Category: classic

Cataclysm Classic Holy Paladin Meta Gems

Kurn / / cataclysm, classic, ramblings

It is 4:28am. I have work in… not too many hours. But I came across a video on YouTube while I couldn’t sleep and they were talking about how holy paladins should use the burning meta gem in Cata Classic.

And I was like… that’s not right, is it?

So what did I do?

First, I scoured THIS VERY BLOG to see what I have to say about Cataclysm meta gems. Know what I found? One post. One. That’s it. And it doesn’t even mention the Burning Shadowspirit meta?

So I got out of bed and went to check what gems were in Madrana’s old helms — both original Madrana and baby paladin Madrana. Ember Shadowspirit Diamonds were in basically all of my old holy helms (different ones for tanking and the odd ret helm).

And I’m like how did I not mention a whole other meta gem? I was very, very confused.

Until I saw a comment at Wowhead. The Burning meta used to say 3% Increased Critical Damage until 4.3, whereupon it changed to 3% Increased Critical Effect.

Judging from Wowhead, Cata is going with 3% Increased Critical Effect for Classic. (And, it seems, the second iteration of Holy Radiance, but that’s for another post.)

So, questions:

1) Was I really unaware of this change at 4.3???

2) If I wasn’t unaware, why did I keep using the Ember?

3) Why have I been researching this and writing this for 20m in the middle of the night when I have work the next day?

I think I’ll do a bit more research this week and come up with a good video/post about Cata and holy pallies. In the meantime, yes, use the Burning Shadowspirit Diamond as your meta. And here’s what I still believe is a pretty decent max-level spec for a PVE holy paladin.

Okay, back to bed. The birds are chirping and the sun is coming up. I am not going to be a happy camper at work…

[Wrath Classic] Oh the failure…

Kurn / / classic, facepalm, paladins, wrath classic

Well, folks, even those of us who have done this expansion before will make mistakes. Here’s the biggest one I’ve made so far in Wrath…

I use Grid and Clique. Actually, that’s now Plexus and Clique. With Clique, you can define various spells to be cast with various mouse clicks and various modifiers on whatever frames you like. So I don’t have it enabled for my player frames (my frame, my target, etc), but I do have it for the Grid/Plexus layout. Using this combination has made me so much of a better healer, I can’t even really express it.

So when I was playing in Classic (and an itty bitty bit in BC), I had my binds all set up. Right click for Holy Light, left click for Flash of Light, Ctrl-4 (thumb button) for Lay on Hands, various other spells bound to other keys.

I noticed, twice, during my dungeon runs, that my various bindings did not all work. “Oh, I thought, I must have misremembered what the bind was.” You can even see me looking at the binds in this video (at about 12:20). Can anyone see what the issue is? Just watch it for a bit. Take a good look. I’ll wait.

Any thoughts? Here, let me paste a close up of my bindings here.

Anyone see it? I didn’t. It took me days to figure it out.

The problem, my dear readers, is that I had not updated my bindings. Flash of Light worked fine. Holy Light did too. Holy Shock and Lay on Hands, all good. And Cleanse and Beacon, too!

But Blessing of Sacrifice, Blessing of Protection and Blessing of Freedom? No. They weren’t working.

I confirmed it in a run with my brother (that’s right, I roped Fog into playing and tanking for me!) when I hit Blessing of Sacrifice (Ctrl-Right Button) and it just didn’t work. And then we were outside the instance testing and testing our frames and threat plates and all kinds of stuff and I’m like “WHY IN THE HELL IS HAND OF SACRIFICE NOT WORKING?!?!” as I slammed the keybind over and over and over again.

And I paused.

And I looked at the binding again.

The issue is that I had bound Blessing of Sacrifice and Blessing of Protection and Blessing of Freedom. I had not bound Hand of Sacrifice, Protection and Freedom. BLESSING. Of course all of these worked in Vanilla and BC! They were still BLESSINGS then! Wrath’s pre-patch changed them to Hands! And I knew that had happened. I even talked to my brother about them the other night.

AND YET I MISSED THIS. So yeah, your friendly neighbourhood holy paladin has been running around for a few weeks with no Hands bound because she is, on occasion, a dingbat.

Check your keybinds/clique binds, folks.

(PS: Videos with Fog coming as soon as we actually have a run that’s halfway decent to share.)

[Wrath Classic] How I Made 4500+ Gold in 5 Days

Kurn / / classic, gold, wrath classic

Hi folks!

First of all, I’ve been busy in WoW. Primarily, I’ve been making money, which is the main point of this post. However, I’ve also healed The Nexus and Utgarde Keep on Madrana and both Madrana and Kurn are level 71. This is possibly the slowest I have ever levelled barring the original Vanilla… Anyway, if you’d like to see my adventures, I’m recording and posting at least the first healing run of all the dungeons I’m doing on Madrana. Here’s The Nexus and here’s Utgarde Keep. They’re unedited, just raw runs complete with my muttering about tanks and complaining about mana. Check it out and please do subscribe to my YouTube channel if you’re interested in more Wrath videos!

GOLD, GOLD, GOLD!!!

