So I flipped 6500 cards of omens last night

11 Friday Jul 2025

Posted by abc in Gold

Tags

economy, garrison, gold, inscription, multibox, old content, starter account, WoW

Let’s get the raw numbers just out there – total profit: 35,000

It’s obviously not a great income stream.

—

I used to multibox (not the druid spam moon fire, just multiple accounts doing different things at once) and now I’ve got 3 extra accounts I’m leaving on free and seeing what I can do with them while I play my main. I’m sitting on a free month due to recruit a friend (which I highly recommend if you’re playing more than one account, you get free game time) so I’m currently playing with ways to make money with these other accounts I have with minimal investment before I resub.

This honestly doesn’t seem too bad, combined with my panda farms and transmutes. It’ll add up and when I finally sub that account it’ll be free gold.

—

Now, for the nuance!

First, let’s talk about card of omens…

This is a card you can make with Draenor inscription. Flipping (eg using a cast to use it) generates another card which you can sell. The sell prices range from coppers to thousands of gold – it’s basically gambling, crafter-style.

Crafting it requires War Paints which you can craft once each day as your Draenor cooldown as an inscription crafter.

Spirit of War:

Here’s where it gets fun because I obviously didn’t wait 6500 days…

Once you have a level 3 town hall, a traveling merchant will appear in rotation potentially each day. They will sell a pattern to make War Paints at will using primal spirits…and also let you trade raw comms for primal spirits.

Example merchant: Nicholas, herbs

Note: even if it’s not your profession trader, you can still do the weekly quest for primal spirits AND trade in excess mats for primal spirits. This means you can trade in all that ore from your mine, for example!

So, once you have these grabbed, you’ll want to maximize your passive primal spirit generation – this means shipyard missions as there are often ship missions which give 50 primal spirits.

If you’re going fully passive generation (I accrued these mats for the 6500 cards just from missions and daily CD), you’ll want to focus on buffing your Inn to let you recruit extra resources: your goal is to have extreme scavenger and scavenger stacked as traits on most of your followers – this will let you rack up tons of resources which you can cash in for mats at the Trading Post. Once you level your Inn, you can recruit a follower each week with a trait you select, so this will let you focus on generating resources.

Notes:

– starter accounts can stock up to prepare for this. They CANNOT use the primal spirit trade as they can’t access the higher level garrison needed.

– it’s basically all free passive mats. If you want to grind this, primal spirits can be obtained through killing rares in Draenor but I don’t suggest that method for a starter account as it’s tedious, slow and unreliable. Better to focus on panda farms and xmute. See my other posts about old expansion money making: garrison, general, living steel

– using a mage or shaman lets you time warp to speed up flips. Any haste buff will speed up flip cast time!

– all flipped cards you don’t have room for will go to mailbox. Mailbox will also reach max (unsure if there is overflow protection here), so you can go afk and “loot” mailbox for a bit

– free accounts can use the mine to quickly gather more resources to increase potential trade ins (use the trading post work order when it’s ore to generate more garrison resources)

– this is straight gold, eg no reliance of auctions selling, which is a nice guarantee if you have limited time to make stockpiled gold conversion count (eg getting a few days free via a request)

– You need to wait to subscribe before you do the flip spam as starter accounts have a gold max. Save up the mats to do this for your push to get a token during subbed time. You can sometimes get a free few days by asking nicely via a support ticket and spamming craft/flip can get you a decent way towards a token.

Summary:

If you’re like me (and I doubt you are because why would you be, I’m a bit crazy trying this out) and have several extra accounts set to free, this seems like a decent potential way to stock away a burst of gold influx for a token.

I don’t advise this for anyone actually leveled and strong at the game but for people trying to eke by on free accounts, it might be a decent way to stockpile potential gold for that month when you sub the account.

Omg how did I not know there was classic+ MoP happening?

22 Wednesday May 2024

Posted by abc in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

mists, mists of Pandaria, mop, pandaria, update, WoW

https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24092672/world-of-warcraft-remix-mists-of-pandaria-now-live

Welp, I’m back to Pandaria. Re-reading my old blog for tips, lol.

Also guess I’m back to the archives for tagging. What interesting timing – I was just yearning for a return to decentralized social blogging over consolidated, commercialized social media.

Edit:

Ok just played through character creation! From what I’ve read, this is basically OP alt levelling and when the event ends, they will transfer to normal realms all levelled up!

You can play allied races. You can even (maybe?) play a Dracthyr. It says one per account. My husband is trying that this weekend when we play. He’s going to delete the one he has 2 levels into the starting zone. Given how insane MoP is with heights, I think it will be hilarious. Imagine soar from Mount Neverist – he might hit Timelost Isle or the island with the T-Rex.

Wonder if they’ve tested that… Better make sure there is some handling when people hit the map edges!

