Best Deal of All Time

I like bad guild names and good deals. Luckily for me I came across both today:

He sold me the Eternal Life for 10g each; at least 5g under market price! Went along nicely with my existing stock of Snowfalls to produce a bunch of Darkmoon Cards. Unfortunately I didn't get as much or as varied Nobles Cards, but that's the sort of gamble you have to take with them.

Of course another route I could've taken is to sell off creation of DMCs themselves. The customer would pay 100g or so for each, and if they are lucky then they get a minimum of 300% return in the form of a Nobles card. If they are unlucky then you still get the 100g. Win-win for the scribe. I've never had the chance to try it out, however.

My current stock of DMF cards. I didn't particularly like them as a source of income since it was pretty luck based and you would only see return on it around one week every month. However since I have so much supply I decided to get rid of it through this method.

Blizzard also hotfixed Abyssal Shatter today. I didn't manage to get much from the auction house, obviously someone was quicker to the draw of grabbing the sub 40g shards. However a quick ply in trade and I was able to grab a stack to test with.

A promising yield. Seems like prices of Dust and Essence will drop slightly over the next few days and Abyssals will rise to compensate.

How I Profit From Morons & Slackers

Method 1. Simply search for greens above level 75 on the AH and buy any around 15g or under, then send them to my enchanter to disenchant. Then collect up the enchanting mats and sell when prices are high or when Tuesday night rolls along. Pretty much always nets a good profit but was only really effective when ToC5 came out and people did it for the easy purples. Nowadays its a bit of a rare find.

Method 2. Some people can't do maths. I profit from that. Note how fucked the herb prices still are without our gold farmers to mass list them.

Method 3. A new technique; joining Ulduar PUGS on my engineering druid just to dismantle Flame Leviathan and XT-002. One of the reasons I love having levelled engineering, aside from the amazing gadgets and trinkets, of course.

I've reached a gold equilibrium of around 45k at the moment. I haven't been creating new glyphs due to mailbox limit, herb prices and lack of motivation. However so far I have bought up four Tankard O'Terrors for around 770g each. Will probably start selling those once supply drops after Brewfest.

Runescroll of Brilliance

Some time during 3.2 PTR, Blizzard the new group buff consumables. Just before the release of 3.2, Runescroll of Brilliance was removed.

Ghostcrawler's justification at the time was flawed. Arcane Brilliance to be considered a secondary spell? On the same grounds as Spirit and Shadow Protection, of all things? Spirit being used as a stat for about 4/10 classes, of which only certain specs could make effective use of it. And Spirit Protection, well, Ghostcrawler can be a bit deluded at times. Intellect on the other hand is pretty much a universal caster stat, functioning as spellcrit and mana regen (with Replenishment). No one in their right mind would ignore it, so when a raid doesn't possess mages, we do end up very slightly handicapped.

However he has rejustified removing the scroll, stating that the GotW, Fort and Kings scrolls were to balance tank health. Fair enough, but he does also go on to say they are considering Heroism.

Although encounters won't be made or broken through the Runescroll of Brilliance, let's hope he remembers that it's not just another spell to be lumped with Shadow Protection, but that it is a very valuable primary stat. And instead of giving another consumable to scribes, it would be a nice addition to a tailor's repertoire.

A Shadowpriest's Wishlist

Head: Aurora of Transcendence*
Neck: Wail of the Val'kyr* / Darkbane Pendant
Shoulders: Velen's Mantle of Triumph
Back: Flowing Sapphiron Drape* / Shawl of the Refreshing Winds*
Chest: Velen's Robe of Triumph
Wrist: Bindings of Dark Essence
Hands: Velen's Handwraps of Triumph
Belt: Belt of the Eternal
Legs: Legwraps of the Demonic Messenger
Feet: Sandals of the Silver Magus
Ring1: Polished Dragonslayer's Signet
Ring2: Firestorm Ring
Trinket1: Reign of the Unliving*
Trinket2: Solace of the Defeated*
Weapon: Heartcrusher
Offhand: Chalice of Searing Light*
Ranged: Rod of Imprisoned Souls

Items with strikethrough are ones I have already.
Items with asterisk are ones which I will have to PUG 25 mans for.