Okay, on to making money! I walked into Wrath Classic with about 1500g. Certainly not a lot of money — Madrana doesn’t even have epic flying. I also knew I wasn’t going to be able to participate in the absolute wildness that is Darkmoon Cards at the start of the expansion. I don’t have a scribe and didn’t have the money to make one, plus I like my current professions. So I knew Inscription and cards weren’t going to be an option for me, but I did know that anyone who was lucky enough to create any of the Nobles cards was going to get super rich. The Nobles cards turn into one of four Greatness trinkets and these are, without a doubt, incredibly powerful to start off in this expansion.

So I had a plan that included mining and jewelcrafting. My plan was to get to Dalaran and start in on getting my Jewelcrafting tokens on day one, basically. The majority of the “good” cuts of gems require 3 JC tokens, which are basically rewards from the daily JC quests in Dal.

Problem: Dalaran requires you to do a quest at level 74 to gain access to the city. I was wholly unamused that I had forgotten this.

So what I did was I looked up when mages get the Dal portal. It’s level 74 (which makes sense, given the quest requirements). I spent a while watching mages ding 71, 72, 73… but by the time I went to bed on Monday, either no mage on my server was 74 or no one was responding to my whispers. (I tried two mages who were 74 and no dice.) So the next morning I logged on before work and whispered a couple more mages with something like “Hey! So sorry to bother you. Do you have the Dal port yet? If so, I’ll tip you 150g to port me there!” And so that’s exactly what happened.

Using Professions to make Gold

Jewelcrafting Dailies FTW

So, once in Dalaran, I made it my hearth, then turned in the first JC quest and then did the daily. On Day 2, I had 2 JC tokens. Sweet.

Mining… and Engineering!

Meanwhile, I was mining like crazy on Kurn. Very little questing, a TON of mining. As such, I found myself with a ton of Cobalt Ore and Eternal/Crystallized Earth. What do 4 Cobalt Bars and 1 Crystallized Earth get you? For an engineer, like Kurn, it gets you 1 Overcharged Capacitor. That’s the objective of a low-level quest in Borean Tundra and five Overcharged Capacitors are the objective of a Storm Peaks quest. Basically, people need Overcharged Capacitors. I had, to be frank, completely forgotten about this. Entirely. When I saw people asking for it in Borean’s General Chat channel, it clicked. “OH MY GOD, I CAN PROVIDE THIS.”

Folks, I have probably sold approximately 80-90 Overcharged Capacitors in the last 5-6 days. Prices have ranged from 27g apiece to close to 80g apiece, depending on the market’s fluctuations. At the peak, I was selling approximately 1-2 Overcharged Capacitors every minute. It was literally unlimited money. As I write this, I have sold five in the last ten minutes, and that’s slow for me. People are also happy to undercut me, so it’s important to check every few minutes while you’re selling to make sure no one has undercut you. It’s gotten so profitable that I’ve just started buying Cobalt Ore outright. I spent 258g or so on 60 ore. I smelted it into bars (it’s 1:1, unlike Saronite and Titanium which are 2:1) and, thanks to my mining, I have a ton of crystallized earth and it’s cheap on the AH, too. So if I then make 15 Overcharged Capacitors and list them at about 27g, that’s about 450g in sales, then that’s about 247 in profit, minus the AH cut of 5%, so about 227g in profit. I spend 258g and get it all back and a 227g profit. Really not bad at all.

However! The market is volatile! SO volatile! I was sometimes selling for almost 80 a pop, now around 26-30g each. So, it’s important to diversify your portfolio.

This is where jewelcrafting comes in.

Back to Jewelcrafting!

On Day 3, Madrana learned her first “good” cut — Delicate Scarlet Ruby. Why 16 agility? Why not Bold and go with 16 strength? Strength gems are good for DPS warriors, DPS DKs and ret paladins, while agility gems are good for hunters, enhancement shamans, rogues and feral (DPS) druids. It seemed to me that I would hit a wider bunch of players with agility — including Kurn. Why not learn gem cuts that will benefit my other toon, right? Plus, Bold is a more obvious choice. There was at least one other JC on the server who was selling Bold, but I didn’t see anyone selling Delicates. I still believe, even a few days on, that there are only 4-5 of us on the server. I only just picked up my second good cut today from the vendor and I went with the Glinting Monarch Topaz. Why? Well, see above. All those agi folks also need hit, particularly at this time of the expansion when hit is rare to find enough of on gear, especially for melee folks who are dual-wielding (rogues, enhancement shaman). Plus, again, that particular gem can benefit Kurn. So now I can cut 16 agi and 8 agi/8 hit and I may be one of the only people on the server who can do both, catering specifically to the agi classes.

I could have decided to go for a meta gem recipe, which are 5 tokens each. Those will be around all expansion, after all. But my alchemy isn’t levelled up, so I’d have to rely on the AH to get the diamonds and such. Besides, there are already people selling Insightfuls and Chaotics, so I decided to hold off on those. I could have decided to go for a ring or necklace recipe (4 tokens apiece), but these won’t last the whole expansion. The gear, while useful now, will be crap in six months. Right now, people are tipping outrageously, but you’ve given up four tokens to rely on combines, because all of these recipes require Dragon’s Eye gems. These are only obtained by purchasing them from the vendor with, you guessed it, JC tokens. So you take your first four tokens and buy a recipe. Great. Then for four days, unless you want to pony up 500-700 gold for each Dragon’s Eye (at least on my server), you’re stuck only doing combines for people who may or may not tip, while you spend your daily token on a Dragon’s Eye. Not to mention the other mats you’d need to purchase, etc. And for what? Level 200 gear that will be completely outdated come Ulduar.

