Tricks of the trade: Dailies.

There are many things that you can do while running Dailies that can make them easier.  Here are some of the ones I use.  As a skinner / Herbalist my perspective may be a little different than most. 

1) There is a Netherwing Daily that requires you to pummel some lazy orcs with a boot.  Create a simple macro:
/target disobedient
/use booterang

This macro will target and fire all in one button hit.  The nice thing is it will target even if the mob has not rendered to being visible yet (i.e. you are flying by on epic mount and will tag invisible mobs).

2) In the Netherwing there is the one that sends you to Nagrand to kill 20 cultists.  That is usually the first one I pick up in the morning, then I do the boot one, then a bunch of others, then fly out and drop off that one and log out for the night, that way I am right there to pick it up again in the morning. 

3) The SSO two in hellfire.  First is the fireball one.  You do NOT have to be the one that kills the fire guy to get credit, you just have to be standing there.  If you spot someone killing one run over and help, you will get credit too.  The second one is the Fel weakness one.  Hunters, you can trap the mob and then weaken it.  They remain frozen all the way until they are weakened and easy to kill.  I wonder if that would work with polymorph. 

4) Out on the new SSO Island, the bombing one to dead scar, map the bomb to something with a button that you can press.  Before doing that I would struggle to complete all the kills in one trip.  After doing that I can sometimes get all my kills before I get to Brutallis, i.e. less than half way thru the flight.  Also, try and group with someone.  You can get credit for their kills if they are close enough.

5) The SSO one to kill 6 demons, and plant the flag in one.  You can plant the flag in the dead guy even if you did not kill him, or even damage him.  All it requires is his body.

6) The SSO one where you have to loot the keys from the naga and get the ore, any leftover keys remain in your keyring bag after you turn in the quest.  So, the next time you are online during a non-peak time (i.e. wake up an hour early for work, or stay up till 4am on a Tuesday) go out there and grind a bunch of keys, so you don’t have to try and do it when the whole area is camped. 

7) The one from Shatt where you have to get the essences from herbing, mining, or skinning.  Skinning is the FASTEST way to get them, as they can come off any skin.  If you are doing the Fel Gland quest or the ravager killing quest for the Netherwing you can skin the mobs and get essences.  Collecting the Pollen for Netherwing can also yield essences, but the drop rate sucks. 

8 ) If you are working on Honor Hold rep, and having a hard time getting to do the daily to capture the three towers in Hellfire because the alliance ALWAYS controls it, then do what I did…make a deal with the horde.  Roll a toon on the horde side of your server.  Find someone in Hellfire that does not have the name “LEEt dUdE” and make a proposal.  You get him to capture the towers, then he lets you cap, then you let him kill you a few times for tokens.  It works out good for both of you.  Get a group up on your side and tell them the plan.  It is nice and friendly like.  Before it became a daily, that was a good way to grind rep.  When I was 63ish I made an arrangement with a hordie, and was in their TS.  We went thru 11 full rotations of control in one afternoon. 

9) There is a daily in Terrokar to capture the spirit towers.  Arrange it with your guild so when the control comes up for grabs your guild shows up in force, and all does the daily.  Also, this is a good time to do an instance there, as you get Spirit shards. 

10) When doing the one from Shatt that sends you to Netherstorm to get the battleplans, hit the general and see if anyone else is looking for them too.  If you are in a party and it drops for one of you, then you both get to loot it.  Working side by side with someone doubles your chance of getting them.
Now, there is a little PS.  This has been written for 3 days.  I intended to go look up the dailies by name and fill those in.  However two thing intervened.  First, I am really busy at work and have not had time to do it.  Second, I realized that anyone doing these dailies will recognize them.  If you are doing dailies and don’t recognize them, let me know and I will look them up. 

My new Pet

So, a while ago I traveled to Ungoro Crater and tamed U’cha, the brown gorilla deep in the cave.  I have been using the same animal for a long time and wanted to switch to something new.  I have been taking him on my dailies and when herb farming and he has been leveling nicely.  He is now level 64. 

P.S. For any old school hunters that HATED leveling a pet, the pet leveling speed has been more than tripled.  It is not nearly as painful as it once was.  Not that it is easy, but it is not the mountain of work it used to be.

So, I am pretty much the go to guy when someone wants run thru something.  I don’t mind it, I have plenty of gold so I have time to spare, and working on guild faction is more important…so I spend a lot of time in Deadmines, Stockades, Scarlet Monastery, and others.  I chose to find a gorilla specifically for that task.  I chose the gorilla because of one very special ability, Thunderstomp  Thunderstomp is an AOE attack, the only real AOE pets get. Misdirect + multishot is nice, but it only hits three targets, thunderstomp hits everything. 

