Of Money and Alts

So I set out on Friday to make 5000g and to level my priest alt from 78-and-a-half to 80.

I was halfway successful.

My priest is languishing at about 79 and a half, mostly because my brother and a friend of ours both dinged 80 over the weekend. This meant that my brother, resplendent in his awful tanking gear (though still immune to crits, thank you very much) insisted I “heal [him] plz” through some heroics. Seriously, he hit 80 and says to me on Vent “heal meh plz!!!”. So I hopped on my druid and went to town. Over the weekend, we went to Azjol-Nerub, The Nexus, Culling of Stratholme and Halls of Stone, all on heroic, and tried TOC regular for the tanking trinket, too.

He’s not easy to heal, but he’s not inflicting himself on another healer, so I’m okay with that.

What’s more than a little surprising is that he’s not having a horrible time holding aggro. When I went out there on my druid in bear form, probably better geared than my brother, I kept running into people with ICC gear who would whirlwind or Consecrate or Death and Decay and BAM, they would own the mobs.

My brother? No problem. And he’s using Grid to show him who has aggro so he can cast Righteous Defense or BOP or something easily. (Yes, that was my influence.)

Conclusion: Paladin tanks are OP. ;)

As to the money side of things, I ended up with 5,400g more than I had on Friday afternoon. There are still things up on the AH and still things that expired in my bags, but really, that wasn’t bad at all.

How did I do it?

1) Flasks. Flasks sell like hotcakes between 7pm-8pm server time. I sold Flasks of the Frost Wyrm exclusively, in stacks of 5, for just over 100g per stack. I have no idea how many flasks I made, but it was a LOT. It seemed like I always had at least a stack up on the AH or a stack that had just sold.

How did I get the mats? Well, Icethorn is plentiful out there. So is Lichbloom, really, but it’s expensive on the AH. So I took Rilgon’s advice and grabbed GatherMate/GatherMate data (Gatherer has never worked properly for me, for some reason) and went farming in both Wintergrasp and Icecrown on my shaman. My shammy is both a miner and an herbalist, so I used GatherMate’s displays to show me when I should be tracking what, which worked out very well.

The Wintergrasp farming was particularly productive since you can not only harvest Frost Lotuses from any herb you pick, but you can also pick Frost Lotuses from their rare spawns. (I think the only other place in the game you can pick an actual Frost Lotus spawn is in Freya’s room in Ulduar, but I could be wrong.)

While farming herbs for flasks, I also gathered a ton of ore (I actually hit something like 10 titanium nodes in two loops of Icecrown and Wintergrasp!) and did the following:

– prospected the raw Titanium Ore: sold some Titanium Powder, cut and sold any epic gems from the ore, stored the rare and uncommon gems for the future.

– smelted the raw Saronite into Bars: sent them to my transmute specced alchemist and transmuted them to Titanium Bars. The proc rate was abysmal, but I did see a couple. I sold stacks of five bars for 75-80g per stack.

– kept all the crystallized elements for the future, including future Cardinal Ruby transmutes

2) Gems. I had a bit of a stockpile of Cardinal Rubies in my bank (5-6 I think) and so cut those into Fractured, Delicate, Bold and Runed. I transmuted four more Cardinal Rubies on Saturday and Sunday (no procs) and cut and sold those as well. I got a couple epic gems from my Titanium Ore prospecting, so I cut a Solid Majestic Zircon and a couple of Ametrines (Reckless — they sell, but cheaply! — and Glinting, which doesn’t sell well at all on my server). The trouble here is that most of the cash I got from gems is not repeatable because I emptied my stock of Cardinal Rubies and the cut gems are going for like, one or two gold over the raw gems on my server. If I made about 1100g from gems, probably only 500g of it was not due to my prior stock.

3) Food. I spent some time on Kurn fishing and got a ton of Imperial Manta Ray, which I cooked into Imperial Manta Steak. This is my preferred buff food in raids on Madrana, so at worst, I was stocking up for myself. But when I realized I had something like over 200 fish, I decided to sell half of what I had. 80-100g a stack for haste food at raid time on the weekend. Very nice.