So I decided to go with stable cuts that will be good all expansion long, until epic gems come out. Your mileage may vary, check your server’s prices, and remember, it’s volatile as crap right now! What might go for 100g tonight might go for 20g tomorrow! Keep an eye on a market before you jump in and know it may shift dramatically without warning.

All right, so I’m making money from jewelcrafting and from engineering… what about mining?

Back to Mining!

Mining, you ask? Just mine ore and sell it or convert it to Overcharged Capacitors or send to the JC for prospecting, right?

Wrong. At 450 mining, you get Smelt Titansteel! It’s a 20h cooldown with really simple mats — 2 titanium bars (4 ore), 1 Crystallized Fire, 1 Crystallized Earth and 1 Crystallized Shadow. Titansteel bars go for ~550-700g apiece on my server right now. And if you don’t have the mats, you can sell your cooldown for up to 300-350g! (I’ve seen very desperate people looking for a smelt tipping that much.) I’ve sold two bars, one for 670ish and one for 600 even, plus made a 200g tip. Totally worth it right now.

I got to 450 mining by virtue of doing laps in Sholazar Basin… at level 70. Yep. Cannot recommend it on any other toon than a hunter or a rogue. Feign Death (or vanish) is basically required and I’ve still died a ton of times. Also, don’t be dumb like me. Buy a vellum on the AH for Enchant Gloves: Advanced Mining. I passed not one, not two, but three Titanium nodes in Sholazar when I was at 446 mining. You can’t mine it ’till 450, so imagine my displeasure when I saw three nodes that I could have mined if only I had that enchant on my gloves! At this point, I’m also sending Saronite Ore to Madrana to prospect if the cost of a stack is under 50g or so. If I can sell at stack for 75+, it goes to the AH. I’m not smelting it yet, but I’ll be looking at those prices too. If you can get two ore for cheaper than 1 bar, you can make a nice little profit for your time spent smelting.

What about Alchemy?

Finally, why haven’t I touched alchemy? Well, I don’t have an herbalist anymore… but also, no one is raiding right now. So I have a bit of time to start in on that. Flasks, of course, will be popular, as well as potions like Potion of Speed, Indestructible Potion and such, plus things like Mighty Frost Protection Potion, for fights like Sapphiron in Naxxramas.

Miscellaneous

Additionally, I have a level 1 toon in Stormwind. With the advent of guild banks, tons of people are always looking for people to sign their guild charters for their own personal guild banks. So run a level 1 toon from Elwynn to Stormwind or wherever to Orgrimmar and if you see someone advertising for guild sigs, go for it. I get 5-10g per signature. Now these guilds get formed rather quickly, so after a day or so, I’ll log in on that toon and if I’m still guilded I’ll /gquit and sign another charter. If I’m not guilded, the guild probably formed and I got kicked (which is fine). So I’m then free to sign. I’ve made at least 50g doing this. Every little bit helps!

What about you?

How are you making money in this expansion so far? Are you remembering old tips and tricks? Are you just questing? Tell me how you’re going to earn your 1k for Cold Weather Flying!

[Wrath Classic] Gems & Enchants for Holy Paladins

Kurn / / classic, jewelcrafting, paladins, wrath classic

All right, folks, we’re coming up to the launch of Wrath Classic, so this will be an overview of Gems & Enchants for Holy Paladins.

But before we get into it, I did it. I dropped Herbalism and picked up Jewelcrafting and have gotten it to 368, which is close enough to maxed out for me. It’ll be cheaper to get to 375 with Wrath materials, but I’m pretty glad I made the decision to pick up Jewelcrafting. I think it would have super bothered me if I hadn’t. All-told, it wasn’t too bad. The worst part was the mithril. Oh god, the mithril. It was also super expensive at the AH. So I got on Kurn and spent a couple of hours doing laps around The Hinterlands. Yo, that was painful. But it saved me about 300g on the AH. So my total cost was around 800g or so, out of the ~2000g I had. Plus I was able to recoup some costs with leftover mats or things I created.

All right, so gems is probably the best place to start here.

Wrath Classic – Holy Paladin Gemming Strategy

  • Intellect
  • ???
  • Profit

That’s basically the size of it. If you get more intellect, do it. Let’s dive into the details!

Meta Gem Choices & Requirements

Surprisingly, there are a few different meta gems that are interesting.

Insightful Earthsiege Diamond – This is pretty much my top choice of a meta gem throughout Wrath, but in reviewing things, some others look neat, and I’ll get to them. Despite the tooltip, it appears as though this gem restores 600 mana when it procs, which is double the 300 mana it’s thought to give. I’m not sure if they’ve fixed this in Wrath or whatever, but if it does restore 600 mana when it procs, this is great. Bear in mind that this procs on spellcast. Basically any spellcast. Beacon of Light. Sacred Shield. Divine Favor. Divine Illumination. Flash of Light. Holy Light. Etc etc etc. The more you cast, the more mana you get back.

