guild for the ease of supporting and supplying my alts with the stuff they needed. Ultimately being in this self imposed isolation took it's toll and I brought all my alts to a new guild leaving my 1 non lvl 85 as the tried and true banker alt with it's own guild. But it left me wondering why WoW doesn't have a feature to more easily share items across same account characters?  Diablo 3 has this, why not WoW? It even seems like implementing a private storage would elevate system resources for Blizzard and it's severs. All those log in servers being used every time you have to hop over to an alt for just a minute. It'd reduce the system resources of your own computer by not having to load a new character with all it's add-on's and the world/city graphics of whatever area it's currently in. Instead just a storage or bank, a simple window of stored icons that only loads when you need it. I don't know how the game/system works for this kind of stuff, this is just my layman speculation.

So my suggestion for fixing this while also combating another issue Blizzard seems to be currently concerned with, The Gold Sink Personal Vault Storage! Basically allow any toon on an account to go purchase a guild vault that only characters on that account and realm would have access to. Set it up the same as guild vaults and charge an increasing amount for every tab in it. I'd gladly pay any cost for a feature like this. I'd glady pay 100,000 gold out of my current 550,000 gold just for 1 tab. I personally don't even need much space. Just enough to store elemental mats all professions use while having enough space left over to drop the mats an alt collects in any given day so when I log over to another toon he can pick them up and add them to his personal bank.

Simple and brilliant right?

I Still Miss Wintergrasp

Wintergrasp even with all the QQ'ers QQ'n about imbalance in numbers or buff was always a grand time throughout the duration or Wrath. Take over a workshop, man a canon in the fort or a tower, bulldoze that workshop in that demolisher you just built (until they took that out). Defend/attack, go as ground support for the vehicles... There was a lot of options in how you played WG. We won some and we lost some, but it was always great. Even when the battle wasn't going on it was an actual world pvp zone filled with activity. It was there! On the Map! You could fly to it, you could fly around it, YOU DIDN'T ZONE INTO IT! Many players would stick around scrapping it out for so long after a battle that the next one would start. The rich ore, herb and later fishing resources available made sure even the timid players would be hanging around. I'd often stick around so long farming it up after the fight that the next one would begin. The music in WG between battles was somber, peaceful almost mournful like something you'd expect to hear after a truly grand battle. It really set the tone for this beautiful zone between the bloodshed. The battle itself was fun enough that people always got into it regardless of wanting to run a VoA or farm the elites after their victory. I loved WG from the first time to the last time and all throughout Wrath, regardless of what toon I was on, whether he had any pvp gear at all or not, if I was online and it was going on I was there.

Tol Barad really failed to capture anything that I loved about WG. TB was just a mindless zergfest until the clock ran out. Win or lose you most likely hit your hearth and got the hell out of there unless you stuck around to do the dailys. The actual zone was all but a ghost town 99% of the time outside of the battle. With WG when you won you saved that hour long hearth cd and headed to the fortress for the portal back to Dalaran and flew by or saw your fellow combatants and in most cases hung out for awhile! Players celebrated their victory in WG by shooting the shit. They kicked it on their epic mounts, dueled around with each other, pug'd VoAs, etc... The WG courtyard after a victory was just as populated as Dal or the Org AH. Even if you lost and that last wall was down you'd fly by a crowd of the opposing faction and their elite npc's just to use that portal! It was a little, but significant something. TB was instanced like so many other parts of Cata so it didn't really feel like it was an actual place. The lore sucked and was all but completely unexplained. You don't need grand lore to sustain something. That little journal of Archavon's was all you needed! That was hilarious, and with each patch we met another of his brothers. You weren't flagged upon entering TB so basically it was just another questing zone on pve servers. If you weren't grinding for some vendor item or maximizing your daily quests for guild rep there was really no purpose in going there at all.

TLDR: WG ruled, TB sucks. I will continue to wax nostalgic about WG for years. As for TB I can't really say I'm going to miss something that I never cared about or rarely spent any time doing.