I also had enough fish to make a couple of Fish Feasts, which I sold for about 120g per stack of 20.

I also bought some cheap Rhino Meat and made some Hearty Rhino. I made 40, so 2 stacks sold for about 90g apiece, I think it was.

4) Enchants. I sold some raw materials. I had Dream Shards coming out my ears, so I sold a bunch of those (about 40) and a lot of leftover enchanting mats from the 50-60 range, like Large Brilliant Shards, Greater Eternal Essences and the like. Sold all that, probably to the tune of about 500g. I also had leftover mats for the Fiery enchant, so I made some scrolls and while I’ve only sold one of them for 35g, I still have 3 to sell. This was really just me selling crap I already had.

5) Dailies. The only dailies I did were the fishing and cooking dailies on Kurn and the daily random dungeon. I also did the weekly quest on Kurn. I got lucky a couple of times and got the Waterlogged Recipe (5 extra cooking tokens) and the Poison Vial thingy (extra gold). I could have done a lot more in terms of dailies and money, but the thing is, I absolutely loathe the Argent Tournament dailies in particular, and I hate relying on people for Threat from Above and the Commanders.

6) Glyphs. My druid is my scribe and I have a very poor selection of recipes. I essentially did Inscription for the Darkmoon Cards and the shoulder enchant, because as I was levelling my druid, I decided there was no way in hell I was going to do Hodir again. And then when I hit, oh, 70-something, they patched in that the Hodir enchants were BOA. /headdesk. Still, I had a bunch of glyphs leftover that had never sold, so I managed to sell about 200g worth of glyphs. Glyph of Polymorph, Glyph of Chain Heal, Glyph of Rejuvenation all sold out.

Other Things I Could Have Tried: With some patience, I could have done various Leatherworking leg armors, Tailoring spellthreads, done more Earthsiege/Skyflare Diamond transmutes/cuts. The main issue here was a lack of cheap eternals and Frozen Orbs to do this effectively. I already have most of the mats for these, but not so much with the eternals and definitely not with the Frozen Orbs. (Most of the orbs I was getting — and yes, I bought some — were for the sole purpose of making them into Frost Lotuses.)

So. With a 24h downtime coming to ALL MY SERVERS as of 3am, I need to get going on my priest. Stupid priest. Why did I roll a priest? A fourth healer? Really? Someone punch me in the face if I ever decide to level another healer to 80 again. I’ve GOT one of each, that should now be sufficient FOREVER.

All "Good" Things… ?

Well, I snapped. At least a little bit.

I sent a fairly, how shall I put it, biting PM to my raid leader (CCing my RL friend the resto druid/healing lead) on Thursday afternoon. In it, I addressed three things:

1) Screw this noise, I am not your healing lead, even when the healing lead isn’t there. The expectation to automatically do healing if my RL friend is late or absent, without so much as a “hey, do you think you could…?” was perhaps understandable, but not doable for me. I made it very clear that my time as healing lead was temporary and that I was happy to help my friend during a time of RL trouble, but that I was done with it.

2) The MT/GM has got to stop being so freaking abusive. I’ve talked to my RL friend about this point a lot and she’s insistent that he’s not saying it to deliberately insult us but that he’s just a bad leader and that’s how he’s seen the previous leaders in this guild get results. My stance is that I just don’t give a crap what his intentions are, because any normal person is going to take offense to “HEALERS YOU FUCKING SUCK” and such. The chances of changing any part of the MT/GM’s behaviour are slim to none.

However, I did realize something. He has always been this crude, abrasive and obnoxious. It’s not a new thing. But prior to my RL friend’s break from the game, he at least was telling her in /o or whatever that we sucked and trusted her to bring the message to us. Which, we both realized in discussing this, he doesn’t do anymore. He just lets us have it in raid chat. She had been acting as a filter for him for pretty much the entire time I’ve been in the guild, but without her, he had no one he trusted to tell us we suck and fix things. Because he didn’t know or trust me. (Compared to my RL friend, who’s been in the guild for four years.) So my RL friend is going to work on getting him to use her as a filter again. Which is only changing what chat channel he says his stuff in, rather than changing what he says.

