• Players participating in Lunk’s Adventure: Rendari’s Weakness should be delighted to note that Iron Summit Guards are now properly gonna shake their body and do the conga.
• Mages, we’re very sorry to report that both Living Bomb and Nether Tempest are now dealing 70% of their damage when used against other players instead of 100%.
• Drinking a potion while under the effects of Stealth or Invisibility no longer causes potions to go on permanent cooldown.

Many players think that MoP kills a lot of guilds and they always ask Why are so many guilds dying in MoP? Many readers replied, blaming raid finder for taking away the “good old days” of raiding and “killing their guilds”. This is a bunch of baloney, and I’m going to tell you why.

Raid Finder Makes An Excellent Scapegoat

Raid Finder, also known as “Looking For Raid” or simply LFR is a wonderful scapegoat for raiding guilds who can’t fill their rosters. Truth be told, even before LFR guilds had trouble filling their raid roster. Having been in several guilds who struggled to put together a raid team way before Cataclysm, it appears to me that the addition of LFR did nothing worse than add an easy target for raid leaders to blame. As a former raid leader, I welcomed LFR as a way for guildies to learn the boss fights in a method akin to “Bumper Bowling.” LFR is a wonderful tool for raiding guilds, as it lets raiders familiarize themselves with the basic raid mechanics before entering regular raids.

Raid Finder Isn’t The Same As Raiding

I don’t raid anymore. Not because of MoP, and not because of raid finder. I stopped raiding long before raid finder was released. I lost interest in spending hours in a raid, and did not wish to dedicate that much time to WoW. To most people, WoW is just a game, and it is not feasible to commit several hours per week to a raid team. Instead of sitting in a raid waiting for latecomers to arrive, LFR now allows those with busier schedules (and a more casual gameplay approach) to stick to casual raiding instead of making the rest of the team suffer. Raiding guilds are still in existence, and those looking for a challenge and able to make a weekly commitment can join a raid team. Those who want to keep WoW as a less stressful casual activity can queue up for LFR. Raiding and LFR are two completely different animals. Apples and oranges, if you will.

Guilds (And Players) Come And Go

I’ve been playing since the end of Vanilla. I’ve seen countless guilds come and go. It’s not because of an expansion pack, it’s not because of raid finder, and it’s not because of cross realm zones either. It’s called attrition. I’ve had many friends stop playing, and the common denominator is usually boredom. They’ve been playing WoW for so long and have lost interest. Does that mean WoW is failing? Absolutely not! When I was a kid, I’d buy a video game cartridge and spend perhaps 50-100 hours on a single game tops. When you play WoW for years and quit, it’s not a waste. You’ve derived plenty of entertainment value, and are ready to move onto a different hobby. There is nothing crazy about this concept!

In 5.2, the “LFR failbags” received some updates. The old bags from Tier 14 LFR have a chance to contain the following besides gold:

LFR-quality versions of items obtainable from normal-mode trash. For example, Jade Magistrate Figurine can be found in LFR satchels, while Jade Magistrate Figurine drops from trash.

Based on this, it’s very likely that the Tier 15 loot satchel, Treasures of the Thunder King, will contain trash drops such as ilvl 502 necks, belts, and feet.

A variety of pets, ranging from Cat Carrier (Silver Tabby) to all the Argent Tournament pets like Enchanted Broom.

Mists of Pandaria flasks, gems, and potions.

Battle-Stones to upgrade your battle pets.

Blood Spirit and Spirit of Harmony.

Based on Bashiok’s post, it appears that there’s a low chance to also find mounts and valuable vendor trash.

This is the first full weekend of Patch 5.2. The story will be told just how the different patterns and changes in the auction house market will come forward. Since Tuesday it’s been lackluster on some servers on some of the items that were predicted to go higher.

One of the lackluster changes to me as far as marketing goes was the reputation orders done at half hill. Each turn-in (at revered for the chosen faction) ends up netting 800+ reputation points. This is assuming you have the bonus stone that you can purchase at revered. For non crafters this might be a benefit if you’re not farming for cooking materials or selling raw materials.

But for crafters, I am having a difficult time seeing the benefits of eating up 8 slots for reputation to a faction. Unless you are desperate to get as much reputation every day towards a faction (ends up maxxing out around 3000 if you do all the dailies at revered + chosen faction for instance + farmed for the faction the day before. Compare this to storing up 8 motes of harmony towards crafting patterns. Currently the new Blacksmithing patterns are not available direction (there have been reports of exploits to get to the boss needed to obtain the patterns). Either way you would have to farm those extra 8 motes towards a crafting pattern through mobs or instances.

