Morgraan's Corner

Thinking Ahead

2009-10-01T11:15:00.001-04:00

There’s not too much for me to focus on once I have my druid flying and with dual specs, so I am thinking that it might be worthwhile to slow down and do some serious stockpiling for Cataclysm. Stockpile what? Well, here are some initial thoughts :

• Netherweave bags – New Worgen and Goblin players entering the game will need bags and if you have a few hundred of them laying in a guild bank, you could make some real coin in the first week.

• Ore – Yes, I know, there will be new ore to farm in the xpac, but there will still be skill points to be gained from Northrend ore at the beginning. If you aren’t quick you may miss this boat, though.

• Runecloth – New factions, new races leveling the old factions, there should be money in runecloth if you farm it now or at least ahead of time.

• Belt Buckles – I may be wrong, but once people hit 85, they’re still going to want belt buckles. Having a good stockpile will allow you to sell faster than the folks that are having to go back to Northrend to farm mats.

• Cobalt, Goldclover, Borean Leather – If the change in profession leveling from BC to WOTLK is any indication, the higher end (read:metagem part of JC and titansteel part of BS) sections will be gone. People will level the early part then jump to the new areas and mats. The question is, will there be a huge rush in new people leveling professions? I”m guessing that there will be with the changes to some professions allowing more end game usefulness (Like buckles and sockets with BS in Wrath).

What won’t sell at all? Old gems. I doubt anyone who keeps up with this stuff will have any gems at all about a month out from the release. Cheap greens becoming better than blues and epics will destroy the prices.

This is all a year or more away, so there’s no reason to go into stockpile-overdrive just yet, but if you find a great deal on some stuff that could be useful down the road, it might be worth banking it now to sell for big profit later.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

2009-09-30T07:22:00.001-04:00

So MMO-Champion, one of the most read WoW websites, posts a couple of gold-making strategy guides and there’s considerable concern from many in the AH community that are worried about the resulting crash of several markets. At least there should be some new players on the scene, right? I can only speak for my server, but I haven’t seen much change. Eternals have been a little high for about a week (7g for earth, 6g for water and shadow) but saronite still dips into a good sub-15g area often enough that I haven’t had any slowdown. Belt buckles still sell. So do epic gems. Granted, I’m not in the herb or glyph markets, so I can’t really speak to how those are looking at the moment, and yes, enchanting mats have dipped a little, but the world isn’t coming to an end or anything.

PvP rare gems apparently sell on my server. I’ve been wondering what to do with them, so I ran into Wintergrasp and bought up a few recipes, cut a small sample of gems and tossed em up. Not everything sold, but considering the stacks of blue gems I’ve been sitting on, it was nice to see some of them turned into cash.

856g yesterday with another 407g in overnight sales gave me my first 1000g day. How’d I celebrate? I bought eternal earth, water, and saronite ore and bars. Shadow is still high, but I have a ton of green gems to turn into jewelry and poof tonight and I’m still researching a few rare gem cuts. (There really just isn’t anything to do with forest emeralds, is there?) My total before my purchases was 5758g. I’m closing in on that last 4k I need to buy the druid epic flight and cold weather flying (he’s 71 now) to really make leveling him speed right up. The biggest test yet will be whether or not I can keep myself from breaking into the gold stash early to get him moving. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it, I just lose a bit of my liquid assets and have to slow down a bit for a little while. But I really think I can rebuild faster the second time around and should be making good money again quickly, especially as quest money and drops roll in to supplement my AH work. Also, what’s the point of making all the money if you don’t use it for something? I’m never going to hit 214k. I just want to be comfortable that I can buy what I need (not necessarily everything I want) and at the end of the day, I’m learning to enjoy the AH as a new part of the game.

Progress, a Complaint

2009-09-29T07:22:00.001-04:00

I’m just shy of 5k right now, which puts my 2 week total at about 4300g, which is pretty good. I’ve said it before, I’m never going to be a 10k a day guy, but I’m making steady progress and the only time I have a down day is if I buy a ton of mats and don’t get everything reposted. I’m using belt buckles and JC/disenchanting for the vast majority of my income, although as I level the druid I’ve been selling off netherweave bags. I’ve built enough of a cushion now that if anyone severely undercuts my buckles I just buy them out and repost them for a small profit, but one that allows my inventory to keep moving. I don’t do it all the time, but if I’ll make 5-6g from the deal I’ll go ahead and buy them out. If it’s less than that, I just wait on the lower priced buckles to sell.