So. I guess we’ll see.

3) The late nights are killing me. The raid leader has pushed us past 2am a few times in the last couple of weeks and obviously, I stay, like a moron, because I know they can’t get X or Y down without a holy paladin or without a sixth healer or whatever. So I told the RL in my PM that I was done, that 2am is my hard limit and that any attempts that begin after 2am, unless it’s an exceptional circumstance, will have to be done without me.

Those were the basic points. Of course, I was a lot less brief about it all and I was angry, to boot.

The response I received involved the RL being pissy at me and included the phrases:

“If you’re really that unhappy raiding here though, you should probably
just stop raiding. […] If you have more suggestions about what we can do, then I’m all ears, but I’m kind of doubtful we’ll be able to fix all the issues.”

So I didn’t raid on Thursday. I’m about to post and say that I won’t raid tonight. Did I mention that they didn’t raid on Thursday, either? Not enough people in general, but only five healers as well. 0, that is zero, paladins of any spec.

I’m not one to cause issues, really. But I’m not above withdrawing my services from the guild for a little while to illustrate various points: a) We need 3 holy paladins, period, b) I have worked my ass off for you people and if you think that you can just tell me to not raid because we’re not going to solve the issues, well, good luck raiding without me, c) An unhappy raid environment leads to unhappy raiders who then don’t want to raid or do whatever’s necessary to push through, such as staying ’till 2:30am when end time is 2am.

That cancelled raids give my RL friend a better night’s sleep doesn’t hurt, either. ;)

Anyways, I don’t know what this means for me or for my guild at the moment. It may mean I’m in the market for a new guild. As angry as I am with the RL, he has a point: if I’m not happy, I shouldn’t raid, which is what so many people have said to me over the last week. His pissiness towards me (not really included in this post) has helped ease the guilt of not showing up. I have lost respect for him and, as such, I don’t feel motivated to do my best. Or, you know, anything at all.

Having spoken candidly with my RL friend really helped and I’m feeling less stressed and less worried about the impact my absence has on the guild and raids. I suspect taking a few nights off is also helping substantially.

I’m undecided on tomorrow’s raid, but it’ll probably depend on what they do, if anything, tonight.

In the meantime, priest is 79 and I’ve made almost 4000g since Friday afternoon. So there’s that. ;)

Weekend Plans

I didn’t raid on Thursday and I probably won’t raid on Sunday. I’m feeling pretty burnt out, as if most of you haven’t been able to tell. ;) So there are a few goals I have for this weekend, since it’s raining and I’m not going to go up north to my parents’ cottage.

1) Try to ding the priest 80. She’s three bars into 78 at the moment and just a wee bit rested. I have completed precisely 262 quests with her. Can you tell I have basically spent all my time on her from 15+ in instances? Also, some battlegrounds. And it’s AB weekend, so maybe I’ll go camp LM and enjoy hurling some Horde off the side.

2) Make money. I have always loved to make virtual money. And yet, in WoW, I am not so good at keeping it. I think I’ve broken 20k gold once, but spent a lot of money on my druid alt, my brother’s hunter and our friend’s DK, so that dwindled. On Friday, I was at 10k gold in my bank alt’s guild bank, with no more than 200g on each of my other toons. I plan to end the weekend with about 15k gold in the bank. How?

– Flasks: Madrana’s an elixir specced alchemist and flasks are one of the things that EVERYONE buys. Problem: Frost Lotuses. Solutions: farm with the shammy; run instances on the druid tank for badges to turn in for frozen orbs; buy the damn things.

– Smelting Ore: Mithril Ore was really cheap this week whereas Mithril Bars were super expensive. I made about 800g from smelting ore into bars, but I risked flooding the market. Still, weekends are when people tend to power-level professions and stuff if the mats are available, n’est-ce pas?