Requires at least 1 Red, 1 Yellow, 1 Blue gem. Now here’s the thing about meta gem requirements like this. This is all three colours. You can use a single prismatic gem to satisfy the requirements of the meta gem. An Enchanted Tear will grant +4 to all stats, for example, which is (and let’s be fair), super underwhelming. But it alone will meet the requirements of the meta gem! This means you do not need a Reckless Monarch Topaz or a Luminous Monarch Topaz (which are orange) to meet a red gem requirement. Nor do you need a Royal Twilight Opal (which is purple) or a Dazzling Forest Emerald (which is green) to meet a blue gem requirement.

And, most importantly, a prismatic gem does not need to go in a prismatic socket!!! The Eternal Belt Buckle is a prismatic socket, but you can put anything (except a meta) into that socket, and you can put a prismatic gem into any gem socket (except a meta socket).

Let’s look at an example, using the Gear Planner from Wowhead:

In this gear planner example, I have the Helm of Purified Thoughts, the Titanium Spellshock Necklace and the Ferocious Pauldrons of the Rhino and I have the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond in the helm. Let’s look at the other socket in the helm.

It’s a blue socket and the socket bonus is +8 intellect. Now, we can ignore this and drop in a Brilliant Autumn’s Glow, or we can put in a Dazzling Forest Emerald, which is 8 intellect and 4mp5, for example. If we ignore the socket colour and bonus and we put in 16 intellect, we get 16 intellect. If we put in the Dazzling Forest Emerald, we get 16 intellect and 4 mp5. So to me, the right choice for this socket is a Dazzling Forest Emerald as we get the same amount of intellect that we would with a Brilliant Autumn’s Glow plus the 4 mp5. So let’s put that in there and look at the updated planner.

Next, let’s look at the necklace. It’s a red socket with a bonus of 4 intellect. Underwhelming. Putting in a Luminous Monarch Topaz (9 spellpower and 8 intellect) is less intellect than just dropping in a Brilliant Autumn’s Glow. So, 16 int it is and here’s the updated planner.

Finally, let’s look at the shoulders. Yellow socket and the socket bonus is 6 stamina. Also underwhelming. But it’s a yellow socket, so we may as well drop in a Brilliant Autumn’s Glow for the 16 intellect and now we have an extra 6 stamina. Whee.

So here’s the updated planner.

If you hover over the meta gem, you can see we’re missing a red gem. We have not yet activated the meta. If you have no other sockets on your gear, it would be best to put in the Luminous Monarch Topaz into the necklace because it activates your meta. No other reason to do that. But let’s take a look at a more geared person with an updated planner link.

You can see here that there’s not a ton of sockets in this gear. Do we care about +9 stam as a socket bonus on the legs? Nope. Do we care about the +6 spirit on the chest that comes from the socket bonus? Absolutely not. But, if we have to use a Luminous Monarch Topaz anyway, why not take advantage of the socket bonus in the necklace? I get 9 spellpower and 12 int from that gem in that socket, with the bonus. Then, I can add a Brilliant Autumn’s Glow to the Eternal Belt Buckle socket. Doing it this way activates the meta and it gives us the max intellect by getting the socket bonus from the necklace.

So when to use an Enchanted Tear? Well, if you lack sockets, for one. For another, if the bonuses aren’t good enough to put in other gems. The other good thing about the Enchanted Tear is that it will always ensure this meta gem is activated. Always! Swapping gear can mean changing gems and bonuses and sometimes you’ll raid an entire raid week without your meta being activated… So be on top of things for sure and don’t forget to use a prismatic gem if all else fails to activate your meta.

Another meta gem possibility is the Ember Skyflare Diamond, which requires three red gems. You may think this is great, 2% more intellect? AMAZING!!! And you would be kind of wrong. If I had that meta in my gear planner paladin, I’d have less intellect than I have with the Insightful and I’d need to change out some Brilliant Autumn’s Glows for other gems to get the three red gems requirement. So let’s see what that looks like here in another version of the planner.

I’ve changed the meta and the gem in the helm. The gem is now a Royal Twilight Opal because it gets us the 8 intellect from the bonus and it counts as a red gem because it’s purple. I’ve still got a Luminous Monarch Topaz in the necklace. Then, I’ve swapped out the Brilliant Autumn’s Glow in one of the leg sockets with a Luminous Monarch Topaz. This gives me… 9 stam. Why didn’t I go for the socket bonus on the chest, instead? Spirit is useless. Stamina may keep you alive, one day. (I remember being ice blocked on Heroic Sindragosa with like 100 health left. Do not overlook the importance of stamina as a “nice to have” stat.)

So I have a total of 1017 intellect now. And my meta gem is active. And in my prior version, I had 1040 intellect.

