Just wanted to say, you know this Sartharion thing where there are 3 drakes?

You know, in Obsidian Sanctum?

Well, I don’t know about 25 person mode, but in Normal 10, you can kill him with 4 level 85 people in LFR gear (or maybe a little better) very, very easily.

One Bear tank, one Enhancement Shaman, one Unholy Death Knight and one Arms Warrior equalled obliteration, plus the whole run is less than 15 minutes.

I think we didn’t need a tank, either. I think if I’d been there on my Hunter with a tanky pet, it would have been faster, and we might have been able to do it with only three of us.

Alex now has a Black Drake, and a 22 slot bag. That’s not bad for 15 minutes.

The one thing I was really surprised at, was that when Sartherion dies, all three drake adds vanish, regardless of whether they activated or not. So it’s a true boss zerg, dig in and destroy Sarth.

So you don’t even need to worry about the aftermath. Just burn Sarth. Bring strong DPS, no healers, a tank or a tank pet, kill the trash while leaving the drakes alone, then get in the middle, charge Sartharion and burn him down.

Took about 10 minutes, max.

I’m shocked. I really am.

The only reason I never thought to do it before was I assumed you only got a mount on 25 person mode. It wasn’t until Alex used Mogit to browse the mounts, and announced the Black Drake was one of his 5 favorites in the game, that I realized 10 person mode had one all it’s own.

Just FYI, so you can laugh your butts off, his other four favorites (that he doesn’t have) are; Dark Phoenix, X-51 Nether-Rocket Extreme, the Icebound Frostblood Vanquisher, and… the Phosphorescent Stone Drake.

He carefully wrote the names down on paper, and stapled them together to make a book. :)

Yeah… the what drake? Yeah, good luck finding Aeonaxx kid, here’s NPC Scan and a bag lunch. I packed it for you, aren’t I helpful? Have a fun summer vacation.

Now, back to answering emails about the ICC raid. You know, something achievable in our lifetime.

I don’t care whether you are a part of our upcoming Glory of the Icecrown Raider group or not. If you collect mounts or like dragons, and you haven’t done this yet, get three friends together and go do it! Don’t be afraid, don’t worry about what might happen.

If you weren’t going to do it anyway, then there ain’t no worries about ruining a lockout by messing up, right? And what else could you be worried about, a repair bill?

If you are, you don’t run LFR with the same people I do. If I walk away with less than 100g in repairs, I’m a happy camper.

Don’t forget, if the number of friends is hard to come by, you can use Battletags for cross-server groups. And when Mists comes out, your mounts get shared amongst your character. !

Just saying… we could all use some internet dragon time.

Good afternoon, folks!

As I said I would in the comments to the last post, I just went through the comments and made a list of folks who are actively interested in raiding some ICC action, getting some achievements, aiming towards the Drake.

I currently have 27 people total that are interested and able to go on Alliance side… pending a decision on dates and times.

I will be sending out an email in about 10 minutes to every one of those people, simply asking them to choose one or the other date/times, or both, that works for them so I can try like heck to build a group that will all be able to show up without hardship, and be able to keep coming each week until we all get it done. However short or long that may be.

So, yes, here is how I, in my eternal optimism, am hoping it will break down.

We will run ICC in 25 person mode, going for the Icebound drake. We will try as hard as possible to have 25 people in the group.

Do we need 25 people? Well, probably not. But that will be 25 people with the achievement and the drake, and I’m mighty happy with that plan.

Before each run in ICC, whoever wants to can start like 15, 20 minutes early and run Sartharion with 3 drakes up, to get a chance at that drake.  A Black Drake drops from 10 man Sarth, and a Twilight drops from 25, so technically the group could break down into those who want one or the other or whatever.

I’ll admit, the Sarth 3D thing seems pretty complicated for a tired old bear like me. The more people in the run, the more folks competing for one drake drop.