– Fish Feasts/Buff Food: One of my pre-Cataclysm goals is for Kurn to get a freaking turtle mount. Ever since I got my buddy Euphie to go fishing for me pre-raid, several months ago, and he got the turtle mount, I have been consumed with jealousy. ;) So Kurn’s been doing a lot of fishing lately (and will probably take in the fishing contest today, too) and, as such, has a ton of many different fish. Must go get more Nettlefish for Fish Feasts and check out what other fish are selling well.

– Gems: Madrana’s also a JC, so if I can find a bunch of raw gems for cheap, I should be able to turn those over pretty quickly.

– Runescrolls of Fortitude: The druid’s got Inscription and these consistently sell well. I just haven’t bothered to make any for a while.

– Drums of Forgotten Kings/of the Wild: Speaking of, Kurn’s a LW and can make drums. I wonder if they’re selling well these days.

So those are my plans for the weekend. Anyone have additional money-making tips? Professions at my disposal:

Skinning, Herbalism, Mining, Fishing, Enchanting, Tailoring, Jewelcrafting, Alchemy (Elixir spec and Transmute spec), Inscription, Leatherworking.

A Look at a Heroic Putricide Strategy

Good news, everyone! I’ve decided to take a minute here and talk about how my guild does Heroic Professor Putricide on 25-man. Seems that there are a lot of people out there struggling with the fight and not a lot of information out there, so I thought I’d drop in my two cents.

Please bear in mind that I really don’t know a lot of the details as to how the DPS works on this fight, but I do know how healing works pretty darn well.

Our raid composition is rarely exactly the same, but our tanks almost always are. We have a warrior tank who is the MT. We have another warrior tank who is in the abomination. We have a bear tank who plays kitty for us until Phase 3.

For raid buffs, we find it essential to drop Nature Resistance Totem and have Prayer of Shadow Protection up, in addition to the regular raid buffs. In lieu of NR Totem, Aspect of the Wild may be used, but this is a serious DPS/healing check, so you don’t really want to gimp your DPS by forcing a hunter out of Aspect of the Dragonhawk.

For paladin auras, we prefer Improved Devotion Aura, if only for the extra armor (and the bonus healing if there’s no tree in the raid), Concentration Aura to help reduce or eliminate spell pushback and either Retribution Aura or Shadow Resistance Aura, though it doesn’t stack with Prayer of Shadow Protection. (A holy paladin can use Aura Mastery + Shadow Resistance Aura to boost everyone’s Shadow Resistance for a short time.)

Phase 1:

Healing: We typically run with six healers. Two holy paladins, one disc priest, one resto shaman and the remaining are a mix of either 2 resto druids or 1 resto/1 holy priest or even 1 resto shammy/1 holy priest. It really depends on who’s around, but we do our best to have at least two holy paladins, the disc and a shammy.

Paladins: Beacon MT, heal raid, focusing on Unbound Plague and Gaseous Bloat targets, helping out on Volatile Ooze Adhesive targets if possible.

1 Resto Shammy: Raid healing + Volatile Ooze Adhesive targets.

Disc Priest: Raid healing by virtue of shielding folks and tossing out Renews, Prayers of Mending and the odd Prayer of Healing. Spot heals with Penance and Flash Heal as well.

Other healers: Focused really on the raid and these are the people who will do the most moving. They’re the ones who stand on the Volatile Ooze Adhesive person, but the pallies and shammy generally won’t, since the melee and 3-4 healers is enough to absorb the damage.

We also find that a minimum of one resto druid with Revitalize is excellent for regenerating the abomination’s energy. If possible, two resto druids with this talent really helps out because it means the slime puddles really don’t have to stay up for long at all in order to regen the abom’s energy. In the comments, ambient reminds us all that Rapture works like Revitalize does. The important thing is having two of these effects on the abomination as often as possible. :) More energy = more slows on adds. Thanks for the reminder, ambient!

