Jewelcarfting, its a bad joke!

Looking back

Chasey's professions are Jewel Crafting and Enchanting. She has always been an enchanter but the other profession has changed a few times. I don't remember the 1st couple, but one day before Naxx. 2.0 I went mining to get the Stam. that goes along with that profession. Shortly after I realized, I must go JC, I was spending SO much gold on gems. At the time I did it, I was looking to save gold and get the unbelievable JC only gem bonuses. My goal wasn't to be a gold maker or to collect all of the recipes that the game offered. I was to make my gems or gems for my alt's. and to get the profession only stats.

Towards the end of Wrath I got to get the real benefit of being a Jewel Crafter. The awesome gold oppertunity and doing what the money makers call the "Saronite Shuffle" by prospecting Saronite. It worked but I was never a true auction house mogul. It was to keep my butt out of debt. Doing the JC daily wasn't much fun but it wasn't painful. The money you made became much better than any of the drawbacks.

During Cata, the money from JC was sickening! I made painful amounts of gold selling gems. Until the epics came out. At that time, being a JC was a pain in the ass! The dailies weren't horrible but it was something you had to do to get the patterns you wanted and the sheer fact your bonus was almost void by being a JC hurt to the core. I wasn't raiding but it saddened me I could spend 250g to get the same stats I had already by being the owner of a crafting profession. I heard some talk of it, but in the end Blizz never did up the JC only gem stats.

Enter the Mist of Panderia

For almost the entirety of Cata, blue quality red gem cuts sold for above 100g. They hardly ever dipped below that until the release of epics and even then certain cuts stayed pretty close. Every 4 days you had a new pattern that you NEEDED and could make a profit.

MoP has brought us a guessing game and the NEED for a miner on staff to get the gems you need. As we sit less than two months from release day, the blue quality red cuts are 60g on my server. That is even for the brilliant cut, which is much needed by ALMOST every class.

I'm a tank, I need 3 or 4 cuts. I'm not looking to sell at this point, I'm looking to get the cuts I need for my gear. It took me close to a week of buy or xmuting to get my cuts, per gem. Now I did get extra gem cuts but NO ONE buys blues. It is almost at this point (yes, even now in game) better to vendor them. Because re-listing them for 5 days straight makes no Goblin sense.

I thank Blizz for giving JC's a mount. Its been glorious doing dailies to get the pattern. While I discuss this I can see almost non stop for another poor JC, and I say poor because there seems to be a million of us, are now selling the panthers for cost. Yes, there is zero money to be made in the mounts.

No this isn't all about gold with me, my complaint isn't that the poor JC can't make gold, the simple fact is I've had to rely on RNG to get my patterns. I still don't have the pure mastery cut and the ring and neck patterns were obsolete a few days after level 90 for any toon.

Just quickly on another note, I think Blizz really dropped the ball on professions for this whole xpac. Sure I think they cut down the BOT'rs by making raw mats so very plentiful. But being a LW, Tailor or Blacksmith requires you to level and GRIND rep! OH, yes more grinding with the alts. Enchanting doesn't even have a use for the sought after Spirit of Harmony.

On the Spirit of Harmony front, I'm not sure if Blizz has implemented a worse idea to "get people out in the world". Making them BOE makes some of the raw materials less attractive. To my statement on enchanters, and even JC's who get their patterns they want they are now sitting on these and selling the raw mats you can buy from the panda. If you look it really has put dent in the Golden Lotus market.

Looking ahead

I'm guessing as teir gear becomes more regular on the normal raiders, as opposed to the hard core. That will once again make the gem market profitable again, but...

Sure being a JC is still fun at this point. The money from the profession is dried up. We are now only able to have TWO JC only gems in our gear and even cutting the Meta's is less cost efficient than selling the blue quality gems. I'm hoping that Blizz makes a change to the profession in later patches. Again, not raiding I'm not really disabled by this other than not having incoming gold flow that came with being a JC once was. Blizz has fixed that for us by giving us 120 or so factions that take no less than 9000 dailies to do to become exalted with.

Currently, being a JC is a joke. If I was raiding hard core again or on a serious scales I'd be upset by the 'nerfs' to the profession only benefit.

Just another DK.

Inept!

I've never denied it, I'm a bad DK. I laugh at myself for just how bad I am. Being a solid DK has never been a priority. I mean for as good as I am at tanking, DK tanking came easy but as far as what a DK is really capable of I'm not that kind of player.

