Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Making Gold

As promised (sort of) here's one of the gold making strategies. Most if not all of the methods I list in this article should work post cataclysm.

This time it's all about converting stuff upwards. Ore and Leather are especially good for this. some of the most profitable conversions are:
Saronite Ore --> Saronite Bar --> Titanium Bar -?> Titansteel Bar
Fel Iron Ore --> Fel Iron Bar
Borean Leather --> Heavy Borean Leather --> Arctic Fur
When converting these upwards you will generally buy the lowest step and sell in each level all the way up allowing you access to multiple markets from one source. Any of these are nearly always profitable with the exception of titansteel, be especially careful not to over produce in that market. These that I've shown you aren't the only things that are profitable to convert. Be sure to check your own server to find the best market for you.

Friday, September 24, 2010

A Few Things

Beta Death Knight Tanking Changes
I'm behind the curve here but if you haven't seen the 12984 build changes before, you can see them now. With a little opinion from me.

All Presences have no cooldown or rune cost, but consume all runic power. This will cause significant changes to pvp as well as making it easier to fix mistakes in pve. Impromptu tanking anyone?

Base disease duration is now 21 seconds. Not really a dps buff or anything, but it significantly increases utility and freedom.

Death Strike now heals for a minimum of 10% of your max health. This buff fixes my biggest problem with the Cata changes Blizzard was making. It's still not as powerful as it's current iteration solo, but it is a large improvement over the previous change.

Entering The Market
The standard version of the Entering the Market column will be postponed as most of the strategies used could change significantly very soon. I will post a few working strategies tomorrow and possibly a few more times before Cataclysm drops.

In Other News
Heroics are hard again. I'm not sure whether to cry or scream for joy at this. I will say that I enjoy some strategy in my dungeons though.

That's it for today, if you have any questions or suggestions feel free to post them on the facebook discussion board or email them to bf.safdv@gmail.com

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Death Knight Tanking in Cata

I was originally planning on talking about alternate playstyles and other such nonsense, but that'll have to wait for another day. Today my biggest question is "What will DK tanking be like in cata?"

Previous Beta Builds
Before it looked like blood tanking would be extremely similar to how it is now. The main differences being that you would have cooldowns from other trees in the blood tree.

Current Beta Build (12942)
I'll start little and work my way up here Vampiric Blood has been nerfed to 25% bonus healing, from 35%. While this isn't a particularly large change it does begin to bring us back in line with other tanks.

Rune Tap has also been weakened slightly. It now heals 15% of your max health instead of 20%.

Will of the Necropolis now can only occur once every 45 seconds. All this does is put it in line with the other tank's automatic "oh shit" skills.

This is where it gets kind of sticky. Death Strike has been reworked, it now heals you for 30% of the damage you have received in the preceding 5 seconds. Although this is a good change for overall balance it will have a few repercussions we need to look at. Improved Death Strike now increases the healing component of Death Strike by 25/50/75%. These changes make our 2pc T11 bonus much less useful. As it currently stands the bonus is only a 5% increase to Death Strike's damage which formerly would've also indirectly increased survivability. Now it's simply a very minor threat increase. I could see an easy way to make this increase survivability again would be to make it increase healing as well as damage. On a slightly different note this could bring up interesting questions of when exactly would be the most optimal time to hit Death Strike. The confusion this could cause with newer or less experienced tanks could lead to problems and once again a bad reputation for DK tanks everywhere

In the end we'll have to see how Blizzard works this all out. The T11 thing could simply be that they overlooked it in this build and it will be fixed in the next one.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Entering The Market

One of the many things I'll be doing in this blog is to attempt to guide you on the path to making gold. I'll begin with some of the more basic methods and work my way up.

I will be using 1200 starting gold. Each week I will give you a report on my profits, methods, and time spent in order to help you determine what would work best for you. I'll give the risk involved with each method as well as the math for GPH (gold per hour) and profit percentages. I'll be using an 80 DK with mining/enchanting and an 80 Rogue with skinning/LWing as well as an assembly of lower level toons that I will mention as they get used.

This week I'll briefly discuss the addons I'm using and how they will benefit you in making gold.

Postal
This is a very simple addon that lets you retrieve your mail in bulk as well as only retrieving certain types, successful auctions, expired auctions, etc.

Lil Sparky's Workshop
This addon compares market values for materials and the finished product on your crafting page allowing you to easily see what is profitable for you to make.

Crap Away
Crap Away simply automatically vendors all your gray quality items each time you go to the vendor.

Bagnon
An extremely useful addon that allows you to quickly see what is in your bank, guild bank, and other toons inventories.

Auctioneer
Either Auctioneer or QA3 is pretty much required in order to post the amounts of auctions used for most strategies and saves massive amounts of time at the auction house. I prefer Auctioneer for its utility and interface.

Addon Control Panel
Although it isn't actually going to help make gold ACP is extremely useful if you tend to run a large number of addons as it lets you easily switch between the ones you need at any given time.