DPSing: Uh… moar pew pew? ;) No, seriously, the DPS really just focus on the boss, always prioritizing the adds when they come out. We WILL try to stop DPS at 84% if we’re due for another add. We have discovered, the hard way, that even one extra add up during any transition phase is a bad, bad thing.

Tanking/positioning: The tank is usually moving Putricide around, away from Unbound Plague targets, towards Volatile Ooze Adhesive targets. It’s a very mobile encounter and while we used to stand on various sides based on which add was coming out back on normal mode, we don’t tend to do this any longer and definitely not on heroic mode.

Once the adds are down and we’re not due another one for a bit, we will push Putricide to 80% and start the first transition phase.

Transition Phase 1:

Healing: We maintain the same assignments as during phase 1, with the paladins healing the Gaseous Bloats and a resto shammy on the Volatile Ooze Adhesives. Unbound Plague should fall off someone just as the transition is beginning, so we don’t have to worry about that again until Phase 2.

DPSing: What can be said but kill the add that you can attack? Something that helps us immeasurably, though, is a good Gaseous Bloat kiter. They’ll run the ooze away from the raid, initially, and then come running back towards the group, so that the DPS can get a good start on the Ooze and then can ruin the Gas. Go go focused fire!

Phase 2:

I hate Malleable Goo. :P

Healing: Nothing’s changed, everyone’s still doing what they’ve been doing up ’till now.

Tanking: Same thing, MT is on Putricide, OT is in the abomination and the other OT is playing kitty.

DPSing: Again, the same.

In reality, Phase 2 is so similar to Phase 1 that it’s hard to believe that the addition of Malleable Goo is such a problem. But it IS a problem. I believe that Putricide launches THREE Goos (I’m usually too busy to count!) and the only way to really avoid them is to watch for them. DXE, AVR, DBM, BigWigs, none of them will show you all the targets. Trust me, I’ve tried.

So what I do is move my big central warning text from the middle of my screen off to the side and watch my Malleable Goo timer as best I can. When the warning noise (from DXE, I believe) goes off, I stop whatever I’m doing and look up at Putricide and run like the dickens.

This does not mean that I don’t get hit, now and then, because I do. :P But it’s a lot less often now that I’ve trained myself to watch for it. Plus I still have DBM yelling at me if it’s targetting me specifically.

So, same as the end of Phase 1, we hold off DPS at around 38% or so until we’ve killed all the adds and then we push Putricide into transition.

Transition Phase 2:

Same as the first transition phase, with two exceptions:

1) We hit heroism.

2) We also try to pull out summonable pets for the Volatile Ooze Adhesive explosion, to help absorb the damage. We’re talking Army of the Dead, Ghost Wolves, Shadowfiends, hunter pets, warlock pets and shammy elementals. These pets are really key to absorbing damage and helping to finish off the transition adds so we can get on to Putricide ASAP in P3. Adds MUST go down before DPS switches to Putricide.

This is one reason why going into a transition with any kind of extra add up is recipe for disaster. It prevents you from getting back to the boss in a timely fashion.

Phase 3:

Okay, time to switch things up!

Tanking: OT pops out of the abom. OT pops out of kitty into bear form. MT tanks until he has two stacks of Mutated Plague, then Bear Tank taunts and holds the boss for two stacks. Then other OT taunts and holds the boss for two stacks.

Subsequent taunts are quick, just for one stack each, so it goes like this:

Tank 1: 2 stacks

Tank 2: 2 stacks

Tank 3: 2 stacks

Tank 1: 1 additional stack, for 3 stacks

Tank 2: 1 additional stack, for 3 stacks

Tank 3: 1 additional stack, for 3 stacks

Tank 1: 1 additional stack, for 4 stacks

Tank 2: 1 additional stack, for 4 stacks

Tank 3: 1 additional stack, for 4 stacks

If Putricide isn’t dead by now, chances are, the entire raid is.