I’ve decided to play a Pandarian, though it’s priestess yet again! I’m thinking:

1. Would be nice to get panda heritage armor

2. I already know how to priest all of this, so it will be easy

3. I fall off stuff a lot, so bouncy will get value. And Pandaria has a LOT of stuff to fall off (aren’t there even some raid mechanics which this will mitigate damage for?)

4. Stardew Valley chef dreams. Pandaria actually has exciting cooking mechanics and one of the panda racials doubles food buffs

5. CC for PvP. MoP is an amazing PVP expansion and this is an OP trait.

Pet arbitrage

08 Thursday Sep 2022

Posted by abc in Gold, World of Warcraft

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Tags

2nd account, auction house, crafting, economy, gold, pets, second account, WoW

Hiya, here’s an easy guide to setting up selling pets on multiple servers!

1. Optional: Make a vulpera. This isn’t mandatory, but it makes it SO much easier. They spawn with some gold to cover listing fees and they have extra bag space. They also spawn at the back of Org, close to AH and bank.

2. Optional: when spawned, run to the Tauren AH area (nice close bank/AH). Stop at the enchanting trainer and learn enchanting and buy the strange dust/lesser magic essence from the mats merchant. These can be sold for seed money.

3. Cage extra pets. Useful macros, can run these as moving to Ah area (they won’t dismount you):

Cage for sale (this macro cages any pets you have 3 of, leaving 2 behind. You can tweak it to your preference, eg sub 2 for 1 to cage any pets above 1):
/run local t,p,j={},{},C_PetJournal for i=1,j.GetNumPets() do p={j.GetPetInfoByIndex(i)} t[p[2]]=(t[p[2]] or 0)+1 if t[p[2]]>2 and p[16] and p[1] then j.CagePetByID(p[1]) return end end

Add to journal (this will fail if it hits journal full for a pet, so put extra pets at the very bottom on your inventory) :
/use pet cage

TSM:
Use TUJGlobalMean to price pets based on overall region prices. This lets you buy pets cheaply on one region and sell them for a profit on other regions. You will need the undermine journal addon for this price source.

Seed money tips:

– Use TSM “vendor” search to buy/sell items listed lower than vendor price
– Sell enchanting mats from vendor
– Buy and DE cheapo greens and sell mats
– Buy/smelt ores and sell bars
– Mail guild tabard: buy cost is 250g, sell cost is around 60g. You eat a loss but can essentially transfer money to another server to finance posting auctions.

Strategy:

– Buy pets listed heavily below regional prices and relist on other servers. You’ll begin to notice patterns, such as farmers flooding a server market and listing a ton of the same pet for cheap or timewalking driving down the cost of pets associated with turnin area (example: Bemax during Pandaria timewalking, price will tank and then slowly rise once Timeless Isle is less common to visit).
– Augment with pets you create via crafting.
– Keep an ear out for content creators sharing farming tips. These pets will tank in price as people jump on the bandwagon and will go up in value once a new farm becomes popular.
– Learn which pets are bought from vendors and avoid these. As the supply is constant, their price will not fluctuate as much and one dedicated idiot can keep the price low. Place an alt at vendors to easily keep them supplied for yourself.
– Buy FOMO and timegated pets during events which make them common, eg holidays or Darkmoon Faire. Resell later when they are temporarily unobtainable and price has gone up.
– Create a pet dungeon alt to farm rare pets for resale. Legion petshop in Dalaran will let you easily teleport alts to pet dungeons if you’ve already cleared them, just talk to the NPC in the pet shop for a teleport. This will let you easily set up an alt at each pet dungeon entrance (pick Legion for Chromie time and do the intro quests/scenario). These are some of the most expensive pets, but will have lower sale rates so spreading them among multiple servers is really useful.

Useful crafted pets:

– Pandaria engineering dragonling
– WoD garrison elekk plushie
– WoD garrison engineering pets
– Enchanting lantern

Any other tips and hints to share about this method of gold making?

Middleman

08 Thursday Sep 2022

Posted by abc in Gold, World of Warcraft

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Tags

2nd account, crafting, economy, gold, WoW

As a crafting middleman, you basically are supplying other crafters with what they need. You’re the dude making sure there are enchanting mats on the AH or the gal offering end results of annoying assemblies.

Your goal in this role is to basically turn raw mats and items into stuff people want to pay for.

For example, for enchanting, search for weapon or armor and sort by price. Buy anything under 1-5g, as a rule of thumb – the expansion the item sources from will affect value. Cataclysm breakdowns, for example, are more rare while nobody wants spirit dust from Pandaria. You can almost always disenchant the mats for a profit or snag some transmog to flip. You can do this with the base AH UI very quickly (TSM chugs too hard on my computer for searches as big as this).

(Side note: The next step to making this loop self sustainable is using your own production skill to produce the things to DE, eg making a bunch of bracers with a tailor to DE for dust. This is what’s known as a shuffle)

You can apply this same concept to ores: you’re taking one thing and crafting it to add value. Buy cheap ores, smelt them to sell more expensive bars.