Unfortunately the past ability to plant and then dig up isn’t available this time for half hill quests. To fill the requirements of the reputation quest you must both plant and cultivate. Again this eats up the 8 plots necessary to finish the task.

The different seeds available do seem to be giving more random materials other than intended. The Enigma seeds seem to be popping more Golden Lotus. If the Ghost Iron ore market begins to climb them Snakeroot Seed.

Your determination of what to plant is based on your needs at the time. But if you’re a crafter then your big ticket item should remain the Songbell Seed for the near future. Non crafters have a much bigger decision to make.

If you read the blurb at the end of my articles you can see that I spend much of my time on the Shandris server. This has been the home for myself and the alt army since I started this game. There have been other servers I’ve dipped my foot into, but Shandris has been home for my gaming.

There are a mix of characters that have come and gone on the server. I wouldn’t say that Shandris is anything spectacular. We have a little above average raiding group. A average to above average economy (which I’m trying to make extraordinary of course) and a pretty good group of players. With any server you get players who probably should be doing other things than griping in trade.

But there are a few that have made themselves known just simply by one thing. They pseudo own a piece of property in Orgrimmar. While watching trade chat he will announce his wares depending on which alt and profession he’s selling that day, and it all revolves around a tree that almost everyone knows is his tree in Orgrimmar.

I”ve even seen arguments of others saying ‘that’s not your tree, that tree belongs to everyone. Seems like a very valid argument til 10 players verbally lay a beat down on them saying ‘he has had that tree for years’. It’s a fascinating deluge of support for something that technically isn’t a part of the Warcraft game. This is the epitome of having a reputation that everyone knows.

The question is have you set up your reputation in your home city that players know? Do you have a spot that players know to come to you. In the beginnings of wow I would see players (as well as myself) run to whoever had 5g for my crafting wares. This was long before I looked to dominate the Auction House. Running like a panting dog to get another 5-10g into my coffers. As I progressed I saw a change in my attitude because I could wait for them to come to me. Controlling my own crafting and selling destiny instead of being dependent on the whims of others. Before the biggest letdown was that a player would change their mind the minute I arrived to finish the transaction.

Do I own a tree in Orgrimmar? No, not really. There are players who know the spots that I pop up from my hearthstone so if I am arriving in town they know to wait there. But I’m more partial to bushes than trees. Still, it would be nice to own a nice oak in Silvermoon.

In less than 24 hours there will be either many many MANY screams of “you promised” or another server reset and maintenance day. All of this possible angst brought to us from the dissection of one comment. After the announcement of the patch date being Feb 26, everyone rushing off to spend their valor points due to the statement that valor points would be converted downwards to justice points.

The Blizzard powers that be recanted this change later in the week stating that the valor points would no longer be reset (Thanks Uncle Blizzard for the Valor Points). This does not mean that tomorrow players won’t be waking up to long load times as the new patch updates and deploys on the server.

Unfortunately, if you haven’t hit your weekly topping off of valor points then you have today to finish if this scenario plays out. Now 1000+ valor points is nothing to shake a stick at. Valor gear should be half price after the patch day so that 1000 points now will go to become 2000 points. But the ability to upgrade gear disappears till at least patch 5.3. So balancing out your expectations on gear between patch day and arriving at gear level reputation with the new reputation vendors.

What gets lost in the patch gear is the release of BOA leveling gear for Justice Points. Justice points wow items have seriously suffered from excitement all through the Mists of Pandaria. The gear obtained via Justice points were at a lower ilvl to Heroic Raid gear. So these wow items were used to spot fill gear selection wow items till a suitable replacement from Heroics or Raid/crafted gear.

Patch 5.2 and farther will bring a lot of players to start to heavily level their alt army. Professions weren’t as pressed to maximize their leveling exploits to be viable. Jewelcrafting could finish off their patterns from grinding in Jade Forrest for a few hours. Blacksmithing and Leatherworking and tailoring needed reputation from Klaxxi and Golden Lotus to become viable in many markets. So BOA gear becomes that much more important to get the alt army to 85 and into the hunt to get the army to 90 with regular gear upgrades.

The key to look at is that many players already have most of their alt army at 85. So Justice Points again sit there without an outlet until level 90. Then spent to do a quick gear upgrade to get you into Heroic/raiding position that much quicker.

So hopefully tomorrow there isn’t a sudden shift in the force, like 8 million players finding out that their time is over to finish capping their valor points. Here’s to hoping tomorrow stays just the same as any other server reset the day and then we all receive a patch 5.2 reprieve.