Messing with the gems and gaining 2% intellect granted me a net loss of 23 intellect. 2% of like 1000 intellect is 20 intellect. This is not as huge as you think it might be, at least not at this point in the expansion. Let’s say you have roughly 30,000 mana (~1700 intellect), you’re still only getting 34 more intellect with that gem. At 15 mana points per 1 intellect… that’s 510 mana. Not ideal, not when you can get 600 mana back every time the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond procs. So definitely rule out this one.

Relatedly, the Beaming Earthsiege Diamond is also no good. 2% intellect is greater than 2% mana because Divine Intellect, which increases our intellect by up to 10%, is based on intellect and not mana. If given a choice, as a holy paladin, to pick something with intellect or mana, please pick intellect!

Tireless Skyflare Diamond, requires at least 1 Red, 1 Yellow, 1 Blue gem. 25 spellpower and a minor run speed increase? You must think me mad! But no, I’m not. Minor Run Speed Increase is a game-changer in this game. I’ll get into that a little more with enchants later on. Long story short on this one, though, it’s easy to activate (one Enchanted Tear), 25 spellpower ain’t bad, and run speed is godly. This is also likely to be cheaper. So don’t completely rule this one out, just know there are better ways to get run speed and Earthsiege is still better.

Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond, requires at least 2 Red gems. Well, 11 mp5 doesn’t wholly suck, but the Earthsiege is better for mana regen. (The procs mean about 50-75 mp5 depending on how much you cast.) But what about that 3% increased critical healing effect? That means it doesn’t “proc”, it just adds 3% healing to any critical heal. Probably best-used for a disc priest (what with their fancy shields). But what about us paladins? Let’s do some math!

In my crappy healing gear at level 70, my Flash of Light will hit for about 1579 and will crit for about 2428. Holy Light hits for about 5000 and crits for 7331 or so. Holy Shock hits for 2267 and crits for 3288. So let’s look at these numbers if there was 3% additional healing to the crits.

Spell   Normal  Crit      3%
FoL     1579     2428     2501
HL      5000     7331     7550
HS      2267     3288     3387

So the difference on FoL is roughly 73, HL is 219 and HS is 99. Note that this is a very small sample size and results may vary, etc, etc. What I’m saying is that 3% additional healing to crits is not presently a lot. Again, this may change later in the expansion, but at the start? Nope. Not this one.

And that’s it for gems and metas and such. Basically, do whatever you can to activate your meta gem, ignore any socket bonuses that don’t give you at least 16 intellect after you put in a matching gem (unless it’s to activate your meta gem) and go forth and enjoy your intellect.

Oh, and if you’re a blacksmith and have extra bracer and glove sockets, MOAR INTELLECT!!! (You also have more flexibility to activate your meta.)

Wrath Classic – Holy Paladin Enchanting Strategy

Shockingly, this is largely the same as gemming! Intellect! All the intellect! Is there more intellect? Please, give me more intellect!

Okay, here’s the gear planner link for the enchants.

Helm: Blissful Mending because 20 crit rating is not quite even 1% crit and 10 mp5 is just more reliable and useful.
Shoulders: Master’s Inscription of the Crag for the same reason as above.
Cloak: Ugh, these are awful choices. If you’re not a tailor or engineer, gotta go with Speed (15 haste)
Chest: Powerful Stats (+10 to all)
Wrist: Exceptional Intellect (+16 int)
Gloves: Exceptional Spellpower (28sp)
Belt: Eternal Belt Buckle
Legs: Sapphire Spellthread (50sp/30 stam) because spirit is useless
Boots: Tuskarr’s Vitality (15 stamina and minor run speed increase) because run speed increase > all other stats. It is SO much easier to dodge the lava wave on Sarth, or do the Heigan dance, or dodge the crash in TOC, or any number of other things. GET RUN SPEED. Engineers have Nitro Boosts, but it’s on a 3m cooldown which may not be enough for some of these scenarios. Personally, I would rather a persistent run speed increase than one on a cooldown.
Rings: If you’re an enchanter, greater spellpower is the way to go. If you’re not an enchanter, you cannot enchant rings.
Weapon: Greater Intellect (30 int)
Shield: Greater Intellect (25 int)

Whew. And that’s it, folks. Next post about holy paladins in Wrath will cover T7 gear that you want.

In the meantime, I wish you a pleasant time in Northrend. See you out there in Howling Fjord or Borean Tundra!

Thoughts on WotLK Classic & Dragonflight

Kurn / / classic

Well, hi there! Long time no see. And there’s a good reason for that, I haven’t posted in more than two years.

Sorry!

In fairness, I haven’t played any Blizzard games in a good long while. Part of it has to do with the various scandals the company has faced in the last while. Part of it has to do with my lack of desire to play retail WoW — the auction house changes, the level nerf, etc, have left me not wanting to play retail at all. And while I did get Kurn to 70 in TBC Classic (and got epic flying!), I basically stopped playing shortly thereafter. Poor Classic Madrana is still 58.

And part of it has been a lack of time on my part. I was super burnt out at a previous job, leaving me not wanting to do anything when I’d be done for the day. So I found a new job, quit the old one and have been training, basically, for the last six months. It’s challenging and I’m loving it. I just haven’t had much time for other stuff.