Stats I prioritised on were mainly spellpower and crit. I already have far too much hit from other TotC items so I will be mixing and matching as needs allow, but these are the items I would like if hit was not an issue. Trinkets are a bit of a hard decision really, but I will add them nonetheless. I excluded 25 man heroics and also Ulduar, since we don't run Ulduar anymore.

You can follow my progress on armory.

Thanks to shadowpriest.com

Beniffer UI

I've had a few YouTube PMs about this for a while, so:


Introducing Beniffer UI - 35.21MB, my callous attempt at collaborating a coherent collection of addons. In order for it the work for your installation, and to witness my horrible butchery, you will need to rename the following folders:

ACCOUNTNAME to your Account Name
SERVERNAME to your Server Name
CHARNAME to your Character Name

Within the Interface folder is WUU, this will update addons for you. I have labelled the things that should appear on the screenshot above. Most likely, however, you will find Bartender, FortEXorcist, Recount, Omen and SLDT behaving like asses. You have been warned. The only thing you can do in that case is use what I have given you as a template.

If you want a slick UI without any configuration, try SicaUI.

Dressing to Kill

First off, thanks to Turpster for tweeting one of my earlier posts. I appreciate it!

A certain Swedish guildmate of mine is playing Fallout 3. He was in a certain Oasis, killing a certain tree, when he noted to me that the skimpy clothes of the local folk were appealing with his boob mod. Those who have played FO3 will know you can kill NPCs and loot their clothes. If WoW had that sort of freedom, rather than relying on gathering up similar looking random greens, it would probably motivate me to farm mobs. And judging by Wowhead's comments for Whitemane, I think other people would be motivated too.

I haven't been playing much these past couple days, just logged on this morning to relist expired auctions; I've made about 900-1000g over my absence.

Video: Wilfred Fizzlebang

Video test of the intro to the last of my TotGC videos, Lord Jaraxxus. Since after that I won't really have boss kill movies to make anymore, I'm gonna try my hand at making a snazzy intro.

How To: Shadowpriest

So I made the video, around 1-2 hours of work. I wrote everything else beforehand and had to use the stop and record buttons of Sound Recorder a ton, but the amateurness still shows through. I hope it helps people though. Based on the responses from my brewfest how to ram ride video, people certainly like and appreciate the help, and I like to see that.

It's all too easy to say to a person doing 2k dps that he's a noob and tell him to read Elitist Jerks, but if you think back to when you started - or to any new game for that matter - to read a huge essay on the intricacies of coefficients and how to play, would you still be interested? I don't think I would be. Some people like to find things out for themselves. Some people like to read on how to improve. I think good how to videos are a good way to introduce a new level 80 on how to play end game. I'm not saying my video is the best; I'm saying it's a start.

For my UI, I never really commented on how it works since I doubt people really cared. Although I specifically crafted my UI for making videos, it still works the way I want to. The UI is like the mirrors of a car, they are there on the screen, functional and unobtrusive. You don't need to glance at the damage meters all the time, much like you dont stare at the side mirror when driving. The only UI you need close to the screen is party healthbars (as a healer) or the DoT timers. These are analogic to the speedometer, or the rear view mirror. Put them close, but not too close.

Since we're on the topic of videos, Xephos has released a new YoGScast. He's gone back the style similar to my videos, where we have a song and compress the action to scale to it. It's a pretty good video and I love the song.

The problem with humour in videos is that when you're editing the video, you already know the punchline. So when you finally see the finished product and you're not laughing at your own jokes.. well.. it's a horrible feeling.

UPDATE: Revised second edition of the video.

"Realm 2nd Best Shadowpriest"

In terms of gearscore at least! Illustration of the Dragon Soul is holding me back on that score. Blizzard are terrible when it comes to trinkets. Shadow priesting isn't particularly difficult, I'm planning on making a video that explains both my UI and my rotation. I think Korallon is a nice boss for it.