My Top 3 Pandaren Monk names, so far

1. Chuckymonky

2. Funkymonky

3. Tonyshalhoub

Inscription was invented by the Devil

Making Fox Van Allen over at WoW Insider the Devil's Advocate by continually pushing people to the profession. =P

His First Look at Inscription in MoP

I've had at least 1 character with every profession maxed since the end of Wrath and still to this day Inscription is my least favorite and least profitable mostly because it is the most unstable and unreliable market. DMF decks and Mysterious Fortune cards aside your only other gold maker is Glyphs and that's where the problem lies. The glyph market is completely dependent on the hardcore players who camp the AH and constantly refresh their supply of glyphs. Glyph value is completely dependent on nothing more than what those Inscriptionists willing to play the game deem them worth. The selling price of a glyph can flux +/-300% in a matter of days due to no other fact than Mr. Uber Glyph seller guy hasn't been on in 12 hours. Unless you like making the AH your own time consuming mini-game I'd avoid suggesting anyone to pursue it for raking it in.

I think Fox continually pointing out the riches he made (a year and a half ago in the first months of the expansion mind you) is doing a disservice to his readers suggesting Inscription. There will always be windows of opportunity for every profession and in the early days of Cata those DMF decks and trinkets in addition to the new Mysterious Fortune cards were a perfect storm of profitability. Let's break it down. You had tons of players leveling from 80-85. This means more herbalist herbing than at any other time during the rest of the expansion. Many of those herbalists didn't have alch or inscript and they all ended up selling them on the AH competing with each other and keeping the herb buying costs stable. Meanwhile you have this huge brand new customer base of freshly 85 who want those epics, especially considering how good the trinkets this time around were. My lock was using that Volcano trink until Dragon Soul.

Now I agree that striking while the iron is hot will net you some decent gold and in the first few months of the expansion if you have all your auction ducks in a row you can turn out a serious profit. I sold probably about a dozen decks and trinkets for 20k+ in the first couple months of Cata. I bought many herbs to help produce them even though I already had 2 herbalists. But by the time Firelands had hit I found my DMF deck/trinket business quickly drying up and barely netting a profit good enough to continue pursuing it. Mysterious Fortune cards added greatly to this early expansion money making. I think putting a lottery scratcher in a video game was a boon for income and the gold fever of the player base made sure that those cards would always sell. But after a few months and the novelty of those cards wore off I found them making roughly the same profit for me as my Blacksmiths belt buckles or my Jewelcrafters purple or orange gems. Those cards still sell today and for a decent profit compared to the mats required for making them, but it's barely a steady income, Nobody is getting rich off them anymore than any other profession crafted item. After the early expansion mania wore off and the player base dwindled and those remaining players were 'geared' what have inscriptionists been left with for the last year or more? Glyphs. That utterly maddening, time and soul sucking market that I don't even try to get in on anymore. I've read several guides and tips on how to 'break into' or 'beat' the glyph game, but in my experience unless you're willing to dedicate a serious amount of time to babysitting the AH you're not going to get rich off of glyphs. I'd rather be doing about anything else in the game than that.

The Forsaken in the Age of Transmog

I touched on this awhile back in a post, but apparently it's still on my mind.

I love my Undead, I have 4 of them including my main. I find the Forsaken lore and quest lines to be underlined with a tragic sadness. Former humans, raised up and enslaved through unholy and demonic powers to fight against their will for the very forces that killed and ripped their humanity from them in the first place. Finally after breaking free and trying to notch their own place in this world they are ultimately despised and hated by everyone, even their own Horde, not that they care about them too much either. Sylvannas has her own agenda, but I believe most of the Forsaken are rather just kinda "eh, whatever" about their afterlife. They're resilient, they press on and just keep "living".

But, in the age of transmog I feel penalized for playing this race. Their lack of elbows and knees really destroys the otherwise great looking armor sets available all throughout each expansion of WoW. I don't care for Human males either though. Their hips being so big and their overall straight and shapeless forms just leave a lot of gear looking unimpressive on them.