If you split the group into multiple teams for more drakes, than some folks have to share Battletags with someone other than me, cause I can’t be in both groups at the same time. And what about people who want shots at BOTH drakes? I didn’t figure on the group lasting past the ICC achieves, but even if ICC takes four weeks, that’s still only 4 drakes per group split among the people in the Sarth groups, so a bunch of folks won’t get ‘em, and be dissapointed…

You know, this is one of the reasons I stopped raid leading in the first place. I want everyone to get everything and be shiny, happy people, and I don’t want anyone left out. I wonder if I can figure out a way to dump the Sarth run leadership on Orv…

Anyway, I’ve done Sarth 3 drakes with ten players in 25 person mode, and it was a steamroller. Difficulty isn’t an issue, organizing the groups is. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it?

After a quick Sarth run, we form up in ICC, blast through for two hours, either Sunday night from 7 PM to 9 PM Central, or Wednesday night from 7 PM to 9 PM Central.

The times are about the best I can do. I know it still blows for anyone on the West Coast to try and do a run from 5 to 7, and then someone on the East Coast is running from 8 to 10, but I can’t really keep Alex up later than that without cutting into story time and stuff.

So, emails are going out, and we’ll see who is able to commit to what kind of schedule for, say, the next four weeks max and go from there!

I know I’m excited. Win, lose or epic fail, it sure as hell won’t be boring!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been doing some of the things I always put off before, because I was so busy.

I’ve gotten the Fox Kit, the Sea Pony, the Darkmoon Dancing Bear, things like that.

I was talking to Alex earlier, and he has the addon Mogit, and he was browsing through all of the mounts on there one at a time, oohing and aaahing.

I asked him what his favorite mount there was, the one he was most impressed by.

His reply was the Frostbrood Vanquisher mounts

He likes the Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher the best, but the Bloodbathed is also very awesome.

Well, those are on my list as well… and have long been ignored as being functionally impossible for me to get. Guild groups have always been halfway or more through the achievements, or not announced until the last minute and thus impossible to plan for and be around at the start.

Completing the needed achievements, the long list of quite difficult achievements requiring a large group, has been one of those wistful things a non-ICC raider just has to put aside, right?

Or is it?

It’s only lately occurred to me that, with the advent of Battletags, cross-server raid groups and LFR geared players, it might just be possible to put together a group of ten people who would all like to form a regular group, starting with zero achievements, and work their way through to getting the achievement and the mount before Mists of Pandaria and the account-wide mounts go into effect.

So, I’m putting it out there.

I would like to put together such a group. A group of ten people who want to start and complete the Glory of the Icecrown Raider (10 Man) by clearing Icecrown Citadel in 10 man, both normal and heroic, and all of the achievements within.

For those who are seriously interested, I’d think one night a week, and I’d give each person my Battletag so we could gather together the clans for the runs.

I have one big disadvantage in organizing this kind of thing. I never did any of the damn battles, not really, not even on normal. The first few bosses, sure, but nothing much past that.

So I’d need at least one person along who knows what to do, who can direct us.

Fortunately, the Wowhead entry comments are full of great suggestions on how to work as a team to accomplish the achievements, but it’s not as helpful when you never saw the fight before to interpret exactly what they’re saying.

So…

Are you interested? I mean, really interested? Would you want to be a part?

If the answer is yes, reply in the comments, and make sure the email address you use to register your comment (that only I see, never fear) is accurate so I can get in touch with you. If you wanted to mention which roles in the group you’d be good with playing as, all to the better.

Myself, I’d be willing to tank, heal or DPS, I don’t really care which character I’d go as. And Alex only has Death Knight DPS as an option, but as he’s doing some pretty good DPS now and is careful on getting out of the bad/moving when needed, he won’t even be getting carried!

If there was enough serious interest to field a 25 person team, I’d be willing to go for that, too, but it’s the middle of summer, and interest in WoW is waning for a lot of folks. I’m thinking getting a ten person group together would be more realistic, but what the heck do I know? Maybe I can’t even find five other people who’d want to go!

