The new RNG god is angry…

More cowbell

I profusely apologize for my lack of posts.  My downtime has been limited by a slightly more demanding work schedule.  It didn’t help that I forgot my laptop charger when I last stayed at my girlfriend’s place which also caused me to miss our second kill of Empress ;_;   In any case I appear to be back down to only 5 days/40 hours so now I get to try and balance this once again with my WoW time and catching up on all my tv shows that have started their new seasons – and I STILL need to watch the last Doctor Who episode before the new stuff begins!  Anyway none of this is wow-related so we shall return now to your irregularly scheduled update…

6/6 6/6 and onto Terrace

Well our raid group has finally progressed past another boss, the Grand Empress Shek’zeer, nearly a month after the last time we had a progression kill or a full team.   Many Thanks to Dayani (on her Paladin) and Vorticose for being bored on a Wednesday night or else we wouldn’t have had a raid at all and Vorti again for last night to help with the kill.  I hope our recruitment ads get us a healer soon…  In any case the fight was surprisingly quick to down; I suppose having a full night of attempts after unexpectedly one-shotting Amber Shaper Un’Sok gave us plenty of time to look, strategize, and fine tune.  The second phase was interesting with our pally tank going splat very quickly the first few tries and our first look at the third phase was nearly non-existent with a dissonance field still up as we pushed past 30%.  Our second clean look at the final phase had a wonderful combination of everything working out juuuuust right; we lost one dps but still had our battle rez available.  I started to get that feeling of nervousness at about 15% because I knew I was really scraping the bottom of my mana pool and I can only imagine how my other two healers felt since I was generally ok (OP disc priest) for mana through the rest of the fight.  Then at the last 2% I felt that release of tension when I saw the 5 million health mark, everybody alive and nearly topped off and I knew we had ourselves a new kill.  

Making gold in MoP – Enchanting

So I must start this post with a bit of a disclaimer.  I don’t actually make gold with my enchanting.  The mats I’ve managed to accumulate since the start have all been used on my own characters or enchanting various upgrades mid-raid for my fellow guild members.  If these things are not likely to happen for you then some money can be made selling your scrolls on the Auction House.  Following the break we’ll go into what can potentially make you the most money and also why enchanting is not the gold maker it was in days past.

Press any key to continue. Where’s the any key?

Well, despite my goals for the week, I think I failed miserably on all accounts.  No days off since my last post and having in-laws in town can do that.   We’ll see if after I finish my weekly update I have time to do up the other posts I desired to have up for this week.  Considering my lack of WoW activity in the past week, that might actually be very possible!

Well since last we talked, we’ve had yet another holiday, New Year’s, that tends to have most people enjoying their real life companions and activities instead of trying to slay virtual dragons, celestial or corrupted.  I’ve made zero progress on my mage so instead she sits at the beginning of Townlong Steppes with max rested xp for a level 88 character…33 million or something? Well at least I won’t worry about being the long grind of level 89 with no rested xp.  With no raiding going on either (our last night’s raid got cancelled from lack of sign ups…one of our main dps has decided to quit the game just a few weeks after getting his Ashes of Al’ar on his…6th try I believe?  As he told our guild leader, he’s accomplished nearly everything he can that he wants to so he dumped most of his stuff into our guild bank and said he was going to cancel his subscription.  I’m sad to see him go but I can understand his burnout.  Despite having almost all the classes at max level at the end of Cataclysm, he really only ever played his Death Knight.  I’d be on one of my various alts trying to get some more gear, running LFR for the 4th time that week, and he would be on his death knight going after rare spawns for the Relic Hunter title.  Well if you don’t do pet battles, don’t care about the auction house (he had made plenty of gold from selling gear for transmog from his countless solo runs of old raids while making his various Legendaries) and don’t care about your other characters…he’d pretty much done everything else except for clearing the current raid with us.  So a very unique and interesting player has left the game and I hope he comes back but I think he’s spent enough time with WoW that this might be for good.  I don’t know if I’ll ever meet another player whose sole in game add-on used was DBM.

