Tobold's Blog
Friday, April 17, 2009
 
How is patch 3.1 treating you?

I have yet to visit Ulduar or the Argent Tournament, due to a mix of server problems and real-world time constraints. I happily played with dual-specs, so now I have a holy priest who can switch to shadow in seconds, and deal 3K dps, which isn't half bad for a secondary job. Then of course I suffered from a bug which reset half of my talents and had to distribute them again, but now the priest is ready for Ulduar. My priest being also a miner/jewelcrafter, I had stockpiled the Titansteel Bars I made in the last 40 days, but in spite of everybody's predictions the price for those hasn't gone up on my server. I'll hold onto them a bit longer, maybe just a case of too many people having stockpiled them.

With my warrior I'm planning to follow Spinks excellent guide of dual-speccing Fury, but still have to do some research on whether I can reuse my old protection main spec, or whether there are better options now. The warrior is also my only character with fishing (really no reason to have that skill on several characters), and so I'm content with the new daily quests, and the Wintergrasp fishing, especially now that Fish Feasts aren't bop any more.

The odd man out is my mage, who is having a terrible, terrible patch 3.1. I didn't even look into dual-spec for the mage, there isn't much point to it, especially with me not doing PvP. How many damage dealing PvE specs do you really need? Then Blizzard nerfed the daily cooking quest, changing its minimum level from 65 to 77, leaving my level 72 mage out in the cold. And finally, with every WoW economics blog posting how much gold they are raking in selling glyphs, I seem to be playing on one of the few servers with a too large number of inscribers. I made a measly 500 gold up to now, because I keep getting undercut. Now I don't mind undercutting as such, it is a logical consequence of the non-blind WoW auction house, but why do people have to undercut market prices by half? There are 2,500 glyphs listed on my AH, and for some of them prices range from 50 gold down to less than 1 gold. What is the point of selling a glyph for so low, with the materials being worth more? According to auctioneer most glyphs now sell for LESS than the average market price before the patch. I am seriously considering dropping inscription again, maybe going back to enchanting. [EDIT: I consider the absolutely horrible way in which you learn the new glyphs from random world drop books as another reason to quit inscribing.]

So how is patch 3.1 treating you? What are the things you are happy about, and those that didn't work out as well as planned?
Comments:
Argent Tournament - Meh. Looks kinda pretty. Goblin quests irritated me because they didn't fit with lore. Seriously... paladins and druids are going to go out and chop up a bunch of ancient oak trees from some sacred forest to get lumber for some gobber? Right...

Also, the premise of the Argent Tournament always bothered me, the lore explanations didn't really match up. Seeing it for real didn't change anything. The Argent Dawn are a bunch of front line fighters. Warriors who fight evil that threatens Azeroth. They're supposed to be in the front lines fending off the darkness with shields and honor. Running strikes into the heart of Icecrown and prosecuting the Lich King's forces wherever they can. Not prancing around with flags and lances being pretentious and putting on minigames for solo players.

Dual specs - I've survived this long without them. 1000g? Better stuff to spend my gold on so far. Might get a second spec for my warrior in the future, but so far there's never been a point where my prot spec hasn't come in handy. I think I might have spent around 1000g on respecing in my entire wow career across all my characters.

Hunter changes - Changes to survival feel wrong. We're using a shot where we should be using a trap. The spec always was about traps, now we're being encouraged to stand still even more and just hit buttons? The rhythm of the shot rotation also feels off. The one upside is that even the cookie cutter raiding specs include the talents needed to chain trap. Maybe we'll actually get to trap something this time around. Oh, and I got a new bag. I now have even more unused space. Oh, and my boar is still pretty much useless.

Ulduar - Raid scheduled for this weekend. It's the one thing I'm excited about. The first boss looks like fun. Hope everything stays stable.

Engineering - Yep, still a complete abortion.

Overall? Lots of little bits of fluff to keep the masses entertained. Fishing dailies, Argent tourney, new vanity items. None of which really interest me. Much ado about nothing?
 