The important thing for the tanks to do, apart from knowing when to taunt, is to NOT change direction abruptly. Keep moving him slowly, keeping him out of slime puddles and away from the orange vials and such, but you really don’t want to be going one way and then have another tank taunt and go back the way you just came.

Healing: Healers, I hope you’re ready for some insane freaking damage here. It’s just STUPID.

Paladins: Don’t worry about beacon yet. It should still be on your MT, but I encourage you to keep spamming Holy Light directly on your first tank. You MUST be aware of the tank rotation! As soon as you see that the first tank has two stacks (or whatever you stack to), you need to switch targets immediately. With any luck, your beacon is still up on the MT (although I wouldn’t waste the mana to refresh it) and you can pre-emptively heal the second tank a bit.

After everyone has two stacks is an ideal time to do three things:

1) Find a better place to stand. You want to stand somewhere far enough away from the tanks that you won’t have to move again for the encounter, barring environmental crap, but close enough that they’re still in range. You want to be near the area where they will be kiting the boss towards. But don’t just run over immediately when people have two stacks…

2) This is a great time for one paladin to hit Divine Shield/Divine Sacrifice. The 20% damage reduction for six seconds is enough of a buffer, usually, for you to run to a new place to be before you resume casting and the Divine Shield aspect allows you to run through slime if you need to in order to get to your new location. Any other paladins should chain DS/DS at this point, so when one finishes, the next begins.

3) As soon as you’ve done your DS/DS and moved to a better location, beacon YOURSELF and heal the active tank. This is pretty much the only way you’re going to be able to stay alive on the encounter because you’re taking 18k+ damage every time Mutated Plague ticks on the three tanks when it’s getting to 3 stacks. It’s actually really easy to keep up one tank (and yourself, via beacon) just by spamming the crap out of Holy Light and using all your cooldowns available to you — wings, Divine Illumination, Lay on Hands, anything you’ve got.

Priests: Derevka suggests chaining Divine Hymns at the end of P3, so probably at about the time the first stack of 3 appears and the raid damage gets significantly harder. Chaining them will allow subsequent Divine Hymns to benefit from the buff of the initial heal, with disc priests going first, then holy priests for maximum output. Thanks for the tip! :)

Raid healers: You are probably going to die unless your DPS is seriously on top of things. I honestly recommend priests use the occasional Binding Heal. Don’t worry about the paladins because they’ve beaconed themselves. Don’t worry about the tanks. Worry about yourselves and the DPS.

DPSing: Apart from killing the boss, your biggest responsibility is containing the Unbound Plague. I really haven’t spoken a lot about the plague, because it’s easy enough to hand off/avoid in the first two phases with just a little practice, but since everyone is basically bunched up for Phase 3, this is where it’s YOUR responsibility to get it the hell out of the raid. You do not want this ticking on your tanks or healers and you especially do not want anyone to have the plague ticking on them after they’ve already had the plague. Plague Sickness is bad, okay? The loss of your DPS (if you’re melee) or the slowdown of your DPS (if you’re ranged and have to move) is really minor compared to the havoc that the Unbound Plague can cause in melee range. So if you get it, RUN IT OUT. If you die with it, it’s not the end of the world, because at least you won’t spread the plague. But try to hand it off after about 10 seconds.

And that is, more or less, how my guild does Professor Putricide on 25-man heroic mode.

Comments or questions are welcome. :)

Kurn's Q&A #19

Welcome, welcome, one and all, to Kurn’s Q&A! This is the time of the week when I look at my website stats from the previous week and see how I can better help those search for information by expounding on 10 search terms that led people to my site. I love Tuesdays.

1) “katrana prestor”

Ahhhhh, Lady Katrana Prestor, also known as Lady Onyxia! Katrana Prestor used to be an NPC in Stormwind Keep. There was Bolvar Fordragon, Anduin Wrynn and Katrana Prestor in the throne room in the keep.

