Recently in Professions Category

Today we have 38 days until we can begin hopping on boats and zepplins to travel to Northrend and begin the much touted Death Knight Starting Experience. I thought I would go over a few things that you, me, or anyone can do to pass the next 38 rotations of our big blue marble.

Farm Herbs - With the new Inscription profession coming in the patch that is expected to go live in 9 days, there are a multitude of herbs that you can gather, even if you are a level 70 and fresh to herbalism. If you want to check out the numbers of herbs you may need to get a character up to 375, the level that you will be able to learn up to before the actual expansion.

Farm Ore - Once you have all the herbs you want, you may want to think a bit on the professions your Death Knight, if you choose to make one, will have. Mine will be going Incription/Weaponsmith, since the Death Knight's most noticeable piece of gear is his blade. I would look into the burn rate on materials for the profession, including the steps needed to become a Weaponsmith, then begin gathering those materials up to power to 375 Blacksmithing as early as possible into Wrath.

Prepare for Achievements - There are hundreds of achievements coming in Wrath, and while some will have to wait for the expansion to go live, there are plenty of Achievements you can begin working on now, like exploration, professional, and more. You can go to dungeons, go to NPCs, or just wait for 3.0.2 to be live and start /love'ing the critters in your life.

Grind Rep - There are a number of reputation Achievements in the expansion that rely on reputations, and some of those even award titles. If you are a druid, you might find the Guardian of Cenarius to be one destined for your To Do list, and with the huge leaps in rep for the Encrypted Twilight Texts, you can get the rare Exalted Cenarion Circle part done in no time, assuming you are 70.

Obtain the Impossible - When 3.0.2 hits, there are several raid based rewards that will no longer be available, so why not spend some time now shooting for them? Champion of the Naaru, Hand of Ad'al, and the Amani Warbear are all going bye bye, for those who do not have them, once the new patch goes live, so I encourage you to go for them with all you have, if that is your wish.

There you have it, folks, a short list among many things you can do to pass your time for the next 38 days, that is if you are not participating in one election or another, working your ass off to earn the time off to play Wrath, or just, ya know, taking a break and trying out the competition while they are still around. What are you doing for the next 38 days?

I have been spending a bit of my time on the secondary professions in beta for my now level 76 Paladin, and I had a few observations. First, I hope to god they fix the horrible state of First Aid. Instead of making the manual for the Heavy Frostweave Bandage a vendor item, they have made it a drop, and a pretty rare one at that. I think this is a big mistake, and forces people to run dungeons, and with no in game indication of where to get it, many players might miss it completely, and therefore suffer in their professions.

As far as cooking, I love the daily cooking available from 70 in Dalaran, and that they are pretty straight forward. The Dalaran Cooking Award is awesome, and will allow many players to get the usually rarer recipes. Also, I love the fact that the stats boosted by recipes is a lot more numerous, with many more stats options for food buffs. The only problem is that you seem to learn some recipes at 350, but by 380 or so they are green, with nothing new until 400, which is all of the cooking award ones, and they are already green when you learn them, least the ones I have bought. Hope this improves, with recipes a little more spread out.

The last of the secondaries is Fishing. Medros was already 375, and had a nice stockpile of the Sharpened Fish Hook. These, make no doubt, are required for fishing in Northrend. I do not recall if I needed them for fishing in Borean, but by the time I hit Sholazar I was about 400 and it needed 430 to even cast. The good thing is that fish per point is different now. Fishing in Dragonblight was about 6 or 7 fish per point, but Sholazar was 3 or 4 catches per point. I do not know if they changed the skills for fishing, or if they just made it less mind numbingly boring, but I had no problem getting to 420, which is where Med is now, off just catching the Nettlefish I needed for my 400 cooking, 20 of those fish taking me 5 points to 400.

I would say that of the 3 professions, I found fishing has taken the most steps in progress, while as of build 8982 the cooking and first aid were annoying and pointless to even continue. I hope that tonight's 9014 and beyond make all three of the secondary professions more useful and worthwhile.

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 have a few friends in the European region who were in late alpha and early beta, and they all had a chance to see more phases of the expansion than I have in it's testing, so they have a unique perspective on the coming content than I do. This is a benefit when I am trying to research for writing on this blog. They were also invaluable when I got my beta invite. They were the folks I took my 'where's Dalaran' type questions to in my early beta days.

So when I made my temp DK, Isen, I was first excited to start First Aid at 270, then angered when they told me that no other professions get that boost, likely for the worries about having power leveled profession skills that could be exploited. While I can see this point, begrudgingly, I am still as little aggravated that I have had to, and will need to in live realms when Wrath launches, level my herbalism and Inscription from point 1. It looks really silly, seen to the the left, a level 58 master of slaughter and mayhem Death Knight picking Peacebloom in Elwynn Forest.

Now that I have tried out the Blood tree a bit, I decided when the last build gave me a talent reset I would go Unholy with some influence from this post on DeathKnight.info that said that Death Knights can now be a full use pet class. I do like me a pet class, but I would like to request, officially, that Blizzard give me a way to pretty up my Ghoul, who looks like he's falling to pieces. Flesheater is nice and all, but I am a little worried that a bone or key muscle may drop to the ground at a key time in a fight. Oh, and Blizzard? If this is my perma-pet, can I get the same one every time? kthnxbai!

I have a lot to do. I am collecting herbs for my guild, as well as for myself. I am debating furiously with myself about inscription and my lowbie hunter, Traluun, and trying to still get in time for job hunting, writing, beta testing, and have a small semblance of a social life. So it is with this in mind that I ask you, my readers, what do you think my priorities should be.