That being said, there's some sets that just look utterly badass on an Undead. I'm thinking specifically my locks T8 Deathbringer Garb and T10 Dark Coven's Regalia. Both seem tailor made for an Undead. Nobody wears those sets better than a Forsaken. Even our first sighting of the Deathbringer Garb a year before it was available in game for players was Grand Apothecary Putress at the Battle for Wrathgate.

But ya, with all the talk about updated character models I'd be easily placated if they'd simply add some knees and elbows to my Forsaken. They can leave the spine that pokes out, I don't mind that nearly as much.

First Aid - Should you even bother?

First Aid could use some updating, not to mention just about all professions, primary and secondary, but I'll focus just on First Aid for this post. WoW Insider's The Queue touched on this today and several of it's readers comments suggested improvements and advancements that could help make this secondary profession a little more interesting and capable. Instead of following suite and wildly speculating about how changes could improve things I'm just going to look at what First Aid is, here and now and break down whether or not it's even worth leveling up. Yes, there's a bunch of achievements you can rank up through the profession, one of which (Ultimate Triage) can actually be kind of fun to try to get and better yet is awesome when you didn't even realize it. But for actual function in game it really only reigns supreme in one area, PvP.

In Combat
The great benefit First Aid has is that bandages can be used in combat so that mostly throws it into the PvP category which also touches on it's unique feature that they can be used on other players regardless if they have the profession or not. Though in reality unless you have some amazing on the fly communication going on that other player will likely move the second you start using this 8-second cast-time based bandage hence interrupting it's effect. But for self heals during PvP this is where First Aid really shines, Those bandages can be a literal life saver when used after a perfectly timed CC. In addition, unlike a health potion which can only be used once after combat has started, you'll be able to bandage again after it's 1 minute cooldown is up regardless of dropping combat or not.  But it's not the only in combat self heal ability, there's actually a whole race our there with a bandage effect talent build right in.

Forsaken Racial
If you're Forsaken/Undead your Cannibalize can also be used while fighting and gives the benefit of regenerating mana as well, provided there's a fresh corpse around, which is pretty common in battlegrounds, but only rarely reliable or available in arenas. But out and about in the world questing or running dungeons you won't have to go too far to find, kill then eat a humanoid or undead npc. Beasts, demons, dragonkin can not be Cannibalized. So here's this a whole race on Azeroth who already have and even more power effect built into their character from level 1. No material gathering, no leveling, nada. Just eat away. No, I didn't forget Gift of the Naaru. But a 20% heal with a minute longer cooldown doesn't even come close to working as a replacement for a bandage. But you play Alliance or you play Horde but you'd never even consider rolling an Undead? Well luckily you have a 4 in 10 shot of playing something way more ubiquitous than a Forsaken.

Healing Classes
If you play any healing class in any spec then like me you probably didn't bother leveling First Aid on them at all and never thought about it again. Many years ago I started leveling First Aid on my first alt, an Enhance Shaman. By level 20-something I realized that I still had a stack of Linen Bandages that I've never used so I stopped wasting my cloth to continue leveling it.  He's still sitting at 55/150 First Aid.

Outside of Combat and Class Abilities
Outside of combat there's just so many more readily available options beside bandages. There's food! Cheap, plentiful, utterly common food. You don't even have to make an effort to get it seeing as most humanoid mobs will drop some after you kill them.  Warlocks have Soul Harvest which when used after a Soul Burned Health Stone can take you from 10% health to full in half the time of eating. Precede that with a couple Life Taps and your down time is pretty much nil. Soul Burn is kind of a personal gripe with me since I'm a Forsaken warlock. They basically rolled one of my racial's into my class so eh no big whoop. Though on my priest Cannibalize is still awesome for 5 mans when I just eat on the go and never have to bother a mage for water, speaking of which... Mages have glyphed health regeneration through Evocation, +40%! Actually, every class has some sort of health regeneration talent or ability. Most aren't as available, reliable or convenient as just eating, but Recuperation, Spirit Mend, Enrage Regeneration, Blood Tap/Lichborne+Death Coil, etc... You get the idea.