I've had some really newb moves with this toon.are laughable and legendary. I had hit level 80 with Khasey and never reforged her weapon, why you ask? I didn't know how to open the book that allowed me to pick. I had to ask while in Ebon Hold. It caused a bit of giggle in local but yep, that's me. That isn't even the worst one. I had asked my guild to get a good group together so I could run ZA/ZG with people I know. I didn't want to bring a group down, at least not with strangers. One the way to the bank after the run, a guildie asked me over vent, why I didn't have the DK only flyer. I was stunned! I was like, "dude, stop messing with me". He assured me, he was not messing with me and that they sold a DK flyer that was like a bone gryphon. I went to the trainer after having him give me directions and bought it. I was amazed.

See, I'm not the most pro DK out there. I've always marveled at good DK's that could use all their tools to perfection. I know there is some, not many but those guys are good! I've played with a few that made me marvel the class. I've also had a few people who stopped playing because of how OP the class is. Needless to say they are a tad polarizing.

I tell you all this because I'm leveling my DK as my second to 90. Believe me when I say this, the second time around it is going faster. The killing speed that she offers is AMAZING. Much better than a ret pally offers. I go with a pretty stock UI and don't really worry to much about all the tricks and tools but they are on the bar.

I"m leveling straight DPS this time around. I'm really kind of over tanking for strangers that have zero inhibition on what they feel they need to say to complete strangers. So I que as DPS and just do my job.

I have even read a blog on how to increase my DPS and what kind of stats I need to be a good DPS toon.

Me EPIC?

So today, I went in and did Shado-Pan Monastery in a PUG.It wasn't great, even at lvl 87 I was killing in DPS. I did about 26K DPS or about 6k more than the next high DPS. This might be a long run I was thinking. After clearing to the last boss and pulling him TWICE, I was even on that horrid fight still about 5k more DPS. We had a ranged DPS pulling 6800 DPS, yes at lvl 88 a Warlock hit 6800 on that fight. He dropped group and we got another lock. Mid fight our tank died, then dropped group. I was going to Rez him but he was gone.

I thought oh jeeze here we go again. I didn't want to give up. If you have ever read my blogs in the past you know I do NOT like to give up on a fight. It kills me to not try it completely before you die.

My instinct kicked in. I pushed blood presence, grabbed the boss and tried to maintane aggro as best as I could. The healer died! I'm like we'll this is it. I had enough Runic power to battle rez the healer, and we got pulled to the ORBS. I pop'd army right after that happened. I was taking a beating and had zero blood runes to hit Death Strike, so I sacked my ghoul and hit  Ice bound fortitude and helped with the Orbs as the boss fought. Boss was at about 1 million health. I figured we could do this..,. and we did!

(ok for those that see my DPS for this fight, remember I was running for my life for most of it, brez'n the healer and poping army while trying to avoid damage LOL)

Right after the fight, WOW, great job and AWESOME came up in party chat. Not for me, just for us, for 4 manning a boss that we all thought we were going to die on. Can you imagine a 5 man group acting together and to get a job done. Most of the time we take it for granted but every once in a while a run comes around like this that tells you even if you aren't good on this toon, you can still pull some amazing things off because you don't want to die.

Not bad for just another DK and I had FUN doing it.

The Torment of Halfhill Village!

If I was a witty writer I'd make a song about this wonderful little city. It would be grand and catchy. But I'm not so I won't.

(source)

We has Shatt, a mecca of wonder with refugee's and research facilities. It was multi- leveled and seemed so amazing at when you 1st got there. It seemed busy and friendly  It housed everything you needed aside from auction houses. You could fall to your death in a second if you clicked the wrong mount or happened to be on the toon that was on the non Scryers rep. Located so amazingly it never felt like a chore to get to and was the height of the game for me.

Then came Dalaran. The create it created was huge but getting there was pretty cool. When Wrath hit, it was a mystery to me on how I'd get there then...how do you get out. I jumped out of the sewers the 1st time and bubbled. As I landed I got tore apart by some wolfs that were close. That was fun times.

When Cataclysm released I thought, hey Blizz made a huge mistake by sticking us all in the home cities. We sat around for hours in Org or SW and read trade, did our few dailies and leveled alts. Something felt off about having no hub city.

About a month into MoP I"ve found myself never logging out at the newest and shiniest of the grand cities Blizz has put in game. While it is kinda cool, you can't ride around and well, just about everything is spread out in nooks and crannies. Its not even where I log off now.

