Archeology sucks less, and other things from the patch

Let me preface by saying that Archeology still is a huge time sink and can slowly kill hopes and dreams if you are trying for something like the Troll sword.

However, if you are a druid, a few things added to the tradeskill makes it easier to deal with.

Works with shapeshift forms Really this means that you don't have to come out of Flight form before clicking on the dig button. This makes things move along at a lovely pace. Couple this with the guild perk working for birdies and ZOOM!

Lower cooldown Finally, it's dropped to a 3 second cooldown. This is just about perfect and there's no need to wait for the button while you moved a few yards.

Increase on Tol'vir spawns Many more sites have been added, which was badly needed. This is great news for folks looking for Canopic Jars or other goodies like the Ring of the Boy Emperor and Staff of Ammunae.

And lastly, the sale price of the trash increased. This is still based on RNG, but in my efforts for the trinket, I netted about 1k gold in trash in about 10 hours or so. Are there better ways to make gold? Yes but archeology isn't about money making, now is it? I would highly recommend getting Archeology Helper if you are going to be doing serious digging. Having this sped up the time spent on dig sites tremendously.

Around the forums

Since I was sick and basically spent all day digging, I managed get caught up on the goings on in the druid and healing forums.

There is a small debate on Haste vs Mastery right now. Not sure why, to be honest. I feel that if you can get to the WG haste breakpoint, sweet. If you can't, then Mastery might be for you.

And there are reasons to look at Mastery right now, if you weren't before. Wild growth dropped to 8 seconds and changes to Nature's bounty with Rejuv means the two spells work together more effectively and it speeds up Nourish if you choose to top them off that way. I am still working out the best way to fit Nourish in so I can't comment on if Nature's Bounty is truly an effective route for raid healing.

Be careful, though. Just when you got used to a lower mana cost on Rejuv, now it costs a little more and you may find yourself losing more mana with the Wild Growth. It took me a few pulls to adjust to this and be more cautious. (Speaking of mana, TBJ has a good write up on Innervate.)

All of this is in effort to increase our healing throughput, which they did. We still have bursty issues outside of Tranquility,

I need to take a moment and mention the great bear scandal.

Reesi, a long time member of the community posted some information about Thick Hide and inconsistencies with taking damage between bears. This was followed up by a blue

After the designers looked into this issue more, there appears to be a pretty complex series of bugs that may have led to where we are now. I'll do my best to explain.

Early on in Cataclysm, it was concluded that druid tanks took too much damage and we deployed a hotfix to buff their armor through Thick Hide. Originally, we had thought that 4.0.6 was just updating the Thick Hide tooltip as well as the armor display on the character sheet for the earlier hotfix, but we think now that the armor buff itself was actually correctly applied with 4.0.6, and the previous hotfix had never taken hold properly.

The reason we missed this is because there is no easy way to know what your armor actually is when you can’t trust the tooltip – you have to have things beat on you and see how much damage you take. This test was tainted by a second bug however, where some druid characters were invisibly retaining the 12% damage reduction benefit of the obsolete Protector of the Pack talent. Even though we removed that talent, its effects were still benefitting some characters, and we didn't know who or how many. Again, there is no easy way to know if your druid was affected without a lot of testing. We knew about the Protector of the Pack bug but were hesitant to try and mess with it too much via hotfix since bear survivability was where we wanted it to be for those characters and we didn’t want to risk making anything worse. In any event, those characters appeared to be taking the correct amount of damage, so we thought the Thick Hide hotfix was successful. In reality, we think we were seeing the Protector of the Pack damage reduction and not the Thick Hide armor buff.

We believe the 4.0.6 patch finally removed the Protector of the Pack effects while finally getting the Thick Hide buff applied. Characters who had the Protector of the Pack benefit won’t see their survivability change much (they lost damage reduction while gaining armor), while characters who lacked that talent will see their survivability improve (they gained a lot of armor). The good news is that current bear survivability in 4.0.6 appears to be where we want it to be for everyone.

We’re still not 100% sure that the above explanation is what happened, but it seems consistent with our observations. Again, as of 4.0.6, bear armor should now be correct.

TL;DR Things are now normalized between bear tanks. If you are like me and switched to feral after the patch, you should feel a little less squishy.

Threat changes still seem to be a issue. Believe they are recommending adding a little more hit/expertise to your gear. For heroics, I switched to my Left Eye of Rajh to compensate.

Other things not druid related: Pallies got nerfed a bit through the latest hotfix, and Discs finally got the bubble love they needed.

Shaman still need hugs... so go hug one today.