So outside of PvP is there really a reason to waste all that cloth and time on First Aid? Not for this player. Embersilk, even as this point of the expansion is still too valuable for me to squander on bandages that'll go unused. Even my main who is nearing 13,000 achievement points isn't even getting any for his Preparing for Disaster. He'll get it eventually, but I'll wait for MoP when those bandages will once again grant skill up points.

Tanks are dumb

Response to: Hero Moments: What it means to be a tank

I've had my fair share of "last man standing" as a tank (I mean we're the tank that's kinda our job and what what we're built for!), but none of them compare to the times I've seen the dps and heals use a clever and perfectly executed combination of survival skills to keep the fight going long after the tank (or tanks) have hit the floor and that boss was still up at 5% hp or more.  A mage who knows to kite with Blink then Iceblock passing off threat to the rogue who takes it to the face the whole duration of his Evasion then Vanishing. The lock who wisely hits his Demonic Portal to kite as long as he can before using Soulshatter and bouncing that threat to the hunter who taunts with his pet and feigns death. Perhaps dps warrior/dk/druid had the foresight to stance/presence/bear swap and takes over aggro and soaks the rest as long as they can while the healers are busting out every last sliver of that blue bar to keep alive anyone they can until that boss finally joins the tanks dead on the floor. That's pretty awesome! Ya, tanks being the last ones alive in an encounter is slightly less impressive to the things I've seen dps and healers pull off tier after tier. I'm thinking back to our rogue evasion tanking LK in 25s for his last 5mill hp after our tank died in the throne room. That was before transition when LK "wipes" the raid.

Tanks should be careful not to break their arms patting themselves on the back. The role has been largely automated. Here's your threat, it's just a given. Here's your CD's, some are longer than others, but often you don't even have to use em all. Most of the work of being a tank is done before you even enter a raid by setting up your gear properly. The rest is just swap when you get this debuff, swap back when it's over. Hit this CD when this attack happens, which is conveniently about as often as it takes your CD to come up again. That's about it. My favorite part of being a tank is how mind-numbingly simple it is and the satchels you get from randoms. Seriously, the only roll I can perform while paying more attention to the TV than the game. I mean I can half ass it on my dps but I don't like being shown up on the meters so I pay attention. You don't really have any competition as a tank. It's mostly pass/fail. Either you died or the boss died, everything else is kinda irrelevant. And that suits me just fine. This fear of being a tank is highly unfounded at this point of the game. You want an easy role, quick gear and all that glory? Roll a tank (especially a blood dk)! You won't regret it, but you'll probably get bored very quickly if you don't have a TV in the same room as your computer.

Faction Bias: part 1

What started off as a reply comment over at WoW Insider has once again turned into it's own post.

In response to My own private faction bias.

In this first part I address the issue of going from Horde to Alliance or Alliance to Horde by sharing my experience in doing so.

I can relate to what Matthew is going through here, though my feelings in regard to lore and game play restrictions due to faction segregation don't run so deep. After playing my main for over 3 years I moved him from Horde on one realm to Alliance on another right about the time Firelands came out. My previous guild of 1.5 years decided to call it quits after the disappoint that was Cata and general lack of interest and hardcore progression during Tier 11. I was optimistic about this though, looking at it as an opportunity. I thought a whole big change would be fun and refreshing So I went from a Forsaken lock on one realm to a Worgen lock on another realm. Ultimately it turned out to be a bad decision for me, but the reason why totally surprised me.

