Herbalism and the AH.
My joy, my pain.
The AH and Herbalism have been my best friend ever since I hit my mid 20's and a RL friend of a RL friend (hi, I know you're stressing about your move to a new/old city, but stop lurking and throw me a comment ;-) told me about gathering (I didn't even have any professions yet at that point) and Auctioneer Addon.
Anything and everything went to AH and with not a whole lot of fuss I just used Auc's recommended prices and everything was dandy. Sure there was the occasional stack of herbs that needed re-listing, and sure there was a bit of playing around to see whether ores or smelted bars sell better, but in general, no brainer, just major cash influx.
Then all of a sudden, something strange happened. About 2 weeks ago, my high level herbs started expiring pretty frequently. Like I said, I pretty much don't even look at the price and just use Auctioneer's valuation, and its always worked for me.
Well, now I took a look. Seems that over the past couple weeks, prices of my favorite high-level herbs are plumetting. Fel Lotus was a sweet little bonus from random herb nodes, and used to go for about 19g for a single herb without ever expiring. 2 weeks later and they're selling for 12g. And even when I match the competition at near 12, they're still expiring. Where will it end?
Similar patterns (although not quite as extreme) for Felweed, Terocone, Mana Thistle, Dreaming Glory, and Nightmare Vine. All my top shelf herbs are bombing. Prices are falling fast, and even at competitive prices, they're not selling.
The past 2 weeks have shown that this is not just the normal weekend/weekday sales pattern, and the general trend persists through the entire week.
Thinking with my business hat on, that says to me that either supply is up, or demand is down.
Since the herbs are barely selling, even as I lower my price, I'm going to go with the assumption that the issue is on the demand side. I mean, if it were just that supply went up a lot, at least some of my competitvely priced herbs would sell, just not as often as in the past.
If my assumption is correct, then demand has dropped.
Who uses herbs? Alchemists primarily.
So where did all my alchemists go?
The rest of this post is purely theoretical and made up in my mind, so work with me. My version of economic theorycrafting...
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the high level alchemists make their potions for raiding. If nobody is making these potions, then I'll make the leap to the conclusion that there's been a change in the raiding scene on my server in the past few weeks.
Three things pop into mind:
1) Thanksgiving was here and now we're full-steam-ahead into the holilday season. This is my first year playing, so perhaps this is a normal pattern.
2) Patch 2.3 came out recently. From what I read, and my limited ability to really understand what patch notes mean to me, there was nothing that dramatically should cause a change to high level Alchemy. The only thing that I noticed from a Herbalism stand point is that Fel Blossom is no longer soulbound, and can now be sold on AH, but I noticed that from experience, and not from the patch notes.
3) This one is my favorite...there's going to be a collapse/depression on my server soon. Maybe a hardcore raiding guild had a big falling out and split up or had a bunch of players transfer off. Or maybe some random threshold in the economy has been crossed and cats and dogs will soon be living together, mass hysteria. Glad I got my epic before that happens :-P
Its probably just a random blip in the scheme of the economy, or seasonal and very normal. But I like to believe its chaos and hysteria, just because that's more fun.
Luckily I diversify and my minerals are still selling nicely.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Scramble this!!
The eggs were so nice to me thursday night. While casually doing my Netherwing dailies, there was pretty much nobody else around. I suppose that's a by product of the low pop server?
So in the mine, 6 eggs were to be had. 4 of them just laying there on the ground, and 1 from looting a mob, and 1 from mining some Nethercite.
w00t!!
That's an extra 1500 rep on top of all the normal daily stuff, making a nice dent in my schedule that conservatively estimates 1000 rep total for a day. At this rate, I'll be half way to Exalted if I complete the daily quests on friday.
Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.
So in the mine, 6 eggs were to be had. 4 of them just laying there on the ground, and 1 from looting a mob, and 1 from mining some Nethercite.
w00t!!
That's an extra 1500 rep on top of all the normal daily stuff, making a nice dent in my schedule that conservatively estimates 1000 rep total for a day. At this rate, I'll be half way to Exalted if I complete the daily quests on friday.
Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.
Friday, December 7, 2007
M-I-C-K-E-Y
So what's the deal with using the mouse for movement?
I read lots and lots of stuff that seems to indicate that freeing up your left hand for spell casting by using your mouse for movement is the way to go.
Ok, makes sense. No problem moving forwards or turning one direction or the other. Actually nice for excecuting snap turns substantially faster than via the keyboard, although I'm pretty clumsy with it now, I can see getting more accurate with practice.