But I’m throwing it out there. I’d love to do it, and maybe I’m optimistic as hell, but I think it shouldn’t take more than three or four weeks to give it a damn good shot.

If we get enough folks to do it, I could see it being around 6 PM start Central time, for maybe two hours a pop, one night a week. And I’d really want to start and keep going with the same group who all need the mount and achievement, so everyone who takes part gets it.

Ah, hell with it.

What do you think? Anybody up for it?

I wish I had a great post to go with that title.

Three events all overlapping, the Lunar Festival, Love is in the Air, and the Darkmoon Faire have come to town (for reals, this time).

So much to do, so much to see, so many achievements to seek out. Providing the achievements don’t get wiped out… again.

So what did I do?

I went raiding on my Rogue, of course. It was the only responsible thing to do.

If my queue times this weekend were any indication, a whole lot of other people reacted the same way.

When last we spoke, my Rogue was nearing 85, with all sorts of goodies in the bank. I even wrote a post about how Blizzard seems to be bending over backward in giving us multiple paths to gear preparation to get us into Dragon Soul raiding as fast as possible.

How did it turn out?

My Rogue reached level 85 late Thursday night, and equipped some nice items.

By Sunday evening, my Rogue had an average iLevel of 378, and had completed all new Twilight heroics and the Dragon Soul LFR.

I’m still embarassed to be wearing a few pieces of Vicious leather gear, but my DPS in LFR, with flask and food buffs, was still in the top half of the raids at 18k to 20k.

Okay, the lower part of the top half… I guess it’s all in what you think is acceptable DPS for the LFR Dragon Soul. If you’re one of the ones that want to boot anyone in LFR that has DPS below 30k, I must seem like an unholy abomination. And WTF is with that, anyway?

I swear, it’s like the old joke of “LFM, ICC 25 man, need 24, post achieve” posted by a DPS without the achievement himself. Umm, what?

This isn’t a brag post about how leet my Rogue is, although it may sound like one. I’m not going to link to Armory and go, “Ooh, look what I got!” or anything like that.

The reality is, whatever gear I did get, anyone else can get in the exact same way. THAT is the point of the post.

What this is, is a completion of my earlier blog post thinking about gearing, and how easy or hard it may be.

I’ll grant you, this is not representative of a wide sample size. This is one class, a leather wearing Rogue. Also, I am not a new player. I’m fairly familiar with all aspects of the game, and the methods that can be followed to gain gear.

I think it is interesting to see that, armed with the guidance of an experienced player with max level characters, I was able to take a character to level 85 and equip enough gear that I could immediately step foot into the heroic Twilight instances, bypassing the original Cataclysm heroics (including the dreaded Zulroics), and do acceptable DPS right out of the gate.

Running the new Twilight heroics a total of three times gave me enough upgrades to enter Dragon Soul LFR, and running them six times total gave me enough Justice Points and Valor to be able to buy a Thrown weapon and a Trinket.

From that point, it’s on to Dragon Soul LFR, and we’re right in line with everyone else already running the new content, and conceivably able to enter Dragon Soul normal and make a contribution.

Are we talking optimized? No. It’s just the start. From there, the normal cycle of grinding Valor and chasing specific drops awaits us.

But think about what this really means.

If you have a friend that wants to try World of Warcraft, and you really did want to help them and get them into the content you are on as quick as possible, you can totally use your characters and professions and resources to buy item drops, craft BoE items, use your Valor to buy the BoE 397 epics for them and otherwise have things ready for them to step right into.

Not just theoretically, but realistically. It didn’t take me that long, just about a week, and running LFR on more characters for Valor than I normally would have.

The only true limitations to getting into a Dragon Soul raid are time, skill and a group of friends.