Last night was the first test of my Gorilla.   We went to Stockaides.  We had a level 31 pally, 24 mage, and me.  Stockaides is a simple instance.  There is a T shaped Hallway.  As you go down the hall there are rooms on the left and right side of the hall full of guys.  We started out the instance like a normal instance, I send in the gorilla, he starts tanking, I start DPSing, loot, rinse, repeat.  After seeing how helpful Thunderstomp was we came up with a new strategy.  I named the pally left and the mage right.  They would each go into the room on the side of the hall their names indicated.  They would aggro all the mobs and run to the gorilla.  Once they got back I popped thunderstomp.  The mobs would hit my snake trap, I would drop a volley, the mage would Blizzard, and the pally would Consecrate.  Clearing two rooms quickly turned into clearing 4 rooms (I would bring 2 rooms on my own. 

AOEing down 4 rooms of mobs is a BLAST. 

We ran Stockaides 3 times we were having so much fun.

I’m anxious to see what he can do at level 70.  The only thing I don’t like is that Thunderstomp only goes to rank 3, and that is what he has, so his AOE threat and damage are already capped.  Someone needs to have a serious heart to heart with blizzard regarding pet skills.  If they only wanted us to have a cat, raptor, scorpid, or boar, then that should be all we can train.  If they want us to have a nice variety of pets, then make those pets a viable choice.  I am leveling a pet specifically for running people thru low level instances.  Make that pet more viable at level 70 and I may stop complaining that we need more stable slots. 

My ego is (holds hands far apart) This Big!

So, I was late to work today.  I got up on time and everything was on schedule.  I logged in to my bank alt to check some auctions.  I got a very excited message from someone in the guild. 

Guildie: YOU HAVE TO COME HERE!!! Re-log and we will summon.
Me: I can’t I have to leave for work in a few minutes.
Guildie: We are in MC.
Me: Hold on

(dials phone)
Me: Hey (boss) I’m going to be a little late, my wife’s car won’t start and I have to run her to work then wait for the tow truck.

I re-log and get summoned. 

They were just about to start Garr. 

26 people, One was level 60, the rest were 70.  Apparently, they 4 70’s were 5 manning the 60 thru BRD for his Onyxia chain and a few others.  They saw the portal to MC and on a lark hopped in.  It snowballed from there.  My guildie was budies with one of the 70’s that started the run.  Another guildie of that buddy is a hunter and my guildie was ribbing him that he was almost beating him on damage.  The hunter said “yeah, well second place is the first loser”.  My guildie responded “No offense, but there is this hunter in our guild, and if I am within 10% of his damage then I am having a good night, I’m less than 1% behind you, which means he would be 9% ahead of you by now.”

I love it when other people trash talk for me.

So, I didn’t know this until I was there and we were starting the Garr fight.  My bear tanked one of the adds, and I DPS’ed it down.  The other hunter was supposed to do the same.  His pet died when the add was just at 50% health.  I unleashed some holy hell damage while the hunter tried to kite it.  I pulled aggro and it died before it got to me. 

We cleared every boss up to Rags, and gave up because a few people had to go…and they were two of the three healers.  Just before everyone logged my guildie posted the damage report.  I was 4% ahead of the other hunter. 

Hunter: Ha, you said he would beat me by 10%.
Guildie: umm….
Hunter: So, where is your Great White Hunter now?
Guildie: Perhaps I should point out that the damage chart started when we started the instance, and he was not here until Garr.  The 4th boss. 
Hunter:….

The entire raid was busting on him for running his mouth. 

I basked in the DPS that is BM. 

I was quite surprised to notice that I made a good chunck of gold, and ended up with 6 shards, and a handful of stuff to sell, including some fiery cores and corehound leather.

 

To keep my ego in check I will share an experience from Yesterday monrning.

I headed to blades edge to do the SSO daily there.  For those of you that have not done it, you kill these etherials until one drops this thing that switches you to a different dimension, then you run around and collect these little mana boxes.  Simple enough.  I should mention that the dimension switcher thing has about a 8% drop rate.  I got there, and started killing Etherials.  I kind of zoned out.  25 minutes later I came to a realization.  If you do not pick up the quest, the converter thingie NEVER drops.  Crap.