Some things I can't figure out that leave me unable to actually make the switch:
1) Selecting new targets. Currently I can keep moving with the keyboard and select new targets with my mouse. How does a mouse mover overcome this?
2) Strafing. I press q or e to move directly sideways. Can you do this with the mouse?
3) Jumping. How you jump up and down? I know PvP'ers are big on mouse movement, and they're also the jumpiest bunch I've ever seen, so there must be a way. Or do you need to revert to keyboard for jumping even if you're a mouse mover?
4) Backing up. Do you ever have to take a few steps backwards when you're a mouse mover, or do the snap turns become so natural that you just turn around and walk forwards and then turn back around to simulate reverse?
What's the deal?
I read lots and lots of stuff that seems to indicate that freeing up your left hand for spell casting by using your mouse for movement is the way to go.
Ok, makes sense. No problem moving forwards or turning one direction or the other. Actually nice for excecuting snap turns substantially faster than via the keyboard, although I'm pretty clumsy with it now, I can see getting more accurate with practice.
Some things I can't figure out that leave me unable to actually make the switch:
1) Selecting new targets. Currently I can keep moving with the keyboard and select new targets with my mouse. How does a mouse mover overcome this?
2) Strafing. I press q or e to move directly sideways. Can you do this with the mouse?
3) Jumping. How you jump up and down? I know PvP'ers are big on mouse movement, and they're also the jumpiest bunch I've ever seen, so there must be a way. Or do you need to revert to keyboard for jumping even if you're a mouse mover?
4) Backing up. Do you ever have to take a few steps backwards when you're a mouse mover, or do the snap turns become so natural that you just turn around and walk forwards and then turn back around to simulate reverse?
What's the deal?
Shots
Shot rotation seems to be a big source of contention for hunters. You've got one school of thought that says you should build a complex macro that eeks out the most mana efficient and DPS maximizing rotation of shots for your specific weapon speed, and you've got another school of thought (BRK's an advocate of this one) that says you should understand your shots and manually fire them and adjust your rotation to the circumstances.
And I suppose there's a third school of thought, but I hesitate to call it "thought". Those of us who more or less randomly manually fire our special shots, with no real attention to mana efficiency, or DPS, or much of anything at all besides pressing buttons.
I've more or less grown up in that third school of thought, with just a drop of attention paid to not clipping my auto shots, but not a whole lot more than that. Hell, I've even fired shots sometimes because I wanted to see a different color fly by (ohh, purple arcane shot, oooooh, green serpent sting. its like the 4th of July).
To improve my DPS, especially in longer sustained fights, I've got to learn a bit more about what this shot rotation stuff means to me.
In a comment to my post about Kill Command, Kestrel offered a simple macro that just does Steady Shot/Auto Shot, with a call to Kill Command whenever its available. Papewaio offered an alternative, with a bit more sophistication surrounding the error messages that'll pop up while spamming this guy.
I tried a hybrid of this puppy out wednesday night.
#showtooltip Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/castsequence reset=3 Steady Shot, Auto Shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()
I put this guy in place, headed over to Netherwing Fields to do the daily quests, and sat down on one of the floating islands to do the Not So Friendly Skies.
Having no idea what to do with the macro, I just tried hitting it like I would to weave my steady's in with my auto's manually. Didn't really work, with steady shot not really firing other than the first time I hit it. But it was proc'ing my Kill Commands, so happy me.
Then I figured I'd try spamming the key, litterally hitting it again and again, knowing full well that it wasn't ready while steady shot was casting, but with the nice error message suppression, no real problem other than my Cooldown Timer addon animation bar for Kill Command would sort of enlarge to indicate to me that KC was still on cool down. Ok, I can live with that.
Initial thoughts on spamming the key...(1) sort of silly, but ok, lots of life is silly if you think about it, and (2) holy DPS batman.
I didn't do anything quantitative to measure my output, but intuitively, the transporters were dropping like flies. I was just amazed at how fast they'd go down, and how long my mana lasted with Aspect of the Viper turned on.
Just simply from Steady/Auto shots in a 1:1 ratio, spaced as close together as I could get them. I was only slowing down at times to allow my pet to keep aggro.
Thinking of next steps. Firstly, spamming the key is going to become boring in a hurry, so I'm gonna have to think about that part and see if there's any options that allow a bit less spamming and a bit more variety. Secondly, I've got to figure out where people go to for ideas on what they consider to be more optimal rotations. I guess I'll have to dig around, and maybe find out how to do Dr. Boom so I can measure this stuff.
And I suppose there's a third school of thought, but I hesitate to call it "thought". Those of us who more or less randomly manually fire our special shots, with no real attention to mana efficiency, or DPS, or much of anything at all besides pressing buttons.