With tailoring, you have stuff like enchanted frostweave, soulcloth, basically turning mats into more valuable mats. Leatherworking lets you upgrade hides. Enchanting + Shadowlands legendaries is a great example of this middle market.

Herb fragments, leather scraps, ore nuggets, shattering enchanting mats, etc can all work with this concept – you can often sell or use them, once transformed. Do the math – sometimes things sell for very inflated values.

Be aware that there is a limit to when the crafting middle market mats stops becoming profitable. For some things, people won’t pay a middleman for – they might make those mats themselves as part of the end goal of their crafting or the process to make it is so easy that it’s not worth your time.

Also learn which mats help boost this sort of crafter. For example, a bunch of frozen orbs cheap on the AH means you get to make a ton of different cloth. Someone dumping a ton of crystals means DE profit. Timewalking dungeons means X ore, cloth, elemental is super common atm. Etc.

In addition to making money, playing this role will teach you about the flow of mats from raw to crafted, which are very important concepts to understand if you want to tackle goldmaking on a larger scale.

This will not make you tons of gold, but it will make you consistent gold.

Garrison

08 Thursday Sep 2022

Posted by abc in Gold, World of Warcraft

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

2nd account, economy, garrison, gold, old content, starter account, WoW

Ok so these are really old but there is still profit to be made via using resources. How? Well that come comes down to your choice of skills. I’m just going to tackle optimising resource gain, so we can talk about tradeskills in comments.

https://www.wowhead.com/guides/garrisons/buildings/guide-to-the-garrison-lunarfall-inn-frostwall-tavern

Ok so:

– Inn to level 3. This gives you the huge resource missions

– Inn to level 2. This lets you recruit followers each RL week. You want to recruit for the extreme scavenger trait. Select a green follower instead of blue ones – getting two traits sounds fun until you realise you have locked into a nonoptimal trait. Your endgoal is scavenger AND extreme scavenger as follower traits. Unless that blue follower has both (and it can be procced, just got one with both from my Inn this week!) pass over them to get more rolls at scavenger as a secondary trait.

– Also Inn: if you want transmog, you need to do the quests given here. You can complete these quests in WoD Timewalking as well as by soloing them. Timewalking makes it easy to be lazy.

– Salvage yard to level 3. This takes a quest to unlock. Worth it. This gives you a chance for drops on missions. These drops give extra resources, follower upgrades (very much needed with the push you are doing via Inn) and extra coin via DE/vendor.

– Stables to 1. You only need it at level 1 to get action while mounted, which is the huge benefit it gives. While in your garrison you aren’t dismounted while doing actions like farming herbs.

– Ogre tower to level 2+. This unlocks work orders – mage tower work orders create rush orders for your comm producing buildings. This is NOT self sustaining, and you will need to go farm ogre waystones now and then. Fortunately there is a LFR queue mob right next to where you gather your resources. Highmaul is the LFR for these tokens, alternatively go fly there and AoE for a bit. This one is an elective…build it because you have space but do a tiny bit of work now and then to keep it maintained. It basically just adds to your income.

– Trading post at minimum level 1 for alt trades. Check what is cheap, sell/craft.

– Herb garden + mines: gives xp up to level 50, so a great option for passive leveling while building gold. Can use seeds to buy a pet to resell.

-Lumber mill: a good option for raw resource generation, I only advise if on alt and actively leveling through WoD. This setup involves active collection but it can be really nice to boost early resource generation.

– Holidays: look into using Holidays, eg I have turned in Halloween tokens to spawn spiders which means I have a boss up constantly which gives a potential valuable drop.

– Trader: if you have a level 3 garrison, each week you’ll get a trader. You can move to an alt’s garrison to capitalise on this, if you have 2 accounts, eg using a herb trader instead of a fur trader. The trader will ask for resources which you can trade for primal spirits. This lets you easily exchange excess resources for primal spirits, which can be used for purchasing mats or accelerating tradeskills.

– Wandering vendors may visit you. Depending on your server, the items they sell may have resell value.

– Battle pets setup lets you farm token and stones.

I am writing this off the top of my head, so I expect I’ve forgotten stuff. Please chime in with details!

5.2 goodies

09 Saturday Mar 2013

Posted by abc in Achievements, Gameplay, Gaming, Gold, Raids, World of Warcraft

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

5.2, Farming, Fishing, mists, mists of Pandaria, mop, raiding, WoW

Awesome, awesome dancing in this video. Picking it out of C2C’s selection (my favorite new group) because I am happy! Why am I happy? My guild did an impromptu run of Throne of Tunder – we reached critical mass of all our raiders online and decided to dive right in. After only a few pulls we downed Jin’kroh and this happened:

Anyways! 5.2 is here and with it comes some pretty fun new things. WoWInsider already does a great job of covering the fundamentals of this new, huge bunch of content. Byeond the core new additions, here are some fun little “extras” I’ve found so far.