So where do log out you ask? In a tiny lil village full of wonderful dragon and magical seeds. You can phase out in the blink of an eye and buy all the good you need to power level cooking in about 20 seconds and 60g or so (really I'm guessing at the price, I think it might have been more like 200g but whatever) and if you head up just a tad you can find an inn on stilts (the Lazy Turnip) with the coolest music in game (my opinion).


Every day I log on and do some farming. Oh, no not that kind of farming. I am not looking to make some armor or extra gold. I'm actually growing crops where my main, Chasey always seems to have to beat the hell out of some critter that messes with my plants. Once you get high enough level with the Tillers you no longer have to use their rusty ole can or hand pump sprayer, but you still have to deal with them stupid ass vermin that pop up. Yes, folks, I log on to a video game and farm! Why, cuz someone thought it would cool to take us out of the major cities and put us in the thimble of a village where every nit wit on the server ride their WAY to big mount and stand on the vendor or quest giver.

Growing 1.6 Spirit of Harmony a day is O.P. if you ask me. I farmed mobs, and did dalies for about 3 days to get my first 3 to do the JC research.

Really I don't mind the farming in game. It is kind of cool to grow what mats or food you need. The only real issue I have is Halfhill is so small its hard to get to what you need. The dailies out of that area are pretty fun and fast. Seems that all that work you put into cooking some panda wants to steal your newly cooked food for reputation. I do wonder why pre 90's don't get rep from the Tillers while planting.

Its really hard to talk to people in game with mounts sitting on top of the quest givers.
It never seems to amaze me that Blizz never pre-thinks these things thru. If you are on at a busy time on a busy server it could take 5 minutes to get the person you need to talk to. Doing the Golden Lotus dailies is pain stacking at times.

The other biggest pain in the butt right now is logging on to farm rep. Yes, I"ve heard that rep farming was done. But if you don't you won't get the rep you need to get patterns and well epics. The money is great. Logging on to do a job is NOT!

I wonder how the quaint people of this tiny village think of the growth potential of all the new guests?

My Impressions of the Mist!

Finally a 90!

Oh my what a grind. I've played this game since 2007 and I've seen some grinds to level and get rep. I don't think any of the past stuff I've done in game come close to how LONG the grind was from 88-90. It honestly felt that was seven levels worth of work. Even the quest rewards, XP and gold was amazing. It felt like the my XP bar never moved. Mostly I had rested XP too. I just can't image going to another toon now and starting that grid.

So what do I think of MoP. The scenery is beautiful. They really did a nice job on the art work. Not really liking the mobs but the buildings and landscape are really put together well. I haven't got all the instances done but what I have seen they did nice work on that too. I can't wait to see the rest.

Now on the difficulty level from what I've seen - The 5 mans are a joke. I'm in starter gear and the things I've seen and done are laughable. Cata set the bar much higher on entry level difficulty. Gear isn't horrible, the quest rewards seem to be pretty nice. Not the greens but anything blue and higher. At this point, by the time people hit epic level of gearing, we will be doing 5 mans as fast as we did towards the end of Wrath. It will be a pull fest. In fact there is ZERO fear by the dps on ninja pulling.

I'll say this, I do not run a damage meter as a tank or ever for that matter. Due to this I've almost figured out I have and internal clock that tells me how the DPS is going. I've been linked a few times and I fear tank damage output is TOO low at this moment.

Up until level 87 I quested as prot as I have done for 87 levels. Chasey was leveled as prot from level 1. At 88 it felt like I was back at level 32, I could honestly go to the rest room and come back with half a mobs health left to finish. Pulling 5 mobs as I have in the past really lead to trying to keep alive more than anything else. The mob really started to hit hard. As I got to 89 to 90 I had to actually quest as Ret. This saddened me but it made killing go just a tad quicker. Level 90 mobs had roughly 400K health. So I guess you could say the quest mobs are highly tuned and the 5 mans are well....easy sauce.

I do understand that there is a new feature to the game in called challenge mode but I don't know if running 5 mans (normal, heroic and challenge) mode add variety. It seems like there is just EXTRA lockouts. I dunno, I haven't done them yet, so my judgement is with out knowledge.

On being Prot!