Naughtypants, I salute you.

All work and no raid make Praka something something…

Still no raiding while we’re in the winter holidays.   Err, holidays.  It’s summer for all my fellow raiders at the moment.  I guess this is fine since it’s also busy season at work (hooray service industry…) and I’m usually far too tired to do much else let alone try and focus until 5 am.  Regardless, let’s see what I’ve been able to do since “sleep” as I claimed previously wasn’t really one of those activities.  

Making Gold in MoP – Professions – Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing has a special place in my digital heart because it’s the first crafting profession that I had at max level and it allowed me my first glimpse into a significant sum of gold…After making myself the 359 chest/shield for tanking (which I never did because I had no idea what I was doing) I immediately made more to be sold for 10k each on the Auction House.  In  my opinion the crafting professions, which I consider to be Blacksmithing, Tailoring, and Leatherworking, are not particularly great money makers but will generally start off well at the beginning of each expansion and raid tier.  So what are the best ways to make money as a blacksmith? 

Making gold in MoP – Professions – Alchemy

We’re now about 3 months into the expansion and from what I can tell, the various gold making opportunities are all just about solidified and will likely remain the same for a while to come.  While some of the tactics remain from Cataclysm, many of them have been changed a bit and in some ways affected drastically.  While the jewelcrafting shuffle still remains in some degree, it is no longer the outstanding cash cow that it was in Cataclysmn.  I was going to try and include a brief overview of each profession in this post and go into detail with following posts but I think I will just start one profession at a time.  So alphabetically…first up is Alchemy!  

Holiday Break = sleep and fun with more alts

The group’s going on hiatus for probably a couple weeks during the holiday season.  We’ve always scheduled for Thursday and Monday night each week and, as I learned last year, that leaves quite a few holidays where we take a night away from the expectation of logging in and smashing bugs, punching dragons in the face etc.

I’m actually welcoming this short break despite still wanting to play more everyday.  Playing on an oceanic server while living in California means that right now, during daylight savings time, I’m starting our raids at 1:30 am and finishing at 5 am.  This is generally not a problem for me since I typically work at night but it’s really not useful to be up until 6 am on average everyday when I’m not doing something purposeful with that time.  I tried doing some quests on my mage this afternoon which was briefly successful until I found myself falling asleep in my chair.  When I wake up in the mornings (or perhaps afternoons) I typically try to stay up and make the most of my day before having to go to work:  catch up on some webpages, eat some lunch (didn’t happen), and in game I try to take care of my profession dailies at a minimum, plus some Tillers planting if I have the time.  If I have lots of time I try to take care of one LFR run.  The paladin still needs to run Terrace of Endless Spring and try to get the healing and dps trinkets.  I’ve given up on running the priest through LFR (don’t need the gear except for the awesome trinket off sha) and the shaman is done for the week with HoF and ToES.  The Druid finally reached LFR ilvl two weeks ago and hasn’t actually entered yet.  I guess I’m trying to put too much on my plate AND still get things done during the holidays.

Today I logged onto the mage and decided that looked like more fun and it truly was great to learn how to play Frost just a bit better.  I actually pulled up the “Core Abilities” tab on the talents menu so I could look at Frostfire Bolt and try to figure out why I wasn’t using it in my rotation ever.  Well Brain Freeze only procs off of Frost Bomb.  THAT’s what I’ve been missing this whole time! My kill speed jumped up dramatically and I did top dps for most of my run through Temple of the Jade Serpent.  This was definitely refreshing and I only needed half of the xp to get to level 86 so a few quests and a dungeon were more than enough to ding.  However I was still starting to nod off in my chair after less than an hour at it so…guess some SLEEP would be more refreshing than taking up questing on another character.  OK OK I guess I don’t need my 4 set tier bonus on my paladin and shaman right away…

Therapist Dragon

I feel violated.