Results tagged “Professions” from From the Abbey to Outlands

Those of you who are Alchemists and who have been for awhile now will recall the Burning Crusade days when a lot of what you did, in fact one of the most profitable parts, was transmutation. There were a few recipes on the trainers, some on faction quartermasters, and the majority were learned via discovery. There were a lot of Elixirs and Potions that were discovered as well, but by and large it was Transmutes that made the cash.

In beta the form of learning new transmutes and recipes seemed like it was going to change a bit with the appearance of research.  Sadly, I was wrong. Not only does all but one transmute require discovery, but the one you can train has pretty harsh mats, is on a 4 day cooldown, only has a chance of discovery, and is the only transmute you can discover from. I am not sure what you can learn from research, but as it requires over or nearly 40 herbs of different kinds, it too will be hard to perform.

While discovering items was hit or miss in Burning Crusade, in Wrath it feels somewhat more assured, but a lot more expensive. When you add in the fact that the discovery transmute, which requires mined resources, makes some that can be mined and smelted with no cooldown. All of this together means that transmuting in Wrath is incredibly frustrating and aggravating in the long run. We can only hope that Bliizzard will realize how hard they have made the transmutation aspect of the Alchemy profession.

I have asked before about preparation and plans surrounding Wrath before, but I thought it might be a good time to check in again, since when I asked before we were a long way off from Wrath's launch, coming in three days. So the first part was asking what you will be doing in the last 24 hours before Wrath launches? Will you be trying to get a few last items sold on the AH? Will you be grinding out some rep? Doing a few dailies whole they still return gold? Working to get your professions up to 350 in order to bring your skills up to where they start in Wrath? Respeccing or regemming to more leveling friendly specs or stats. Or maybe you just plan to farm for lowbies or your planned Death Knight? Me, I have plans to increase my xp gain right away on install.

Now to after the expansion hits. What are your plans for after the expansion goes live? Will you choose to be a servant of the Lich King? Will you hop a ride north and begin taking our fight to that very King? If so, will you be hitting up Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord? Going to Northrend to learn new levels of gathering skills, but going to Outlands to get skill ups? Working on Outlands or Azeroth to do old stuff to scour lag? Or are you pretty new to WoW, or too low, for Wrath to really matter to your game play? I also wonder how many just won't be getting the expansion, and instead will spend the day of and those after the expansion just reveling in how quickly Outlands cleared out? I will take all my 70s to Northrend for training but at least my Druid will keep farming Outlands for herbs to level alchemy and inscription.

I wrote yesterday about the mods I sadly had to abandon from my post 3.0.2 world, well today I will talk about the mods that I have found since patch day and have fallen in mod-whore love with. Enjoy this list, and look forward tomorrow to the next in my impromptu series on mods; the mods which never went bad.

As I mentioned yesterday, Skillet is my new mod for crafting my items, be they gems, armor, or potions. Combine that mod, which allows me to search and craft based on a number of parameters, with TradeTabs, which puts a tab for every crafting profession that you know. This is a really simply, very useful way to keep all of my professions easily accessible and usable. I do not know if either of these are, or need to be updated for Inscription, however comments are down below if you want to test them out.

I fell in love, or back in love with TrainerSkills in the beta. I used to use this, or a mod like this, ages ago. It basically tells you when you can learn something and what that is. Whether it be a new class skill on ding, or a new profession item on reaching a certain point, these things are all clearly pointed out to you in the chat window of your choice. A long lost mod, come back and just as awesome as before!

Since I am trying to avoid the crutch of CT Mod, I have been forced to go elsewhere for a few things I loved about the package. TipTop takes care of the tooltip placement problem, though it admittedly took a bit to get the tooltip right where I like it, which is to say center of my screen right below TitanPanel. oRA2 is a mod recommended by a guildie as we prepared for a post 3.0.2 raid, and realized that CTRA had been abandoned. I replaced the bar mods part of CT Mod, which was always more broken than fixed, with Dominos, though I have a Druid in Cat while Prowling bug I had to fix. Lastly I have not yet found a fix for the mail mod, but I am working on it and have a few leads.

