IRL, and actually playing the game, getting in the way of blogging these days. I do update my Twitter from time to time over here, though. Thanks for your patience!

After a lot of self-whoring, I’ve finally hit 450, with most of the popular patterns. I’m making a decent amount of money, but the “you have to deal with people” clause is still there. As such, problems with fees still arise.

Yesterday, for the first time since I leveled enchanting, I had someone demand their mats back after learning the fee for an enchant. This happened literally after I did the enchant in the trade window, he pressed Trade, and I mentioned my fee.

My fees change depending on the enchant: 5g for really low cost enchants like 38 AP or Icewalker, 10g for most other enchants, 15g for high end weapon enchants (Massacre, Berserking, 81 sp on staff, 63 sp on one-hand) and 40 stamina on bracers.

The enchant in question was 40 stamina on bracers, and as well as requiring 450 skill to even make, the pattern itself costs 5 Abyss Crystals. The cost of one Abyss Crystal on Grim Batol is on average 50g. This considered, I thought it was a pretty fair fee. With this fee, I’d need to sell the enchant 17 times before I can turn a profit. Apparently, even in this case, 15g was too much for my customer.

I had another customer, who was buying 63 spellpower, find the fee too much for “just clicking two buttons”. I find this argument strange used for enchanting, because every profession consists of two buttons. The difference between my enchanting and my tailoring is that I can make and sell legpatches with a 50-70g profit per patch, without having to deal with unpleasant people. However, I have to put up with peddling my enchants for the amount of money I get doing a daily.

Some days, though, I get really good sales and make 100-150g just sitting in Dalaran. Other days, it’s barely two or three customers.

Wow, I’ve been missing for about two months now.

Two main things that have happened are: I’ve leveled a human priest to 80, and our raiding alliance fell apart.

On the raiding alliance front, we’ve had a visible attitude change ever since a paladin alt from one of the server’s top guilds joined us. Going from “we don’t have the greatest group makeup, but we can damn well do this, and we will” to expecting people to switch their roles so that we’d have that elusive ideal makeup (which said paladin insisted we absolutely need) didn’t sit well with some of us. This plus getting introduced to elitism, snarked over small mistakes, each player getting too princessy, and such problems spelled the end of the group.

While I feel sad that the group fell apart, the real source of my disappointment is the realisation that this group I considered myself friends with were never my real friends.  We genuinely liked and respected these people. It was really sad to see they didn’t feel the same way.

As for my human priest – meet Elisse (I wanted a name similar to, but not the exact same, as my beloved priest). She’s been disc since she got her first talent point, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the spec.

I like the playstyle – there is no rest to it, no stopping to cheat the FSR, no big heals that take years to cast. It’s all very fast paced, and the most crucial casts are either instants or very short time ones. Borrowed Time is up for the majority of the time. Penance into PWS, then a GHeal, is a massive burst that typically takes around 4-5 seconds to deliver (currently 5.5k absorption, then a 9-10k Penance, then a 8k GHeal with my gear). I’ve also never had any problems AOE healing at any point.

People seem to think that I’ve only chosen disc because I’m a fresh 80, and that when I have better gear I’ll be legging it over to the, eh, light side. That’s not true – I find holy right now pretty /yawn, even if it scales better. It’s always relied on long casts and cheating the FSR, although the new Serendipity fixed that a bit. I’m quite bored of that playstyle after three years of it, so disc suits me best.

To do list and random notes for 3.1 (AKA: How to kill time before a patch):

Purchase dual spec for Ely – I’m inclined towards PvP disc and PvE Holy. Still in the process of finding good resources to explain the new glyphs definitively. Should sift through EJ posts for some info. Search function not turning up anything useful.

No idea how good new Serendipity is. I’ve seen a lot of priests spam Flash Heal to pad the meters, while I conservatively stuck to Greater Heals and CoH (still in the TBC mindset where mana is a precious commodity not to be wasted). It seems like the new Serendipity is geared towards priests who still will use FH a lot and damn the efficiency. However, it’s also useful as a new ohshi function, coupled with Test of Faith. Both of which I didn’t take, but mostly because I didn’t know where to take points out of.

Stuck between choosing 2.5 second Greater Heals or Spell Warding for PvP. On one hand, will Flash Heal + Penance be efficient enough, and will the throughput suffice? I’ve never played without 2.5 second GHs except as shadow, and the thought of being without worries me, although people say it is enough.