I've more or less grown up in that third school of thought, with just a drop of attention paid to not clipping my auto shots, but not a whole lot more than that. Hell, I've even fired shots sometimes because I wanted to see a different color fly by (ohh, purple arcane shot, oooooh, green serpent sting. its like the 4th of July).
To improve my DPS, especially in longer sustained fights, I've got to learn a bit more about what this shot rotation stuff means to me.
In a comment to my post about Kill Command, Kestrel offered a simple macro that just does Steady Shot/Auto Shot, with a call to Kill Command whenever its available. Papewaio offered an alternative, with a bit more sophistication surrounding the error messages that'll pop up while spamming this guy.
I tried a hybrid of this puppy out wednesday night.
#showtooltip Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/castsequence reset=3 Steady Shot, Auto Shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()
I put this guy in place, headed over to Netherwing Fields to do the daily quests, and sat down on one of the floating islands to do the Not So Friendly Skies.
Having no idea what to do with the macro, I just tried hitting it like I would to weave my steady's in with my auto's manually. Didn't really work, with steady shot not really firing other than the first time I hit it. But it was proc'ing my Kill Commands, so happy me.
Then I figured I'd try spamming the key, litterally hitting it again and again, knowing full well that it wasn't ready while steady shot was casting, but with the nice error message suppression, no real problem other than my Cooldown Timer addon animation bar for Kill Command would sort of enlarge to indicate to me that KC was still on cool down. Ok, I can live with that.
Initial thoughts on spamming the key...(1) sort of silly, but ok, lots of life is silly if you think about it, and (2) holy DPS batman.
I didn't do anything quantitative to measure my output, but intuitively, the transporters were dropping like flies. I was just amazed at how fast they'd go down, and how long my mana lasted with Aspect of the Viper turned on.
Just simply from Steady/Auto shots in a 1:1 ratio, spaced as close together as I could get them. I was only slowing down at times to allow my pet to keep aggro.
Thinking of next steps. Firstly, spamming the key is going to become boring in a hurry, so I'm gonna have to think about that part and see if there's any options that allow a bit less spamming and a bit more variety. Secondly, I've got to figure out where people go to for ideas on what they consider to be more optimal rotations. I guess I'll have to dig around, and maybe find out how to do Dr. Boom so I can measure this stuff.
How the hell do you tank?
Warning, this post isn't about hunters, but it does lean on my experience as ranged DPS in contrast to in-your-face world of tanking.
Part of my family of toons includes my AH pally mule who does enchanting, specifically to DE those green items that won't sell after a few rounds of listing and lowering the price.
Amava's been collecting items that require 275 enchanting skill to DE, and my enchanter was lvl 20, thus maxed out at 225 skill, and needing to level up to 35 to allow Artesian training to raise the skill max to 300.
So my Pally has been getting some play time. And the 2.3 patch changes to XP make a level in the 20's go by in about 2 hours at my pace of play on my pally, so its flying by.
On the trek from 10-20, he was all retribution since a really quick read of the talents showed that this allows for the most DPS. I have dreams of playing this guy as a tank some day (I was inspired by Amava working with a 70 pally tank and his Avenger's Shield. Just looks really cool, and seems very effective).
This weekend I quested with a guy who's main is a pally and he said I should check out protection tree.
Ok, so I looked it over and went with it. Got a nice shield and a 1H sword, applied the best enchants my 225 level would allow to all my gear.
Very nice stuff. Sure, it takes a while to kill stuff, but I feel indestructable. 3 same level enemy mobs, and my health only gets down to about half, without me healing at all during the fight. Kinda neat, plus consecrate makes the ground look nice.
Found myself in a cave with some random guy (named PizzaTheHut, which cracked me up..."You're Delicious, Boss!"), a warlock. We quested together for a bit.
Ok, so I really quick tried to think of what my job is? Hmmm, you mean I'm not supposed to stand far away and let my teammate get up close to the mob? Oh, and I'm supposed to MAKE all these guys hit me?
How the hell do you do that?
Granted, it wasn't super important because the two of us were crushing the mobs pretty quick, and we're only in our low 20's so this isn't like brain surgery.
But I was definitely in a quandry as to how to make this happen. If any of you are Paladins out there, please chime in with how I can be a better (or even passable) tank at this level (dinged 24 this morning).
Seems there's a spell that increases my threat from holy damage. Cool, I can do that with a seal or some judgement that does holy damage. Later on in the talent tree, there's a bunch of talents that increase threat output, so when I get there, I'll invest in those if they make sense.