I spent nearly a whole raid wiping on H-Deconstructor tonight! It was fantastic! I'm finally getting what I thought I paid for when I bought the bloody box!
 
1) Glyphs sell rather well. Put 1.000 on AH, 400 have sold yesterday. I didn't up my prices (a lot), all sold for 17 a 25g at which point they arleady give a nice profit. I just don't like "ripping of people" by putting my glyphs up for 100g. And people who put up their glyphs at 5g are just dumbasses. Wait untill those sold before putting up your own.
2) I'm not yet sure what to do with my second spec. I hate PVP. I'm not gonna be tanking since we already have too many tanks who are just dpsing. So that leaves two raid DPS specs. But which ones? And is it useful to have two?

Glyphs are now selling well but once everyone has their two pairs, demand is gonna be dropping very very fast. Only new characters will need some or when a player has a rare respec. Except if you get one of those new glyphs a few days after launch...
 
I didn't bother doing anything but sitting at the AH to watch my glyph auctions. I use the mod "Lil Sparky's Workshop" to streamline my glyph making/selling. Once a glyph goes below a certain level, I simply stop selling it until there's either nobody else selling it again (so I can relist them at a higher price).
Since my server went back up, I've made around 25K just on my glyphs. I haven't even gone over to my JC alt yet. I haven't had the time.
You have to resign yourself to being an even moire ruthless undercutter than your competition.
 
Glyphs sell rather well. Put 1.000 on AH, 400 have sold yesterday. ... And people who put up their glyphs at 5g are just dumbasses. Wait untill those sold before putting up your own.

How high do you think the total fresh demand for glyphs is going to be? Basically it's 6 glyphs per player who goes dual-spec on your server and side, plus some people changing a glyph or two for their main spec. On a low population side like mine, the total demand might be something like 10,000 glyphs. If one inscriber puts up 1,000 glyphs, there is no room in the market for more than 10 inscribers.

I think the glyph market depends very much on the ratio of inscribers to players on your server/side, and I'm just unlucky to be somewhere with too many inscribers and not enough players.
 
3.1 has caused me to end my subscription to WoW. I've been subscribed to WoW for four years, even if I wasn't playing a lot. I've decided to finally end it. Although I have no intentions taking a permanent exudous from WoW. I need some time off, infact I've already spent the past two months away from WoW, only logging on to make titansteel and await patch 3.1.

I get really excited come patch day, and it just wasn't there for me this time. I am thinking it is burn out. I have two level 80's, in full epics. I have almost full epics for both duel specs. I could try and raid uldar, but I'm looking at a huge time sink, with minimal upgrades. I'm going to spend the next few weeks running heroics. I've seen these heroics countless times on my Paladin as a tank, and on my DK as dps. I feel burned out on tanking, so I think I will heal on my paladin, or perhaps DPS in blood spec on my DK...maybe even tank on my DK. I have a lot of options but I'm not too excited either way.
 
None of the item enhancement stuff is going to sell until S6 is released and the massive upgrading truly begins. Hang on a bit longer.
 
Paladins are way OP in PvP, DK's hitting 10K with obliterate and self heal 25% more than before. No battleground honor rewards (weapons). Raiding easy mode. Can't find 5 mans and when you do pugs suck. Arena... no balance. Watched all the Uldar videos. Cancel until 3.2.
 
Loving the new LifeBloom
 
Barely dipped my toes into Ulduar (first 3 bosses in 10 man mode, first boss in 25 man mode) but so far it's different and fun. I'll be cursing these fights in 3 months but for now they're great.

My inscriptionist alt has kept me in tons of gold doing nothing but making Darkmoon cards, I buy herbs when they get below a certain level and I make cards all through the month. I normally don't post the Nobles until the Faire is in town, unless it's a card that doesn't exist on the market. Once the Faire hits, you watch all the prices go up 25% and you jump in. Sell all the cards you made, watch to see which cards aren't on the market and put them up for way more than you think somebody would pay. There's always somebody missing just that one card who can't handle the possibility of another month without their trinket. They'll pay.