Lurky has a friend now.

About Investing

Whenever I spend money on things that aren't for personal use, I call it an investment. This helps make me feel less guilty spending 3k on something, since I know I'll make it back. Today I invested in two Tankard O' Terrors, 900g and 950g respectively. I predict I'll make 1.5k from them after Brewfest, and if I don't then hey - two new gimmick items for my Priest and Paladin.


Runescrolls of Fortitude haven't sold at all at 9g each, so I'm taking a new strategy and listing them for 5-6g each. I'm also alternating batches of five and singles, and I guess the M&S haven't found out about them so I guess I'll advertise in trade as well. I hope I get rid of them, I have lots of Snowfall Ink to use up.


Other deals of the day: 6g and under stacks of Frostweave; 10g stack of Saronite Ore; 13g Eternal Life. Our server's market is fucked at the moment, no Adder's Tongue nor Goldclover up at all, and the other herbs have some serious markup.

Guild Politics

A hilarious post by Gevlon on his philosophies on Guild Politics. He makes a very strong argument for a dictator-style leadership in guilds, and I'm very inclined to agree with him on the most part. However Tumbleweed is a casual, social guild - in the eyes of Gevlon we are useless compared to the hardcore raiding ones. Although on paper we should be slower at progression, we managed to get the realm first Twin Val'kyrs and Anub'arak down on 10 man heroic. So - there are always exceptions. We run with a council style of leadership and it works out for us.

In the comments to that post, Armond writes:

"I cannot think of a single time I found a working democracy with more than 15-ish people. I also cannot remember the last time I saw a vote that was useful for deciding something important and not just e.g. the background theme for a forum."

A point I agree upon. Even in the case for what music I should use in my boss kill movies, Tumbleweed can rarely come up with a sensible conclusion. In the end, someone has to decide on something, all we can do is hope it is for the good of all of us.

Video: Onyxia

I don't think anyone had too much of a problem with Onyxia. It was never a hard fight to begin with, other than getting 39 other people to comprehend and move around. It has had some minor updates to make it work and feel in touch with the feeling of a WotLK instance - I especially liked Blizzard's cheek of retaining the Rugged Leather from skinning the trash mobs, you just get more of it now.

Last night as we heard of the upcoming 3.2.2 patch we did one last retro raid, one where I help a guildmate get his lvl 60 Onyxia achievement and also a random lvl 60 rogue, another where I join my old guild, Goon Squad Sporeggar. It was a fun and relaxing night.



Sometimes you just can't get enough Onyxia.

PDP Part 2

The results as the day ends. In total, when combined with the earlier snapshot, it gives me a total of 3297g. As of now I am undercut on most of my auctions and the glyphs didn't sell as fast as I expected, but I'll just keep dropping off the rest of my stock slowly across the week.

Runescrolls are very easy to make, most scribes have a huge stock of snowfall ink. I roughly calculate it to be around 20g for cost of making 5 of them, and right now the market price is at over 9g each. I will probably use up my ink on this rather than darkmoon cards, I suspect it'll be rather popular.

PDP Part 1

Well, I woke up to see most of my auctions were undercut - not a problem with QuickAuction2's feature of automatic cancelling of undercut auctions. I haven't sold as many glyphs as I anticipated, although I managed to get rid of some triumph badges and sold a Crusader Orb for 1.3k. The glyph market has changed slightly, nothing worrying since my death knight glyphs were still up at the top and lowest price, which was the primary market I was going for.


Did Onyxia10 on my druid, seemed as simple a fight as it used to be. The Deep Breath mechanic has been streamlined, with a new large add accompanying the whelps in stage 2 as a way of putting pressure into groups killing her fast. Casters have a greater role in the fight as a whole, which is not a problem when you're one of the best shadowpriests in the realm. For a single boss, three items plus a head on the loot table makes it out to be really generous. I don't see many guilds running this for months on end.

