Road to WOD: Finish Your Chores

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 11:37 AM

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One of the most difficult things to do is to keep motivated.  Wait,  I think I've said that over and over again.  You probably get the idea that the next 3-4 months will be a little bit more of a drag for the average player.  Many players will be logging on less and less during the week as the Mists of Pandaria expansion gets a little bit less shine on the content.

Getting prepped for the next expansion, Warlords of Draenor, can add a little bit of purpose to your gaming life.  One of the prep items is your long abandoned farm in Halfhill.

You remember Halfhill?   The place that was o so awesome at the beginning of MOP?   Finishing your daily runs to open up new land to farm.  Yes,  that's right World of Warcraft had become World of Farm Craft.

So why should these plots of land become important in your future setup during Warlords of Draenor?  One item that will continually be able to be made are the Motes of Harmony.  Right now most players have a stockpile of these things in their inventory.  Turning them in every so often for cash and prizes from the different vendor.  I spend many of them on the Black and White Trillium ore for crafting purposes.   Come WOD this won't be as important.  Except that material could easily become much more scarce come WOD.

Look at the logic.  We know that there are massive changes coming with WOD when it comes to gathering.  No longer will players be needing to go to older expansion zones to gather items.  This could easily mean that items such as Trillium ore and herbs become that much more valuable.

The other thing to look at is your own crafting needs.   Engineering has received a long term blessing because they have pets that can be crafted.  Right now they are much more expensive due to the length of time to craft (Jard's Peculiar Energy Source) and many people not continuing to craft these during the next expansion.  Older crafting pets can be a good source of income with the next expansion.  For 10 minutes of work a day (farming your crops,  replanting) and then finishing your daily you could easily next a large amount of coin.

Other professions might not be as lucky when it comes to pets, but they still have opportunities.  Simply just flipping purchased ore and herbs on the Auction House can add more money into your coffers.   Where the main profit making of these items might not always be available,  alternative options of selling can add much more profit into your bank.

Many players will just start with a clean slate when the WOD expansion opens its doors.  Taking advantage of your knowledge and your preparation can give you that gold making advantage that others won't have.

Good Luck and Good Profit Hunting

Some Day I Will Learn
Garrosh Is My Friend
You Lost That Alpha Feeling
Too Many Coins On My Hand
We All Make Mistrakes
World Without The Auction House
Not So Smart Loot
It Was A Great Day
WOD:  Prepping For The Storm
Special Brand Of Stupid
Silver And Gold Have I None
Worth What Someone Will Pay For It

Some Day I Will Learn

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 10:04 AM

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Mommar here.

Another Tuesday has come and gone,  resetting the loot tables for Garrosh runs as well as world bosses.  With the change in the most recent hotfix that made world bosses taggable by everyone celestial runs have become a lot easier.  Running in there,  tagging an active mob that players are already killing and getting credit (along with your world famous Bag o' Gold) makes running 7 players through the grinder that much quicker.

After the success of adding more gold (and the occasional piece of gear) to my alts I then look to tackle the wonders that if flex 4.  Having said it many times I like to get my flex 4 runs done early in the week simply because the better players during this time and my chances of success are that much better.

So I popped open the Oqueue extension and watched the filling of run requests.  Words like 'quick' 'easy' 'no noobs' (my personal favorite) flash through each group loading up.  Usually I ignore most of these simply because they rarely are quick and if you only have 3 players in your group how do you really know it will be quick and easy?  To borrow a line from a favorite movie of mine "... Quick and easy is how you bake a cake,  no run a multi-million dollar business such as ours ".

I queued up for a couple of seemingly interesting groups forming.  They were listed as being run by 10/14H (shorthand for 10 of 14 bosses down in heroic) and waited to see if I got invited to the dance.   Getting my magic golden ticket I was ready to go.  I bring my own food and go and repair before I even queue.  Similar to my views on queuing for groups on the Timeless Isle (be on the island,  be ready to go, don't expect summons) etc.

After finishing off Garrosh and receiving my bag of nothing I logged onto my Hunter to see if she wouldn't be as successful.  Being a Hunter generally I get chosen to run belts on Seigecrafter and end up killing the engineer for the Garrosh kill.  Luckily, there was another hunter that volunteered to go.  Both Seigecrafter and the Bugs went down pretty easily.  Then it was time for the main event.  Even the trash between the bugs and the Garrosh went down pretty easily.

Having high hopes that this would be a 1 shot kill we got set up.  Lately the big strategy is to stack up on the spot just in front of Garrosh and kill the weapon as it pops.  Seems to make things a lot easier because of less required running around and more DPS on the boss.  But the RL decided that we needed to dance for the run.

First attempt we died pretty quickly.  Second attempt we made it a little bit further and then the tirades began.  Players blaming tanks,  tank blaming healers and my little 170k dps sitting there deciding if it was time to call it a night and try the next day.

But being a little bit stubborn I stuck it out and we went at it with 11 people.  Now generally the sweet spot I have seen is 13-14 players (or a full 25 grouping) when it comes to being successful.   After the fourth attempt being a complete and utter failure I decided it was time to retire from the group and check on some auctions.  Politely I thanked them for the attempts and went on my merry way.

Moral of the story?   Even heroically attuned players are not always successful.  Maybe I should have gone with the quick and easy cake.   mmmm Cake.

Good Luck and Good Hunting

Garrosh Is My Friend
You Lost That Alpha Feeling
Too Many Coins On My Hand
We All Make Mistrakes
World Without The Auction House
Not So Smart Loot
It Was A Great Day
WOD:  Prepping For The Storm
Special Brand Of Stupid
Silver And Gold Have I None
Worth What Someone Will Pay For It

5 Tips To Survive Cross Realm Raids

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:46 PM

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The latest PTR (Player Test Realm) just popped up on the boards.  The biggest change was that Blizzard has created it's own cross realm version of Oqueue.

If you have not used this mighty addon yet,  go out and download it.  It makes Flex raiding much easier because it adds your name into a swarm between servers allowing you to get involved quicker than just waiting for a raid to pop up on your own server.

But as always,  there are a few tips that will help with surviving these cross realm raids with your sanity in tact.

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1.   Know Your Role and Shut Your Mouth

The odds are that if you jump into an Oqueue raid then you will be with 13 or more strangers.  They do not know how good (or how bad) you are.  The only time that I would suggest saying anything is that if you do not know what you are supposed to do.  This doesn't mean that Oqueue flex raids are the best source of learning what your role is.  That's what LFR is for.  But if you are a tank,  then tank.  If you are dps then soak up those puddles in Flex wing 3 and say thank you very much.  If you get involved with strategy and 'my guild does it this way' you will only irritate people and the raid will break up that much quicker.

2.   Your Raid Will Fail At Times

No raid is perfect.  Someone will probably die in the raid.  Having your finger on the abandon button only will drive you bonkers.  Repair bills are part of the game.  If your raid starts to wipe continually on the same thing over and over again.  Then look for the eject button and move onto a better group.

3.   Oqueue will probably flag you PVP.

This doesn't occur all the time.  But 7 out of 10 you will be transported and flagged PVP.  Too many times have I ended up right dead smack in the middle of 10 or so enemies all flagged and looking to put uncomfortable items into my body part.  If this happens then just look for your happy flight path and stay there for a while.  Where you can do some farming,  being in a raid keeps you from being able to complete most quests.  So sit around and chat with your new found raid buddies and get a lay of the land.

4.   When Looking For Raids in Oqueue,  Look For Raids With 6 or More People Already Joined.

This tip will not make everyone happy.  Mostly because those raids that are looking for 'fast clears' need quality people.  You probably are quality simply because you read this journal.  But your awesome abilities might also be carrying someone that is not as good as you.  The Oqueue gives a lot of information including how many are in the queue,  and even how many wipes on bosses have occurred with that raid group.   If there is a lot of wipes and no boss kills then reconsider whether it's going to be the group for you.

5.  Be Geared For The Content

If your new shiny toon is running around in ilvl 502 gear,  you are not prepared for flex 4 Garrosh.  Sorry to say that you will be probably dragging down the group and cause more problems.  The odds are that you won't even be invited into the group.  For me a good idea of what ilvl to expect is

Wing 1 496+
Wing 2 510
Wing 3 515
Wing 4 525

Of course your mileage may of course.  your 502 gear might be awesome and can solo everything.  These are tips and not laws.  But being a good part of a team,  even a pickup team like flex raiding is to be prepared to carry your weight.  Everyone has been in a raid where there is someone dragging the raid down.  If you look to your left and right and cannot find the person who is dragging the raid down,  there is a good chance it is you.