As far as the new glyph books, the drop rate is just absurd. I've seen 1 book on the AH, and it was going for a 5000 gold buyout. This would be well worth it if you knew that it would make you the only person on the server with the Living Bomb glyph, or something else people are lining up for, but you have an equal chance it will give you a bad glyph already discovered by somebody else. Nobody in my guild has seen a single book up to this point.
 
@Dink

Raiding easy mode? hahahahaha

Say that again once you've downed Yogg-Sarron please. Ulduar is not the joke that Naxxramas was.

My guild and I are working on XT-002 (heroic) atm, only had about an hour on him last night after downing razorscale. We expect to down him on our sunday raid and then start it all over next week. Having a real blast doing boss fights that we can't just walk over without worrying about wiping.
 
I 100% agree with you that the way you learn the new inscriptions (from ultra-rare world drop books) is terrible. Especially considering that some class/spec combos are balanced around having those glyphs available. Most of them don't even exist on my server yet. Much better to allow you to get a random one from a daily (like JC) or even from research (which is already in the game, so why not?) I just don't get it.

Anyway, I'm loving 3.1. And Tobold, I'm having a lot of "your kind" of fun...going in to fight bosses without knowing the strategies before hand. We are clearing Ulduar slowly, but having way more fun than if we were just executing the video we all memorized. So you've definitely got a point. :D
 
I would hold the titansteel bars a week or two longer since their price jump is all based on the new patterns coming out, which are drops from ulduar bosses. Until enough people have these patterns (and the runic orbs to use them) the titansteel won't be moving much.
 
You're right. At 72, there isn't a huge reason for pure DPS classes to dual-spec, really.

At 80, though, the option to have a dedicated PVP and PVE spec, or to have PVE specs of varying qualities (FFB for long fights where mana will be an issue, Arcane for fast burns, for instance) is invaluable.
 
Loving the lock talent changes..... Can now do the DPS id do as afflic pre 3.1 without the high matinence rotation..... 10k conflag crits are fun
 
10k conflag crits are fun

Wasn't that declared a "bug" and already hotfixed?
 
My 72 rogue has done the cooking daily every day since the patch hit - are you sure it was changed?
 
The cooking quest level having temporarily been set to 77 was a known bug and has fortunately been fixed as part of the hotfix.
 
"Wasn't that declared a "bug" and already hotfixed?"

Unless they hotfixed it over last night... I dont beleive so. And to be fair, that high is rare, theyre usually around 8-9k on a good crit.
 
I was very excited to see the changes to Divine Plea, which make it a little more bearable if I'm running with another tank who is an aggro hog, but if you take more than ten seconds to pull the next group you wind up waiting 45 seconds for Divine Plea's cooldown. This has resulted in me zerging a lot more than I'd like to keep Divine Plea going. Sometimes I just can't, like in encounters where the adds trickle in at slow rates but hit very lightly and die very quickly.

It feels like Blessing of Sanctuary + 2/2 Spiritual Attunement + 2/2 Guarded by the Light is extreme overkill as far as mana regen goes if you're main tanking everything, yet each of those is situationally required when you're off-tanking -- and it's not like I can pull talent points out of them on the fly when my role as a tank changes. So I'm feeling like I've wasted talent points, yet can't avoid doing so, and I'm still getting a patchy system of mana regeneration. The Divine Plea changes sounded great in theory but are still quite clunky in my experience.

Perhaps if hitting something added 5 seconds to the Divine Plea duration (with a max cap of 30 seconds), this would work a lot better for Prot without affecting Holy or Ret.
 
Death Knight, "Obliterate" crit 10K. 25% more self heal. Melee WTFeverything class. But Ghostcrawler's Baby, Death Knight = OKAY
Warlock, "Conflagrate" crit 10K. In the crit-obsessed Destro-tree. Caster DPS class. = "Must be a bug" ?

I want back the old times when the pendulum of imbalance was swinging hard in favor of the Warlock! :>
 
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