I was enjoying playing with my new Alliance guild and tackling a higher level of progression raiding than I previously did, but the whole time something was off. Outside of raiding on my now "traitor" main I rarely logged into him. I was always back on my original realm playing my Horde alts that I left behind. A couple of them even found their way into new guilds main raid groups. As the patch went on it became more and more apparent to me that by faction transferring I pretty much mutilated my main into this character I no longer recognized, no longer felt anything for. Turns out that scrawny little Undead was more to me than a lean, mean dot throwing machine. I completely stripped him of his (our?) history and identity and in the end I didn't like it. So very shortly after Dragon Soul launched I decided to return him to the fold of my Horde alt army back on my ever shrinking original realm. Yes, I actually paid once again for 2 premium services to return him right back to where he started. *Shakes fist at Blizzard* (You should get 1 free transfer a year per paid account, but that's another post entirely)

The effect of this homecoming was immediately apparent. My lock felt like my lock once again. He had his Orc shaman brother, his Forsaken sister priest and all the others under the same guild banner again and just a mailbox away from anything they needed. Pug's are fewer are further apart on this old realm, most of my alts don't even get into a BH during any given week unless I'm the one putting them together. Our top ranked raiding guild can't hold a candle to the #5 raiding guild on the Alliance server I left behind. There are no Rated BGs groups and only one 25 man raiding guild left, but it's home and having my main back there was the best decision I ever made. It was a lesson for sure, I just wish I didn't have to pay a combined total of $110 to learn it.

Part 2 coming soon: It's Orcs & Humans, not Orcs VS. Humans! (Why can't we all get along and why do I have to be stuck in this faction always against that faction? I want to defect to the Argent Crusade or run off and join the Darkmoon Faire!)

I might have to shorten that subhead.

Why nobody plays a lock anymore, as written by a lock

I went from absolutely loving Demo when I swapped to it when ICC came out and it rocked for the 9 months we were stuck in there. Originally I only went Demo to stack spirit and buff that raid as much as possible, but it turned out it was pretty awesome. Molten Core procs were plentiful and often. The Princes in ICC was the greatest, you could maintain a near 100% Decimation up time just bouncing a SB at whichever prince was at 1% hp. Nobody could touch my Demo lock on that one, not even close. Soul Fire under Decimation used to hit like a truck instead of the wet noodle it became in Cata. I'd be 4th or 5th down on the meters going into execute phase, but those SF nukes hit so hard I'd often climb my way to first in less than 25% boss health.

Then Cata dropped a big ol poop on Demo. The spec just seemed like it wasn't working right this whole expansion and they just never bothered to do anything about it.  All we got was another slow-cast nuke in HoG who's main benefit debuff was often negated by the tank or boss moving. Most Demo locks were and still are confused over whether Shad Bolt or Incinerate is supposed to be your filler.  Tier 11 alone saw Demo's using everything from the Succy to the Imp for our main DPS pet depending on the patch. In fact the one pet we haven't used this whole expansion for pure dps is the one only Demo's can use, the Felguard (Blueberry doesn't count). As things normalized heading up to Firelands we got the whole Felguard/Felpuppy/Demon Soul/MWC pet twisting dance, which maximized dps enough to justify doing it, but in reality few locks could master. Not to mention this whole set up completely voided our other main new talent, Impending Doom... "Oh my Meta is up but I still have 35/25/whatever seconds left on my Demon Soul and trinket." What a friggin headache.

In addition if you didn't have an Ele Sham in raid your GM or raid lead would probably be pressuring you to go Demo whether you liked it or not.

Oh and Gul'dan help you if you didn't have this shit down pat, your dps greatly suffered, even being off a little. There was no, "Oh I missed that cd or that HoG Immo refresh on this rotation, I'll get it next time and keep going." No, you were screwed, there was no recovering and keeping up with everyone else.

And your reward for mastering this nightmare of a sitation and pulling it off perfectly? Roughly about the same dps as that shad priest or mage or hunter or any other class who doesn't have to track of half the timers you are, doesn't have to hit a forth of the spells you do. No wonder nobody plays this class anymore. Oh, and only if you didn't have to move too much and could stand in melee the whole fight! Frig that!