I hopped a flight, I decided to go to Nagrand first and do the daily there, did it, then back to Shatt.  I dropped off some dailys, then hit the bank and mailbox to empty my bags.  Hopped a flight back to blades edge, and got back into some serious Etherial Ownage.  15 minutes later one still had not dropped.  This is such shit, this quest is bugged, it is broken, it is impossible, I need to page a GM…..or…perhaps fly back to Shatt and actually PICK UP THE QUEST.

Ego is back at the proper size.

Wow, it has been a lot longer than expected

I just realized, Last week on Tuesday was the 6 month birthday of my little piece of the internet here.  It has gone by a lot faster than I expected, and I am enjoying it.  Any feedback?

I wanted to take a minute to quote someone “Personally, for you, I’m betting on a month an the WAY outside”.  Words of encouragement like that are hard to forget on your 6 month birthday.   I encourage the writer of that comment to stop by and say hi. 

Suggestions to improve the usefulness of Misdirect

Currently, Misdirect is 100% useless in PVP.  As such, any changes to it do not affect the almighty class balance for PVP.  A few times I have cast Misdirect too early and then sat there and watched the timer burn and it eventually dropped off unused.  I want to suggest one of two changes. I would prefer that if no charges of Misdirect are used then the cooldown does not get used, so it can be re-cast.  If that is deemed Overpowered, then I suggest increasing the time that it stays active without being used from 20 seconds to 60 seconds.  This means that I would have more leeway if a pat walks around the corner after I cast it and I had to wait. 

Second:
How about adding some functionality to Misdirection in PVP?  What if I could misdirect pets in PVP just like mobs in PVE?  What if hitting a person with misdirection would change their target to my target?  That would make them drop their target, just like Feign Death does.  It would only cause a second of confusion, and stop anything being cast, but could help us get away.  Neither would be a game breaking or exploitable mechanic, but would give us a way of disrupting the persons focus, just like we can mobs in PVE.  

I was late to the dentist and it made Google better

After my wisdom tooth broke I had to find a dental surgeon that could get me in on Friday to have my two left wisdom teeth removed.  After a marathon calling spree I found one.  I made the appointment.  I pulled up a Google map and found it.  I plotted a route to get there and back and printed a map because my wife was driving my drugged butt home. 

On a side note, this step was necessary because my wife is a whole new level of directionally challenged. She could get lost in our bathroom if she had GPS, a compass, and a string tied to her wrist leading her back to the couch.  A map was 200% necessary.

I drove there.  We got close and I told her to start looking for it.  4 blocks later I knew we must have passed it.  I turned around and we started looking at street addresses.  We found the right address and it was a house…not a dentist office.  I called the dentist office and told them that I was lost.  They gave me directions.  The road I was on went about half a mile and dead ended into a river.  They were just on the other side of the river. 
Crap.
10 minutes later I found my way there.  When I got there I showed the receptionist the map I had from Google, and the incorrect location.  She did not care.  They doped me up and extracted my two left wisdom teeth.  I left drooling like an idiot and went home to suck down painkillers all weekend. 

This morning I had an idea.  There has to be a way to make that bubble accurate.  I looked into it, and sure enough, there is. 

If you find a bubble in Google Maps that is not accurate, click on it, then click on Edit, it prompts you to click on the bubble an move it to the correct location.  I moved the dentist’s bubble, my work’s bubble, and my homes bubble to be more accurate. 

So, because I was late to the dentist, Google Maps are now more accurate.

Ouch

No real post today.  Last night one of my wisdom teeth broke.  Having a broken tooth hurts.  I am complete wuss when it comes to pain.  I will be at home sucking pain pulls until tomorrow when they pull my left two wisdom teeth.  I do not look forward to that, but it will be better than it is now.  Right now it feels like someone curb stomped my face, after softening it with a metal bat. 

Greatest Kara week ever

So, as I have previously mentioned, our normal Kara week is Morose, Opera, Curator (and sometimes back for Attuman / Maiden for badges) on the first night, then curator and chess on the second night.  Two weeks ago we had our guild first kill on Shade of Aran and Prince.  We have tried Netherspite a few times.

Last week we did the quest chain to summon Nightbane.

Wednesday night we went into our first night and did Morose, Opera, Curator, Aran, Attuman, and Maiden all in one shot…in 3 hours.  Between Aran and Attuman we tried Nightbane twice and wiped both times.  Last night we did Prince and Netherspite, AND Nightbane in one shot.  Guild first kill on Netherspite and Nightbane.  We had only tried both of those fights twice before, so our third attempt as a guild was out guild first kill, both on one night.