Which leads me to my complaint or criticism. So many people say, “I don’t have any money” or “I don’t know how to make money”. Well, as the druid is a skinner/leatherworker I can tell you that there are a shocking number of people out there that don’t loot the grays off of the mobs they kill. I mean, people, this is like leaving money there on the ground. Little piles of silver that apparently you can’t be bothered to carry. I don’t understand the thought process. Do people think that they need to conserve bag space in case they get something better to drop? Or do they think that selling off grays is too big a pain? While it would be nice for me to be able to skin all these mobs, I’m really not that worried about it. I’ll get my leather eventually. I’m mostly sad for people that pass up free money (you were killing the mob anyway, right?)

Big money

2009-09-24T07:51:00.002-04:00

Last night was one of those strange nights where everything on the AH was overpriced (except Runed Cardinal Rubies…go figure). Infinite dust was actually selling for a while at 10g50s per and even when that fell through, I was selling them at 6g per. Eternal Water was sitting around 18 a piece (that was more a frustration than anything else), belt buckles sold solidly all night around 45g. It just so happened that I went through several stacks of green gems to start the night and therefore had my finest day so far. In the end I was at 900g profit after restocking. That brings my gold total to 2546 as of this morning.

I’m starting to rethink rare gems. They simply don’t sell fast enough to be a big deal. I’m doing better selling them uncut than cut .Maybe I’m using the wrong cuts, but the Smooth and Bold cuts have always been useful and you’d think they would move, but they don’t. I put up five and sell maybe one. I think I’ll switch to just putting up 1-2 at a time and restocking it when it sells.

Also this morning, Grunty the Merloc Marine showed up in my email. He’ll get a chance to shoot some stuff in ToC at the raid tonight.

The Time Balance

2009-09-23T10:59:00.001-04:00

Real life doesn’t allow me to play WoW like I used to play. (And honestly, I used to play way too much) I can’t usually get more than 15 minutes before work in the morning to set up the day’s auctions and then a good 2-3 hours most nights, although I take a few nights a week off. What I’m coming to realize is that the key is setting priorities and doing what I get the most out of with my time.

There are some things that just have to be done. I have to craft the stuff I’m selling. I have to make sure I have the consumables for my 3 raid nights. I have to show up for raids and tank. Raiding Sunday, Monday, and Thursday typically allows me Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday to futz around as I see fit. (Saturday is date night with the Mrs.)

My typical off night plays out like this: I log into the bank alt, collect money (hopefully), run a quick scan, then check the going prices on saronite ore, saronite bars, eternal earth, water, and shadow, eternal belt buckles, netherweave cloth and netherweave bags. I buy what needs restocking and post whatever needs posting. I run to the mailbox and toss crafting materials off to their respective crafters. Then I go back to the AH and check whatever I forgot to check the first time and look around for anything that’s surprisingly low, what’s in low supply that I might be able to turn a quick profit on, and I relog to my crafting toons. I make what I need to and ship it back to the bank alt, log back to that toon, and post all the new stuff. I try to knock all of this out before raid times kick in for most guilds to try and catch a few sales before those guys get into instances.

After that I do JC, fishing, and cooking dailies and then (if we’re being honest) check to see what’s sold already. If anything needs to be cancel/reposted, I do that, then I head off to the druid to do some leveling. I’m taking too much time with the druid, trying to keep him in rested xp for the most part (raid nights help with that). I’m thinking very seriously about switching him to my new main once he gets to 80 and gets geared, but I have to get there first. He’s LW/skinning, which I don’t intend to change at this point. I’m looking forward to some skinning sales once I get up to 80 and get LW done, I think there’s money to be made there as I gear the toon out.

Around 10:30-11:00, I usually log back to the AH alt and collect some more cash and run a full check again on all my materials to see what I can pick up cheap for tomorrow. I may jump back to a crafter if I see an opportunity here, but really I’m pretty much done for the night. I’ll log in in the morning before work, run a quick check to see any steals, collect money, cancel/repost, and then it’s off to work. Unfortunately, this schedule is only doable 3-4 days a week, so I’m never going to be a huge businessman I’m afraid, but I should be able to continually make money, get leveled and geared, and raid without too much trouble.

Eternal Earth-a-thon

2009-09-23T08:30:00.001-04:00

For some reason, the planets realigned last night and Eternal Earth was extremely cheap (5g60s – 5g75s) while water was all gone and shadow was overpriced (8g). This morning there were plenty of waters if you were willing to spend 14g per. Ha! I used the opportunity to stock up, buying about 4 stacks worth of earth and waiting for the shadow and water markets come back down. Saronite ore was around 18g, so I wasn’t bothering with that either (got one stack for 14g). All in all, it was more of a stocking night than a posting night. I undercut some belt buckles, threw some blue gems up, and moved over to leveling the druid some more.