Fish upon fish upon fish!

Ben of the Booming Voice makes a surprisingly quiet addition to this patch as a new NPC fishing from the river east of Halfhill.

There’s a one-time intro quest to meet him where you learn about the ability to fish without poles (although this was introduced in Cata, not everyone knew about it!), and you can get some easy golden carp. After that, however, is where it gets awesome.

Ben gives you a daily “secret” about where the fishing is hot. And by hot, I mean on fire.

Dozens of pools spawn in the daily fishing spot (make sure to use your Ancient Pandaren Fishing Charm!) and not only can you fish up the the special Nat Pagle rep fish, sealed crates, a minipet fish and the infamous turtle, fishing up enough pools eventually makes a super big pool spawn, called “Large Swarm of [insert daily fish here]”.

This pool can then be fished up, ala The Lurker Below, to summon a big ol’ monster named Krakkanon. This elite doesn’t do much damage, but he has a huge health pool, so you might want to bring some pals. From what I’ve observed so far, he can drop a stack of 20 fish, Nat Pagle rep fish, and Nat Pagle journals (increases your fishing 50 points, BoA, worth 1k gold!). He might drop even more fun things!

I advise systematically fishing each pool, as every pool you clear has a chance to make this pool spawn. It’s not a quick process (at least 30 minutes or more for one person; 50-100 pools), but I think this will become quicker over time as more people become aware of this new little bit of fun!

Faster Farming!

The master plough, introduced in 5.2, is now more effective than ever, finally stunning and (nearly) killing pesky vermin found in untilled soil. This is a great speed up to clearing your farm’s land (it’ll till up to 4 plots at a time).

There are also new seed bags, which let you plant up to 4 of each seed type at a time. Each bag holds 10 charges, so don’t be deterred by the price. Once you buy one, just point and click to plant all the plots in a targettable circle (plots must be tilled first!).

Pets, Pets, Everywhere!

If you are a fan of battle pets, 5.2 is a goldmine. Basically ever new part of the game drops battle pets. If you haven’t checked out the new Jurassic Park Island, head on over there. Bring a friend or 5 (we had a group of 10 at one point) and kill dinosaurs to collect bones which you can turn in for a mount or a battle pet. OR, go alone and just pinpoint the Zandalari trolls. These guys have a CRAZY high drop rate for minipets. They have 4 different ones they can drop, and we were seeing one pet drop for about every 3-4 trolls we killed.

Who’s a cute widdle dinosaur? You are, aren’t you?!

The rares on Isle of Thunder also hand out shinies. Our very first kill on Haywire Sunreaver Construct (down on the southern beach), Muttonhocks and I each got a Sunreaver Micro Sentry. Mutton’s the pet battling fiend in this relationship, so I asked him if the little dude was any good. His reply? An emphatic, holy shit of a yes. Apparently rare mechanicals are hard to find, and this guy can do a variety of attack types, making him great for hunting all sorts of pets in the wild. Plus, he’s so big he can’t even display properly in your window, which makes me giggle far more than it should:

DGAF PROTOCOL ENGAGED. ALL SYSTEMS NORMAL.

The Raid That Wipes Together…

Finally, if you are on a raid team, you are going to want to have your team camping out Ra’Sha. He drops an item that lets you kill yourself. Ra’Sha’s Sacrificial Dagger is insanely useful for a progressive raid team – not only does the death incur no durability costs, if your whole raid has it, you can quickly die to fully wipe and end an attempt, instead of wasting time waiting for people to stand in pools or whatnot.

He hangs out in a cave tucked away in a little beach cove past the troll area. If you see a Hakkar look alive (bone wind serpent) you are in the right spot. Hang a right past that ominous little clearing and there is a cave guarded by two elites. Inside is Ra’Sha.

This way to self-initiated doom!

My team’s been camping this guy on rotation. We have about half of our raid team equipped with the daggers so far. He only drops one, you see, regardless of however many people attack him, and that drop only goes to whoever tags him, so it can be a bit of a slog to get them. They are completely worth it, however, for any raid team trying to be efficient!

Darkmoon Arising

The Darkmoon Faire also got some minor upgrades! The daily quests now reward a sack instead of a single token. The sack can contain between 1-5 tickets, as well as a chance at a fluffy Darkmoon toy, like the sandbox rides. Minor upgrade, but definitely a change that makes doing the dailies a lot more appealing.

The elite pet you can battle there also now rewards a sack of fun things instead of the single ticket he used to give. This sack rewards the same thing as the daily quests AS WELL AS pet battle goodies. Not a bad change, at all!

I’m not sure when this change went in, but fishing at Darkmoon Island also now fishes up Pandaland fish, instead of the crappy level 1 stuff.