Destro is the only spec that's felt right this whole expansion, which is sad cuz you should have just rolled a mage if that's what you wanted to do. But Destro made sense when you looked at it, you weren't scratching your head over the spells you were using, the procs and flow and rotation/priority and ISP getting better and the use of Soul Burn in execute phase plus Bane of Havoc! All the new stuff weaved perfectly into the old standard stuff. Destro is and has been great symphony of a spec this whole expansion, don't know what went wrong with the other two.

Affliction got better once we no longer had to deal with the whole Improved Soul Fire talent/buff. Affliction locks juggling Soulfires? That was just wrong! Then they nerfed the hell out of our only cool new ability Soul Swap (for PVP reasons I'm sure, which is just pouring salt on the wounds) and SS still requires a glyph for something it should just do by default! Soulburn Seed? Oh please... 1 fight currently that comes in handy and still doesn't touch the aoe of most other classes even when combined with a Shadowflame. That's locks using a CD, and 2 separate aoe abilities, not even coming close to Mind Sear, Multi-shot, Swipe, FoK, etc... so on... Oh, btw here we are a year later and Affliction locks are back to using Soulfires because of the tier bonus!!

*sighs and hangs head dejectedly.

Any more confusion over why locks are the least played class?

8 Tips to Minimize Fail When Forming a PUG.

*work in progress, it started off being 10 tips. 

None of them include asking for ilevel!

"Patience is a virtue" and "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

The time you spend putting together a capable and solid pug will be returned ten fold when you're finally in there. Take a little extra time and not just grab the first person who responds out of trade. Getting things set up right from the get go will help eliviate many problems down the line. Save yourself and your raid a ton of frustration by following these simple steps when setting up your next pug.

1. Tab Out:
Look up all potential and unfamiliar pugs at wowarmory.com. This is an easy and informative resource for getting an idea about who you're dealing with. You can check their raid progression and even use the gear audit function to see if they even bothered to gem and chant. Don't know about specific class specs/gear set up? Ask someone who does to give them a quick look over.

Obvious signs of fail - no gems/chants, shamans/druids wearing cloth, 0 actual raid kills and waaaaay too many in Raid Finder.

2. Ask for a Commitment:
If you're planning a full clear then ask everyone if they have 2+ hours to get through Dragon Soul. An experienced group can easily blow through regular mode and still have that first flask ticking. If you think the group can handle some heroics ask if theyr'e going to freak out on the first or 2nd wipe and bail. When you clarify the situation for the raid and give an estimated time for it's comlpetion then it's on that one player who bounces before it's done.

3. Have a Raid Leader:
If you aren't up on every aspect of each encounter from the boss abilities to the tanking to the healing to the melee to the range... then get someone in there who is. If you know all this stuff but aren't good at marking and explaining mechanics or even talking in vent/mumble, then get someone who is. In a pug even experienced players are going to go about things differently and you need someone steering the ship and keeping everyone on the same page. Which brings me to...

4. Get Everyone in Vent/Mumble:
My rule is no Vent/Mumble, no invite. It takes way too much time typing out line after line of instruction at every pull. More so, most of what you type out will be forgotten once you do pull. Fact is, unless you are yelling "melee out" or "hit buttons" most players will fail at it.

5. Loot Rules:
Clearly state the loot rules at the beginning and be thorough. Hopefully are you familiar enough with the loot to know when to step in and say, "hey that item has hit and you're a resto druid so that's not main spec" and other such situations. PuGs will roll on anything and everything.

My rules for a mostly pug filled run.
- Main spec over Off spec
- 1 tier piece and 1 non tier peice per person (when rolling against the same players).
-  BoE's are Main spec then open roll, if taken for Main spec I ask them to equip right then.
-  Patterns are up for whoever in raid has that profession then open roll if nobody can use it. I check for that "glow" and "chime" that they learned it and ask for a link in their book.
- Essense of Destruction I like to gather up and offer at the end of raid to those players who didn't get any loot. It's a small consolation prize to go with those gems. That can be a pain so a simple /roll when one drops is simple enough. On that note, pocketing the Essence is a dick move unless half or more of the raid is made up of your guildies and then they better end up in the vault.