I like tanking so far. Threat is a no brainier picking up mobs after a bone head ninja pulls while the healer has zero man isn't tough. It feels like we are missing another attack or a bit of a lull in the rotation. I love holy prism, my 7th tier talent. Not huge damage but enough and the heal is pretty nice, when running with DK's who think there is zero reason to move out of the goop, fire or black shadow stuff on the floor, it gives the healer a second to realize he is dealing with a retard...lol

Brewmaster!

So when I hit 89 I decided to do the brewmaster boss. Coren has SO many HP's and abilities that I never knew he did. My 1st time I did it, the healer was 90 and a rogue was 90, the others were 89 and we got it done. It went smoothly and fast. Not DPS fast but kind of like any other time you ran Coren just to get the dodge trinket.

My next time I wasn't so lucky. I had a druid healer who forgot he was a healer and went kitty and a Ret pally. ( I don't know if anyone has noticed, Ret pally's are pretty squishy) I died almost instantly, well as soon as Ardent Defender went off. He battle rezed me. I got all the mobs set up and I proceeded to get kegged 4 times straight. (Yes DPS was that slow that I was able to get kegged 4 times). All of a sudden after the wipe, the talk of how bad the tank is because he can't keep aggro starts between the Druid and Ret. I wasn't aware that while stunned for 2 minutes of a 4 minute fight where I can do nothing but wander about until the debuff wears off mean I'm a bad TANK. But oh well it happens. The group fell apart, I requeued and low and behold the Druid and Ret were there again.I know I'm out of practice tanking but really, if no one picks up Ursula when she pop's out and the DPS is too slow to kill the boss, that fight sucks. The Druid starts to berate me and leaves after dropping this dandy little line. I'm not healing that suck ass tank ever again. My pride was hurt.

Next group full of 89's downs boss no issue at all.

The stam trinket is NOT dropping, so I que'd one more time. This time we had a few 90s and a Druid healer from my realm. We wipe! We rez, run back in and pull again. We wipe again. I get a whisper saying I don't know how to tank so please don't ever do it again. He then drops group. 10 seconds later we get another healer, I pull and WHAMO, down goes Coren and my trinket drops.  I know I shouldn't have, I just couldn't resist but I sent him a tell telling him for some reason, a different healer was the key to downing the boss.

To be fair to all involved I did announce to the group, if Ursula isn't OT or kited I will get kegged (stunned) and we will not get the boss down. The hunter tanked Ursula with her pet and it went fast.

Moral of that story is, don't underestimate any fight, even if you have done it hundreds of times because you never know the group you are going to be with. Oh and good DPS is really nice to have.

TL;DR-
MoP is grindy and takes long to level. They did a nice job with the art work. Killing stuff in Prot is a burdensome process, 5 mans are easy, quest mobs are high in health and Coren Direbrew is not easy when people can't just faceroll the boss.

Still Crazy!

My current MoP experience-

Just a quick not to say I'm still around. Why? I love the game, its a good time sink and I missed my toons. Sounds crazy right? it kinda is but oh well that's who I am.

I'm enjoying the scenery or MoP. Blizz really did a nice job with the graphics, landscapes and mobs. I wasn't sure how seeing an all China theme would go but hand it to them, they pulled it off. Some places are beautiful and other dismal. All in all it works.

So where am I at? I am not raiding at all this tier or maybe not doing progression in any way but will enjoy an LFR or two. I chose the path to make some gold prior to leveling. I made about 12k gold in about 3 hours of farming with my hunger prior to touching Chasey. I was able to make my hunters prof's and go to level 87 with out hardly doing a quest. Farming turned out to be OK but they are soooo abundant it is a market killer.

I have all professions covered aside from inscription and engineering. I'm amazed that some are so easy to level and others are requiring you to be a level to make it to a vendor to by additional patterns. Not liking the JC discoveries at all. In my 4 days of looking for rare gems, I've gotten 1 pattern. Sadness...

I'm going to plan on getting in to the 'lay persons' guide to MoP pally tanking.

See everyone around soon and thanks for sticking around, if you have!

Paladin Changes 5.0

As long as you don't live under a rock, I'm sure you heard that 5.0 will be going live to serves the week of 8-28-12. Here is the changes you will need to know for the Paladin class. You can also look at my post for the talent calculator and Theck at Sacred Duty did a great tutorial on how to work the new talents (here) and lets not forget Rhidach giving us the full run down (here). Thanks to both of the, you guys are the best.

As for me, I'm not in game ATM but I think by next week I might re-up my sub to see how the new things are going.

