The Importance of Quick Decisions

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 11:19 AM

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Mommar here.

I seriously thought about titling this 'my 20,000$ days' but that felt a little too much like humble bragging.   But I will share a story that occurred this weekend to help you understand why it's important to not just sell but know how to trade your items.

Since the opening patch of 5.4 I have burned my cooldowns on all of my professions.  Many players have been slowing down their professions and just concentrating on the items that make direct sales.  One of the items that are produced on the dailies is the Balanced Trillium Ingot.   Each of these if done on your daily rotation costs you a the Trillium Bar (yes,  I know you can use a Spirit Of War + a Trillium Bar but these are still expensive on many servers).

Most of the time,  when I've produced 21 of the bars I will go ahead and craft one of the belt recipe.   Having an overabundance of plate wearers on my server that DPs I generally will craft an Avengers Trillium Waistplate selling at around 9500g.   Doing quick math and producing my own Trillium bars from my miner, I end up profiting the entire 9500g.   For the 21 days that ends up Avg about 450g a day.  Some servers show this item going for higher.   My server seems to like this number with maybe a 10% give or take.

So I listed my belt (Saying "Avengers Belt Assemble' because it amused me) and went on my merry way to finish up some game chores.  Receiving an in game message a player asked if I would take 6500g for the belt.   Depending on my attitude for the day I sometimes would take that deal simply because I am not that worried so much about eeking out every bit of profit I can.  (Save the bricks and pitchforks,  I'm not the overbearing miser that some have set me up to be).

Deciding that his offer was a little low I dropped my price 500g.   He countered with an offer of 3000g and throwing in a Gooey Shaling from SOO raid.   Those that have read my missives before know that I do not like to buy pets from raids.   They feel unearned and I like to think I've earned everything I have in my inventory.   In this case I made an exception and considered making the trade.  I was near the AH so I went to see what the going rate on the Board was for the little Gooeyness to see just what the entire total was being offered.   To my surprise, I saw that there was one listed on the AH for 500g.   Knowing the drop rate for pets in any of the current raid tiers is pretty low that seemed very cheap to me.  So I jumped over to my favorite listing place theunderminejournal.com  to get a quick peek at what the normal going rate was.   The barterer had graciously suggested that the pet could easily be sold for 5k.   On most of my trades I like to trade for a little higher value than an item would be just from a gold transaction.   TUJ showed that the going rate for the pet was 7500g.  Doing quick math in my head that gave me an approximate value of 10,500 g.  I liked that number so I made the trade.

Here is where the fun begins.  After making the trade I quickly grabbed the 500g Gooey Shaling pet off the AH,  listed one on the Ah for 8500 and then added the new Shaling pet to my stable of awesomeness.   30 minutes later I received an ingame message saying that my pet had sold for 8500g.   So after all of these trades I ended up with

3000g  - original trade
1 Gooey Shaling - Original trade
8500g  sale on the AH

Subtract the 500g investment to flip the pet
Subtract AH fees

Ending up with a profit of just over 10,000g.   Now I could probably take the Pet I added to my book and sell that for another 8500g which would net me for three transactions just over 17500g.  But he's so cute that I just can't sell him... til he starts eating at my profits.

So why tell you this?   It truly isn't meant to make me feel superior.   I've told many stories of where I took the wrong end of a deal and ended up eating some crow.  Everytime I see someone selling a Sky Golem Mount for 15k it makes me kick myself for how much I paid to try to control the market early.  The reason I shared, this is simply because direct sales can net you a lot of cash.  Bartered sales or combinations that allow you to flip items off the AH can net you a huge increase in revenue.  Plus, you can come out with some nifty little toys in the end.

Now me and my little pet Blinky have to go whoop some pets around Azeroth.  Papa needs a new achievement.

Good Luck and Good Profit Hunting

PS.   The reason I was going to call it 25,000 day is because adding all of my professions that day I netted around 36,000g.   But that just was a really, really good day.

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. 

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The True Cost of Goods

Pitty Pat Sales

He's Not Heavy... I Will Carry Him

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:25 PM

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To give a little perspective,  currently my raiding guild does not do much when it comes to normal and heroic content during SOO.   The guild I belong to has more 'mature' members, with many of them having other hobbies that keep them busy.  One is a writer,  a couple do lots of travelling for work etc.  