What item stats should I be trying to stack at this point? I'm sure stamina's a good one, but what else? Strength like a warrior? Or intellect like a caster? What about +health?
What else? How do you guys do it? Its really counter-intuitive to me to be MAKING these guys hit me, when I've spent my whole WoW life avoiding hits.
So now I want to run a dungeon and try it out. I think BFD is appropriate for my level, and maybe DM. See if I really can be a tank. If for no other reason than to understand the challenges you guys face better.
Ok, sorry for the digression for all you hunters.
Part of my family of toons includes my AH pally mule who does enchanting, specifically to DE those green items that won't sell after a few rounds of listing and lowering the price.
Amava's been collecting items that require 275 enchanting skill to DE, and my enchanter was lvl 20, thus maxed out at 225 skill, and needing to level up to 35 to allow Artesian training to raise the skill max to 300.
So my Pally has been getting some play time. And the 2.3 patch changes to XP make a level in the 20's go by in about 2 hours at my pace of play on my pally, so its flying by.
On the trek from 10-20, he was all retribution since a really quick read of the talents showed that this allows for the most DPS. I have dreams of playing this guy as a tank some day (I was inspired by Amava working with a 70 pally tank and his Avenger's Shield. Just looks really cool, and seems very effective).
This weekend I quested with a guy who's main is a pally and he said I should check out protection tree.
Ok, so I looked it over and went with it. Got a nice shield and a 1H sword, applied the best enchants my 225 level would allow to all my gear.
Very nice stuff. Sure, it takes a while to kill stuff, but I feel indestructable. 3 same level enemy mobs, and my health only gets down to about half, without me healing at all during the fight. Kinda neat, plus consecrate makes the ground look nice.
Found myself in a cave with some random guy (named PizzaTheHut, which cracked me up..."You're Delicious, Boss!"), a warlock. We quested together for a bit.
Ok, so I really quick tried to think of what my job is? Hmmm, you mean I'm not supposed to stand far away and let my teammate get up close to the mob? Oh, and I'm supposed to MAKE all these guys hit me?
How the hell do you do that?
Granted, it wasn't super important because the two of us were crushing the mobs pretty quick, and we're only in our low 20's so this isn't like brain surgery.
But I was definitely in a quandry as to how to make this happen. If any of you are Paladins out there, please chime in with how I can be a better (or even passable) tank at this level (dinged 24 this morning).
Seems there's a spell that increases my threat from holy damage. Cool, I can do that with a seal or some judgement that does holy damage. Later on in the talent tree, there's a bunch of talents that increase threat output, so when I get there, I'll invest in those if they make sense.
What item stats should I be trying to stack at this point? I'm sure stamina's a good one, but what else? Strength like a warrior? Or intellect like a caster? What about +health?
What else? How do you guys do it? Its really counter-intuitive to me to be MAKING these guys hit me, when I've spent my whole WoW life avoiding hits.
So now I want to run a dungeon and try it out. I think BFD is appropriate for my level, and maybe DM. See if I really can be a tank. If for no other reason than to understand the challenges you guys face better.
Ok, sorry for the digression for all you hunters.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Sleeping Aggro
Strange random thoughts sometimes creep into my head. Ususally a sign that I'm overly addicted to a video game. First happened when I was an early teenager playing Tetris on the NES. Got to the point that anytime I'd see a square grid pattern (such as ceramic tiles in the shower, or cinder block walls in my school) there would be moving pieces that needed to be aligned into solid rows. Probably a sign that you need to unplug for a while.
Last night, I'm laying in bed in a half dreaming / half conscious state. To set the stage a bit more, imagine a bed with me and my dog (black lab, border collie mix, cute as hell), and 6 pillows. I like to go overboard with the pillows, just so many uses for those silly things. Primary purpose of too many pillows is to allow for a continuous supply of a cold side on any given pillow, because that's what I like.
So I'm laying there half asleep, wiggling to find a cold side of a pillow to reposition under my head and a whole scene paints itself in my imagination.
I'm the dungeon boss.
The pillows are the raid group trying to take me down and get phat loot.
Among the 6 pillows, one is my favorite, its got the perfect ratio of head support to squishiness. He's the main tank. When ever possible, you want that one tanking the boss.
But the boss has different phases of fire attacks, so sometimes the main tank has to take a breather and an off tank has to step in. That's the number two pillow, with acceptable, but not quite maximum comfort.
And sometimes the fire attacks get so bad that one of the squishies gains aggro. Those are the couple of pillows that are pretty late in their life cycle and are severly lacking in the comfort, even if they do have a cold side available.