Now that Blizzard have upped the spawn rate for Golden Lotuses (Loti?), as extras from normal herb picks and from the Enigma Seeds on your Tillers farm, I wondered whether I could make some good gold from them. Yes, I know, I’m late to the party but I’ve been focused on completing my cooking Ways and leveling and dailies! I’m also trying to work out which is the best crop to plant to make the most gold from my Farm. I’ve been planting the Songbell seeds to get Motes of Harmony but as my Leatherworker is creeping so slowly through her dailies, I have more than enough Spirits of Harmony for now.

As far as I can see, there are several options for using Golden Lotus to make gold – the 5 different flasks or transmuting uncommen gems into rare gems (6 colours) as well as the Mists of Pandaria Potion of Luck – all made/used by Alchemists. I could also just sell the Golden Lotus on the Auction House and save myself a fair bit of time and effort by not crafting anything but looking at this graph from The Undermine Journal, an average price of 100g-ish per Golden Lotus is not exactly the most profitable way.

My alchemists are both transmute masters so making flasks is probably not the best option either – the additional procs of a mastery are where the real profits lie as they bring the per item crafting cost down. I could change one alchemist to an Elixir Master at a cost of 8 Flasks, especially as the Living Steel transmute is not exactly profitable right now but I’m hesitant to do that straight away. I think I’ll test the market first.

The transmute uncommon gems to rare gems is also a bit of a non-starter – prices for gems are pretty bad on my server – to the point where my Jewelcrafter is still sitting around not doing much. Again, I’ve been focused elsewhere so I haven’t been watching the JC markets as closely as I used to. Besides cut rare gems though, there are the ilevel 450 rings and necks to make as well as the JC crafted Panther mounts. Looking on the Undermine Journal for my server, it looks like there are some good profits in those for now but I’d need to do the prospect vs. transmute costings before I throw all my Golden Lotuses at those!

So what to do? Well for now, I think I’m going to try the Flasks market – just dip a toe in to see how things go – for the cost of 16 Enigma seeds each day, I’m picking up 3-7 Golden Lotus as well as a variety of the other Pandaren herbs so my crafting costs are minimal (yes, I’m ignoring opportunity cost etc!).

Like so many, I’m also limited by time so I think this will be least time consuming whilst I have a better look at prospecting. My other 4-plot farms are still producing vegetables but I may just leave those lie for now – spend that time doing dailies or prospecting instead. I’m beginning to feel as if I’m a long way behind – with the release of patch 5.1 there’s a whole load of new stuff to get into but I haven’t even seen all of the initial Mists of Pandaria stuff yet and that’s without spending much time at the Auction House! My gold flow is just ok but so many of my traditional markets seem to have almost disappeared that I really need to knuckle down and get that gold really flowing again.

When listing up auctions, time is literally translated to money. If you list things up for 48 hours, what are the chances it will sit at that price and sell? Can you really be bothered to repost it every twelve hours? Am I participating in a cut throat market? These are all things we have to consider when we list our auctions, and I am going to give you five easy tips to make sure you are getting the most from your gold.

Convenience – Convenience is a huge factor. If you are listing up many stacks of an item, or tens of wow items, can you really be bothered with putting them back up after twelve hours? If you spend 20 minutes listing glyphs every 12 hours, you could save an hour every two days if you just list them for 48 hours. Consider whats worth more, that hour, or the deposits that you might lose.

Know the Market Speed – If a market is fast paced, listing at a reasonable price at 48 hours should never be an issue. If you are in the ores business, try listing for max time to determine what amount you can see moving and at what prices.

Competition – Auctioneers run into this issue often, is my competition going to bother re-listing under me, or is he going to ride out his 48 hour auctions? Check competitors in your markets and see what time they list for to determine how stiff the competition may be in the next few days.

Deposits – Consider the following, if I have an item that costs 4g per 12 hours, and it doesn’t sell 3 times, but sells on the forth, you could have listed it for 48 hours and gotten your deposit back without wasting 12g. Always think of the auction house as a money grubbing ex-wife, because it is.

Think Ahead – If you know an extended maintenance is coming, don’t list for 48 hours, list for whatever will have your auctions down before the maintenance without losing valuable time listed. There’s no sense in paying for time that no one can even buy your wow items!

I hope you guys found these tips helpful! Go out there and put these to work in your auction house and let me know how it goes.

When scenarios were added to the World of Warcraft just before the launch of Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard made mention that they would be used for more than just small group content. That comment has come true with the launch of patch 5.2 and the new solo scenarios added to the game on the Isle of the Thunder King.

These new scenarios unfold as part of the story telling aspect of the game as you unlock various portions of the Isle of the Thunder King. Instead of having everyone compete over key enemies on the isle and wait for respawns, Blizzard has made these key parts of the story line into solo scenarios. This means that you will no longer have to worry about hurrying to tag a mob before someone else does (which is important in a multi faction area) as well as allowing you to go at your own pace and either read or skip the story text as you chose.

