A Kiss Before Dying

So apparently Patch 3.1 will hit tomorrow.

Having complained about boredom with the end-game for quite some time, let me now complain that I feel totally unprepared.  I think part of this is due to Khrii’s recently achieving 80, and my desire to get her raid-ready while people are still, ya know, running Naxx.  But I really did think it’d be another week or so til we’d see the patch, and so tonight I feel like I’m sorta scrambling to get things in order.

• Major and minor glyphs made for Khaeli.  Check.
• An idea of where I’ll put those talent points.  Check
• Flasks for Ulduar raid tomorrow.  Check.
• Flasks for Kaleyen for Ulduar.  Check.
• Food for Khaeli and Kaleyen.  Check.
• Gold set aside for dual-spec for Khaeli.  Check.
• Stockpiles of enchanting materials.  Check.
• Good idea of which add-ons will need to be disabled to make the game playable.  Check.  (FYI:  it looks like, barring an update tomorrow, MSBT and Chatter will give me grief.  But the ones I need to raid — Grid, Pitbull, Bartender, Quartz — should be ok.)
• Item level 213 or higher in every slot to battle Flame Leviathan.  Check. 
• Herbs for inscription research.  Um, gathering them now.  Except now I’m tabbed out writing this blog entry.  But yeah…

 

OK, someone is clearly paying much more attention to Goldclover-gathering than me as the Howling Fjord has been herbed clean.  Back to work.

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The Routine

No matter what “the plan” is for the evening — whether it’s a raid night or not — my routine is similar:

1)  Log into Khiiya

The Death Knight is my scribe.  She’s yet to learn all the glyphs so she does the major and minor inscription research religiously.  She’s also the toon with Auctioneer enabled, so I funnel everything to sell from all my characters to her.

2)  Log into Khrii

The Druid is my chef, fisherman, and alchemist.  Khrii has been very lazy about the alchemy research, as she already knows the recipes for the two flasks Kaleyen and Khaeli need:  Flask of the Frost Wyrm and Flask of Endless Rage.  If she has the materials, she’ll do the research, but that’s a rarer occurrence than a transmutation proc.  Her primary duty is to do the cooking daily every day.  She knows all the recipes, save the Fish Feast, and has over 30 Dalaran Cooking Awards stockpiled, but Khrii does the daily nonetheless.

3)  Log into Khaeli

The Priest is my jewelcrafter.  She picks up the JC daily and hopes that Kaleyen hasn’t done it yet as it’s ever so much easier to just autofollow him while he one shots Scourge/Shoveltusks/Vyrkul/etc.  Kaleyen also buys her the gems needed for the quest — extra bonus.  She should probably make an Icy Prism every day, but as she hasn’t been too diligent lately about running heroics, so she has neither the Frozen Orbs nor the badges to buy them.  Khaeli used to sell the Dragon’s Eye gems, but the market has collapsed for those; now she saves the tokens, much like Khrii does with the cooking rewards.  Once 3.1 hits, she’ll probably buy some more recipes and/or try selling the gems again.

Khaeli is exalted with all the Northrend factions, so other than the JC daily, the only quest she bothers with is the “Hyldnir Spoils” one in Storm Peaks.

Once a week, she returns to the Oracles to buy a new egg.  (Yesterday, she received the proto-drake whelp, which she sent to promptly sent to Khiiya to sell.)

4)  The Main Event

Once all my characters have completed their tasks, K- and I determine what we’re working on for the evening:  raiding, leveling alts, instances, BGs, etc.  Sometimes we have particular “projects” that we focus on:  making the Nobles Deck, for example, or working on the Kara key questline or “the Explorer” achievement.

What do you make sure your characters accomplish every day?  What’s your routine?

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The State of The My Professions

K- and I veer dangerously close to being "min-maxxers," even though we
try to keep our play-time "casual."  And as such, we take seriously our
profession choices for the benefits they can provide our characters. 
When Kaleyen switched from being a tank to being DPS, for example, he
felt as though the health bonus afforded by mining was less valuable
than the gem bonuses of jewelcrafting; and so he dropped the former and
powerleveled the latter.  Although expensive, it hasn't been that bad
to do so, and the benefits of jewelcrafting are undeniable.  I've been
feeling sorta "meh" about my characters' professions, and seeing him
breeze through the switch has made me consider doing the same.