Things to do after the Shattering

Now that the world has changed, there is certainly a fair number of things to work on before "Cattakissem", like getting pets, finishing up titles, etc.

Companion Pets

Warcraftpets.com has the latest on the pets they added with this patch, including one they squeeked in called Tiny Flamefly. Perks N Peeves has recent information on this pet. I will add that once I was done in the Thorium Bros area, I had to head to Flame Crest to pick up the rest of the chain. I didn't get a breadcrumb to go there, so it could easily be missed.

Somehow, this was a convincing disguise for the Blackrock folks.

Fans of Plants verses Zombies may already be prepared to get their Sunflower pet. Guildies who had never played the game before had a bit more of a learning curve for these quests, much to some frustration. Still, kinda neat and a chance to get "Zombies on your Lawn" song stuck in your head.

Fiona in Eastern Plaguelands has a few quests to offer as a set up to get her Lucky Charm buff from the Caravan. Your mileage may vary, as they say, but expect to take a bit of time to get Mr. Grubbs. Interesting sidenote: Slime covered bags from the grubs dropped a new plant: Dragon's Teeth. Well, really it's an old plant called Wintersbite. Not sure why the name change.

Finally, in Darkshore (which looks killer now!) there is a Forsaken in a cave which sells Withers. He shrinks then grows when near water. How cool is that?

Not just Stayin' Alive, but also causing havoc in Darkshore.

Fishing and Cooking

The dailies for these are open and so are the Cata cooking recipes bought with the daily rewards. What I didn't know before was that each daily also rewards skill ups on their corresponding profession. Very handy later.

Debated on working on Limnologist and Oceanographer. It's a lot of fish to catch, which could be be used toward the guild progress in Cata. However, I didn't want to be bogged down by having to back track to Northrend and Outlands. In addition, as a friend pointed out, I would kick myself for not getting Winter Squid now. Would be too easy to skip it until it is too late. Check out El's page for more information on where to catch your fish (link is on the right hand side of the page).

Quests and Loremaster

It is so much easier to see progress now. But oh my, I didn't realize how depressing it would be to see so many zones drop to zero. To start over seems like a drag but I was just too far away from completely finishing it before the patch.

Some of the quests are a bit of a pain to do at max level, like letting a level 6 hit you to poison you for example.

Other things

Don't forget to do take a Joy Ride in Azshera (it's recommended to go North to South) for an easy achievement.

You can't fly in Azeroth, but you can in Dalaran, now.

The new Trollish Cat forms look rather neat! I would seriously consider a race change if I wasn't broke.

The new tabards don't seem to be working properly, but you can get the new Goblin tabard in Org at the Darkspear area. Just look for Frizzo Villamar. (Sorry Alliance, not caught up on my info for you guys. It's exhausting enough to figure out the Horde!)

What are you working on as we head toward the 7th?

Checklist

One thing we have learned from past expansions is the significance of preparation. This could mean stockpiling supplies or cleaning out the bank of crap.


Tradeskills

So Kir is a JCer, miner, fisher and chef. Now, if I didn't have mining, I would be stock piling epic gems like crazy. However, knowing that I will be stopping at every node I come across, finding gems won't be a problem. Same with cooking, since fishing and killing things for materials go hand in hand with making food. I can't bring myself to do the dailies so I will just level cooking and fishing together.

I suggest taking a look at your own person time and energy. Since information is still slow to come in for various tradeskills, it may be hard to map out a good leveling plan.

If you fish, save fishing hooks and water walking potions. Since I am not in beta, I don't know how annoying it will be to try reaching certain pools, but it doesn't hurt to be prepared.

If you don't fish but still cook, it may be worth it to do the cooking dailies if you stopped. Things like Hearty Rhino and Mega Mammoth Meals look to be good until 450 skill but still need spices.

If you use ores, the prices aren't super low yet (at least on my server) so it may be worth it to mine several stacks if you are able. Otherwise, wait for the clearance sale at your local auction house as Cata gets closer.

Herbs are probably still at crazy prices, like they are for my server. Again, if you can get your own flowers, great. Otherwise, bribe a friend or watch the AH.

Books of Glyph Mastery seem to be a hot item as well. I wish I understood inscription better to give any insight.

Bank

Most people have a bank alt for dumping stuff in. Now is a great time to go through it and get rid of things have become obsolete recently to make room for the new stuff. Clear your main bank of outdated things (like any idols you were hanging on to because of their now defunct perks) and start moving some old tradeskill items to an alt.