We officially have Kara on Farm. 

As if that was not cool enough, I got some new pants.  I now only have one blue left. 

To add icing to the cake:  Last night we had our pally tank, druid healer, priest healer, shammy healer, Warrior DPS / offtank, Lock, rouge, and three beast spec hunters. 

The rouge, lock, warrior, and I are all about equally geared. 

Last night the DPS meter (from 2 different people) looked like this

Me: 26%
Rouge: 16%
Warrior: 16%
Lock: 15%
Pally tank: 10%
Hunter 1: 9%
Hunter 2: 6%

I was #1 with 26-27%, second place was 10% less than me.  The two other hunters were below the tank.  To be fair, one of the hunters had connection issues and kept dropping mid fight.  The other one died half way into the Netherspite fight.  The rouge and warrior never died, so I have no mercy on them. 

I’m very happy to be above 20% of the damage. I figure that there is 100% damage done, the take claims some of it, and the rest is spread out over the 5 DPS slots.  Hypothetically, if the tank did no damage, then each DPS could get 20%.  In the real world 20% means you are pulling way more than your weight. 

The Healing taken chart: (I don’t remember the numbers, but I remember the rank)
Tank
Warrior
Hunter 2
Lock (lot of lifetap heals)
Rouge
Hunter 1
Priest
Shammy healer
Druid healer
Me
 

So, to re-cap
-guild first kill on two new bosses
-guild first complete kara clear
-new epic pants
-first place on the DPS chart by 60%
-Dead last place in healing taken.
 

If my head gets any bigger I am going to have to walk sideways to get thru doors.

How to have more gold than you can spend:

Step 0: I am a firm believer that unless you are in my position financially, Or unless you are the guild designated crafter (i.e. the entire guild feeds you mats to make things) you should not have a crafting profession.  If you are not 70, do not have epic flying, do not have all the gold you need, and are not the guild’s only XXX profession, then you need dual gathering professions.  I chose Herb / skin.  Mine / skin is also good.  The only exception I have seen to this is a friend that had a friend.  They teamed up.  One was tailor / herb, the other was enchanter / mine.  The enchanter fed the tailor cloth, the tailor fed the enchanter greens to DE.  They both had one gathering for pure profit.

 

Let me say this clearly, if you have dual gathering you will not only be able to buy more than what you could craft, but you will have money left over after that.

 

Step 1: Get to 70. 

This is perhaps the hardest and most involved part.

 

Step 2: Do every quest you can find.  When you hit 70 there will likely be entire zones you have hardly scratched the surface on.  For example, I had not hardly touched Blades Edge, Netherstorm, or Shadowmoon Valley.  While leveling I completely exhausted all the quests in Hellfire, Zangamarsh, Nagrand and Terrokar.  After hitting 70 I spent over a month doing all the quests in the other areas.  A good day of questing is very profitable, and there are plenty of quest rewards that are very nice, an will save you a ton in the next step.

 

Step 3: AFTER doing all the quests in EVERY zone that has green level quests or higher, then raid the AH and gear yourself.  Doing the quests will yield quite a few pieces better than what the AH has to offer, saving you hundreds of gold. 

 

Step 4: As soon as they are available, start doing the dailies.  Dailies pay between 9-18G, and many give you rewards also.  Do every daily you can.  Do them before anything else, unless you have a REALLY good reason to do that something else.  Group up for the dailies and it speeds them along.  The only ones that suck in a group are the gathering ones, but even then, most of the time it involves fighting which is faster in a group.  Group up with the guild healer / tank for some seriously happy guildies.  If you are facing a decision between doing a daily and doing a regular quest, do the daily.  Dailies will be there tomorrow.  Do regular quests only when you have done all the dailies you have access to.  To start out, the cooking one, and the ones in Skettis (in Terokar, above Alerian Stronghold, need flying to get there) do not need to be unlocked. 

 

There are unlockable dailies in Shadowmoon valley for the Netherwing, and in Blades Edge.  The Netherwing not only pays well, once you hit exalted you get a dragon epic flying mount that is arguable the most sweet looking mount in the game.