Yet, here I am, wondering if I should dip my toes into WotLK Classic or Dragonflight or both.

Wrath of the Lich King Classic

A whole lot of this blog is dedicated to my adventures throughout Wrath of the Lich King. I know it is, because not only did I write it, but I also just reread a bunch of entries.

Wrath is the expansion with dungeons like Oculus. >.> Wrath is the expansion where Onyxia came back out. Wrath is the expansion with Naxx and Sarth and Eye and Ulduar and TOC and ICC. Wrath is the expansion when the LFG tool launched when ICC did.

Rereading about being the only healer in the Thorim tunnel with a Blood DK instead of a Frost DK brought back loads of aggravation and frustration.

Rereading about the idiocy of my raid leader on Bronzebeard brought back a ton of bad memories.

Rereading about the idiocy of my MT on Proudmoore brought back even more bad memories.

And rereading about my missing Apotheosis so badly during Wrath, which was the reason I started Apotheosis back up in Cataclysm, makes me wistful for those days (ie: the BC-era Apotheosis) again.

The thing I realized during Cataclysm, when I reformed Apotheosis, is that you can’t go home again. You just can’t. Those times, even those people, no longer exist. Apart from anything else, we’re all older (and hopefully wiser). Demands on time are different now. I wouldn’t have the time to be a GM these days, at least not the way I would want to be. And I’m pretty sure I still would end up getting promoted to officer in any guild I joined because, as Majik has pointed out to me, I fail at being bad.

So, my question is… do I do Wrath? At all? I wouldn’t need to learn a lot. My hard-mode Ulduar experience is lacking, but apart from that, heroic Anub 25 and heroic LK 25 are the only 25-man bosses I haven’t downed, though I have had the pleasure of wiping on them. A lot. And I liked a lot of the dungeons, even. I levelled my shammy and a druid and a priest through Wrath. (And maybe a mage?) The content was pretty cool. I know I can make a crapton of gold in Wrath.

But to what end? What would the point be? If I’ve done X and Y and Z, why do them again? I do not have a burning desire to do Mimiron’s Firefighter achievement (haha, I made a pun). I really don’t know that I ever want to do heroic Sindragosa 25 again. (Your pathetic magic betraaaaaays you!) Would it just be to pass the time? I mean, I have other things I could do.

Still, it’s tempting… And my brother wants to roll on a fresh start server and I’m like NOPE HAVE FUN ENJOY BYE.

Dragonflight

So, I mean, dragons. One of the things I love to do in WoW is kill dragons. And I like learning more about the big dragon aspects and everything.

But:

  • I am still pissed off that Kurn is level 50. Excuse you, I have hit 60 on that toon before. And 70. 80. 85. 90. 100. 110. 120. I know that the number of levels just gets ridiculous. I know. But while I am okay with the concept of redoing whole expansions I’ve done before, the sheer gall of having to re-do my levels 50-60 and 60-70 is so unappealing to me. I think I might have finished the intro to Shadowlands but that’s it???
  • The Auction House. The changes they made… whenever they did, I guess in BfA (?) where they completely changed everything about auctions just absolutely ruined the game for me. I did not adapt and I don’t agree with the change. I had been able to make money in WoW for over a decade with the old system and I feel like the new system sucks. Maybe I just need to relearn how to do things yet again but UGH, I don’t wanna. And if I can’t make gold in the game, why should I even play???

Still, if I do end up playing at all, I’ll probably want to pay for my sub with WoW Tokens. Which costs in-game money. And if my sub includes retail (well, there’s the cost of the game too, I know), then I might as well play retail and learn to make money there so that I can support my sub.

What’s hilarious is that, nowadays, the sub cost is like nothing to me, but back in the day of me being a poor college student, sometimes it was hard to get that sub money! And yet if I can pay with in-game gold, then, by golly, I want to pay with gold!

Nerd Stuff

One of the things I have to do in my new job is, I’m not joking, log dive. Obviously, it’s not diving through logs from WoW (boy, do I wish!), but rather logs from customers’ servers and stuff. It dawned on me, though, that all of my WoW log dives are responsible for my comfort in scrolling through customer server logs. And I miss doing that in WoW. I miss teaching that in WoW. Maybe I don’t even have to play in order to do that. I can ask you to submit logs to me and I can review them and/or use them as teaching moments? Maybe? Hm.

So…

Lots of thoughts, no decisions made. But that’s one thing I’ve always liked about the blog. I could always write out my thoughts to better understand things, whether it’s the mechanisms of holy paladin healing or why I hate various raid leaders.

What are your plans for Wrath Classic and Dragonflight? Let me know in the comments. :)

Classic Lesser Arcanums of Voracity and You

Kurn / / classic, guide

A few weeks ago, I got myself into an Onyxia pug of 30 people and the Dragonstalker’s Helm dropped. I rolled a 94.

So I decided I should probably get a helm enchant. With Zul’Gurub out, there are some pretty great helm enchants that require a Voodoo Doll for your class, as well as a Primal Hakkari Idol, and then you get Falcon’s Call (for a hunter). I mean, that’s freaking sweet. Alas, a Primal Hakkari Idol drops only from Mandokir and Jin’do, both of which aren’t exactly the most easily accessible bosses in ZG. It’s not like Venoxis or even Jek’lik.