Plus, finally, you can get this:

AM I NOT FABULOUS?!

(Caveat: it actually gives 10% extra rep/xp when used and using it consumes it. It doesn’t stack with the carousel buff, and you can only use it during the Darkmoon Faire Season. Still, for only 10 tickets, it’s kinda worth it just for awesome screen shots…)

Those are some of the less advertised goodies I’ve noticed with 5.2. Hope you are enjoying the new patch!

And now for something completely different!

27 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by abc in Community, Gameplay, Gaming, Raids, World of Warcraft

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Tags

community, raiding, silliness, WoW

My guildmate Zakkimatsu loves to make videos of us raiding (I’ve linked several on this blog). He released this short little outtake video yesterday, and it cracked me up:

It’s gotten some amused responses from the WoW forums and reddit as well. The editing is awesome (he’s really getting good at making these!), and it seems like the in-guild jokes we share touch on things most raiders have experienced.

Check all the things.

The pre-pull checklist cracked me up the most, since these topics (and reasons for wipes) have happened multiple times for us, to the point that they are now memes in our guild. For me, that’s the best part of hanging out with a group – you develop inside jokes and can laugh at silly things that have happened…and the fact that we can do that for an online game is a good sign that our guild has built up a community beyond just getting loot.

I found some of the comments surprising, reading people saying that they wished they were still having fun raiding like we seem to be. What has killed this fun for them? Why still continue if it’s not entertaining? For me, this shared community is why I raid! For those of you out there not raiding – what’s turned you off to the raiding scene? What would draw you back?

Spirit shelling your way through tier 14

25 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by abc in Gaming, Raids, World of Warcraft

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

disc priest, discipline priest, heal, healing, heals, mists, mists of Pandaria, mop, raiding, spirit shell, WoW

So I’ve been sucked back into MUDs and have only been playing WoW a bit every now and then between raids – my guild is now up to 3/6H MSV, 6/6 HoF and 4/4 ToES! Huzzah! I intended to post this ages ago, but it might still be helpful for other teams given how 5.0 raid content will still remain semi-viable for gearing in 5.2.

Spirit shell is, in my opinion, the best trick up discipline priest’s sleeves right now. I loved the spell since the moment we got it, even with all of the initial wonkiness and awkward feeling it first had for use. It rewards intelligent foresight, which I think is a core aspect of discipline priest play – we don’t just heal reactively, but we also use our knowledge of the fight and our raiders to blanket the raid before the damage hits.

So, here’s my quick breakdown of the best spots to pop spirit shell in each fight this tier:

Mogu’shan Vaults

Stone Guards – Excellent to use before an overload if your tanks identify that they are going to be unable to execute a juggle with the dogs. This can and does prevent a wipe. I ran holy for this fight due to the better mobility until I got better gear (plus disc was bad off back then), but spirit shell can have moderate use here.
For heroic, the mines do enough damage that using it whenever you have a free CD can mitigate raid damage – however I saved mine for when I had From Darkness Comes Light procs and used it on tanks due to the immense amount of damage they take.
Feng – Perfect for every phase of the fight. If your tank missed grabbing an interrupt, use it for epicenters where nullification barrier is off CD. Use it at the start of draw flame that nullification barrier isn’t eating (draw flame damage ramps up, so starting the shell at the start of draw flames is good timing). For phase 3, use it for the arcane velocities that are not mitigated by nullification barrier.
For heroic, you can use it for a general damage blanket during throw shield (though the damage is a bit spotty, so atonement covered that quite nicely).
Gara’jal – Spirit shell is stupid awesome in this fight. Voodoo doll damage almost always starts at the tank, so use bubble and spirit shell to absorb that damage off the bat with spirit shell and flash heal (even better with From Darkness Comes Light procs, but remember to save 2 for when you go in totems). The other voodoo dolls will take minimal damage.
Spirit Kings – Great right off the bat to absorb Qiang’s massive attacks. Spot heal until Meng is active and use spirit shell before maddening shout.
Elegon – Use early on to mitigate damage from Total Annihilation. A good timer for this is to start blanketing right after the celestial protector spawns. Atonement is amazing in this fight because of the dps and hps boost, so smite and offensive penance are your prime heals for most of this fight (especially since THOSE heals can reach the other side of the platform during draw power, whereas your direct heals can’t reach). I usually toss in another shell (or do a hymn of hope) while pillars are being taken down, just to absorb any splash damage from adds. Finally, in the last phase, spirit shell is obviously useful against the constant damage – try to get it out during that moment your team is grouped up at the console, so everyone goes in blanketed in absorbs.
Will of the Emperor – Use right before titan gas, obviously. However, there is time for 2 shells between titan gas phases, so I pop shell when I get FDCL procs to give the tanks extra absorbs.