Ely needs to get some PvP gear, stat. Looking forward to the next season, and perhaps battlegrounding more on her.

As for Lumi – her duals will be 0/60/11 feral tank and 0/55/16 PvE kitty. I’m again undecided about my last tank glyph. I’ve had Frenzied Regen and found it lackluster, that’s a fault on my part though as I mostly forget to pop it. I could opt to change now to SI or Berserk. The thing is that I’m not sure either of those are. I pop Berserk at the start of every boss fight for a nice threat lead, so having an extra 5 seconds (time to squeeze in 3 extra mangles) is nice. And I can see it potentially being useful for trash pulls, although I would be much happier if it reduced the cooldown rather than gave an extended effect. On raid trash though I usually tank a single mob, the one currently being DPSed, and leave the heavier AoE tanking to DKs or paladins, so not sure how useful extra Berserk time is there.

The SI glyph, on the other hand… a lot of the time, I go without popping SI on a boss fight. If the healers are doing their jobs properly, I shouldn’t need to anyway. But when I do need it, extra 15% sure is nice. Again, it comes down to survivability versus threat.

Want to roll mining and JC or enchanting on Shaylah, my new DK girl. Enchanting entails farming lots of instances on Lumi until Shay gets it to 375 (I do have a lot of 300-375 mats stockpiled though so). 375-450 = Pure torture begins, although I only need 375 for my disenchanting purposes so I can level 375+ at my leisure, cheaply. As opposed to Jewelcrafting which is pure torture all the way, BUT, I can potentially make more gold from it.

It was so easy to level Jewelcrafting to 375 on Haomarush that I’m amazed how expensive it is on Grim Batol, despite there being more supply. On Haomarush I managed to turn a profit all the way except on the 250-300 stage, whereas on GB after hitting 150 I’d need mats like 30 Moss Agates at 10g each on AH (on Haomarush I’d get them for 1-2g each, sell the resulting necklaces for 3-4, everyone would be happy). Yeah, if I’m not making profit leveling it, and if I’m not sure how much I will make when I hit 80, I’m not leveling it, thanks.

It’d be easier if the mats were even remotely farmable… but no, they aren’t. I mean, I can’t even begin to imagine how many stacks of tin I would need to get 30 Moss Agates, and how many hours that would take in total. Mining runs make me want to die inside, as opposed to herbalism runs, that are easier.

I guess I’d eventually roll the leftover profession on my priest anyways, along with Tailoring that I’d always planned to roll as soon as she hits 60. But Tailoring/Enchanting seems more self-sustainable than Tailoring/Jewelcrafting. With tailoring, you can at least find the materials you need while questing.

If I log on and see that Bartender no longer has the Zoom feature, as one of the comments says it does, I am going to be a very unhappy player. I love that feature! On the same note, I hope all my addons work properly and flawlessly.

I wonder if we can get an Ulduar raid going this week.

Wow, it’s sure been ages since I wrote! I guess this is what happens when one gets carried away more with playing the game, rather than writing about it.

On Alliance side, things have been going rather well, in fact, better than I’ve ever thought they would. It really helps that we’re on a very good server as far as things to do go. So far, a few things I have managed to PuG on Lumi:

- Champion of the Frozen Wastes
- 3/5 Valorous
- A full Sunwell run
- Several best in slot items

And I’m just 13 badges away from Valorous leggings, bringing me to 4/5. My helm is best in slot anyways, so that means I’m settled for gear for a pretty long time.

I am a bit amazed at what can be done on a more capable server. On Haomarush, if you don’t have a guild, you are SOL and you turn to things like PvP which can be done on a small scale with PuGs. It doesn’t help that there are very, very few quality guilds – most of the more progressed guilds are plagued by drama, bad leadership, or people you just don’t want to be around. There was a single guild I was a great fit for, and who were in need of healers, but as it turned out, their raiding times were very, very early for me.

On Grim Batol, if nothing, there are a wider choice of guilds with a very wide variety of raid times. If none of them suit you, or if you value your independence like us, you can PuG pretty much anything (the only exceptions I’ve seen are Malygos 25 and Sarth+). I’ve seen content I thought my druid would never see.

That said, I sort of miss Home-a-rush’s peace and quiet sometimes, hanging out with my Hordies, and all the friends we made there in 2+ years of playing. I don’t miss though that as casuals, the server gives you very little opportunity to grow.