The last batch of mods I have come across is the Achievement mods. Overachiever is a nice mod that helps me track where I am on an achievement, and it also changes exploration tracking based on zones and the /love you've given, or need to give to critters all over the world. AchievementSS is a cool mod which takes a screenshot whenever you complete and achievement, no matter where you are. Lastly, we have Urban Achiever, which is accessed by /ua and allows you to search for any achievement, text for an achievement, or criteria in order to find an achievement.

So there you have it. A few of the neat new mods I have found in this, the post 3.0.2 mod world. Like I said before, check back for the strong and true mods that never, or barely faltered for me when modpocalypse hit. [Update: Dominos not only allowed me to turn off the bar changing in prowl mode, but also turn off the moonkin bar change! I have more bars now!]

So we look to have a date for the upcoming 3.0.2 patch, which will bring in some of the features of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, so I thought I would give you the lowdown on the stuff that will make it into 3.0.2 based on the latest PTR builds, what you have to wait until the expansion for, and what won't be in until much later on.

The Patch - We know we will see the Barbershop feature in the patch, giving us the chance to finally change those hairstyles we've had for up to four years. Achievements will make it in, so while a few will wait for many of the Achievements that require Northrend to complete, we can get many of our desired achievements out of the way before we slag through the lengthy install process for the expansion. Inscription will be active, which is surprising a lot of people since Jewelcrafting was not available unless you had the expansion. A feature we will see that has many of my character's banks rejoicing is the Pets/Mounts tab, which will be in for the patch. Thousands of vanity pets will soon find a new home!

Hunters will get to customize their pets in a new talent style of ability system, with the old system of training points going the way of the Ghost Wolf. Hunters will also get Exotic pets, so expect to see Devilsaurs, Rhinos, Chimeras and Worms in your local bank. Stormwind Harbor will finally open up, and King Varian Wrynn will return to Stormwind, bringing a new era to the land of Azeroth. The patch will bring in new UI features like the Calendar system, built in threat meter, and many new emotes.

In the way of combat we will also be seeing several stat changes. Hit, Crit, and Haste will affect Melee and Spell attacks, while Spell Damage and Healing stats will be unified into a universal Spell Power, meaning more gear can be shared between the various casting classes. Lastly on this section, channeling and casting interrupts are changing, with any hits after the second no longer interrupting or stopping a cast bar, though I believe full spell interrupts like Kick and Counterspell will still work as usual. As you can tell, the patch will be bringing some big things for all players of the game.

The Expansion - As big as the patch is, the expansion is even bigger. Of course we get to travel to Northrend, which can be accessed from boats in either Stormwind Harbor or Menethil Harbor. There is also the leveling to 80 thing, which is a pretty important expansion-only feature to mention. From my travels in beta, this is going to be an area that is well worth the time to buy the expansion for. The mobs are interesting, and often unique. The zones are huge, and each has many quest hubs. Medros, one of my Paladins, has gone through all of Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Howling Fjord, and part of Grizzly Hills before he hit 76.

I am in Sholazar Basin, have left a bunch of unfinished quests in Grizzly Hills, and I have yet to enter any Northrend instances. I haven't even touched quests in Zul'Drak, Crystalsong(quests Not Yet Implemented), Storm Peaks, or Icecrown. I feel it is quite possible Medros could ding 80 without even touching the top two zones, and on Live it would be even easier with guildies to run dungeons with. No need to worry, folks, there will be no lack of things to do when Wrath hits, even beyond the 80 Ding.

With reaching 80, you immediately have the chance to hop into the 10 man Naxxramas dungeon, which is followed by the 25 man, and the other three Raid dungeons, The Nexus, Eye of Eternity, and Ulduar. According to Blizzard's reps, you should be able to enter Naxx 10 man with just the quest and dungeon gear you have when you hit 80 or shortly thereafter, and the gear progresses naturally from there. While Icecrown Glacier the raid will not be in at launch, it should launch in 3.1, which can be expected a couple months into 2009.