Spirit (binder) shell(s)

Heart of Fear

Vizier – AMAZING before force and verve. For timing, I do instant holy and 4 smites to get full Archangel and then shell and prayer of healing. Timing is perfect to eat most of the force and verve – follow with a cascade or halo during the active F&V.
Bladelord – If you can get the timing down, this is great to use before unseen strikes. It makes a huge difference and can prevent wipes if people are slow to stack. Also, start shelling around 25-23% of the bosses’ health to give your team a nice blanket that absorbs nearly all of the damage from storm unleashed (during which you can’t heal!)
Garalon – Start shelling when your pherome carrier is around 15 stacks, assuming you switch in the early 20s. Or just shell whenever it’s off CD, since the constant raid damage is just that nuts. The trickiest part of this fight is being able to heal people in range, since there is a lot of movement from the melee DPS. Bonus points – stand in the blue ring and smite/penance the legs. 200k heals for each penance tick? Yes, please!
Windlord – Shell before rain of blades, especially in the later parts of the fight. The trick to this is that the DBM timer shows you the ability’s CD, not actually when the ability is about to happen (the actual ability is several seconds after that) so shell once that CD is at 0, instead of anticipating having a shell up at 0 on the timer.
Amber Shaper – Use bubble and shell, especially with FDCL procs, on people afflicted with parasitic growth (and tell your other healers to stop freaking healing the people). In the later stages of the fight, this can and does save lives! Also be very wary of atonement if parasitic growth is up during phase 3, due to the smart-heal nature – a quick shell, however, can ensure that the person with growth remains with higher health than others, allowing you to smite away!
Empress – Shell is excellent to blanket the raid before a dissonance field pops. You can also use shell to absorb damage from cry of terror when targets are inside the dissonance field. For phase 3, damage is fairly constant, so you can just use it on CD.

Terrace of Endless Spring

Protectors of the Endless – The best use of this (especially if you are going for elite, which you should! It’s especially doable with a disc priest!) is to eat the increasing raid damage from corruption. Use it more heavily as the fight goes on and the damage builds up.
Tsulong – Simply use on CD during night phase to mitigate constant raid damage. Bonus points – during day, save your inner focus and 1-2 FDCL procs for sun breath. Start casting greater heal shortly after he begins casting sun breath (so your greater heal casts RIGHT when he starts breathing). You can get several million healing each breath this way.
Lei Shi – I use my FDCL procs with spirit shell to give tanks extra absorbs, especially during the spawn elementals phase. Ideally I’d use this for get away, but it’s really impossible to predict when that’s coming. 😦
The Sha of Fear – UGGGHHHH. Hate this fight. I use spirit shell when I’m on the main platform to give extra absorbs in case people get hit by the adds’ bolts.

I’ll write up a version of this for the next tier, once we start raiding. Happy priesting!

Newb Moments

17 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by abc in Game Psychology, MUDs, Social, World of Warcraft

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

gaming, MUD, MUDs, newb, newb moments, newbie, text game, WoW

The following comment from a WI article started reminding me of some of my biggest newb moments.

Daniel said: If quest healing, also remember not to modify your attacks to the alt key! Alt+tab when questing may end in disaster.

You see, I use keybindings a lot for my healing, especially for instant cast spells. Probably a development of all the PvPing I did during my formative levelling. I soon realized that I ran out of keys to use, so I use modifiers quite often.

#showtooltip penance
/cast [mod:alt, target=focus][mod:shift, target=target][nomod, target=player] penance

That’s a simple use of modifiers in a macro. You press different buttons and different things happen. You can use these quite potently…or otherwise…

I, personally, have alt set as my modifier for directing my spells to my tank. Ie, I press 1, I bubble myself. I press alt+1, I bubble the tank. Well, I was raiding on my paladin and we were in Bastion of Twilight at that REALLY nasty trash pull with all the elements, right before the Captain Planet fight.

Now, at this past point in time, I have my hands (eg of protection, salvation, etc) lined up on my F keys to keep track of them really easily (you may see where this is going), but when I try to hand of sacrifice the tank, my game crashes!

“Omg!” I growl into mumble. “Wait, sorry, ack, stupid game crashed!”

I log back in to see that everyone has wiped. Sadface. We run back and try again. Again, I attempt to hand of sacrifice the tank. Again, poof! WoW closes.

“OMG! This spell is making my game crash!!!” I log back in, righteously pissed off at Blizzard by this point, and finally one of my teammates jokes, “Geez, what are you doing? Pressing alt+f4 over and over? Lawl!”

Oh. Duh. I mumble something about bugs as I furtively move hand of sacrifice off of the F4 key.

Apparently I’m not the only one who was reminded of newbiness, as today’s WI breakfast topic is a wonderful collection of amusing raid-based failure. I highly recommend a read.

Some runs back are longer than others…

“Newb moments,” to me, are something longer-lasting than a simple blonde moment or brain fart. They are almost a sort of epiphany, moments where you discover something fundamental and profound – except in this case, that discovery is something you really should have known about.