At level 50, you could start an immense quest chain that begins in Burning Steppes called Dragonkin Menace. It would take you through Burning Steppes, over through Blackrock Depths, to Lakeshire, to Stormwind, back to Morgan’s Vigil, all over the damn place. Eventually, you would rescue Marshall Reginald Windsor, whom everyone from pre-BC probably loathes as much as I do, and meet up with him at the Stormwind gates.

There would be this truly awesome event that would take place — you’d escort Windsor up to the keep and accuse Lady Katrana Prestor of being Onyxia in disguise and she’d transform RIGHT FREAKING THERE and get the guards in the keep to turn into their draconic forms. Bolvar would LAY THE SMACK DOWN, but not before Windsor is mortally wounded. (I used to /cheer.)

Here’s the script.

Onyxia would vanish, presumably to go to her lair, and you would be tasked with restoring a medallion. You’d have to go to freaking Winterspring, to the top of a damn mountain, to talk to a blue dragon (Haleh, who appears in high/blood elf from) who’ll tell you to go to Upper Blackrock Spire and kill General Drakkisath and get the Blood of the Black Dragon Champion. (This eventually became party loot, but for a LONG time, there were only 1-3 of these that dropped at a time.)

Then you go back to Haleh and she would give you your Drakefire Amulet, which you had to have with you to enter Onyxia’s Lair.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of Lady Katrana Prestor as she was in the game before they removed the Onyxia attunement questline. More info here on Lady Katrana Prestor from WoWWiki.

Edit: Best video EVER. The Craft of War: Blind.

2) does divine shield drop lady deathwhispers

Drop Lady Deathwhisper’s what?

Curse of Torpor: Probably
Frostbolt: Yeah.
Mind Control: Well, you can’t pop it if you’re MCed, I don’t think, but if she makes the mistake of popping it for you, you will probably get released from the mind control.

3) dxe bossmods malleable goo putricide hard

Yeah, my DXE only shows me the location of one, not all three, Malleable Goos. Sorry. :(

4) elixir master not proccing 2010

I’m an elixir master. It procs. My proc rate usually sucks, but it procs enough to let me know I haven’t lost the ability to proc entirely.

5) fastest way to get emblem of triumph one night

Queue up as a healer or a tank and do dungeons all night long. Or, do Naxxramas.

6) hard mode professor putricide 25m strat

Funny you should mention that. I just wrote up a post detailing how my guild does heroic Putricide on 25m.

7) holidays grace for dps or healer

I understand your confusion in this day and age of spellpower instead of damage/healing and healing. Holiday’s Grace has mp5 which means it’s for healers. DPS have enough tricks up their sleeves to regen mana, whereas healers have a couple things, typically with long cooldowns, such as Mana Tide Totem, Shadowfiend and Innervate. mp5 is the only thing that will aid in mana regen for healers, so you’ll find it on lots of healer gear.

Rule of thumb: +hit = DPS caster, +mp5 = healer

That doesn’t mean all healers want a lot of mp5 or all casters want a lot of hit, mind you.

8) how to respond when someone asks for raid achievements

If you have them, link them. If not, you may be out of luck if you’re not really geared. You can always say “this is my alt, I know the fight from my main” if that’s the case, or just tell them you know the fight and just haven’t done it on that toon, even if you’ve never done it. The key here, of course, is doing research so you’re not That Tool that everyone else is carrying.

9) why cant i que for icc

First of all, it’s “queue”. Second of all, ICC is not a dungeon. You cannot queue for a raid group. You can sit in the raid browser for it, but I’m assuming that this is what you cannot do.

If you cannot select ICC as a raid to sit in the raid browser for, this means that Blizzard’s estimation of your gear is such that you won’t be able to adequately perform with that gear in ICC. Go get some gear.

10) on a holy palatin, what foods, enhants, and gems to improve mana regeration

… please, please don’t have been a native English speaker.

The more mana you have, the more mana you’ll regenerate. Divine Plea is based on our maximum mana, as are Replenishment and Mana Tide Totem. For mana regen food, you can either go with 40 crit strike food or 20 mp5 food. For everything else, it’s intellect. Make sure you’re also using the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond.