Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets

Last night in ICC10, things started out great! We one shot the first four bosses, and made our way towards Stinky and Precious.

Then [Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets] dropped from trash! I was very excited. The first thing I thought was, "what an awesome loot policy it is to allow BoEs be given to participating main spec toons". My second (although hard to say, since they came thick and fast at this point) was something about how wonderful it is to tank along side a Paladin. I was also relieved that Parl's warrior Oddox had the thing already when he rolled for it... and that certain rogues just like to make trouble. You'd think after being made to wait (not be me (or on purpose)) to roll on [Death's Verdict] he'd know better.

The main reson for my excitement was really about the gun's looks. It is a relatively small upgrade, since ranged weapons are teeny stat sticks for warriors... but just take a second look at that thing! It effortlessly combines a bayonet, with a mini-gun-esque front barrel, with pointy!

Things got better from there, and after one shotting Festergut, we faced off against Rotface. We two healed the encounter, and things were looking very promising right from word kgo. By the time the first Ooze combined and exploded Rotface was at about 45% health, and we had pretty good slime merges right through the fight, leading to a kill.

I also really enjoyed kiting the slimes as a Warrior tank. Vigilance is a great tool to keep the healer aggro on an even keel, and if you time it just right... Heroic Throw, Shockwave, Thunder Clap and shouts are enough to keep the big slimes rolling your way.

To top things off I hit exalted with Ashen Verdict and picked up [Ashen Band of Endless Courage].

25k Gold Transaction

My guild recently looted [Ikfirus's Sack of Wonder] and what a wonderous sack it was.

We have a policy of allowing toons in the run to take BoE items as an upgrade for their main spec, but failing that sell the items through our guild bank. The guildie discount for BoE items is around the 65 - 70% mark, which means not only does the toon get a bargain, but everyone else in the run (and the guild as a whole) benefits from the coin (we sell discounted potions / flasks / eternal belt buckles / enchants through the guild bank).

On this occasion, we banked the item after no interest for a main spec upgrade (mostly due to the peculiar itemisation, and us not running a Bear in our raids). When I looked at the auctioneer data for the item, I started to get a little excited. 25k gold seemed... like... a LOT. So I set the guild price at 8k, and went to the AH.

First up, I wanted to list it at an obscene price on the off chance that a guildie wanted it at 8k. 29400 gold would net almost 28k, so I started there. Almost immediately, I received an offer in the mail from someone's bank alt, offering 25k gold. Later in the day I was whispered with offers over 10k, and got the resigned, "some people have too much gold" when I told them our current best offer.

After checking with guildies that could use the upgrade (8k was still a little steep), I met up with our buyer in Dalaran. At this point in the game, the most coin I had amassed across all my toons was 25k gold, so seeing that much in the trade window got my heart beating a little faster. Even my personal throughput of gold through the guild bank of around 20k gold just didn't compare to seeing it all in one lump sum.

My curiosity got the best of me, and I enquired as to who would be wearing the chest... and it turns out it was going to a horde bear tank in one of the more progressed horde guilds on the server. Although I've dabbled in neutral AHs and grabbing the odd recipe or two from the horde AH, I couldn't believe that I hadn't thought of monitoring the horde AH for those must have BoE items (and other potential money spinners).

So much to my surprise, we decided to bank the coin to give us a head start in Cataclysm, should the guild changes require any actual gold.