As a temporary enchant for what is probably the best helm I’ll ever have in this game, I decided to go with the +8 agility enchant.

However, as a bit of a noob back in Classic, at least when it came to enchants and such, it wasn’t until last night that I fully understood what a pain in the ass it was to get an arcanum for your helm or legs. Someone was in Ironforge selling the application of an arcanum for 250g. I was like, hah, screw that, so I embarked on the adventure of finding out everything I needed to know to get my own.

My final thoughts: 250g is a reasonable price for all the nonsense I had to go through.

First, I had to get a Libram of Voracity. These are world drops from mobs that seem to be 50+ or thereabouts. So naturally, I hit up the Auction House and dropped 90g on one.

Then, I had to go talk to a dude in Burning Steppes. At Morgan’s Vigil? No. At the tiny cave in the northern central cave, Mathredis Firestar. Doing this basically shows me what I need to get to turn in the libram for one of the Lesser Arcanums of Voracity. You can get +8 to agi, int, strength, spirit or stam.

What I needed was a Black Diamond, 4 Whipper Root Tubers and 4 Crystal Forces, in addition to the libram. I got the diamond for like 60s on the AH and I knew Whipper Root Tubers were found in Felwood, but I had no idea what a Crystal Force was.

Fun fact, after doing the Power Crystals quests at Marshall’s Refuge in Un’Goro Crater and then finding all the pylons, you can turn in 10 Green Power Crystals and 10 Blue Power Crystals for 6 Crystal Forces at the Eastern Pylon.

This took an exorbitant amount of time and running around. I had to run back and forth probably about 8 times because I didn’t read ahead and didn’t realize I had to finish all of the quests in order to get access to the exchange function on the Eastern Pylon. Finally did that, plus collected all of the 20 crystals I needed and finally got the Crystal Forces. Whew.

Then it was off to Felwood!

I had to do quests for Maybess Riverbreeze in southern Felwood. Specifically the Cleansing Felwood quest. This involved running my ass up to northern Felwood, killing 15 warpwood elementals (thankfully it’s a 100% droprate) and then running my ass back down to southern Felwood.

Now, luckily, while I was levelling, I’d already collected 20x Patch of Tainted Skin, as a skinner. This allowed me to turn in 5 of them at a time for 2x Cenarion Plant Salve each turn-in thanks to the Salve via Skinning quest.

At that point, it was like, great! Almost done!

Except then you have to find a Whipper Root plant, either corrupted (which you can cleanse with your salve) or already cleansed. I ran all over the damn map until I found this map:

http://www.blizzardguides.com/whipper_root_tubers.html

Killed a few felstalkers and finally was able to loot a cleansed Whipper Root plant and thankfully it gave me all 4 Whipper Root Tubers that I needed.

Armed with my Crystal Forces, Whipper Root Tubers, the Black Diamond and the libram, I made my way back to Burning Steppes to hand in the quest and receive my Lesser Arcanum of Voracity.

What a process.

Now, to be fair, most of the issues I encountered were because I had skipped quests when I was levelling there. So next time (on my paladin), I won’t skip them. But that was still a major pain in the ass. As I ran up and down Felwood or around and around Un’Goro, I was just thinking to myself “250g is a freaking bargain, this is awful”.

Worse, there are other kinds of arcanums that require slightly (or very) different things.

So if you can’t get a hold of a Primal Hakkari Idol for your ZG enchant, then you probably want to do the digging through the quests on Wowhead to see what’s needed for your arcanum of choice. But I promise you, if you see someone offering 250g in trade, it may well be worth it instead of the pain if you haven’t done all the quests. (Assuming you have 250g. I have like 2500g. I really should have done it.)

It’s All Coming Back…

Kurn / / classic, dungeons

So in December, my video card died. My beautiful, gorgeous, GTX 1080Ti died.

Naturally, this put a crimp in my WoW playing in that I basically couldn’t play anything that required hardware acceleration.

Thankfully, my 16-month old video card was still under warranty, so I got a free replacement. Unfortunately, this was all happening over the holidays so it took over a month to get my card. I had other stuff to do with some personal projects, but I’ve finally gotten back to playing WoW.

And I’m level 58! And almost a half!

I’ve run a bunch of the high-end instances for the first time in over a decade since properly doing them at level.

Dire Maul West – a couple of wipes, but ultimately I got the Backwood Helm.

UBRS – No loot but I didn’t have to kite Drak! I did get my Pyroguard Emberseer quest done (Eye of the Emberseer) for Duke Hydraxis and got attuned to BWL and got my Blood of the Black Dragon Champion for Onyxia. So with one run, I was attuned to everything except Molten Core.

LBRS – This was a weird-ass run. Four wipes (I feigned through two of them) and these people didn’t drop down to the right at Hordemar City. Why… why would you not do that? We ended up not clearing the hallway where the recipe for the Greater Fire Protection Potion drops, nor the other one on your way to Troll side. It was weird. But I got my Beaststalker’s Gloves and Beaststalker’s Mantle (thank you, Voone and Wyrmthalak!) as well as Trueaim Gauntlets.