I will probably make another update tonight to see my total PDP

Tools of the Trade

Aside from Auctioneer, QuickAuctions2 is pretty much the tool for a scribe. It's not so much a limb, rather a bike or a car. I've annotated the above screenshot to briefly show you the logistics of how it works, should be fairly simple - if you use it you don't even need my convincing of how awesome it is.


This is a 'cancel-all' macro I found online somewhere. When I originally found it it was for all glyphs. I can modify it to cancel specific glyphs - here I've used it to reset the market for Glyph of Volley, in anticipation of increased demand from hunters who have seen the coefficient buff. I have done this for various things found in the patch notes, although if there were lots of glyphs posted over 20g then I just left it alone. It's basically the opposite to what Gevlon preaches, but each to his own.


Here is MarketWatcher. I enter specific items to watch and it provides a graph. Graphs make me feel like an intellectual instead of a retard who plays videogames. Hence I use MarketWatcher. One worrying thing is that gold farmers have stopped dumping masses of herbs on the auction house, and the price has risen. I don't have much stock left, having used most of it in hopes that my PDP idea will work out. I haven't recently contacted any farmers directly either, who provide me with 10-13g stack of high end Northrend herbs.


Here is my stock as the server closes down. Already I have been undercut, but I assume the competitor is not as dedicated as I am, so I let my OCD go for once and log off. Tomorrow we shall see if the farmer reaps what he sows.

PDP (Patch Day Profits)

At time of writing, tomorrow will be patch 3.2.2, otherwise known as Onyxia patch. Part of the fun of patch days are speculating how the market will change based upon what the Gods of Blizzard decide upon. Kevin writes about his experiences on market speculation, and they are a make or break thing. Lets take a look at what we will see in 3.2.2:

• Glyph of Bone Shield: This glyph now grants 1 additional charge instead of 2.
• Glyph of Flame Shock: Redesigned. This glyph now makes Flame Shock periodic damage able to be critical strikes.
• Glyph of Mind Flay: This glyph no longer reduces the magnitude of the movement reduction on the Mind Flay victim.
• Glyph of Scourge Strike: Redesigned. This glyph now causes Scourge Strike to extend the duration of Frost Fever and Blood Plague by 3 seconds each time Scourge Strike is used on a target, up to a maximum of 9 seconds.
• Glyph of Typhoon: This glyph now increases the range on Typhoon by 10 yards in addition to its current effects.
• Glyph of Unbreakable Armor: Now increases the armor gained from Unbreakable Armor by 20%.
• Glyph of Vampiric Blood: The glyph now increases the duration of Vampiric Blood by 5 seconds instead of 10.

I've struck out the nerfs. Now, I'm a person who makes his profits from glyphs, they are a huge part of my income, probably 70-80%, rest coming from Darkmoon cards and other miscellaneous affairs. Time to speculate on them. I'm not too certain on the Death Knight glyphs, but other than knowing that they currently sell well regardless, I will be pushing out more of them. The other three are definitely improvements and I will also be putting out more on the market, probably around 20-30, posted just before the server goes down tonight. The thing about glyphs is that with current herb prices, they are a win-win market, but since tonight I plan to buyout the entire market and investing it into keeping the price up high - well, it won't be a loss, but it'll be significant I can imagine.


Also for inscription there is Runescroll of Fortitude - The Arcane Intellect replacement was removed for fears that people would ask for more scrolls such as Divine Spirit - a bullshit reason, considering AI is a primary class ability compared to DS's secondary. For those who follow Gevlon and his love of making fools pay 10g for 50s materials, I would suggest putting some parchments up tonight and see if you shoot any fish.

Elsewhere, the recently un-PTR'd Brewfest gave us some expected bugs. I haven't been able to achieve my goal of 19 laps in the Ram Racing due to luck with the barrels. It has also been revealed that Coren Direbrew drops a nice 226ilvl mace, Tankard O' Terror. Congratulations to people who have made a killer on this - I don't see it going higher than 750-1k in a week's time.

