Showing posts with label fingle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fingle. Show all posts

Tuesday, 21 July 2009

The Week That Was

(Not to be confused with the Week That Will Be, or The Week That Is)

Have to wonder if 3.2 will add traffic lights to manage the traffic outside Ulduar.

PvP is, I must admit, a lot more fun when you’re doing it with a group of guildmates who know what they’re doing – random battleground pugs (at least the Alliance-side ones) are awful at least 50% of the time by my calculations (although perception bias may have some small effect on that number).  All the same, I’ve managed to get Fingle off to a good start with her PvP gear (which I’ll probably post about before too long), and I’ve picked up a little how-to about disc priest healing from both my desperate efforts to keep teammates alive in battlegrounds, and the couple of PvE instances I’ve healed since starting to gear her up.

I’ve made some changes to Mingle’s UI based on what I’ve learnt from PvPing on Fingle (and setting up Vuhdo), which helped last night when our main dispeller died early on Yogg-Saron last night, and I had to help make up for her absence.  Also, after last nights raid I splashed out and made both the Ulduar crafted belt and boots for Mingle (the latter using discounted orbs from the guild bank, but the former completely on my own coin) – I’ve been regularly selling the crafted items I’ve been putting on the AH, so I have enough gold to treat myself to something nice every now and then.

I’m beginning to consider dual-speccing Mingle to shadow/disc after my pleasant experiences with Fingle (which is to say healing as disc has been fun, but it’s no comment on battleground pugs).  I’ve been juggling gear to try put together a set to try healing with – admittedly that mostly means trying to find pieces without hit rating, at this stage.  She will have two pieces of t7.5 to start with, and a badge trinket, so she’s not starting off too shabbily.

I’ve been enjoying the “New Races in the Expansion!” rumour that surfaced after someone found new Halloween masks in the PTR data that have been interpreted as evidence that we’ll be playing Goblins and Worgen when we enter the Maelstrom.  My take on it?  I like the thought of Alliance finally gaining a bestial race, and the goblins have been a loooong time coming to the horde.

Pretty, aren't they?  (I modified the image to make the faces thinner and more consistant with the current proportions of goblin faces)

I’m not sure if I’d roll a goblin to level to 80 (or 90, considering expansions raise the level cap), but I might give a worgen a try (depending on what classes are available – I’m still hanging out for a new dwarf class, of course).  Certainly a goblin would be the ultimate bank alt, but considering all my active toons are on the alliance side, it’d be kind of ineffectual if it’s a horde-only character (which I expect will be the case).  In any case, the idea is covered pretty thoroughly over on Random Ravings of Warcraft, which I recommend checking out.

Finally, this weeks glyph industry report.  The changes I made to my undercut value pushed my average sale price up by over 1g, and while my gross volume of sales was down, the total was up slightly from last week.

For the seven days from 13th July – 19th July:
Total glyphs sold: 612
Average price per glyph: 10.51g
Average sales per day: 918.814g
Total income from the AH: 6431.7g

This would have been better, but there was a huge drop in sales on the last day of the week – weekdays seem to be much more reliable for glyph sales than the weekend, quite possibly due to casual players doing their undercutting thing.  I’ve also trimmed my stock based on what hasn’t sold over the last three weeks, so I’ll see if that makes any difference over the coming week’s sales.

It doesn't look like much yet, but this monstrosity is Mingle's current UI.  Very, very much WIP.

Anyway, time to get my chores done (I’m doing the dalaran fishing daily on all my 80s, cooking daily on Pringle, Kringle and Fingle, and the JC daily on Pringle) so I can decide what I want to do with the rest of my day.

/wave

Tuesday, 14 July 2009

You Dirty Rat!

Well, considering how long the critter would have been swimming in the sewer before you fish it up, it’s a tad more likely to be filthy than clean…  Unless it’s a clean sewer?  (Isn’t that an oxymoron like “military intelligence” or “an honest politician”?)

Cute enough to hug.  After which you want to shower.

Financially, it’s been a pretty busy week.  Between my raiding needs (flasks, potions and fish), wheeling and dealing (with eternal belt buckles and leg armors), my investment in Fingle’s PvP gear and enchants, and the crafted Ulduar gear I’ve got on the AH currently (along with two Ulduar patterns that I’ve bought), I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel…  er, of my wallet at this point in time.  I also off-loaded those books of glyph mastery (at around 52g each), so that’s one less thing nagging at the back of my mind.