Bonus tip

Mind your tongue.  The temptation is to let loose your four letter word prowess when your angry for that last failure.  It is frustrating to crash and burn in something that not just last week you cleared quickly.  No one is motivated by calling someone a *(*&( nub.  If you feel that your point cannot be made by calling everyone your entire cursing repertoire then you are taking this game far too seriously.  Unless you are getting paid to play and players are taking money directly out of your physical pocket,  it might be time to go and play some Angry Birds for a little bit.

Just keep these tips in mind when you go into your next flex run and enjoy the game.  It's just that a game and not real life.

Good Luck and Good Hunting

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbear @ gmail. Dot com or find me on twitter at "@JMTCMommar" You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up, and I will buy you a glass of juice. 

Farming Darkmoon Faire
Know Your Gear... Know Your Gold
Ruler of Your Own Gold Garrison
Busy Busy Wednesday
It's Called An Epic Quest For A Reason
Chain Flipping
Taste of Streaming Raids and Kites
Monday Morning Raiding Quarterback
WOW:  Warlords of Draenor
Tomorrow Is Blizzcon
Glyph Me Once Shame On You
Days Of The Dead
 The Times Ten Challenge
The Blanket Method
Lost All Hallows Day
You Never Know

New Toy For Raiding Boys (And Girls)

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:50 PM

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In the past few months I've started to balance my gaming life between making gold and raiding.  Making gold has not always been the forefront of playing World of Warcraft.  Originally I was raiding with a enjoyable fun group of friends.  Ultimately as with many guilds we ended up breaking up due to players leaving the game and finding 'real' lives.

Later on I started to drag my way through the trenches in making every mistake in the book in making gold.  As I was doing this I started to drift away from raiding.  To keep the story short something happened with the guild I was at that point and I completely left raiding and focused on playing solo toons (and the occasional groups) and making my own fortune.

With the introduction of a much stronger Looking for raid and flex raiding I was able to step up my raiding schedule without interference with my gold making duties.  Spending an hour a day making gold through the different means we've talked about allowed me to step back into the boss arena and take my swings.

I did find one thing that made it more difficult to pick up groups was that I live on a medium population server and there wasn't a lot of cross realm conversations.  LFR would let me pick up one raid a week where I could loot for each boss.  This was nice but by the end of the week I had run all three of my raiding toons through everything and I was back to bumbling my way around Timeless Isle looting and pillaging those poor mobs. 

Then a friend made a mention of a very interesting tool.  Someone had taken a PVP pre-made add-on named Oqueue and converted it allowing cross realm groupings for raids.  The core functionality of the PVP side is still there and very strong.  But with the addition of cross grouping for all types of raids it opened up a very interesting and enjoyable side. 

It's very simple once it's set up.  When you first add the package into your addon folder and start up the Wow engine you see what looks like two eyes on your mini map.  Clicking that and your assaulted by a varied amount of  data.  You see a list of everyone that is using the new Oqueue channel that's in the background and just how many raids are there.  At the bottom of the window the first button I clicked was one that said 'qualified'.  This limits what you to see based on your gear you are wearing. 

There are a lot of settings that are available but the basic strategy is that you see one of the raids or premades that your interested in.   It sends a cross realm friend request to whoever is hosting the group and they decide if your added or not.   There is also a wait list function that is built in so that if the premade is full your set into a queue (get it,  the name and queue ha ha) and if someone drops then the next one up is added.  You do have to queue and stay in the spec that you want to raid in.  So tanking spec gets picked up as tanks and heals/dps the same. 

One of the things I did notice is that when I was helping with a four celestial kill that if I flipped between windows reading something that it would fade me between realms.  This became a problem because I had joined a premade on a pvp realm and ended up fading cross realm into about 20 flagged allies.  After my death run back I didn't flip between my windows til after the raid was finished.

The forums at http://oqueue.forumotion.com give a lot of tips and tricks on how to get the most out of this addon. 

Hopefully see you in the next flex raid.  I will be the one pew pewing from the corner.

Good luck and Good Hunting

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbear @ gmail. Dot com or find me on twitter at "@JMTCMommar" You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up, and I will buy you a glass of juice. 

Never To Early To Reset
My Timeless Coin Heart Is Full
Nobody Knows the Golems I Have Sold
Gold Mercenary
Surviving the Raid
Darkmoon Faire Dead?
Golden Days
Tip For Timeless Isle
Be Prepared
Poor Poor Spirits of Harmony
Not Enough Loot On My Hands
10 Rules To Price My Golem.