While we have not seen any sign yet of the Dance studios, the Death Knight is definitely the biggest thing not yet listed, and it will require the expansion to create one. You too get to go through the Starting Experience, likely the first example of the implemented phasing technology Blizzard has made a huge deal of that most people will see. You will be able to Death Grip people from vast distances, summon ghouls from the bones of friends and enemies, and ride and walk on water using the Path of Frost ability given to our friends of the Ebon Blade.

Of course we have the little stuff, like new profession abilities, discovery for many crafters, and so on, not to mention the excitement of the culmination of 2 years of Blizzard's efforts. So while there is no doubt plenty to get excited about in patch 3.0.2 when it hits, expected to be on Octber 14th, there is yet more to get pumped about in Wrath of the Lich King, on store shelves, and online, November 13th.

I was working on my Inscription in the beta, and I thought to myself that leveling a gathering profession from 1 to 450 will be a horrible pain in my arse. This is the basis of this article. I feel that the lack of pre leveled professions for Death Knights will leave them as a default dual crafting profession class.

While the gathering from 1-300 will give a Death Knight a chance to explore the old world, a good thing due to the World Explorer achievement and title, I do not think that the majority of Death Knights will want to spend their valuable Wrath time going from Elwynn, to Westfall, to Darkshire, to Stranglethorn, all in search of the elusive dot on the mini map.

No, I think that those of us with at least a herbalist, or whatever gathering profession compliments our chosen crafting profession, will skip that grind and just pre gather, or gather for our Death Knights. I know I have pre gathered over 400 herbs for my Death Knight, who will be named Connroe. I am planning right now to make him a Scribe/Blacksmith combo, with potential leanings toward Weaponsmithing since so much of what a Death Knight is, lies in their runeforged weapon.

I am curious if I am the only one who plans to take this route? I was planning to take Traluun into Inscription when 3.0.2 came out, and I may still when I have a better idea of what the guildies are doing, but I know for sure that Connroe will be my go to character for long term inscription needs. I do not plan to have Connroe go into any gathering. I have learned how painful power leveling my herbalism will be if I decided to go that route. It has taken me 3 weeks to hit 300 and that is on a nearly barren realm. Trying to level herbalism within 3 months of Wrath will indeed be a painful thing to do.

What professions do you plan to take on your death dealer? Will you make your Death Knight a dual crafting toon? Are you already gathering in preparations? Let me know in the comments how you plan to proceed with your Death Knight when Wrath descends upon us all! 

I would like to note first and foremost that the majority of this work was not done by me, instead being the work of better and more knowledgeable people than I. The Wrath Wiki has put up a guide that is intended to get you from 1 to 300 in Inscription. The guide is good, but there were a few places I thought it could use a little help on in instructing those not in the beta on what it will be like leveling your inscription. I hope they don't mind.

First, their number of herbs needed, from what I have seen, seems to be pretty close. I will just point out that at this point in the beta, a lot of glyphs that can be made require the herb Mageroyal. I haven't had a chance to look, but I would guess at the current point of my Death Knight's inscription, about 75% of the glyphs he can make use this particular herb. It's 1 of each level of parchment, an ink, and a Mageroyal.

If that remains, I would advise a minimum of 4 stacks of Mageroyal be used in your leveling of Inscription. That being said, this could change, and they could change some of them to using Swiftthistle or some other herb, with maybe Lotus as their top of tier herb for really special glyphs. Please do note that the guide says the heavy Mageroyal is due to broken mats.

The next thing I wanted to point out was that, currently, glyphs are trained in waves, so while it may be that 17 Glyph of Swipe can get you from 85-100, there will likely be about 7-9 other glyphs you can make to earn those points too. There are not any Death Knight or Warrior glyphs right now in the game, though there may be in the build that follows 8885, which is current as of this writing, so you can learn about 8 class glyphs at each tier, plus the stat scrolls, the different Vellum's, and inks.