My very first memory of a newb moment was when I initially began playing MUDs, over a dozen years ago (ugh, I feel so old saying that). I remember reading the game’s website and imagining how I could become an amazing, powerful….something. I wasn’t that clear on how it all worked. Eager to become awesome, I set off exploring.

Now, I had played other games before this. I had a Sega Genesis as a kid and even before that we had an Atari ST (it was the Cadillac of prehistoric PCs kthnx). Even better, we had internet access before the internet was even a fully-fledged thing. This meant that we got, in addition to all the important boring government DARPA defense stuff, SHAREWARE (and demo) GAMES!!!

While some of these games were amazing displays of graphics and sound like TURRICAN, some were little freeware ditties, including a range of text games: virtual trucker games, a Clue knockoff and Zork-esque adventures. The text adventures, in particular, resonated with me, and I spent many an hour trying to “get dragon” and “kill dragon” (and lots of subsequent “you have died”ing).

So, when I got older and we got ourselves a fancy new computer and super fast internet – the phone jack went STRAIGHT INTO THE COMPUTER!!! – I started looking at what games were out there on the web and found a game called Avalon. Fast-forward to my imagined ascent to greatness.

Oh boy. Telnet.

I explored the virtual world, merrily typing north, north, east, look, get dung – you know, the usual. I discovered things all over that I could pick up. I found a whole castle on top of a mountain filled with dwarves! I got lost in the caves under the castle and got killed by an orc. I dropped all of the awesome shinies I had been carrying. Le sigh. A roadblock on my path to becoming amazing!

It didn’t matter. I was enthralled. I played for hours straight, and then again the next day. And at the height of this enraptured gameplay, something happened – the newbiest newb moment of all newb moments – that changed my paradigm on games completely.

I was still caught up in my voracious exploring and questing when I wandered into a building that appeared to be a temple. The rooms had vaunted names and the text descriptions detailed columns and ornate carvings. I felt a shiver of apprehension. Was I nearly at the part where I became the ruler of the world?

I came upon a dead end. There, standing out in bright aquamarine text, was what had to be part of my ultimate quest: “Archimedes, the God of Wisdom.” Normal quest creatures weren’t named in colors that brilliant. Normal quest givers didn’t have names that illustrious. Normal quest givers didn’t hang out in a sacred temple. Exhaling slowly, I readied myself for the final task and then typed in the phrase I had learned would prompt the game’s creatures to give me quests – GREET ARCHIMEDES.

You warmly greet Archimedes, the God of Wisdom.

I waited, breath bated.

And kept waiting. Weird. The other creatures always gave me quests instantly.

GREET ARCHIMEDES.

You warmly greet Archimedes, the God of Wisdom.

Still nothing. I was getting frustrated.

GREET ARCHIMEDES

You warmly greet Archimedes, the God of Wisdom.

Archimedes, the God of Wisdom lets out a broad chuckle.

Archimedes, the God of Wisdom says, “Quite the persistently friendly one you are, aren’t you?”

GET QUEST FROM ARCHIMEDES

Archimedes, the God of Wisdom says, “Are you lost? Need some help on your novice quests?”

NOVICE

NOVICE commands are the province of the Ministry of Public Relations and the barony.

Ok, what did that mean?! All of a sudden this game was getting confusing.

Theresa appears before you through the black screen of a magical portal.

Whoa.

“Hi!” Theresa happily says.

Theresa says, “Lost novice here?”

Archimedes, the God of Wisdom nods emphatically.

Theresa says, “No worries. I’ll help her out.”

Theresa says, “Follow me. Just type FOLLOW THERESA.”

WHOA.

Suddenly it hit me – these were not computer creatures. THESE WERE REAL PEOPLE. There were other people playing the game with me. The world fell out beneath me. I had been completely oblivious to the vast, expansive nature of the game I was playing…oblivious to the potential of the internet itself. I was in a fantasy world inhabited not just by monsters and dragons, but also by other living, breathing people. All on my computer. The realization was astounding.

This, here, was my newb moment, when I discovered I had been overlooking an essential element of the game. In my case, I had missed the fundamental nature of what a MUD was – a multiplayer dungeon.

Once that awareness sunk in, the game was never the same.

On one hand, a whole new vista of gameplay unfolded. Player-to-player interactions are far more complex and ever-changing than scripted AI. Roleplay develops, alliances form, enemies are made. Combat is intense and politics compelling. The game develops endless playability.

Then again, there is something vital lost in that awakening. It’s like a kid realizing that (spoilers!) Santa doesn’t really exist. Yes, you see the more complex mechanics of the gameplay (or reasons for the holiday) and learn to play at a deeper level (ie be a grown up), but there is still an element of blissful ignorance that has been shed. What started as an impossibly engaging magical experience establishes itself as just a game.