I made one small change to my glyph listing process (reducing the undercut value in auctioneer from 50% to 40%, which increases the minimum price at which my glyphs would be listed), and in the days since I’ve experienced both a reduction in overall sales along with an increase in price-per-glyph that keeps things roughly equivalent in gross turnover.  Essentially, it means I’m selling fewer items (lowering crafting costs) for more (increasing net profit) – this kind of adjustment would be something to bear in mind if you’re regularly listing items on the AH.

But here’s how the glyph market has been treating me this week:

For the seven days from 6th July – 12th July:
Total glyphs sold: 676
Average price per glyph: 9.26g
Average sales per day: 894.41g
Total income from the AH: 6260.85g

This wasn’t helped by a substantial dip in sales on the day I made the undercut change, but if today’s sales are anything to go by, this week could be quite a bit more profitable (only time, and sales figures, will tell).

Yesterday I did a few battlegrounds with Fingle (including my first visit to the Strand of the Ancients), and the decrease in her mana pool in PvP gear has been quite noticeable – I probably spent as much time drinking yesterday as I did while I leveled her from 70 to 80.  I also have to make up my mind whether I want to be dps or healing, as quite often my dps has been more than triple the amount of healing I’ve done in a BG – I guess my shadow priest upbringing is shining through.  But I think it’s time to put together a new UI for healing – Vuhdo has been suggested as an addon to look into.

healing_sm

All in all, considering how few healers there seem to be in BGs, I think I could prove useful in that regard.  But as the screenshot above shows, I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.

But it’s time to get today’s glyphs listed, and fishing (and cooking and jewelcrafting) dailies completed, then time for some more PvP.  (Fingle should have her first piece of non-crafted PvP gear today!  Hurrah!)

/wave

Sunday, 12 July 2009

Beginning Disc Priest PvP Gear

I’m putting together some items for Fingle’s PvP set, and thought I’d document it here.

Fear the Failpriest!

The idea is to put together a set that’s as much crafted gear as possible (including rings and neck), to minimise the need to do PvP wearing nub PvE gear in order to get items with resilience.

Non-PvP gear that Fingle is starting with (due to a lack of alternatives):

Titansteel Guardian (with the +50SP enchant)
Prison Manifest
Gwyneth’s Runed Dragonwand
Darkmoon Card: Illusion
Mercurial Alchemist Stone

Now for the crafted items.  First, make your Frostsavage Battlegear, a cloak and some Jewelry

Frostsavage Belt
Frostsavage Boots
Frostsavage Bracers
Frostsavage Cowl
Frostsavage Gloves
Frostsavage Leggings
Frostsavage Robe
Frostsavage Shoulders
Cloak of Crimson Snow
Sky Sapphire Amulet
Savage Titanium Band + 1x Durable Monarch Topaz
Runed Mana Band

Total mats required to make that all: 

31x Bolts of Imbued Frostweave
73x Crystallized Fire
33x Crystallized Earth
4x Eternal Shadow
4x Iceweb Spider Silk
16x Eternium Thread
8x Titanium Bar
2x Twilight Opal
2x Sky Sapphire
1x Monarch Topaz (or buy the cut gem on the AH)

Time for enchants!  (Tip:  There’s a handy filter on WoWHead for item enhancements with resilience)

Head: Arcanum of Burning Mysteries
  (to eventually be replaced by the Arcanum of Dominance)
Shoulder: Lesser Inscription of the Crag
  (to eventually be replaced by the Inscription of Dominance)
Enchant Chest – Exceptional Resilience
Enchant Cloak – Greater Speed
Enchant Bracers – Superior Spellpower
Enchant Gloves – Exceptional Spellpower
Eternal Belt Buckle + Durable Monarch Topaz
Earthen Leg Armor
Enchant Boots – Tuskaar’s Vitality

(I’ll leave the mats for these for you to work out – if you’re like me, you will have picked up most of the enchants from the AH, which reduces mats to a sum of gold that varies depending on your server and when you’re buying)