It looks like the first new bag will be 22 slots, same as the current Glacial bag. Some folks have the cash and already have larger bags. Others have tailor friends or alts. With all this in mind, you may or may not want to wait on upgrading your bags.


A note on Scrolls

Since they changed scrolls to work as a battle elixir, it may not be a bad idea to stock pile those along side foods and potions. Always helpful when working those early dungeons and questing to have a little boost until the better stuff is available.


Changes!

As you may have noticed, I changed the banner. However, as you may have also noticed, I suck at formating and such. While I tweak with things a bit more on the blog, bear (ha) with me.

In the meantime, what are you doing to get ready for leveling?

Guild Changes

Guild camaraderie

Some people care about achievements more than other people. Ever since Blizz implemented this arguably epeen waggling system, it has been a love/hate situation with our guild.

I admit some fascinate me more than most, like Insane in the Membrane. We have at least a couple folks with it and I am astounded at the level of dedication needed to complete it. I gave up on goblins long ago, I sure as hell am not leveling the other factions. Still sitting at 39/40... I figure with Cata, I will find new factions to work on.

There is a theory floating around that with the new guild perks guilds will want to come together more to get things done. I can certainly see potential for hardcores who complete progression and are left with craptastic down time. Even more so benefits for casual guilds who don't feel the need to keep up with the top 10s but still like to get together on nights and feel rewarded for getting something accomplished.

This is where I finally feel like there is some return for completing an achievement. It goes beyond a new tabard or title and becomes something that everyone in the guild can take part in.

Feels somewhat like what an old guild on the server did for raiding points. Even if you didn't get to go to raids often, if you contributed mats for potions, bandages, engineering supplies, etc you got points when went towards your dkp.


Speaking of cleaning up achivements



Why, yes, it took us forever to finish this off. We have always been a few steps behind Blizzard when it came to content. While we were closing out Ulduar, TOC came out and most folks lost interest in older content. It wasn't that we lacked skill or time, but we tend to have a butterfly/squirrel mentality for new things. I am sure we aren't the first or last guild to have this problem. Of course, when Lum was trying to congratulate the guild on completing Yogg, I could clearly be heard on vent saying "About ****ing time!" This was met with much vocal agreement. Damn his mic.


New UI

I look forward to the new guild UI. In particular the professions tab. To be able to see who has what profession and what recipes we have in the guild is extremely attractive. This would have been useful during Wrath as folks were gaining recipes in dungeons and trying to get their BiS items made but obviously a boon when the expansion arrives.

Not sure what to make of the LFGuild tool. I haven't seen screenshots of it yet, but I hope it works out well. The trade spam is getting old.

Now that my non patch day themed post is finished, it's time to pour over the survival guides for my characters. I have too many alts!

Happy patch day :)

I don't want a pony

So, I've always been one to keep a good stock of gems on hand. I never know if the mood will strike me to be generous to those who are looking for a gem badly or when I get a few heroics in for Icy Prisms. When I heard the announcement of epic gems, I cried for a new gem bag. When I saw the mats for said new epic gems, I stared at my lonely bag and wished for something more. I even made posts in the tradeskill forums and the suggestion forums. Yes, it's a QQ but it's difficult to see the other professions get new bags. Please, GC, no need to bring me a pony, but a shiny new bag would be awesome!

Ok, this is the last tradeskill-y comment I should be making for a while *crosses fingers*.

I lied. I should also mentioned a PLd an alchemist alt. After the depressing testing done on the PTR regarding prospecting, I decided to make myself a little more self-sufficient. With the cooldown on the transmute, I know many guildies will be badgering our alchemists like they did when the expansion first came out. With my boyfriend not an alchemist anymore, I felt it was time to take matters into my own hands.

Of course, things will settle down after the first few weeks and it won't be such a big deal but what's the point of an army of alts if they can't work like a dog for you?

(How many times can I type the word "bag" in a post? sigh)

3.2 PTR Tradeskilling

More information is coming out in regards to the changes 3.2 will impose on tradeskillers. Of note is the transmutes Alchemists can do for the epic gems.

* Epic Gems transmutations now have a 20 hours cooldown.
* Transmute: Ametrine now requires 1 x Monarch Topaz and 1 x Eternal Shadow
* Transmute: Cardinal Ruby now requires 1 x Scarlet Ruby and 1 x Eternal Fire
* Transmute: Dreadstone now requires 1 x Twilight Opal and 1 x Eternal Shadow
* Transmute: Eye of Zul now requires 3 x Eternal Life
* Transmute: King's Amber now requires 1 x Autumn's Glow and 1 x Eternal Life
* Transmute: Majestic Zircon now requires 1 x Sky Sapphire and 1 x Eternal Air

(Edit on 6.29)

Everything is subject to change, as it seems to change often. I had much different information going from Saturday into Monday.