Any level of competent gameplay requires this transition (which is probably a better topic for another entry, as this one is getting rather long). Sometimes, however, I look back on this first massive newb moment, and nostalgically remember what it was like to be clueless.

How about you? Any incredibly huge blind spots you’ve discovered in your gameplay? Any big discoveries? Any reaaaaaally stupid mistakes you’ve made?

Raiding Trick: How to Sneak Your Team into Terrace

14 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by abc in Game Leadership, Raids, World of Warcraft

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

mists, mists of Pandaria, mop, protectors, protectors of the endless, raid, terrace, terrace of endless spring, toes, WoW

[edit from 2024: this post will get some serious traffic when classic MoP launches, you’re welcome to the future, check out my mop disc stuff]

So my raiding team has had the first fight in Terrace of Endless Spring (TOES, as we call it) on farm for 3 weeks now. The council fight, Protectors of the Endless, features a unique mechanic called “elite” mode. Basically, if you kill the bosses in a harder order, you get better loot. How much better?

ARE MY BOOTS NOT AWESOME

Normal is 496. Elite starting level is 503. Heroic is 509. Two upgrades on an elite item and it is BETTER THAN HEROIC QUALITY. This is an amazing opportunity for guilds who are behind the gear curve, like our team was. We started the tier quite slowly and with a lot of hiccups. We weren’t showing enough discretion in who we brought, and tried to just let everyone have a try, with the more experienced and geared raiders doing a separate Heart of Fear run. Once we realized that we had more progression in Heart of Fear than in Mogu’shan Vaults, we knew we had to switch things around. We now have training raids for the newer members, and a dedicated progression group…which means we are flying through content, downing at least one new boss every progression night.

But, like I said, we had a slow start, so we’re playing catch-up with gear. And one trick we’ve used is leapfrogging ahead into TOES.

Yes, our server has a lot of raid teams.

We downed Garalon last night, but WoWProgress is being stupid and won’t update. Anyways…

As you can see, we downed protectors before we even killed the second boss in Heart of Fear. It’s actually a very simple trick and something I suggest considering if your team is struggling on DPS checks or with gear. Terrace basically won’t let you in if you haven’t cleared HoF yet. The stupidly simple solution is just….clear Heart of Fear.

The thing is, only one member needs to do that. It’s just like switching to heroic modes. As long as the person who has gotten the requisite kill is the first one to enter the raid, the rest of the team will also be able to enter.

For us, we had the fortunate situation of one member in our group being an alt from a hardcore raiding team. They are already on heroic modes and had someone who had to miss a day, so they were happy to bring our rogue (and his ranked DPS – yes, he ranked 113 in the world on our Garalon kill!) along for a HoF farm. Same with our (nearly as DPS-tastic) warrior. So both of them now have a clear of HoF under their belts and we can all progress in Terrace simultaneously with progression through HoF.

Now, I will advise one caveat about this idea – gauge your guild. Some teams might feel offended by a member jumping ship for a week to get a “carry” (although in our DPS’ case, they definitely held their own) to a clear. It might make members feel as if the raid leader has lost confidence in their own ability. Take careful stock of your team and your members before you consider something like this, and decide if it is going to hurt team morale. It is a sort of a gimmicky short-cut, afterall. For many teams, the value of defeating the boss together is more important than advancing in progression – hell, I’d say the same likely will apply to our team for next tier. We just are trying to recover from that initial hold-up at the start of the expansion.

Plus, our raid lead definitely framed it as something to be proud of – we’re basically the only team on our server outside of the top 15 getting kills in TOES. That’s kinda cool, especially for a group that hasn’t started heroic modes yet.

And DO try elite mode. Our first pull, I freaked out, panicking into mumble, “Hey, I think this order isn’t the one the guides suggest…!”

Our raid lead just mumbled “You must be confused321pull!”

After a dozen or so pulls, we downed them (as seen in the video above) – and my eyes immediately widen when I see the loot.

“We did it on ELITE?!” I was stunned. I felt tricked, but also really awesome about the deceit. I felt proud of us – we had not only downed the encounter, but done it far tougher than intended, all unknowingly!

“Did you know this was on ELITE?!” I demanded.

Our raid leader merely chuckled, replying, “Of course.”

“Why?!”

“Because,” he calmly stated, “I knew we could do it.”

Pfffffft. He was right, though – we totally could.

	Shanthi on Back to MoP
	abc on Back to MoP
	Disc Priesting for T… on Spirit shelling your way throu…
	Shanthi on Back to MoP
	So I flipped 6500 ca… on Living steel

a little bit of everything all of the time

~ Thoughts on stuff and things.

Tag Archives: WoW

So I flipped 6500 cards of omens last night

Omg how did I not know there was classic+ MoP happening?

Pet arbitrage

Middleman

Garrison

5.2 goodies

And now for something completely different!

Spirit shelling your way through tier 14

Raiding Trick: How to Sneak Your Team into Terrace

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