---

ENCHANTING
Khaeli:  450/450

Khaeli is level-capped for enchanting.  She's missing most of the
Burning Crusade enchants as she was powerleveled through those levels
(we're working on the Kara key questline so Kaleyen and Khaeli can farm
Moroes), and she hasn't coughed up the crystals for the new stamina
wrist enchant.  But enchanting is a great profession for Khaeli.  She
keeps all our toons' gear enchanted.  She DE's in instances and raids. 
The money-making potential is fairly high:  With mats she just had sitting in her bank, she made and sold 4 Fiery Weapon
enchant scrolls over the weekend, for example; and raw materials — no matter the tier — always
sell well.

---

INSCRIPTION
Khiiya:  141/450

I decided to make the new DK a scribe, and I think with the upcoming
introduction of dual-specs, this will be a good (read:  profitable)
profession.  Shoulder enchants will also be very nice for Khiiya as she
will not bother to woo the Scryers for theirs.  I also have visions of
surprising Kaleyen with a Nobles deck.  I could probably shell out the
coin to buy the herbs to level her a lot more rapidly, but she's
working on raising her Herbalism (see below) simultaneously.

---

HERBALISM
Khrii 450/450 / Khiiya 225/450

In BC, farming herbs was my key moneymaker, but the druid being
level-capped with herbalism, I'm not at the point yet where I'm able to
put herbs on the auction house (I need the herbs for alchemy and
inscription and without Cold Weather Flying, Khrii is hardly able to
farm the Northrend mats).  Does it make sense to have two toons as
herbalists?  Maybe I should switch the DK to another gathering profession.

---

ALCHEMY
Khrii:  436/450

As Khrii is only level 73, she hasn't been able to gather the herbs
necessary to push this profession to level cap (although now we're on a
PVE server, the dangers to her are far less than they were on
Maelstrom).  And despite the excellent change to cooldowns on some of
the alchemy abilities, she rarely takes advantage of them.  When
leveling Khrii in BC, she made the decision to go transmutation-spec,
and while people have long complained that the procs were broken, she
always had a fair amount of luck getting multiple primals.  But in
Wrath, her luck has changed, and while extra eternals would be nice, I
haven't seen a single one.  Oh yeah, she doesn't have any recipes.  I'm
toying with switching her to elixir-spec as with Kaleyen and Khaeli's
raiding activities, this seems like a better option.

---

MINING
Khiya:  247/450

A lot rests on the shoulders of the little shaman.  With a number of
characters between K- and I that are blacksmiths, jewelcrafters, and engineers, Khiya is
our only miner.  No wait, our twinks are miners
for the wtfpwnage of twinked health buffs.  But yeah.  They get "failed
attempts" when trying to mine copper ore.  Dammit, Khiya, for being
stuck in the miserable 50-60 levels.  I have little to no motivation to
level her through zones like Winterspring or Plaguelands.  If I can get
to 300 mining and to level 58, however, I could quite easily make the
push through to the Northrend ore and the Smelt Titansteel skill.  Maybe.

---

TAILORING
Khaeli:  447/450

Once upon a time, all shadowpriests and warlocks were tailors.  The
Frozen Shadowweave set was just that good.  But Blizzard admits the
gear was too good and have stated they don't intend for crafted gear to
ever exceed other drops.  The benefit to tailoring lies, then, in the
cloak embroidery and the cheaper leg enchants.  With Khaeli's current
gear and spec, the benefit of the former is debatable (The image on the right shows how much mana was returned in last week's 25man Naxx for Khaeli.  Darkglow is the embroidery).  My plan is to
craft some frostweave bags for the alts and the auction house, stock up
on some non-tailor leg enchants, and once I have the mats for my new
profession banked, drop Tailoring like a rock.  Barring something huge
in Patch 3.1, tailoring's just not worth it, neither in terms of
enchancing Khaeli's performance nor her pocketbook.

---

JEWELCRAFTING
Khiya:  238/450 / Khaeli: 0/450

As Kaleyen astutely noted in a comment to my last blog entry, "I really
think that JC is the profession to get no matter what role you play in
WoW, it's just THAT good."  Despite sinking over 1000 gold in his
profession switch, I think Kaleyen has virtually earned it all back by
selling Dragon's Eyes and by offering his services cutting gems.  For
Khaeli, it's not only about the profit (I'm not earning much with
tailoring anyways, but with two of us with the profession we can
probably work out some system where one person sells their Dragon's Eyes
while the other saves them for the recipes).  The appeal of the
profession for me lies in the JC-only gems that count as any socket
color.