Strat UD – No loot to speak of, but I got the holy water quest done and got the key.

Haven’t done Live or Scholo or DM North yet. Oh, and I soloed my way to attune myself to Molten Core. Plus got my Royal Seal of Eldre’Thalas all by myself. Plus assembled a video of five ways to mess up Jailbreak.

It’s a very interesting experience, to be really knowledgeable about stuff and yet unable to convince anyone to take you anywhere when pugging because you’re a hunter and no one thinks you can CC worth shit. My brother has promised to tank me through anything I need, so that’s good.

And I have more than enough needed for my epic mount. I’m pretty pleased about that.

The most interesting thing about this experience, though, is how old memories come back.

We were in that LBRS run and we’d killed the quartermaster up the hallway from Halycon and were clearing trash towards the dogs and I’m like … there’s something here. There’s a pat. I hit Track Humanoids and wouldn’t you know it, there’s a pat coming from the upper hallway just as our pally tank is going to run at the group at the far end of the corridor. I pinged the map multiple times, averting certain disaster as the tank stopped to get that pat before the group.

And while in Strat, the goddamn Eye of Naxxramas kept showing up during boss fights, but guess who killed the damn thing each time? That’s right. Me. Too many memories of being wiped by the Eye and its summoned thingies.

But the thing is, that pat in LBRS, the Eye in Strat UD, these aren’t memories I would have consciously thought about. They’re not things I would remember if I were talking about the instances to someone. But as soon as I was in those particular positions, it was like an old neural pathway just lit all the way up.

It’s been fun, relearning this stuff or, perhaps more accurately, rediscovering that I still have this knowledge.

Runecloth Bags, Gold & You

Kurn / / classic, classic instances, gold

Friends, I am currently level 42 in WoW Classic.

That… is not great. I know it’s not great. I should be nearing 60, like my brother (52) and some of our friends (both 55).

It’s not that I haven’t been playing, rather it’s that I haven’t been levelling.

Why is that?

Well, you see, dear reader, as I write this, I am standing by a vendor in Everlook. Yes, at level 42. I’ve been coming here frequently since I was level 30. Shockingly, it only took about 12 deaths (all in Felwood and the furbolg tunnel) to get here. Anyway, I got the flight point in Felwood and in Everlook and so now it takes me 12 minutes to get from Ironforge out to Everlook and stand at this vendor.

Why am I doing this?

Well, the vendor is Qia, the Trade Goods vendor. She sells four limited-supply recipes. What’s a limited-supply recipe? Glad you asked.

A limited-supply recipe means (generally) that the vendor only has one of them in stock at a time. Here’s an example.

So you see the (1) on the icon for the pattern for the Frostsaber Boots? That indicates a limited supply. At any given time, this vendor can have 0, 1, 2, 3 or all 4 patterns in limited supply available for sale.

Pattern: Frostsaver Boots
Formula: Enchant Chest – Major Health
Pattern: Runecloth Gloves
Pattern: Runecloth Bag

I have spent literal hours camping this vendor for the pattern for the Runecloth Bag. It costs 1g20s and I have sold it for a wide variety of prices, from 3g to 25g or thereabouts. I have sold about 30 of these patterns, some of which I bought off the AH cheaply and resold and most of which I camped.

On my server, Westfall, the price has only gone up. We’re talking from 10-14g to upwards of 20g apiece. But why is this so popular?

It’s simple. Bags, big bags, are very rare in the game. The recipe for the Mooncloth Bag (16 slot) exists in the game but is a rare world drop, plus requires mooncloth (4-day cooldown) to make. So the next biggest bag, which is far easier to craft, is the Runecloth Bag. On my server, these bags sell for between 2-4g apiece. So even a tailor purchasing the pattern at 25g is worthwhile, because you will definitely be able to make 8-12 bags and sell them to make your money back. Everyone wants bags.

Also, because it’s a recipe that isn’t always available, a lot of people don’t know where it’s sold. Or, if they do, they don’t stand at the vendor long enough to see it show up.

Now, it’s important to note that when dealing with a limited-supply vendor, you cannot just keep the window open and expect to see changes. You need to close out the vendor window and reopen it to see a potential change in their inventory. I’d recommend doing this about once every 1-2 minutes for best results.

If, by some chance, you see a limited pattern in the vendor’s inventory but right-clicking on it doesn’t work, this means someone else beat you to the purchase.

Using this method, I have made at least 380g with a net profit of 310g. I’m currently selling them, on average, for about 20g. I had my mount money when I hit 40. I’ve been able to train all my skills and I used the money to level up my leatherworking, which has been at 300 since I hit 41.

So there you go, I hope that’s been helpful!

Also, once I actually get to run the dungeons, I’ll be putting out some Classic Dungeon Guides for BRD, Strat Live, Strat UD, Scholomance, LBRS, UBRS and, since it’s coming out sooner than expected, Dire Maul. Check out my YouTube channel where I already have a few videos about BRD and subscribe in order to keep up to date on my videos:

Kurn’s YouTube Channel

Currently, the most useful video on there will be how to get the key to Blackrock Depths.