Link the drops in a raid warning /rw and mention them in vent such as...
[Sexy Love Mace of the Gerbil] MS Roll!
To help avoid confusion I will specify what kind of item is up for roll while linking it. "tank bracers", "agility leather, "healer cloth", etc...

Reserves are a touchy situation, but can be totally justifiable. If you find a tank in full tier and mostly 397s and he really just needs a ring or that damn shield off Blackhorn, then I say, hell ya. If it's one of those low drop rate trinkets that any of 4 bosses can drop then I say hell no. This is also where Vent/Mumble and communication comes in handy. You'd be suprised how giving and accomidating players can be when you're straight up with them. Yes, that hand of Morchok is a great Frost DK or Fury Warrior weap, but it's also the only viable tanking weapon in Dragon Soul until Souldrinker off Madness, which a Frost DK or Fury Warrior probably wants too. If you notice that you're going to be rolling on the same drops as other players then get some chatter going and see what can be worked out. Often in my pugs we bypass rolling altogether because we've already figured who gets what and people are cool with it.

6. Keep Things Moving:
This applies to any raid, but especially a pug. Nothing will grind and tire out a group of random players more than down time. In guild you know good or bad what time that raid is ending. In a pug you have no idea until you're there. Don't make it any longer than it has to be.

Dedicate a break time at the start if it's going to be a full clear to minimize the AFKs and Bios. If you're the tank or a healer make a dps the Loot Master so you can keep pulling trash after the boss dies. When things go bad and you're 2 dps and healer down call for an immediate wipe to get things moving again [CITATION NEEDED]. If you just failed on a fight and you see there's problems, don't just rush back into another attempt until you've identified the problem and figured out it's solution. Talking it over a for a couple minutes is a lot qucker than dying 4 mins into a fight and spending another 5+ getting ready for another pull.

7. Schedule to Finish:
It's a pug and the group is capable of finishing, but a few wipes caused things to run long and now people are getting tired and want to leave because it's been over 3 hours on a run YOU STATED AT THE BEGINNING that would only take 2 and half. Understandable. Try to find a time to get everyone back together to finish. In all honesty, this often doesn't work out, but it does enough to give it a go. It's kinda like that 4 am after party with all your new BFFs you've just met at the bar earlier and you make these glorious plans to get breakfast or "do lunch" the next day. You know it's probably not going to happen by you say it anyway. But sometimes it does and it's usually pretty good! Even if you only get half your original raid to log in the next day that's enough to get even more pugs to try and finish it out. There's a reason most of the best loot is at the end. I have a couple toons I wouldn't mind at all coming into a DS on Blackhorn or Spine with.

8.Provide a cauldron and feasts:
*This might be more effort and gold than you're willing to offer, but it does 2 key things. First it gives everyone flasks and food buffs for a stronger raid. 2nd, it demonstrates faith and commitment to the success of the raid right from the get go.

So there ya go, a handful of tips, suggestions to help create that winning PuG.

Is WoW better on busy servers?

Reply to MMOChamp forum post. Is WoW better on busy servers?

After playing on my medium pop BC-era realm for a couple years I started rolling and leveling random alts on various realms in an effort to get a feel for their differences. I leveled on Full realms, Day 1 launch realms, new player realms, RPpvp realms, about 15-20 realms in all. I spend some time on these realms too, not just running a lvl 1 to Org or SW to check out trade chat, but leveling them to 20, 40, 60 or even 80 during Wrath and into Cata.

*This is subjective and only my perception of things in regard to how I like to play, but... 