Learning to Be Communicative

If there was one thing I got out of Blizzcon, was that Blizzard were coming out of their shells and speaking to its fans a lot more. This proved true when they released details about how their company works at GDC Austin. So why are Blizzard taking a giant step backwards? Never mind, they posted an update to the situation, as hilarious as it may be:

The Brewfest quests ‘Pink Elekks On Parade’ and ‘Catch the Wild Wolpertinger!’ were removed to ensure that World of Warcraft contains content that complies with regional game rating requirement

First time I've heard of America being more liberal than Europe.

I guess in the theme of communication, shoutouts to the GMs and ex-GMs out there. I would love to be a GM at Blizzard, but of course I'm sorting my life out and getting a degree to show that I am serious before I even consider applying.

Video: Anub'arak

So we cleared ToGC10 last night, earning Tribute to Skill in the process. We were 5 tries off from Mad Skill. Through the tribute system we can see where our mistakes were in the amount of tries we took to finish it - NRB (1), Twin Val'kyr (4), Anub'arak (5). I like the tribute system since you get a feeling of progression each time you clear the instance, it lets most guilds experience the 'true' fight instead of sticking to the usual normal modes that you see in Ulduar. All in all, both systems are pretty good and work well in their enviroments.

Last night out of the haul I got a couple sweet items to add to my shadow set. Vestments of the Sleepless, taking up a potential set piece location, and the curiously named Heartcrusher. The latter looks odd, like a clockwork key with gears and a random lightbulb attached to the end. I have the intense urge to stick it into one of Mimiron's mechanical creations and use it for my own dastardly deeds.

I'm really happy with my recent videos. Anub'arak continues where my Twin Valkyr video left off, props to Pinkhair on #machinima who suggested a Kanye parody while I was halfway through rendering Anub'arak. The idea was too fantastic to save it for later. He also suggested using a voice actor but I guess he doesn't realise my turnover for boss kill movies, besides, the whole butchery of it all gives off a meme template to it which works well. I couldn't find Tirion's sound file when he congratulates the raid so I threw in a mix of ToC5 and Ulduar voices to make up for it, turns out it worked well.

I also made a NRB video which uses a Dissidia song, one that was used to promote the game in adverts. The song is great for an introduction to a raid, evoking a feeling only describable as GAR.

I only have Heroic Jaraxxus left to do, only ideas I have so far is a pimp intro for the unfortunate gnome who summons him and using Lord Malchezzar voices instead of his usual stuff.

How To: Ram Race

I made this video yesterday for brewfest.



Here is the optimal route for both the Alliance and the Horde, with the apple barrels marked. Despite minor changes to the positioning this year, Horde still have the other end of the stick when it comes to maximizing token gain. However it should be simple enough to get tokens for everything you want so it's not a game breaking concern.


UPDATE: It turns out you can just jump over the barrels. The removal of fatigue isn't detected through collision, so jumping over them will reduce chance of getting stuck in an apple barrel, and will improve your time as a result.

Also it turns out I helped a guild member through the video, he didn't know about the apple barrels at all. I'm really glad to get feedback like this.

UPDATE (2): I managed 18 laps now, probably room for one more. I've changed my route slightly, and ignored barrel 3 on the return trip and just make a beeline over the hill to barrel 2. Fastest lap was around 40 seconds.



UPDATE (3): How To: Ram Racing v2.0!

Introduction

Hi, my name is Beniffer. Despite the name of the this blog, Lurky has not yet evolved into a species self-aware enough to be capable of documenting their own life, which limits his posting. However as his caring master I will be documenting his, and subsequently my own, life on Azeroth.

While I continue playing this game, my mind wonders why I play. World of Warcraft is nearing it's fifth anniversary and I ask myself, "What is it about this game that keeps me hooked?" Every so often I hope I get ideas to jot down into the blog. After all, if I'm wasting time playing videogames I might as well try to develop my analytical mind while I'm at it.

Of course this blog will feature mostly things I'll be doing ingame, and not random viral videos that are funny or whatever horrible misconceptions that come with the word "blog". I like the term "programmer's blog".

Philosophy of a Gold Buyer

"I'm not a gold buyer, I'm a money seller."