For most of the time lately I’ve been chilling on Luminaria, instead of leveling/gearing/bothering with my other characters on Haomarush Horde. The reasons for that are numerous, but mostly having to do with the difficulty of getting anything done on a low population server. We’ve lately tried yet another raiding alliance that fell apart, due to some loot drama, and the players involved suddenly transferring back to their home server without a single word, over one night.

Being on a high population server simply benefits my casual playstyle much, much more, because I don’t need a guild to get everything done. I can easily PuG any 10man raid so the content is not beyond my reach. I can chain heroics if I want to (groups usually take 5 minutes to set up), premade or PuG battlegrounds (granted, Misery EU is a pretty bad battlegroup for Alliance), find an arena team and have fun with that – and the great thing is that in doing all of these things, I can see a much higher quality of gameplay from other players that is hard to see on my home server. Things both take less time to do, and are easier because of the higher skill level that everyone expects from each other.

Do I miss my Hordies? For sure. As far as I’m concerned, Ely is still my main, and will be my main (until I level Kielle on Grim Batol?). I have history on her, it’s not just a character I can get rid of if I wanted to – she represents all the friends I made and all the fun I had since vanilla WoW. We’ve considered a server transfer to see if we can end up someplace where we can enjoy our Hordies more, however, as a friends group, we all had so many alts, most of them at the level cap, that transferring wasn’t financially viable at all, not to mention the fact that we consider Haomarush home. 

But at least as a friends group we seem to be happy on Grim Batol right now. My forever partner-in-crime Zilli has leveled up a druid himself, and we’ve been rocking arenas, battlegrounds, and happily chaining heroics to gear ourselves up. In future posts, you might read more about our adventures.

On Grim Batol:

My three best friends, on characters ranging from 70 to… 17.

My ex-GM on his warrior.

The prospect of my ex-GM’s flatmate, and one of the greatest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing with, transferring.

More or less a server I know.

On Ravencrest:

My old arena partner, ex-rogue now DK, someone whose company I thoroughly enjoy.

Our twice gladiator friend Kiyu.

The fact that I can leech in on their Naxx PuGs, unlike Grim Batol where everyone goes “Link achievement”.

*sigh*

Indecision.

Since I last posted, a lot of changes have happened ingame!

First off, Elysiane hit 80, which was about 10 days of effort in total (although it felt like it was much longer).

Second, I and my closest friends in-game, the Love Vendor core, have /gquit. I have to admit this was out of sheer boredom – PvP as a priest right now is about as fun as sticking fork repeatedly in eye. I die in about three seconds with a hybrid Blessed Resilience/spirit spec. Going in with my old PvP gear is no help at all as 12k mana does absolutely not cut it, this time I run out of mana in the first 15 seconds and then die shortly after.

At the moment the best PvP gear can be obtained so easily through PvE that it is painful. Archavon is easy, is also easily PuGgable. In a way that obtaining 2k rating isn’t. Elysiane has already landed the Hateful gloves and I will definitely be going back for more.

However, the fact that top of the line PvP gear is obtainable through PvE does not please me – I thought that was what was Blizzard was trying to move away from, keeping PvP and PvE separate. At the moment it seems like good PvEers will still be dominating this season as they have access to both high quality weapons and high quality gear that normally requires a rating to get.

So as far as PvE goes, I’ve so far done: 10man/25man Sartharion, 10man/25man Archavon, halfway through 10man Naxx, halfway through 25’s Naxx (guild atm is stuck at Patchwerk but they have cleared 10man Naxx), and a variety of heroics.

This has only reinforced my opinion that PvE is easy. If I ever had any doubts about PvE being easy it disappeared when my guild 10manned 25man Heigan, after the 15 idiots died during the first two dance phases. Same Heigan was also 5manned after we lost all our melee because the tank couldn’t dance, and all our retards because they couldn’t dance either.

To be honest, I’m really sure I don’t want to hardcore raid, but it seems to be all there is to do ingame at the moment. We joined this guild specifically because their raid times were suitably late but had a suitably early ending, and because their recruitment forums said they only raided 3 days a week, however, so far it doesn’t seem to be the case. There are raids going every day of the week, most of them being 25man, and 10mans only being set up when there aren’t enough people raiding.

I hope this lack of things to do changes soon and good PvP is underway fast. I’m so used to tanking in PvP that not being survivable provides zero fun, and to be perfectly honest, I like PvP so much more than PvE. Primarily because quality PvP does not require me to be online at a certain time every night, spend three to four hours on progression, blow hundreds of gold on repairs and flasks, yet still remain competitive at what I like to do and is, unlike PvE, dynamic.