Reading the JMTC forums, I’ve come to realize that I just don’t deal in nearly the quantity that those guys do. I may get to that point, but more than likely, I’m going to ramp up a little bit from where I am now and remain content to move slower. I’m not sure if that means I’m going to get stuck somewhere down the road (I kinda figure it does) but with leveling, gearing, raiding, I just don’t have the time to spend on AH and production to work in the kinds of numbers they’re talking about. I feel good about having 5 stacks of Eternal Earth, some of those guys keep a stock of 50 stacks. The problem is, I don’t have any suppliers and am at the whim of the AH to keep myself stocked.

Tonight I’ll do a big run of green JC stuff and send that off for poofing, check the usual stuff on the AH, and make the netherweave bags that I bought the cloth for last night (3g a stack, but only 5 stacks up there). Then I will get the druid to 67 and hopefully 68. Here’s hoping the buckle market comes back from the current 33g or so back to closer to 40g.

A Weekend Wasted

2009-09-22T07:21:00.001-04:00

As you may have heard, Atlanta is slowly turning into Atlantis and as a result my power has been going out a lot. This killed my ability to keep on top of my auctions this weekend and therefore stalled out the trickle of money I’ve been getting.

I’m up to 1900g as of last night, which puts my first week of work at about 1400g. I started out very slowly, made some goofy mistakes, and ended up riding the “belt buckle” wave all the way to 1400. I know that most good WoWeconomists do that in like a morning, but for me it was nice just to see that while yes, I am buying all my mats, I am in fact turning a profit on the goods and mats that I sell from them.

I’m DEing JC greens and selling the dust and cosmics, I’ve hooked up with an alchemist friend who transmutes Cardinal Rubies everyday which I cut and sell for 200-220. I kick him half the money and we’re both happy with the extra hundred. I’ve also started dabbling in cutting a few blue gems (few as in I cut 7 this week) and they’re selling, but very slowly. I’m still making bags when the cost of cloth is under 4 and making buckles pretty much all the time. I’m discovering that the hold up in belt buckle production is the price of Eternal Earth, which some nights is 6g and some nights is 8g.

All in all I’m happy with the progress and irritated that I didn’t get to do more this weekend. My druid is 66 now and has also stalled in his leveling, but my goal is to buy him epic flying and cold weather flying when I hit 10k, which would set me back to 4k and shouldn’t be all that tough to build back. After that I shouldn’t have any major expenses left and money coming in should be pure profit.

Well, here goes nothing.

2009-09-17T18:54:00.001-04:00

I came home to some buckle sales that put me over 1k. I bought 25 stacks of saronite ore because it was cheap(14g50s), all the Netherweave that was under 4g (4 stacks), a stack of eternal water for 100g, 5 shadows, and 9 earths at 7g. The 7g was way higher than I wanted to pay, but I was on a time crunch before the raid time and wanted to get the rings poofed before I lost my mage DE'er. All told, I'm back down to 585g, but I have 2.5 stacks of infinite dust, 10 lesser cosmics, and 4 bags. Once the earths come down again, I'll buy enough to make a bunch more buckles. I have figured my enchanting mats experiment cost to be 285.60, so I"m a little worried that I've screwed the pooch on that one. I am picking up the spell power red epic gem cut tonight (to pay back the DE'er) so maybe that can help some too. All in all, I'm worried.

30k – Day 3

2009-09-17T07:25:00.001-04:00

I logged in tonight to find that the two markets I was dabbling in were down. Netherweave bags were selling around 9g99s and Eternal Belt Buckles were at 35g. I posted my last 2 bags and used low saronite and eternal prices to buy up the mats for more buckles. I was immediately undercut on the bags by the AH farmer, but I didn’t see enough profit in cancel/reposting at that price, so I let those ride. I made my buckles and tossed up 3 at the new low 35g price. One sold within seconds, and at just over 15g material cost, I threw all the rest of the buckles on the AH and switched over for some druid leveling. (66 now)

I’ve changed my plan with his leveling, too. I’m now going to stay in Outland as long as humanly possible so that I use up less of Northrend’s quests on the actual leveling and have more of those quests for making money. I enjoy questing, so I don’t see that as farming at all.