But now for the taste-test.  Fingle’s stats in her normal gear (including one item with resilience) versus her stats in her shiny new PvP gear:

PvE Gear PvP Gear
12650 Health
16738 Mana
1655 SP
11.18% Crit
395 Haste
283 MP5
29 Resilience
16170 Health
14323 Mana
1557 SP
17.94% Crit
126 Haste
105 MP5
545 Resilience

There’s one last item that I expect will be very useful, the Lesser Flask of Toughness.  As Fingle is an alchemist, her Mixology buff increases the flask to 82 resilience and a 2-hour duration.  Sure she’s starting pretty cheaply, but 627 resilience should be enough to get her off on the right foot.  Time will tell what effect the substantial drop in MP5 (and lesser drop in mana) will have, but I guess the next step is to actually try it all out.  (Hmmm, I wonder what guildmates I could convince to participate?)

One other little change I’ve made (while farming the AH for all those mats), has been to dress Bingle, glyph vendor and bank alt extraordinaire, in a more appropriate fashion for her station.

I R Banker!

You can keep your tuxedos and fancy dresses, I’ll stick with my classy Netherweave.

/wave

And Now For Something Completely Different

It’s…

Where's that mp3 of "We Are The Champions"?

PvP!  (And good PvP, at that)

Now, I’m pretty sure all my guildmates are aware of how much I’ve vocally exclaimed how much I detest pvp on my rogue (an attitude that dates back to some awful experiences in WSG and arena).  They must, therefore, have been quite surprised to see me raising my hand for an invite when doing semi-premade battlegrounds.

I started off with Dingle last night (still specced and geared as prot), and not only did Wintergrasp twice, but also ventured into AB and EotS.  I have to say, PvP is a lot more fun when you’re not being used as a doormat by your opponents (which had been my previous experience).

Later on in the evening I decided to try something quite out-of-character, and switched to Fingle, my discipline priest.  Yes, I was going to try my hand at healing.  And you know what?  While I was pretty ineffectual, it was still fun!

It was actually so much fun that I’m considering whether I want to invest some time into farming honor in order to put together a set of PvP gear for Fingle, to see what it’s like when I’m less squishy (which was something of a problem).

It's OK!  It's Honorable!

For now, though, it’s time to do my chores (an accurate description of the glyph industry process if ever I heard of one) so I can afford to PvP.

/wave

Thursday, 23 April 2009

Yawn. No, Really.

I couldn’t get back to sleep (woke up at about 6am, after going to bed at 2am), so I figured I might as well get some dailies out of the way.  And guess what?  The fourth day of Blood Is Thicker in a row.

Just call me the Red Baron.

Ah well, you get that sometimes.  (But it would be nice to get something else for a change – I’ve done the dailies every day since 3.1 went live, and I’ve still only seen two of them)  I’ve started leveling fishing on Fingle as well, which gives me four characters to fish with.  Fortunately you’re able to do the fishing daily in Shattrath in addition to the Dalaran one, so I can keep myself in Sharpened Fish Hooks.

Ulduar-25 went better last night; after defeating the loot piñata that is Flame Leviathan (well, we downed him despite all the raiders who still don’t know how to do that fight – apparently we’re going to be organised when we do it next week), we then downed Razorscale (eventually – it took a few attempts), and I sat out for XT-002 Deconstructor.  We finished with Ignis (barely downing him before we over-ran our scheduled raid times).  Razorscale was generous, and gave me the Collar of the Wyrmhunter, which has allowed me to drop Haunting Call in favour of The Impossible Dream – the new +hit pieces are making it a lot easier to juggle that particular stat.  (The stats on it are nice, but some of these helms make me really glad I can set them to not display on my characters)

I’m hoping to get Dingle into the second guild 10-man group for Ulduar this week, but her comparative lack of gear may put her out of the running – Ulduar is really quite demanding of raiders, in that they need to be pretty solidly geared before it’s worth taking them in.  While she’s geared enough for Naxx25, Ulduar10 may be beyond her – or at least, her lack of gear may make her impossible to keep up.  I’ll have to see what happens come Friday.

For now, though, I’m going to finish the fishing dailies and see if I can get another couple of hours sleep – raiding and sleep deprivation aren’t a very successful combination.

/wave