I’ve dinged 79 today and now am officially on the final stretch. And experiencing heavy burnout. I don’t even want to start up WoW, let alone quest.

I don’t even know what to do when I ding. I guess professions, crafts, reputations, in that order? I’d definitely like a baseline resilience set as fast as possible so I can start doing what I enjoy, which is battleground and arena PvP with friends. I’m looking forward to spells and abilities balancing themselves out so I can have fun playing my healers once again.

I don’t think I will powerlevel professions instantly as soon as I am 80 – as usual I like to bid my time, look for deals, and make a profit while leveling professions. This pays off in the end, remember, if a profession is not making money while leveling and after you have leveled, you should probably drop it and get another one.

As far as reps go, I’m keeping an eye on the Wyrmrest reputation as that seems to yield the healing enchant, and the Horde Offensive reputation for the new Sta/Resi enchant. Not looking forward to said grind as Haomarush isn’t the most populated of servers, so getting into PuGs is always difficult.

EDIT: Wow! I’m linked at Out of Mana! Thanks, Megan!

Have I mentioned how the leveling grind is killing my soul piece by little piece?

I’ve hit the midway point yesterday, and while I am looking forward to obtaining Cold Weather Flying, thus making questing that little bit faster with minimum travel time involved, I think if I do one more quest, I will scream.

I mean no. Just no. It’s tedious, and no matter how much variation is involved, it’s boring. Not to mention that the zones are crowded, and I hate questing in crowded zones, competing for mobs. Thankfully there are very few gankers since most people want to just quest and gtfo.

To be perfectly honest, this might be the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I can feel a burnout coming onto me. It doesn’t help that I feel compelled to level, compelled to not fall behind the crowd. This is a game, and it’s meant to be entertainment. And leveling 70-80? Is not entertainment.

It’s not like the grind ends once you are 80, anyway. There’s the grind for reputations so I can obtain the enchants and items I need. There’s the grind for badges so I can get good enough gear to raid. There’s the grind for PvP gear so that we can stomp lesser geared people and work our way up the rating ladder.

Speaking of rating ladder, I’ve lost Rinny the rogue, my arena partner on my priest. He’s rerolled gnome warrior on Ravencrest and is doing the leveling grind the same as me. As he doesn’t know when he will be leveling his rogue or whether he will be doing it at all, that means I’m down an 2v2 mate, and a good, skilled, and nice one at that.

I’m sort of considering migrating Luminaria to Ravencrest so Rinny and I can get to play together again – however, I have three reasons against that, which are my three best friends ingame whom we always play together. Ironically Rinny won’t xfer to Grim Batol for the same reason, he has two very good friends who play on Ravencrest, one of whom is in a Sunwell guild and has no option of leaving.

I guess I could level yet another character on Ravencrest, but I’d probably die during the process, so that’s not an option. Also, I’d like to wait and shamelessly roll a FoTM character that syncs with a warrior if at all possible.

Speaking of FoTM, I’m wondering how popular and strong DKs will be in arena and battleground PvP once level 80 ladders establish themselves. From the looks of their abilities it seems like they counter druids pretty nicely, which may mean that priests and shamans will be on the rise. Given that both can abolish diseases, and the fact that priests got more mana regen options and shamans got a HoT plus curse removal, the reign of druids over small bracket arena may finally be at an end.

That plus the Lifebloom nerf really hit druids pretty hard – the cost of my Lifebloom was increased 50% and it heals for much less. After 3.0, my priest was much more survivable in battlegrounds than my druid, even though I had more of a reliance on casted heals and wore cloth. My druid 1. Ran OOM fast, 2. Didn’t heal for nearly as much. I finally specced 10/0/51 Imp ToL and Wild Growth, and started running around in tree form spamming heals.

If that’s the direction Blizzard wants druids to take, I’m sorry to say that it’s boring, and the completely defensive playstyle feels like being a paladin with HoTs. If you’re caught casting a Cyclone or Roots in caster form, you die, and you can’t afford to anyway because your teammates are dying and your full stack of HoTs can barely keep them up.

Anyway, this has all been said by people who are much more accomplished than myself (and there I went off on a tangent again). With a 70 of each healing class, I’m prepared anyway.

Now to get to 80 and resume work on those Conqueror titles…