In my experience, it's not so much that busy servers are better (though they are, but that's not the point), it's that low pop and even many medium pop are worse. There's realms out there where not a single word is said in trade for hours on end, except the occasional LFW or LFG. It takes forever to find someone to craft something for you. There's like 1 semi-big guild who still hasn't killed that last boss on regular in whatever tier. Servers that don't even have enough player to pug a BH.  These low pop realms often have greatly jacked up Auction Houses where 1 guy will monopolize any given market because he just doesn't have any competition. PVP realms where you might run into 1 opposing faction player every couple weeks or every 10 levels. If you're lucky you might find one guy that's half way good at arena and hopefully you make a good 2s comp, cuz you're probably not going to find a decent 3rd and pretty much no chance on 2 more for a 5s team. Going from my comfy medium pop realm and playing on these lower pop ones just flat out made me depressed. I enjoy single player questing and can get lost in that for hours on end, but whenever I hearth into a deserted city it just just felt sad and wrong. 

The worst part is that more and more servers are degrading into these inactive, lower pop realms due to years of paid realm transfers and dropping subscriptions. There's about a dozen realms that just keep getting "better' while the other 200 just keep getting worse. (pulled that number out of my butt, don't know how many total servers there are, but my point is valid).

So yes, busy servers are better for the most part and in my estimate will continue to get even better. They definitely offer more activity and options in how you want to play. I actually feel sorry for people stuck on these really low pop servers and I wonder what WoW is for them on their realm. 

"How I made 10,000 gold by level 1"

Blog reply to How I made 3k gold by level 30

I farmed all those same armor set greens on my 85 with 310% flying in about 1/100th of the time. Then mailed them to my level 1 who sells them.

Yes, xmog is in full swing on most servers and those lowbie greens you wouldn't even bother to mail to your enchanter to DE are now worth a lot of gold to the right buyers. Your server hasn't caught the fashion bug yet? Then help create it. Get to know which pieces are HOT and when you see them on the AH for pennies, snatch em up and repost. Trust me, on every single server there will be a rogue or 10 or 100 that are going to want that Scouting or Bandit set. Posting the full set at the same time helps too for the unfamiliar buyers who are just randomly looking through the AH for a new xmog set. There are many more desirable sets out there across all armor classes that are raking it in.

This is the time of the xpac where players are getting "Luxury Capped". They've got all the gear they're going to get, no more chants/gems to worry about, etc... They're buying Mammoths and Hogs and Sand Drakes and many players will pay a premium fee for not having to wait or farm for the set they want.  

Dungeons are a great place to gather up random greens, but Rare mobs are really where it's at. They guarantee to drop at least 1 and there's a half a dozen or more per zone. Go to Wowhead, look up a specific zone, click the NPC tab, then FILTER these results and click the rare and elite rare classification. Once you've mapped out the zone and know where they are you can do a full sweep in minutes on a flying mount.

Blasted Lands is a double bonus for this kind of farming. Every rare mob in the zone will drop either a Flawless Draenethyst Sphere or Imperfect Draenethyst Sphere which is a drop quest item that can be turned in for a goodie bag that contains a rare boe for the Perfect (often a green too) or a green for the Imperfect one. So you're getting at least 1 green off the mob then as least 1 more green off the turn in, sometimes you can get 2 from each. This is also the zone to find the highly sought after Swashbuckler's Eyepatch leather helm.

Start doing your research into armor sets, try to gauge your local market, see what competitors are selling what for and somewhere in there you'll see how much you can expect to make in this racket and whether it's worth it or not for you.

Enjoy farming that sexy old gear for fun and profit!

The biggest problem with WoW for me

The enjoyment I get out of the game relies on too many factors outside of my control. i.e. other players...

I've always said my least favorite part of the MMORPG experience was the MMO part.

WoW Brilliant Idea #384 - The JP Store

Want that Argent Tournament pet or mount but hate doing random dailies? What about that rare world drop enchanting recipe for Int/Str/Agi on the bracers? How about a Netherwing Drake? You can get it all at The JP Store.

Blizzard upside: Keeps players mindlessly grinding 5 mans to stock up on points long after weekly VP cap and gear needs are met.

Player upside: Players have choices and greater access to the stuff they want without it being an unbearable pain. Achievement whores will still do all the original content to get that precious 10 points. The rest of us will just grind JP to get that 1 item we want.