So far there are three different solo scenarios that become available as you progress through the unlocking of the Isle. They are as follows: Isle of Thunder, Tear Down This Wall, and To the Skies. These scenarios take place at different stages when unlocking the Isle and are done between daily quests.

Note: While this guide shows the Alliance version of these scenarios, the Horde versions are nearly identical, with really only the quest providers and some of the flavour text being different. Following I will share you a simple guide for Isle of Thunder, one of the the three solo scenario in patch 5.2.

For the Alliance faction when it is time to gain a foothold on the isle, Jaina will give you a quest to capture a troll base to use as your own. This involves several phases as you enter the first of the solo scenarios to complete this quest. This scenario has 5 stages as follows.

Stage 1 – You set out with an escort to get to the isle.  On the way though you are shot down by lightning.

Stage 2 – Here you need to surviving the ambush after you are shot down.  You must simply slay a few beastcallers and their pets and you will move on.

Stage 3 – Requires you to move up the pathway to the start of the hill and knock out the troll barricade there. From this point on in the quest line you should watch for Devil’s Blood Elixir’s laying around the area.  This elixir grants a 30 second buff that heals you for 5% of your health every 3 seconds.  This is very useful if you are not raid geared.

Stage 4 – Involves killing a giant triceratops type mount and the troll beastcaller Pakutesh that is riding it.

Final Stage – Has you make your way to the centre of the troll camp and defeat the troll guarding the artefact that is powering the shield that is protecting the base. Again watch for elixir’s on the ground as they can really help you survive the fight.  In this fight you need to deal with the troll and the artefact that floats around.  When the floating artefact starts casting a silence effect you need to make sure you get into one of the shielded areas that forms on the ground or you will suffer significant damage and be silenced for 10 seconds which could mean your death as a caster.  As long as you watch for this and get into a shielded area the fight is simple enough.

Note: A key thing to realize and something that is not explained in the quest text is that once you are done you need to “leave instance”.  This is because the game starts a solo instance for you, which it does tell you, but never makes it clear that you need to leave it to complete the quest.  Many players have spent a lot of time looking for a quest turn in while in the instanced version of the isle, and wasted a lot of time.  Therefore, once you see that you are done all of the stages of this quest chain and your base has been established, just leave the instance and you will appear in front of your factions leader to turn in the quest.

Patch 5.2 is coming, do you know what wow items you should to stock for the coming patch 5.2? Here I will share you some of my thoughts.

1) Ghost Iron!! If you do nothing else, start collecting/saving/buying ghost iron. There are so many new things going in that involve ghost iron it’s not funny. Blacksmiths will need it for their new daily CD as well as the new PVP gear they’ll be learning. Engineers will need it for their new component which is used in all three of their new recipes, and Jewelcrafters will need to prospect it for the Serpent’s Eye(3) they need to use their daily CD. That’s not to mention all the ghost iron bars required for the new “improved” Blacksmith leveling process that uses ghost iron instead of all the old-world metals. I expect this to put heavy demand on ghost iron.

2) Trillium Bars/Living Steel: I expect trillium bars to get residual pressure from the ghost iron squeeze. If ghost iron becomes too expensive, we may see crafters start shopping for trillium bars to make their Living Steel. I expect a spike in Living Steel demand due to increased interest in the current epics (new Raid Finder requirements) and demand from raiders for the 5.2 epics. Living steel is also used in all three of the new Engineering recipes. And apparently trillium bars are required for a 5.2 quest involving the Black Prince (ty Christina!).

3) Exotic Leather & Prismatic Scales: Leatherworkers will need a stack per day for their daily discovery cooldown, in addition to what they might use for crafting gear. The discovery recipes will unlock crafted 458 PVP gear and epic quality items as well. Currently the item level of the new crafted epics is not known. Both of these types of leather will work for the cooldown and both produce the magnificent hide needed to craft items.

4) Windwool Cloth/Imperial Silk: I expect a modest bump in demand for these items as raiders start purchasing 5.2 crafted gear and non-raiders start purchasing 476 gear to get into the higher Raid Finder groups. If your Tailor won’t be participating in the new 5.2 content, you may not need to stockpile much if at all.

5) Spirits of Harmony: All crafters should be stockpiling SoH for making raid gear in 5.2. Even if you don’t plan to do the Isle of Thunder content, you can still make 476 gear to sell players who need to beef up their item level for the 5.2 raid finder.

Be prepared that once 5.2 drops all of these items will go up in price to some degree. This weekend should be a good time to start purchasing cheap materials so you don’t have to pay sky-high prices later. Good Luck and stay tuned!