Wednesday, March 02, 2011

[WoW] State of WoW.

So I broke down last week and transferred my Druid Waash to my new realm ( The Forgotten Coast). I leveled him a bit to get him to 80 and into the Cataclysm content. This, plus my Priest dinging 85 gives me 3 high level (80+) characters, 2 mid level ( 50+) characters and my lowly Mage at level 12.

I think I've burned out a bit on leveling, once Waash hit 80, I couldn't bring myself to do one more quest. Instead I've been leveling professions, trying to make gold.

Waash, 80 Tauren Druid



So I decided to make Waash a Tauren. I was considering making him a Troll, but I just did not like the Troll fight form. He's now my second Tauren, after my DK Caaz.

I'm currently trying to make money using Inscription, which was one of the big reasons I wanted to transfer Waash. Its not as easy as it used to be, there's a lot of competition and nowhere near as many people buying glyphs. Currently I'm cherry-picking all glyphs that sell for 500g+. This gives me about 15-20 I need to craft, and they're selling ok. I'll sell 1-2 a day, which while not great amount of money, lets me work back into the flow of things slowly.

In Wrath it was easy to be in the glyph business, all herbs below Outland level were going for about as much as Icethorn, so you just buy all Icethorn and trade the inks in for the correct one you need. This time the prices of Cata-level herbs are much much higher. So now I have to compare both the level-appropriate herb prices as well as the cata-level herb prices, to get the cheapest inks. I might switch over to cata-herbs only if the prices drop a bit more, and my revenue stream gets more reliable. So far its been ok, and I'm making a bit of money.

I need that money because I'm spending it left and right. I'm going to buy Artisan ( Epic) flying on Waash soon, so that'll be about 4800g. I've also been leveling his Alchemy. I have quite a few herbs saved up so its at least not costing much out of pocket. But leveling Alchemy and doing the glyphs has drained my herb stores quickly.

Alchemy is probably one of the easiest to level crafting professions. Waash is currently at around 505 or 515, I can't quite remember. I've already been able to craft a few potions, flasks and elixirs that Solinari and Hooff can both use for healing and DPS. Also I've been able to make a nice Epic trinket for Waash as well. That should help quite a bit for leveling. I've hit a bit of a wall right now, since the only way to skill up is to transmute one of two rare gems, the mat requirements being a Twilight Jasmine and 3 uncommon gems. Unfortunately the uncommon gets are worth more than the resulting rare gem. I am an xmute master, so if I proc an extra gem it would put me over, but thats very very rare. I might just have to suck it up and do the xmute, so that I can level Alchemy. Once I can get the truegold xmute then that should recoup some of my losses.

Inscription also has quite a few off-hands and relics that can be made. I made one for Solinari, but I forgot that priests use wands, not relics. The Relics themselves sell for almost nothing on the AH, so I might just end up saving it for my warlock or if Waash ever wants to heal.

Solinari



After hitting 85, Solinari already had quite a few rep rewards available to get her ilvl up quickly. She just recently got to ilvl 329 technically letting her queue for a heroic. I don't feel near ready enough to take her into a heroic, let alone a PUG heroic. I still have some trouble healing heroics on Hooff, and he's much better geared. My plan for her is to keep doing Normals until she replaces all her < 333 ilvl gear, then try doing the PUG heroics. There's quite a few more rep grinds she can do to get that gear.

On a more cosmetic front, she recently did a PUG Obsidiam Sanctum raid, 3 drakes run. She DPSed, and was a respectable 3rd or 4th in DPS. She also won the Black drake! It looks mighty cool and she's the first toon I have to get that drake. Its actually spurned me to want to get it on my other toons as well as go for more mounts in general.

Hooff



Unfortunately for Hooff, he's been stagnating as of late. He's my only raid-ready toon, but since we're not raiding, I haven't been using him much. He can certainly handle a PUG heroic, given a good tank. But most of the time I just don't feel like putting myself through that. My love for healing has been going away lately, specially when there are tanks queuing for heroics at the bare minimum iLvl, then blame the healer for not being able to keep their squishy butts alive.

Solinari, 85 Disc/Shadow Priest



Solinari hit 85 a little while ago. With the questing she did in Hyjal and Deepholm, she was able to get a few nice piece of rep gear. That plus normal dungeon drops and technically she's ready for heroics ( iLvl 333 ). Of course she's nowhere near ready to actually heal a PUG heroic. I tried last night and on the first pull everyone went down. There was a lag spike in the middle but I was already in trouble by that point.

She had more luck doing old school raids. There was an OS-3D group forming on Trade, so I had her join as DPS. Sarth went down pretty easily and everyone rolled Need on the drake and bag. I lost on the bag but won the drake! It looks mighty cool. Who would have thought that just shading the same drake model differently would make such a difference. She also got the Green proto-drake from the egg in the same week. Not bad at all.