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Weekend Update (in Images)

Khaeli and Kaleyen finally earned their "Champion of the Wastes" titles.  Although we'd killed Malygos about a month ago, we'd never done Heroic Occulus or Heroic Halls of Stone.

As no one in the guild seemed to log in to do 25-mans this weekend, I respecced shadow.  I'm still feeling pretty unsure of my DPS, but K- was really encouraging and supportive.  We did a couple of pickup raids, and yay, I didn't suck.

I'm planning a much longer post on this soon™ but I sent the shaman out to (begin to) gather the supplies necessary to switch Khaeli to jewelcrafting.  But as you can see, she was a little sidetracked by gathering candies instead.

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A Holiday Miracle

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410 to Shadowmoon Valley

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/ding /sleep

I'm pretty pleased with all K- and I accomplished this weekend.  Khæli is level 68; Kaleyen is 67.  Our tradeskills, while not maxxed, were high enough for us to pop into Howling Fjord to get to Grand Master in all four of our professions:

Needless to say, I'm exhausted, so halfassed-blog-update-with-graphics-FTL.  I healed this weekend, and yeah, I have more to say on that subject, but it'll have to wait…

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To Shadoweave or not to Shadoweave, that is the Question…

It used to be a no-brainer:  shadowpriest-tailors specialized in shadoweave.  Since Patch 3.02 (like oh so many things it seems), that's no longer the case.

At Level 60, tailors can choose one of three cloth specializations that used to be differentiated thus:

Mooncloth:  healing/mana
Spellfire:  crit/spell damage
Shadoweave:  shadow damage

Shadowpriests and warlocks chose the latter, a set that devs admitted was "too good" and that players often didn't replace until Tier 6.

But now the sets have changed, in no small part to the change to spellpower, and the choice for shadowpriests is complicated as crit has become a far more viable stat for us.  Spellfire remains the crit set.  Moonfire still centers on regen, but has the highest spellpower of the three.  And now Shadoweave features stamina — yay?

Maybe I'm being silly for even weighing these options as WotLK will quickly make the sets obsolete (although less so for Khæli as she will not be starting the expansion with T5 or higher gear).

But as it stands right now, I'm leaning towards spellfire specialization, and will probably task Khree with farming the materials, some of which I already have:

• 10 netherweb spider silk
• 38 primal fire
• 26 spellcloth

Looks like the druid needs to go kill some fire elementals…

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Preparing for the Expansion

With just over two weeks til Wrath of the Lich King arrives, it's getting down to the wire to make those preparations for the expansion.  As K- and I are both switching classes, we have quite a lot to do.

Leveling the Shadow Priest:

Our goal was level 58, to coincide with the deathknight's level upon finishing his opening questline.  Khæli is now about 40% into level 60, and I'm a little concerned she'll hit 61 and level out of the AV bracket — the only BG in my battlegroup where the alliance consistently wins.

Honor:

I'd hoped to get all six pieces of my PVP Epic set, along with a weapon and maybe a jewelry item.  Of course this gear is made obsolete in the Outlands, but it is pretty badass looking, and the deathknight deserves a hot-lookin' shadow priest at his side.  I have about 3000 honor now and 3 of the six pieces.  So by my count, I need roughly 62,000 honor, 70 AB tokens, and 30 WSG tokens.  Ouch.

Faction items:

The shadow priest will go Aldor; the deathknight Scryer.  The dailies from the Isle have made collecting the latter quite easy.  We need to spend a bit more time farming the Aldor turn-in items.  We also have banked hundreds of the Unidentified Plant Parts for the CE rep, as well as a number of the spores and hibiscus parts for Sporeggar faction.  Lower City, Consortium, Sha'tar, Kurenai — all these will need to be earned via questing.  Whether we choose to do so will probably depend on crafting recipes.  At the least, of course, we'll get honored with all of them for the key to the heroics.

Tradeskills:

Khæli is in good stead for crafting.  She's over 300 with both enchanting and tailoring.  There are lots of recipes she'll have to track down, however, particularly if there aren't good upgrades in the expansion.  She hasn't learned cooking or fishing, however.  I don't think I have time before WotLK to level these.  We also have quite a bit of ore saved in the bank, along with some blacksmithing recipes, in preparation for the deathknight's professions.  And tons of cloth.  Seriously.  Tons.

Coin:

Ugh.  We have long felt at a deficit in this realm as relatively new players we do not have the large stash of gold that other players seem to.  We'd hoped to raise enough funds to buy epic flyers for Khæli and Kaleyen, but needless to say, I haven't amassed enough gold for one yet.

So much to do; so little time.

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