 

There is a limit to the number of dailies you can do.  It used to be 10, but the new patch changed the limit 25.  Doing 25 dailies is Hours of play that take you all over the world.  You start to learn which dailies you like and which you don’t.  Keep in mind, you can DO as many dailies as you can pick up, you can only TURN IN 25.  If you have an epic long play day, pick up and complete every single daily you can do, turn in 25, and you have a jumpstart on the next days…all you have to do the next day is run around turning them in.  Use some logic.  If you did the Heroic daily and one other and are trying to decide which one to turn in, remember that the one you turn in today you can do again tomorrow.  If you are not planning on doing the heroic the next day, save that one and turn in the other one, that way the other one is available again the next day.  If you have multiple times you play throughout the day, consider your hearthstone.  I log in before work and do the ones in Netherstorm, that way I can hearth back, and by that night my hearthstone is done on cooldown. 

 

Doing all 25 dailies will pay around 250G, and you can usually pick up another 50-100G worth of greys, greens, and gathered mats.  As a skinner / herb I usually end up with 2-3 stacks of Knothide scraps and a 1-2 stacks of Knothide leather, and half a stack or so of 4-5 different herbs.  I usually don’t have enough time to do them all, there is 4-5 that I do most days.  I tend to do them in clusters, so I do all the ones in a particular area, then the next day do them in another area.  Heroic dailies reward extra badges, and PVP rewards extra honor, so they are both worth the time if you are doing those. 

 

With the new patch, I always try and do the dailies that reward the Supplies bag, as they always contain a green, can contain a blue, and can also contain a badge. 

 

After a while you will have everything that you can equip filled with the best piece that is available at the AH or better.  You will stockpile some extra consumables.  You will buy some things that are insanely priced just because you can. 

 

Then you are where I am.

 

When you reach that point you get to have some fun with it.  I bought about 40 Heavy leather balls.  I made a macro that said “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball” and it threw a ball at someone.  I sat there on the bridge in Ironforge and threw balls at every non-70 that rode past me. 

 

 

p.s. I just remembered, if you are doing the new dailies in Hellfire, the one where you have to grow the little ball of fire, you don’t have to be the one that loots to get your ball to grow.  If you see someone else fighting one run near it.  When the fire guy dies both their and your fire ball gets bigger, they just get the loot, and I have never seen anyone complain about free DPS help. 

Spending Gold

So, I’m 70.  I have better gear than the AH can sell me.  I have twinked all my alts with 18 slot bags and the best gear I can find.  I have epic flying.  I spent almost 3K gold on Coilfang Armaments to turn in for Cenarion rep so I can get their epic flying mount.  I bought my way to exalted with Scryer turn ins.  I bought and turned in as many Akkora feathers and Ivory tusks as I could turn in.  I have a good stockpile of flasks and potions.  I have bags full of the best buff foods.

Now what?

I have nothing to spend money on.

Then I remembered something.  Runecloth. 

I have decided to make a concentrated effort to work on getting all the different mounts I can.  First on the list is a Night Elf Mount.  I have bought the AH almost dry of runecloth many times now.  There is nothing like filling three 18 slot bags with stacks of runecloth, then turning them in and heading to the mailbox for more.  So far I have gotten from about 3/4 way thru honored just to into revered.  It will take many more trips loaded up will finish off my Nightsaber. 

After this I plan on getting a horse, then a mechanostrider just to complete the set.  While I’m buying the Runecloth for that I’ll work on the PVP mounts, the talbuck, and the Elephant.  If I manage to get all those, then I will start working on the Frostsaber in Winterspring.  That one is the coolest looking, but also the most pain in the butt to get.

In the meantime I have donated 1,000G each to three different people to allow them to get their Epic Flyer. 

*Update.  I know I have not posted this yet, but I write it a few days ago, and things have changed.  Staring on Sunday I made a concentrated effort to clean as much Runecloth out of the AH as feasible.  I have a limitation.  I will not buy at more than 11S per piece.  That means 2.2G per stack.  I buyout whatever I can, and bid on the rest.  In the morning I stop in and check my auctions.  Did you know that there is a limit to how many things you can bid on at one time?  I didn’t.  I have been riding that limit since Sunday night.

Last night I mailed all the cloth on my bank alt to my main.  I ported to Darnassus.  I emptied my backpack and Two 18 slot bags into the bank.  I picked up all 20 stacks that I had in the bank, and then hit the mail.  Message after message I emptied it until my inventory was full.  I ran over and dropped them all.  Three times I had to go back to the mailbox and completely fill my inventory, then run back and turn them all in.  I’m now about 60% thru revered. 

I want to petition Blizzard to make a turn in that takes more than one stack at a time, like the turn in for the scryer / aldor marks, you get a choice between turning in one or 10.  I want a choice to turn in one or 5.  That would save me a TON of time in the coming months.