One of the things I have found as I've geared my two raiding toons (Hunter, Arms Warrior) is that without the benefits of a weekly Seige of Orgrimmar raiding run I have had to run many many MANY flex and looking for raid runs to get a high gear level.  This has given me lots of practice with my rotation and knowledge of the fights.

Now understand this isn't to toot my own horn.  This idea that I have a relatively high gear level and have worked to obtain it will set the tone for what I'm about to speak about.   Having a discussion with a fellow guild member about the pitfalls of running LFR one item came up to mind.  Just how much carrying there is in flux and looking for raid runs.  We had slightly differing opinions on just how much personal responsibility should be taken when it comes to be geared for the next step in the progression.  Currently the progression goes LFR-Flex-Normal-Heroic.  In theory, this has people running LFR runs until they are able to hold up on most of the fights and contribute.  Some will draw that line at 100k and others have no problem with lowering this bar significantly. Tanks have to be able to survive and healers should be throwing out decent numbers to be able to keep up with the rest of the raid.

But anyone who has run flex lately can see that there is a stiff drop in some of the players.  Some fights provide monster numbers on trash (cleave arms warriors rule, multi mob fights) but put us in the Thok fight and most melee has significantly lower numbers.  Many of these questions about who is carrying who has to be taken with an overall view of a run.

Let's take for instance a Flex 2 run.  The first two bosses can a lot of stand up and fight moments.  Little movement is necessary on the first two fights other than repositioning.  Both fights contain single target and multi targeting moments.  This gives a good baseline on what a raid member can bring to the party.

For me, I like a baseline for Flex of around 75k (my guild mate argued at 100k).  Anything less than 50k and someone is being carried through the fight.  Having spent some time in flex with multiple toons I understand that trash doesn't count.  You can beef up your numbers and look awesome, but when the boss hits the numbers drop significantly.  This is where most people's kick button starts to get itchy.  It becomes too easy to blame DPS for not being high enough.  Or heals to not being high enough etc.  Tanks take the most abuse in flex,  which has caused them to be more picky and more scarce.  Why run as a tank and take abuse when you can run as a dps,  get carried and then get the same tank gear?

One of my biggest 'carry me' moments I have seen has happened through a friends guild.  I went along with a friend of mines guild for a weekly run.  Their raid leader asked what everyone else wanted to do.  Their progression had Normal 1 and Normal, 2 on the farm.  The raid leader chirped out and said that, let's try wing 3. Feeling a little froggy I jumped and started looking at any changes.  The cringe in my heart happened when the raider leader and many others said they had never been in wing 3 even on LFR and flex.  I knew I was going to be facing a large repair bill right then and there.  The bosses in wing three can be the most demanding and unforgiving when it comes to tactics.  You can get away with one mistake with higher level gear, but two mistakes and everyone are running back and resetting.   After an hour and a half of dying over and over again, it was obvious that no progress was going to happen today.  I mumbled to a online friend over what happened and how a few lfr/flex runs would give them the tools to be much more successful.  Basic knowledge is a prerequisite to being successful

All of this becomes concerned with the changes that will be happening with Warlords of Draenor.   Flex will be the new normal, with bosses and difficulty scaling to the amount of players in a raid.  Blizzard revamping the group finding system and the LFR system to allow much more selective choice when it comes to what players come to the show.  LFR will still be the default gear grinds and learn the tactics.  The looking for group/flex runs will be the bread and butter learning the tactics and how to raid successfully   Truly, I'm hoping that Blizzard adds a part that requires players to run LFR at least once to open up the next wings.  It will irritate the hardcore raiders, but save a lot of heartache and frustration for your normal readers who become annoyed with carrying the unprepared players.

Now that my Soapbox is a little dented with some stomping.  Let's get out there and enjoy the upcoming weeks of the Seige of Orgrimmar.  Don't worry brother,  I will still carry you.  Just Bring Noodles.

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. 

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It's Called An Epic Quest For A Reason
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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.

-----------

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
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