While the Scroll of Recall lists making about 60 to get the 25 points, I did not need to make this many myself. I did make that many, as they are super handy little scrolls that act, essentially,l as a 10 minute hearthstone cooldown, so in your time in Northrend and beyond you will no doubt go through a lot of them. Don't be surprised if you find it to be in the hundreds, especially if you have your hearth set to a trainer location and have to go farm up the herbs.

Lastly, I would like to point out that there are at least 4 herbs in each pigment level, and each one in that level of pigment can give the same amount. Some of the herbs can give both a common quality and uncommon quality pigment, and some inks require a little of each kind, so use each pigment wisely. I for one am incredibly excited about the inscription profession, and am already farming herbs for when the 3.0.2 patch hits the live realms, how about you?

I know, I know. Cheesy. But I am happy. This is the first time I have experienced a beta patch first hand in about 4 years. I am a little excited. Below you will find the thoughts I have as I work my way through reported and discovered changes.

-Death Knight's Frost Presence now gives an aura buff to everyone nearby for a walk on water buff. Blood Presence still gives nothing
-Death Knights now appear almost diseased in appearance. Eww.
-Can now check, read, and delete mail.
-Fishing trainer in Valiance now trains Grand Master. Cooking Trainer still blank. Same goes for Valgarde.
-Paladins cannot use Judgments. More properly put, they can cast them, but they have no effect. Still able to so decent damage.
-Warlocks now glow purple.
-Hunter's Kill Command has been changed, for the worse.
-IF guard still does not know what inscription is.
-Select bodies of water have schools of fish.
-Turkey killing achievement is still very hard to do in Valgarde proper
-The flight... master(?) at Amber Ledge now has the proper texture for her form.
-Apparently Titan's Grip, the long griped about dps nerf to the Fury Warriors, has been fixed to make those same Warriors machines of mass slaughter. Expect a slight tweak down of that talent in a later build.
-Even patches can be followed by downtime

And on that note, as the servers went down, I assume to fix the glow issues, the judgment issues, or just to randomly taunt beta testers, I will end this here. I would like to say that while I feel a Blizzcon release of Wrath would be awesome, I don't see it as feasible, but I feel the game will be released withing a short time after that. We now have level 80 and only one world zone left unreleased, as well as raid dungeons which need to see a few runs, likely the purpose of the mentioned premade realm. Look for more new soon!

[Update: 2:30 AM - After the lengthy shut down Paladins still cannot judge, and Death Knights still look diseased. Server is about to shut down again, and I am off to bed. Look for another update in the morning.]

I posted on my Twitter today that it is beginning to feel, after so many professions nerfs, the Blizzard is at war with their own professions. Make them too good, and you have to increase the difficulty and requirements of the encounters in raids, or so I hear so often. Having done a little raiding, I can see that they have a point, to a degree. I do, though, have some questions. I made a few of these in this post about the seeming death of the Alchemy profession with the huge nerf of potions.

I once heard an opinion that if you don't an idea of how to solve a problem, don't bother mentioning it. Well, here is my best solution. There are items and abilities which cannot, and could not once upon a time, be used in a particular place. There was a time when you couldn't summon at all in Netherstorm. You cannot use some long cooldown abilities in Arenas. Blizzard has even changed the cooldown of some abilities to make them either able or unable to be used in those situations.

My suggestion is that Blizzard, instead of nerfing these items across the whole game, make them work differently when in a raid. Instead of giving us Tennitus whenever a drum is used in game, make it so that this effect only happens in a raid, be it dungeon or world raid encounters. The same would go for the Potion Sickness. Perhaps, just to be fair, give them a 5% buff to the effects when in a raid group, but then you get the debuff. This would solve the raid encounter issue, but not take away the benefits of using potions and drums in your game play.