I hope everyone enjoys MoP!

Below is the new abilities animated!


All the Paladin ability's can be found (here) click on picture to enlarge -

Paladin Talent Calculator 5.0

It can be found here .
If you look up toward the top right it will give you a link so you can save it and share it too.

Below is a hot link to all the paladin changes:
Paladin:
SKILLS
Talent Calculator
Holy Changes
Ret Changes
Prot Changes

Thanks (here)

And Azshira has made a BRILLIANT post about all the changes for paladins over at MMO-Champion.

Below is WOW's stat changes that you will need to know: (source) and (source)

Almost that time...

I hate to say it, it has been a solid friend to me, a great stress relief and I've met some amazing people. But sadly I must say this out loud...I'm probably finished with WOW.

Why? Well a few things come to mind.

I am so bored leveling low toons. My druid is fun or, um, sort of. My rogue is cool but it is a single mob killing machine. I like to pull lots.

There is no one to talk too! My guild is barren (see what I did there) it has 185 members and 3 people have logged on this week. Most of my realID friends are playing D3 and I'm not raiding.

I have about as much intrerest in buying and playing MoP as I do of hitting myself in the toe with a hammer.

Time will tell, I'm super busy with summer here so I'm in no hurry but the economical and smart thing to do would be to cancel my account.

Whatever the case, I will miss my blogging pals I've made.

MoP map and paladin changes.

Finally, the MoP MAP is in!

Every day new info comes in about MoP out of the Beta people. I haven't seen anything really worth mentioning. What makes me the authority? Well I'm not in Beta so I'm not to concerned about a quest not working right now or what the abilities of every class in game since so much is going to change before the game goes live. I'm trying to hit on the important stuff, so if there is something you would like to see more of, please let me know.

The MoP MAP -

(source)

A few minor updates to the Paladin class have been changed too:
Paladin (Forums)

• Blessing of Kings had a tooltip error corrected: Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing Strength, Agility, and Intellect by 5%.
• Blessing of Might had a tooltip error corrected: Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing mastery by 3,500.

Holy-

• Holy Light now costs 14% of Base Mana, down from 16%.
• Holy Shock now costs 16% of Base Mana, down from 18%.

Protection - 

• Mastery: Divine Bulwark now increases the damage reduction of your Shield of the Righteous by 8% (was 10%), adds 8% (was 10%) to your Bastion of Glory, and increases your chance to block melee attacks by 8% (was 10%).
• Consecration damage reduced by 10%.
• Holy Wrath damage changed to (4,300.5 + 91% of SPH).

Major Glyphs -

• Glyph of Exorcism now requires you to deal damage with Exorcism to get the damage reduction buff.

There was also a video of Paladin abilities posted: (Source)

Not using your head, Head Enchants are Gone!

A Real Head Scratcher!

File this one in the unexpected and in the trash can too. I don't understand the reasoning behind this. In mid Wrath they made these enchants BoA so you only had to grind the rep for any of these ONE time. So once you got the rep on one toon, you could get that enchant for any toon.

In an effort to make the game less grindy, they did what any smart company would do, they not only didn't put a new head and shoulder enchant in game, they now make the old one non-functional. Why wouldn't they allow enchanters or leatherworkers do the head slot and have scribes do what they are still able to do and create the shoulder enchant? No answers on either of those but my guess is the company line will come out and they will say "thats really not in their plans" which translates to "WE DON'T HAVE TIME OR THE RESOURCES TO DO THAT".

I'd be interested in hearing others thoughts on this.

Source: (HERE) and (HERE)

Ghostcrawler

Head enchants are gone.

We decided that putting head enchants on the various faction vendors wasn't working well with our design intent for the factions. There is a lot of max-level quest content in MoP, much of it focused around the reputation with the new factions. I think it's really cool stuff -- worlds away from the old Argent Crusade scourge stone days. :)

In previous expansions, the head enchants on the faction vendors served to force players into that content. You couldn't even choose which reputation to pursue -- you had to pursue the one with your specific head enchant. Our design intent for MoP is to give players options in how to play, and the head enchant design wasn't compatible with that.

Once we decided to no longer offer new head enchants, we made the older ones non-functional or else players would feel like they had to go back to older content or be missing out on power. This way, helmets are just no longer enchantable and you'll have one less required step to get a piece of loot ready to wear.

Shoulder enchants can now be provided by scribes, so those still exist, but they are also not part of the faction reputation system.