Anyhow, a long work week and late nights were taking a toll, so I checked my auctions one more time and headed off to bed with 7 buckles up at 35g, 4 more at 38g and both of my bags sold already. 10g a bag after a 4g investment in mats is still a 6g profit. It won’t set the world on fire, but profit is profit.

Happily, I woke up this morning and checked my auctions to find that all of the 35g bags had sold and that the price was back up to my old 38g, and 2 of those had actually sold as well. Not a bad night. All told, I pulled down 245g overnight in pure profit and should be able to afford more mats pretty easily. The only downside is that I was left at 999g15s. Everyone tells me that the first 1k is the toughest, so hopefully that will be true tonight and I’ll be ready to step things up.

As far as the future, I’ve pretty much decided to abandon the glyph idea. I’m way too far behind and at my place right now, I can’t afford to dump that much gold into the Glyph Mastery books in hopes of getting the good ones. I can continue to do research in preparation for a day when I have enough money to jump into that market. Instead, I’m going to work on jewels right now and see how well I can do selling rare cuts then epics as my bankroll increases.

I learn something new about this process every night it seems, and I make a mistake at least once a day. Today I bought the last remaining 35g buckle and relisted it at 38g. Then I noticed I put it up for 48 hours which cost me 2g, so if it sells it’ll be for a 1g profit. Oops.

Welcome Back

2009-09-16T12:34:00.001-04:00

Hello. I had the highest of intentions when I started this thing up, but no real direction. Then I started writing for a couple of other blogs and my poor corner fell apart completely. Well, I’m back now and actually have a clear purpose of something to write about. I made a decision earlier this week that by the end of this year I would make 30,000 gold in WoW. I’ve always been someone that fluctuates wildly in my cash flow. Two weeks ago, for instance, I was sitting pretty around 3k. Then I power leveled Jewelcrafting on Morg and moved my druid over to my server and switched him to feral, and all of a sudden I was sitting around 500g. Now I know I can run dailies and do some farming to get myself caught back up, but it would take a lot of time and energy and in the end I’d end up right where I’d started.

So I did some research. I followed a couple of WoW economy sites in my RSS already, so I hit up their links and found some more. Then I found the forums over at JMTC and I started to see how, with a few addons and a little work, I might just push this gold making thing to a completely different level.

I started out slow, clearing out the old guild bank on my bank alt and milling all the Northrend herbs I had laying around from my Alchemy days. I haven't made any glyphs yet, though. I feel like I need to watch the market a bit and see how it’s working on my server before jumping in with both feet. In the meantime, I decided to start doing some simpler things to try and build up my supply of cash.

I looked around last night to see where there might be a spot I could make some hay and stepped in on netherweave bags as cloth was going for 3g and bags at 14g when I first logged in. Then I priced out the mats for belt buckles (16g) and the buckles themselves(39g) and saw that there was definitely money to be made. I had also dabbled in belt buckles in the past and was confident that they would sell quickly, so I blew a bunch of the little bit of cash I had on eternals (4-5g each) and ore (16g a stack) and set up to watch prices all night and make sure I wasn't getting jobbed in either market. There was n0 competition in buckles, I just sold them all night at one solid price. Bags were a pretty popular group, I'd sell some then an AH camper would undercut me by a copper, I'd undercut her, then every once in a while someone else would step in and drop the price about a gold. By the end of the night I was still selling bags around 12g75s. So I made about 300g, all told. Baby steps, right?

The thing I need to work on now is simply keeping this up and making a little here, a little there until I have the resources to really jump in and make a big play at either the Inscription or Jewel market. Well, that and not buy anything that I don’t need.

Raid Leaders. What can you do to help them?

2009-03-10T11:01:00.001-04:00

So you’ve gotten yourself a spot in a 10 or 25 man raid and you’re in there dps’ing, tanking, healing, doing your thing. You aren’t the worst player in the world and the raid is making decent progress, but the raid leaders are stressed out every week and can get downright snippy from time to time. Look at things from their point of view, though. They’re the ones responsible for the whole run. They need to know the strategies ahead of time to know what kind of class balance is necessary. They need to know the schedules of 24 other people and need to make all of those mesh so that they can herd all 24 ~~cats~~ people into the same place at the same time.

Then you get into the run itself. The new guy from another server is whispering the RL with strategy ideas from his old guild. The hunter and the rogue are arguing about a loot drop from the first boss and you’re on the sixth. The warlock seems to have a terribly weak bladder and runs to the bathroom at least once every half hour. These are all just the problems on a farming run. Progression runs bring a whole new swath of problems. After every wipe the tank yells at the healers. The mage says “We just don’t have the dps for this” and tries to convince everyone that you’re wasting your time. It sometimes can really be miserable to lead a raid. So what can you do to make yourself more useful to the raid leader to save him/her some headache? I’m glad you asked.