My biggest concern, and the reason I used in my previous post, is still a valid one. I found more than once in leveling my 4 70s through Outlands that there is a nasty habit of mobs to swarm a player. From Fel Orcs in Terrokar, to vultures in Hellfire, to mana wyrms up on Bash'ir Landing. Attack the one on the edge, and before you know it you are surrounded by mobs and have little chance of surviving the fight. Except you have pots or you have drums. Not all of us are Paladins or other self healing and other survivor based classes.

What do you think of this suggestion? Are you one of those who feel this is much needed to make raids more accessible? Or do you feel that Blizzard is taking a heavy hand across the board with stuff that they feel isn't helping one aspect of one portion of the game? Let me know and sound off, you might even get audio played on the podcast if you send it in. 

I was reading this thread on the WoW General forums earlier, and it got my to thinking. What is an acceptable tip? Is there such a thing as tip expectation? What can result from poor tipping? Me? I usually tip 5g or so per service. If I have multiple cuts I am having done on gems, I will pay about 80% per cut, cause there is not the same amount of travel time for each cut that there would be if they were separate events.

The reason I am curious about this is primarily because I now have a number top level crafters. I have 375 in Dragonscale Leatherworking, Armorsmithing, Jewelcrafting and Potions Mastery. Smithing is not really a profitable profession, primarily only used by those who don't Raid and mostly by the smith themselves. Alchemy can be profitable, but Potions Mastery is one of the least profitable of them all, simply because there are all of 3 or 4 potions in TBC. Elixir has far more demand.

Leatherworking can be profitable from the creation of armor kits, but these days it seems only the purple ones are in the highest demand, but honestly I haven't tried to sell and of my Clefthide Leg Armor. Drums are only usable by Leatherworkers, and the bags are the same and pretty easy to farm up. I guess you could sell some if you found a non 70 Leatherworker, but I don't see them the highest in demand.

Of all of my played characters, I see only my two Draenei to have professions I can use to make some cash. Telaan, my Draenei Paladin, has 375 Jewelcrafting as well as over a dozen cuts of blue quality gems including two Meta cuts. This is character has the most potential for profitability, but will it ever make back the over 4000g I have spent on the recipes? My second profit potential character is Traluun, who is currently Enchanter/LW, but will be dropping LW for Inscription in the next expansion.

None of this, though, addresses my points. After discussing this with a few guildmates and in game friends, I would say that overall I will accept tips. However, if I see a person getting a lot of cuts and not tipping, or turning around and seeing that person with those cuts up on the AH, I will set forth a fee. Overall, though, for the majority of my professions and those asking for those services, just as I do with services I ask of others, I will use a tipping system. What do you all think? Do you tip? Do you demand a fee? Will you use a player for a service who demands a fee?

While anyone who visits fan sites or the WoW forums will already know patch 2.4 is out, I figured I would let you all know a few highlights of the PTR so far. First, though, the current PTR notes version can be found here, and as they are trying a new testing method where there test different content as they are satisfied with it, those notes can be expected to change regularly.

The biggest info we have so far is profession based, and my goodness we have a lot of goodies coming for professions in this final battleground in the fight with Legion(for now).

• Leatherworking
• Blacksmithing 
• Tailor
• Jewelcrafting and Gems

We also have other information, such as the rep rewards for the Shattered Sun Offensive, though sadly no loot links yet due to the database sites not quite catching up. We also have some interesting tidbits of new surrounding some interesting new raid drops, sunmote. But wait, there's more! New possible bag types, the Rocket Mounts from the TCG loot card(available in March), new Badge of Justice rewards on the Isle of Quel'Danas that equal or surpass Black Temple loot, and did I mention the new epic bow Thor'idal, which makes it own arrows, has the build in buff from the quivers we have now, and which is just fricking awesome? Well, consider it done.

Additional Info:

• Black Temple & Mount Hyjap Attunements gone!
• The return of 8 piece sets?!?
• Defense changes
• Possible new Priest form: Holyform
  
• Dubious quality of PvP Battleground changes
• New Phoenix Non-Combat Pet dropping off Kael'Thas
• Sunwell Plateau in game cinematic
• 
  

Keep tuned here for more as the news develops