Exalted with <Fidelity>

 

I'm excited to have finally reached exalted with Fidelity! I have mixed feelings about the restrictions on the ways you can increase guild reputation, but once I figured out the various reputation and guild experience caps I hit the daily circuit pretty hard. I'm pleased that Blizzard are also increasing the amount of guild reputation rewarded for raid bosses, and I'll continue to try and round up guildies for guild heroics which is much more entertaining than dailies.

My dailies of choice were the Tol Barad, and it just so happened that hitting exalted coincided with enough commendations to purchase: [Reins of the Drake of the West Wind].

 

5,000 / 25,000 Glyphs

 

A big milestone yesterday for Twitchie, hitting the 5000 glyph mark since Cataclysm hit. Since Twitchie is in a 'quiet time' guild, he's the only scribe in his guild, making glyph output very easy to track.

So at the moment, I'm just a touch behind the goal of 25,000 glyphs in a year. Initially when I started this quest, I was dominating the glyph market, and increased production of glyphs just lead to more and more coin. There were a few 'glyphmas' moments after cataclysm hit where I just could not keep up with demand and the coin was flowing in. However, recently there has been a surge in competition on the glyph market, so both sales and profit are falling.

Which leads me to the question, "Do I really want to achieve my 25,000 glyphs in a year goal?"

On the positive, I think producing an average of almost 70 glyphs per day over the course of a year is pretty awesome. And even with the increased competition, it is still an excellent way to make coin in game.

On the negative, as my competition increases, my sales decrease, profit margins falls and inventory management gets more difficult as I have trouble offloading glyphs as fast as I produce them. The bottom line is my gold per hour suffers, and while I love the gold making game withing World of Warcraft, there's a lot of other things I like to do in game.

So... I'd love to get your thoughts. Firstly, what do you think of the goal itself? Are you into setting yourself an extremely arbitrary target and going for it? Or do you prefer to reach your gold goals as efficiently as possible?

Secondly, what is your strategy for the glyph market? Do you have multiple posting alts divided by class (or by volume like this consortium poster)? What addons do you use to manage your inventory?

I'm resistant to multiple posting alts, and would prefer to use any or all of: Twitchie's bags, bank or guild bank to manage glyph inventory. I'm keen to find an addon that can not just shuffle stuff between bags and bank, but follow a set of logic about how it does it (e.g., make up stacks of 2 glyphs for posting from my bank). I haven't found this addon yet, but I'll keep looking. The major limitation of using one toon is simply that even with four scribbling bags, there isn't enough space to post all of the profitable glyphs in one sitting, but keeping inventory management manageable without resorting to posting alts would be a nice compromise.

Drake fixed!

 

=O I'm actually riding!

PUG Horror Stories #1: Ah $#@% it!

By way of introduction, my shadow priest Zenborg will be covering all things related to pick up groups. I to a lot of 'pugging' on my alts, and will share some of my experiences (both good and bad here). On with the story...

Today on Twitchie, I had a random heroic dungeon group disband in record time, and it inspired what will probably be a long series of posts describing some horror stories, as well as my own advice on how they could be prevented.

The Death Knight tank asked at the start of our Heroic Throne of Tides run, "Any CCs?". I was only a few words into my sentence describing my fear / succubus combination, our Ret Paladin’s repent (and the group disbanded so quickly I can’t even remember the third DPSs class) when he followed up with, "Ah $#@% it" and pulled the first pack which is notable for it contains not just one, but two healers.

The tank also didn’t specify a primary target, so we all merrily opened up our AOE and set in for what turned out to be quite a long haul. Eventually, the tank marked a skull target, but with virtually non-existant interrupts it just wouldn’t go down, since two healers far out paced the DPS. I did my best to time fears and a death coil, but to no avail and the healer left... then a DPS, and another... and after a final expletive declaration, the tank as well.

So my plea to tanks (especially for a pick up group) is firstly, mark a skull target! If nothing else, a single skull means a mob burned down quickly, reducing the healing load. It also gives melee a definitive target that their white damage lands on, and should help substantially with knowing which mob will have the majority of aggro pumped into it.

Secondly, in a pick up group, use some CC at least on the first pull. As we all just experienced, a 15% buff to damage and healing can’t overcome completely ignoring the basic abilities of the mobs you’re trying to kill. If you EVER have to wait for the healer to regain some mana, use MORE CC. It is completely false economy to avoid using CC and burn the group as a whole down faster, if you then have to wait around for healer mana. Be nice to your healer, use CC, and the run will go smoother and faster than if you didn’t. If after the first pack, your healer announces they are bored... then by all means ramp it up a little bit.