The reason this came up is that in conjunction with the recent beta build 8905, Blizzard's reps have posted feedback requests for all of the currently open dungeons in the beta, from Utgarde Keep to Naxxramas in both 10 and 25 man versions, and I realized that even with Med not even at 74 yet, I have not hit a single instance. Not even a one. I got my starter Death Knight through the old Starting Experience and into Inscription/Herbalism professions, worked a fair bit on Med's blacksmithing, and a bit on Arita's Northrend herbalism and alchemy, but I haven't *done* much in the beta.

Sure, I have moved and been doing renovations, and I haven't had the unregulated time I would like to be working on the beta and live realms. I also find it really hard to go from Medros, level 73 ret Paladin with awesome abilities and the capability to take down the mobs with ease, to Medros, level 70 Paladin, or even Telaan, Level 70 Paladin, or even still Traluun, level 45 Hunter. It's a bit of a shock, you know? A big change in the game and the world.

So, as my readers, I come to you, playtime in hand, and ask for your advice. Do you want more Wrath prep info as I push through the live realms to gather needed materials for the Inscription profession coming in 3.0.2, or should I spend more time on the beta realms, digging through the lore, the stories, and the experiences to give you all a better insight into what awaits us in the wonderful continent of Northrend, from gorlocs and proto drakes to dragon aspects and scarlet lackies? Sound off in the comments!

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?

What follows are my early thoughts on the 8885 beta build that went live tonight.

• they missed something that should have been in this build, cause I am getting errors like crazy
• still no weightstones or sharpening stones
• it looks like most glyphs are actually craftable by scribes, including scribes as low as 100
  Paladin judgements are working again
• no noticeable change in xp required per level
• cooking daily quests in, with Dalaran Cooking Award, which can be used to buy recipes in Legerdemain Lounge in north Dalaran
• thanks to Zubr of Arathor, playing on Northrend for the /console error 0 command to stop showing errors
• glyphs seem to be 'used' with 1 hour cooldowns
• scribes will make a killing
  
• Mageroyal seems to be a big in demand herb for early scribe glyphs
• to use a glyph, you right click it. Some say they cannot be used, even when well beyond the level required. Odd.
  
• Overall nice, once you remove the errors, but more time may be required to work out some potential issues

There are many bad changes, many mediocre ones, and many good ones. It's beta, and things will change, but for now, I can play on my Paladin, though I am about to stop my leveling because I want to prep my live toons for the 3.0.2 patch and expansion.

So I mentioned here that I have begun in the Wrath of the Lich King beta test, and I have some thoughts and questions here. First, are there any mods for the beta? I am a mod fiend and I am feeling really lost without a single mod. I have my Statusbars mod which tells me in a HUD type display what my health and the mobs health is. I have died a number of times because of this. Second, Gatherer? Is there any way to mark gather nodes? I am finding Cobalt ore hard to find and would love to mark them.

As an aside, it is nice that WoW Head WotLK has comments with coordinates, but how exactly do I figure out those coordinates? How did they get the coordinates? I love the look of the zones in Northrend. I have seen both Borean Tundra and Sholazar Basin, though the later only when I pulled a noobish hop off the ledge without remembering that Divine Protection was changed, and thus dying on the rocks. No more suicide jumps from Aldor Rise. I wanted to thank a kind GM from the beta realms who unstuck me in the world so I could return to my journey on Aritas, who was stuck in a server issues last night. The final tip comes from Galanis on the Northrend beta realm, "Profession Trainer tracking is critical in the newbie towns", a good tip to put into practice when you are just hitting Northrend!

Lastly, below you will find the huge, massive gnome lore found in the Tundra. Spoilers may be found! Enjoy!



[Update: Thanks to Lassirra for the tip about WoW Interface for WotLK!]
[Update: Thanks to MrCynical in IRC for the reminder that Divine Shield still does what Divine Protection used to do, and for longer!]

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 am pretty sure, if you listen back, I ranted pretty hard when the 2.1 Alchemy changes came into the game. As an alchemist, the changes to elixirs meant that the profit of a large part of the profession was pretty much gone. Yes, we still had potions, but the resistance potions were nerfed to the point that almost no one needs them, not when you now have 5-10 minute fights and 2 minute long cooldown resistance potions.

Well, guess what. The current beta build shows that I will even more adamantly refuse to do any alchemy for money, and alchemy for toons will be pretty much non existant. My Alchemist, unless they nerf that too, will be a transmute bot. Oh, wait. He already is. The only times I log my Alchy is to do his daily transmute, and that too will be a lot less important as Wrath gets close and the demand for those primals becomes a thing of the past.

As it is right now I am slowly liquidating my gem stocks on Telaan, not gathering herbs unless I need it, and preparing to sell off any but the most high end mats that can be used for those first few late 300s skill points. Now, in Wrath, I will pretty much farm only what I need for my toons, and that's about it. I do, though, have a couple related points to make. First, what happens when you get 2-3 mobs on you? You get that debuff on you after the first potion, and can't use another until you are out of combat. This is a player killer in the wild.

The other point I wanted to make was in response to Alex Ziebart, who wrote the post about this new beta 'feature'. I think Alex is right about one thing. Much like the elixir and Resistance Pot changes, this change screams 'raiders' louder than a Kazzak kill message. I wonder, honestly, how much further Blizzard will kill Alchemy in the name of the raiding game. Also, maybe Alex's realm has a rich AH for flasks, but I know my own Argent Dawn doesn't have anything near 100g flasks, or I would have made them all the way to a 4th epic mounted alt.

What do you think about these changes to Alchemy? Is this profession the new Engineering of the current and future versions of WoW? Do things like Alchemist stones make the profession more worthwhile to train up in?