Show up on time. There’s nothing worse than being down 6 people with 5 minutes to go to the first pull. You are pretty sure that they will show up, but what if they don’t? At some point you’re going to have to start lining up replacements, but what if you get a replacement and someone shows up 2 minutes late? If you get there on time, you eliminate this concern for the RL and allow them to focus on getting the raid going.
Be prepared. Have your consumables and know the strategies that you’re going to be working on ahead of time. A raid runs best when it runs quickly. If you have to stop to explain every single fight, people lose focus and start wandering off more and more.
Don’t tell the RL how your old guild did it. Honestly, if your old guild was that great, why did you leave? Snarkiness aside, most RLs have a plan for a fight going into it. If they ask for help, by all means chime in, but if they aren’t asking, let them run things. If you’re making comments in guild chat or raid chat about how you used to do things, you’re going to irritate them.
Don’t constantly whisper the RL. You have to consider the amount of stuff that he/she has going on right now. It’s also entirely possible that up to 24 other people are sending whispers at the same time. Don’t be offended if you do send a whisper and don’t get a response. In general, though, ask yourself whether or not this can wait until after the raid. Most of the time it can.
Don’t get up all the time. Try to consolidate afk’s so that you’re grabbing your snack, your drink, and hitting the bathroom all at once. If the raid has to stop constantly, people start to lose interest, dps goes down, tanks miss mobs, and healers start thinking about other stuff. Also, the RL has to keep track of who is available at a moment’s notice. Don’t be the problem.
Don’t whine about loot. I know that the hunter may not ever equip that dagger and I’m sorry, but everyone gets their DKP and can spend it as they see fit. He might actually use it. One way or another, this lowers raid morale and isn’t at all necessary during the raid. If you have a continuing problem with one person, take it up outside of the raid.
Worry about your job. The RL is there to wrangle all those pesky DPS. You don’t have to. If there is really a problem with the healing, let him/her handle it. You make sure you’re doing your job to be best of your ability.

This isn’t nearly a complete list, but it’s a nice starting point. If you do these things, your raid leader may come out of Naxxramas with the same amount of hair he went in with and you will have a smoother, more successful raid.

What is Tanking Part I.

2009-02-22T11:35:00.000-05:00

This is the first in a series of posts about warrior tanking. Tanking has changed since the first version of WoW. It is a series of questions you have to ask yourself. The first question is, "What is my actual job?" and the answer is simple. You want to build the maximum amount of threat in the minimum amount of time. You want every baddy out there to hate you more than it hates your healers and damage dealers.

There's bad news. Tanking isn't always sexy. Damage dealers (DPS) throw up huge numbers with each strike or cast and use a meter to watch how much damage they are doing. They like to fight about these meters and try to be the guy on top. If you are not putting out enough threat, these DPSers are going to have to throttle back and hit less hard. This makes DPSers irritable and makes for a dangerous situation. If they accidentally go too hard or hit a crit or two, they could pull the mob off of you. Tanks have less ability for immediate feedback, although UI mods like Omen allow us to see our threat level and the threat level of the other members of the raid. What you have to do is learn to use that threat level as the first basis for your next set of questions.

In the earlier days of WoW, we could use a set rotation to generate the maximum threat in most situations. Wrath of the Lich King changed that. Now you have to be more aware of your situation and attempt to weigh available talents versus the situation. This makes tanking a lot more fun, but also makes it a tougher affair. Gone are the days of mindless button mashing and in their place are the days of dynamic tanking as you attempt to balance avoidance, threat, and even a little bit of DPS yourself to help the raid along. How can you get better? The easiest way to become a better tank is to tank. Jump in guild groups that you know are going to be good and where all of the members will do their jobs. These show you how things are supposed to run and allow you to gear up in the fastest way possible. Jump in pick up groups (PuGs) where you don't know what you're going to get. Sometimes they will be a solid group and sometimes they will be horrible. Stick with the horrible groups as you will learn a lot about snap threat generation in a worst-case scenario. Your dps will start early and will over-nuke on groups of mobs. If you can keep them alive through that, you're going to be fine when you get in with a more restrained, well balanced group. That second group is going to love you too, since you're going to know how to generate a ton of threat quickly.

In the next post I'll start to look at individual talents, what they do, and show you when you want to use them. Later on we'll take all of the talents and try to weigh them for the best use.