Lastly, a plea for all tanks and melee DPS... interrupts are awesome.

I love bags!

 

I just can’t get enough bag space, so finally after kitting out Zenborg and Twtichie in their BoE tailoring epics, I had enough [Dreamcloth] left over to make Jossamine (Jondy’s warlock) a pair of [Breeches of Mended Nightmares] AND make Borgthor a [Illusionary Bag]!

The tough decision was which bag in my bank to replace, as the smallest is now 20 slots. [Tattered Hexcloth Sack] won out over [Papa's New Bag].

STOP PRESS!

While I got the wowhead link for [Papa's New Bag], I realised there's ANOTHER bag that is 22 slots called [Papa's Brand New Bag] which also had a chance of dropping from Bronjahm <Godfather of Souls> in The Forge of Souls. I hope it was just bad RNG, and not passing on the bag because I thought I had it.

So back to the bags I actually do have... In the screenshot above, you can see my other favourites. Right to left, they are: [Mammoth Mining Bag] which I keep on me full time now that I am crafting a LOT of [Ebonsteel Belt Buckle]s and just pop a few on the AH each time I log on. Perhaps it's time I put it back in the bank and craft them in bulk and let my AH toons do the posting... but I'm getting distracted.

Next up are the Haris Pilton bags, [Portable Hole] and ["Gigantique" Bag]. I was a little surprised that there wasn't an achievement for equipping her hole after they acknowledged my sack. Oh well.

I have chronic bag space issues on Borgthor, who keeps a lot of BoP stuff with largely sentimental value. I'm not sure if I'm mentioned my shield collection on the blog before, which I sometimes am tempted to prune. Jondy won't let me throw away my imperial plate set (which dresses me up like a Stormwind guard), and the festival stuff... oh the festival stuff. Then of course, there's tons and tons and tons of gear. I'm adverse to throwing anything away that I could possibly need in the future... although with the constant gear resets and reforging, it is much less of an issue these days.

So to the sad news, Blizzard took away one of my favourite bags, the [Supply Bag], which was associated with the Argent Dawn (revered if I recall correctly). I remember so vividly, leveling my first toon and deciding that I just had to have this huge massive bag. I had assumed that I vendored it until I looked it up and realised that it probably disappeared when classic quests were redesigned for Cataclysm.

DOUBLE STOP PRESS.

What can only be described as a completely rambling post... I'm coming full circle. The [Supply Bag] is no longer available, but I still have mine! I equipped it in the bank when I decided that a mining bag for the bank AND my bags was overkill. I sent all more old ore / bars to alts to streamline my storage and threw my PvP gear in this bag in the bank. /Phew.

Rounding out my collection are [Enlarged Onyxia Hide Backpack], [Dragon Hide Bag], and more [Glacial Bag] and [Embersilk Bag]s than you can poke a stick at. I think I vendored the [Halaani Bag] quite early on since for some reason I wasn't too attached to it. Oh, and don't forget the ubiqutous [Abyssal Bag] that is a mainstay of my alts since soulshards were removed from the game.

Well, that's quite a trip down memory lane. Bags are awesome.

Working as a Team

<Fidelity> recently completed Working as a Team, with inscription being last cab off the rank. I leveled Zenborg's enchanting to 525 reasonably quickly, and then realised that I didn't have the reputation required to contribute to the achievement. Shortly after that followed at least a week of ranting to my guild mates, real ID friends and IRL loved ones about how, "GAH! I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO QUEST ON MY ALTS". So after drowning my sorrows at the conveniently located Dwarven pub (so close to the auction house!), I got Zenborg into the Deepholm series of quests, Therazane dailies and finally just blowing through Mt. Hyjal for kicks (and the head glyph). After all that, I'd bagged us a tick for Enchanting (Blacksmithing and Mining were no-brainers) and manged to secure the shoulder and helm enhancements while I was at it.

I like the design of the [Banner of Cooperation], and how different it is to the battle standard for completing the Heroic dungeons as a guild. I'm wondering when Bliz will add a carpenter profession.

While the guild roster has been in a state of flux, we've got some momentum going for raiding and are at 5/12 and having a blast. As always for guild news, check out the blog.