Those squishies usually get one-shotted, and end up on the floor seconds after pulling aggro. But sometimes they get a battle rez and I pick them up while half sleeping. Other times they get do a corpse run and get picked up when I wake up in the morning.
So this whole scene of the pillows actively trying to manage aggro and get the main tank back under my head is playing out in my imagination.
Where does the dog come in, you ask?
He's the huntard. He's supposed to attack from range (ie, sleep at the foot of the bed), but he's always closing in and switching to melee (ie, creeping up and trying to steal the main tank from me). Poor little pup, I actually caught him with a beast slaying enchant on his nylabone. If I could only find someone who can do Savagery, I'd show him the way.
Rescued Lab/Border Collie Mutts, FTW!!!!
Last night, I'm laying in bed in a half dreaming / half conscious state. To set the stage a bit more, imagine a bed with me and my dog (black lab, border collie mix, cute as hell), and 6 pillows. I like to go overboard with the pillows, just so many uses for those silly things. Primary purpose of too many pillows is to allow for a continuous supply of a cold side on any given pillow, because that's what I like.
So I'm laying there half asleep, wiggling to find a cold side of a pillow to reposition under my head and a whole scene paints itself in my imagination.
I'm the dungeon boss.
The pillows are the raid group trying to take me down and get phat loot.
Among the 6 pillows, one is my favorite, its got the perfect ratio of head support to squishiness. He's the main tank. When ever possible, you want that one tanking the boss.
But the boss has different phases of fire attacks, so sometimes the main tank has to take a breather and an off tank has to step in. That's the number two pillow, with acceptable, but not quite maximum comfort.
And sometimes the fire attacks get so bad that one of the squishies gains aggro. Those are the couple of pillows that are pretty late in their life cycle and are severly lacking in the comfort, even if they do have a cold side available.
Those squishies usually get one-shotted, and end up on the floor seconds after pulling aggro. But sometimes they get a battle rez and I pick them up while half sleeping. Other times they get do a corpse run and get picked up when I wake up in the morning.
So this whole scene of the pillows actively trying to manage aggro and get the main tank back under my head is playing out in my imagination.
Where does the dog come in, you ask?
He's the huntard. He's supposed to attack from range (ie, sleep at the foot of the bed), but he's always closing in and switching to melee (ie, creeping up and trying to steal the main tank from me). Poor little pup, I actually caught him with a beast slaying enchant on his nylabone. If I could only find someone who can do Savagery, I'd show him the way.
Rescued Lab/Border Collie Mutts, FTW!!!!
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
They like me, they really like me
I wish that Blizz had implemented reputation like a Jr. High School social atmosphere, and you could differentiate the levels with questions such as "do they like me like me, or just like me?"
Well, Netherwing now really likes me, but they're no longer in their Wonder Years, so they call me Revered.
The eggs were nice to me yesterday, and helped push me over the edge into my last reputation progress bar before they'll let me ride one of their nice purple dragons.
That new progress bar was a bit of a punch in the stomach. Exalted seems further away now than it did when I was battling Zuluhead the Wacked to hit Neutral. And where as quest turn-ins at all the earlier reputation tiers made nice visible dents in the progress bar, at Revered, it barely budges from a 250 or 350 contribution.
But I guess that's the point, isn't it?
There's a bit more than 20,000 rep remaining. I've been hitting more than 1,000 per day, but that's still my benchmark I'll use for estimation. So at that pace, and knowing the couple of travel days I'll be doing in December with no WoW, I think that Exalted in '07 is still a reasonable goal.
And if the eggs continue to be my friend, I might even be riding a dragon before Christmas.
Well, Netherwing now really likes me, but they're no longer in their Wonder Years, so they call me Revered.
The eggs were nice to me yesterday, and helped push me over the edge into my last reputation progress bar before they'll let me ride one of their nice purple dragons.
That new progress bar was a bit of a punch in the stomach. Exalted seems further away now than it did when I was battling Zuluhead the Wacked to hit Neutral. And where as quest turn-ins at all the earlier reputation tiers made nice visible dents in the progress bar, at Revered, it barely budges from a 250 or 350 contribution.
But I guess that's the point, isn't it?
There's a bit more than 20,000 rep remaining. I've been hitting more than 1,000 per day, but that's still my benchmark I'll use for estimation. So at that pace, and knowing the couple of travel days I'll be doing in December with no WoW, I think that Exalted in '07 is still a reasonable goal.
And if the eggs continue to be my friend, I might even be riding a dragon before Christmas.
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