I had a whole though process going on the gems, as at first it seemed they were placing things more heavily on the Sky Sapphires and Forest Emeralds, but now things are more spread out. Almost all the Eternals seemed to be used and more gems used for the transmutes. Looks like my engi will be pimped out for crystalized extraction.

In addition to these proposed changes, some servers are seeing a spike on the prices of the lower quality gems, presumably for folks stocking up on Icy Prisms. The return on Icy Prisms far outstrips the return on prospecting Saronite if you are looking for Rare quality gems.

As for the new way to get Tokens, Titanium Powder, the results are looking rare so far.

Per Insider Trader:

Timothy Jones, your friendly neighborhood trainer and merchant will soon offer a quest entitled Titanium Powder. This is repeatable, and not a daily. Ten Titanium Powder can be exchanged for 1 Dalaran Jewelcrafter's Token, but as you can see, acquiring enough powder may take you awhile:

* Out of 12 Prospects (60 ore), Kaliope of the Crafter's Tome prospected only 10 powder, enough for one token. That's about 0.83 dust per prospect, although this is a small sample size.
* Ranjurm posted on the Elitist Jerks forums that out of 564 prospects (2820 ore), 417 powder was gained. That's about 0.74 dust per prospect (5 ore).

Some folks are doing some serious testing on the PTR. Out of 940 Titanium ore (geez that's a lot), here are the results of one tester:

Epic	Rare	Uncommon
49	47	282

Yellow	Green	Red	Blue	Purple	Orange
7 Kings Amber	12 Eyes of Zul	6 Cardinal Ruby	9 Majestic Zircon	10 Dreadstone	5 Ametrine
10 Autumn's Glow	8 Forest Emeralds	3 Scarlet Ruby	8 Sky Sapphires	5 Twilight Opals	13 Monarch Topaz
62 Sun Crystals	42 Dark Jades	42 Bloodstone	39 Chalcedony	45 Shadow Crystal	52 Huge Citrine

Also, a total of 139 Titanium Powder.

This ends up being a rather low percentage of mats yielded (only about 5 percent of the total ore was epic gems). Given the amount of farmers looking for titanium for their own mats or to sell in the AH, we shall see if many of these will end up on the market. Probably will be best to buddy up with an Alchemist in order to get the gems you need.

Seems the new patterns will be purchasable through tokens, just when I thought it was safe to stop doing those dailies, and there are a boat load of them.

For now, there is no cooldown on the Transmutes, but that may or may not change when things go live. It could very well be off a cooldown in order to promote proper testing.

The tradeskill forums are full of rantings and ravings from the Engineering community.

On the PTR, you will not need the goggles to track the clouds and only will need the zapper in your inventory. This is great, as many folks ditched their goggles for better gear. However, wouldn't it be neat to actually make upgraded goggles instead? I have to go with some in the community when they say Ulduar should have been the time when Engineers got a chance at some upgraded patterns. Almost all the other tradeskills got something nifty out of Ulduar (except Jewelcrafting, which I am fine with since I am missing some world drop patterns still) and many of them are BiS, I see no problems with making goggles a potential BiS for those who wish to obtain them.

Potion Injectors now increase the amount gained by 25% when used by engineers. Quantity produced by recipes for Runic Healing and Mana Injectors has been increased.

This is supposed to compensate for the fact that potions will now stack to 20 regardless. I actually use injectors on both my level 80s, though only one of them is actually an engineer. I suspect the potion change is really for pvpers and those who regularly use Potion of Wild Magic, Potion of Speed and other potions in lieu of mana or health. With the changes to mana regen, it is hard to say if the viablity of Mana Potions will increase or not.

Moll-E will have a reduced cooldown to compensate for the changes they made to the upgraded Argent Squire. Yes, your little whipping boy will run errands for you including a mailbox and a vendor. While I thought the mailbox was super cool in the beginning of the expansion, I think the squire will dwarf it. I am, however, still grateful to the engineers that do drop a mailbox during a raid :)

They changed the transporter devices to be used from the inventory, much in the same way they changed the Jumper cables several patches ago (CLEAR!), but the sad thing is, they did not add a teleporter in Northrend. K3 seems to make the most sense (close to Dalaran, close to Ulduar and ultimately the instances in Icecrown) but instead, you can buy a tabbard that teleports you the AT area.

It's hard not to be on board with the Engineering community when they say they feel shafted. Some small changes are being debated (haste for gloves for those who wish to forgo the spell power enchantment), but overall what is seriously lacking with the tradeskill is the sense of fun it had in the older days of WoW. I mean, it was kinda funny to use the shrink ray, only to have the whole group get zapped instead! Some risk with the reward was nice.

Of course, everything is still in the testing stages so I may post more later as things come down the pipeline.

Jcing Changes

In the next major content patch we will be removing the prismatic quality of the jewelcrafter-only Dragon’s Eye gems. Like other gems, they will have to match the socket color to receive a socket bonus. When this change occurs, players with qualifying jewelcrafting skill will be provided a yet to be determined amount of Dalaran Jewelecrafter Tokens as compensation.

At first, I was pretty pissed at blizzard. Now, I'm just mad at the rest of the raiding community.

For those of us who have been Jcers since the start of Burning Crusade, we have seen some small but nifty things come our way. Primatics were a joke in BC so when Wrath came out with the super stat-ed Prismatics (Limit Three) I was pretty happy with it. Then, a strange thing occured that I did not realize was happening. Folks would take Blacksmithing and Jcing together. Not only did you by pass the Meta and Socket bonus requirements, but you were able to plop the gems into Prismatic Sockets and still be full of win.

I suppose I can't blame those folks for wanting to min max as such. But, like those stupid drums for Black Temple and Sunwell, this combination, or at the very least taking up Jewelcrafting alone, seemed like a standard requirement for raiding.

I kept telling people in my guild that Jewelcrafting would suck their souls and to not take it up. So much money spent on one tradeskill. My total cash dumped is enormous, and then there are folks who helped me get a rare but essential pattern (and one player who helped me get each pattern from the Sunwell Island). Total cash spent is easily in the tens of thousands.

I took it up in the beginning to help my guildies. Why pay money in the AH when you can ask me and save some cash? Especially with raw gems purchasable by emblems, all you have to do is spend a few heroics worth of time and energy and BAM, new gem. Ok, maybe that part is a pain the ass, but I have always enjoyed being able to provide a service to the needy in my guild. And, I suppose always having the gem I needed was nice.

Then, despite my pleas and warnings, more and more guildies grabbed the tradeskill. Other guilds did the same. And blizzard responded with a nerf.

Now, a nerf is fine for me. I had been doing things wrong all along and did not use the Dragon's Eye gems to fill socket requirements. I used them just like an enchanter would for their rings or a leatherworker for their bracer enchants. They were an extra bonus for me that no one else had. What I hope is that they change them correctly to be solid colors.

I am sure they had to decide at some point to choose between changing all the JC only gems to the pure colors they represented (sparkling to blue, subtle to red, brillant to yellow) or remove them and force players to start over, with compensation. I personally would have liked to have made them the solid colors and fix sockets accordingly (which wouldn't have been terribly difficult).

Blacksmith/JCers are still edging out in the win column. BS sockets are still going to be prismatic, which means they can still keep those dragon's eye gems and use regular gems to fill their metas.

What I don't understand is the 77 current pages of "This tradeskill is worthless now." Really? Having an extra daily to work on the Horrible Kirin Tor rep must be worthless. Having a cut you want any time is worthless. Having an extra powered gem when you want is not worthless.

In addition, epic gems still haven't come out. Stormjewels are just a taste of whats to come and there is still a light at the end of the tunnel. There are many things that could be better with Jewelcrafting, but this nerf to the Min Maxers is not going to hurt me.

Hell, maybe enough will drop the GD thing so I can go back to selling my gems at a good price :)

Sigh, cooking and fishing

Each time new content is put out or my guild hits the next step in progression means I put in more time at the cooking fire.

While I was out farming for more Glacial Salmon, I checked MMO Champion for any new recipes on the way.

Seems Blizzard has heard the complaints of raiders regarding mage/vendor food not filling their bars in one sitting by adding a new cooked food, Black Jelly. Costing 3 Borean Man O' War, it will Restore 18000 health and 15000 mana over 30 sec. That's a huge boost to the speed of raiding, especially after a wipe.

Now, 3 Jelly Fish may not seem like much. Don't get me wrong here, I am thankful that Northern Spices are not needed to make these, but fishing these is not nearly as fast as other fish. The pools share a spawn with Manta Rays, which slows things down a bit. On top of shared pools, there is also the occasional box or crystalized water thrown in, and before you know it fishing these drags on and on. At least, it feels like it to me.

I hope it will be worth it. I have no noticed if they had added a new rank of mage food, but I wouldn't put it past Blizz to add something last minute after I have fished up 200 of the wiggly suckers.