Damn, that’s a far cry from when I first got into raiding. Didn’t matter how good your friend was, if you just started, and your friends were running Blackwing Lair and Molten Core, good luck. You’ve got a long, long slog of questing followed by grinding Lower and Upper Blackrock Depths, doing attunement runs nobody elses wants to have to do again no matter how exciting it is to you, and so forth.

I think I should say one other thing.

People like to compare other games and how they handle getting a player into content against WoW. I might say something, and the reply will be, “Yeah, but game X did it like this which is inherently friendlier to players or better.”

That may be true, and brand X may very well do it in a way you like better, or even that IS better.

What I think is interesting about this is, World of Warcraft continues to change from it’s earliest days, when it followed in the footsteps of Everquest.

Even at that time, what we now think of as an incredibly long leveling process was revolutionary for how friendly it was to players compared to the alternative. The rested XP thing was just “wow, omg that is SO crazy!” And what about dying, and no XP penalty? Or having your gear looted from your actual in game corpse?

WoW was founded on being the kindler, gentler, less punishing MMO. More accessible. Easy to learn, difficult to master.

Other games have taken that revolutionary concept of ‘don’t hate the player’, and gone even further. Compared to those that have come after, WoW certainly can seem stuck in the past. It’s payment scheme, difficulty level and frequency of content updates all get challenged on a regular basis, and for some good reasons.

But I like to compare WoW with WoW. Where is it at compared to it’s roots?

IF you could somehow get a WoW bundle that would provide the game and all expansions in one reasonably-priced bundle, you could get a friend in with Recruit-a-friend, bring them up all the way to 85 in a flash, really TOO fast, and get them raiding with a remarkable lack of fuss and almost no grinding at all. None.

Just imagine…

So… what the hell are those people going to think when they hit 85 and suddenly face Therazane rep grinds?

Just, OMG, am I right?

Oh, and if you made it this far… eye candy!

It’s been an enchanting few weeks in the BBB household.

Cassie and I are playing a priest/paladin pair through the levels (we’re now 81!), and she decided to go Tailoring and Enchanting. I’ve also recently server transferred my old level 78 priest over, who was at the time maxed level in Jewelcrafting and Tailoring… when Wrath of the Lich King ruled the servers.

On my new server, I already have a max level Jewelcrafter, with epic recipes and stuff, and I ran out of the need for Truegold cooldowns months back.

What I don’t have here is an enchanter. Nice to finally have my tailor back to make bags, though. Spending money on bags in the AH is a crime against the gold gods.

Two enchanters to level simultaneously.

Have you seen AH prices on enchants and mats? Holy crap, right?

The low levels are fairly easy, and in Outlands it was extra nice, because with transmogging, running instances over and over to get gear meant a steady flood of greens to send off for disenchanting. No worries.

Once Cassie and I hit the Wrath of the Lich King level of enchants, it all went wahooney shaped.

Why?

Well, I wasn’t being very imaginative, for one thing. I was stuck in the traditional wisdom, running along the ‘what everyone knows’ groove.

Everyone knows that it’s best to level Tailoring and Enchanting together as you quest, because you can take the cloth you get from killing mobs, make stuff to increase Tailoring skill, then turn right around and disenchant it for the mats to increase Enchanting. Synergy, which is a fancy word for “these things complement each other well”.

Along those lines, I started farming cloth, researching who had the best drop rates for cloth, and I even took my (now level 82) priest back to Northrend to quest for rewards to disenchant. Yay.

If I ever got to higher level, I could start shattering materials that result in tons of WotLK mats. But you’ve got to level past needing the WotLK mats to get the spell to be able to shatter them, damnit! Grrr.

So be it. Cloth, cloth, cloth.

Amusingly enough, it took The Daily Blink to snap me out of being so stupid.

Right along the time I was getting fed up and dreading questing for the next month in Northrend just to get greens, along comes this pair of hilarious comics showing the pain we were feeling, and exploring alternative methods of gathering up the cloth we needed to level enchanting the traditional way.

It was the idea of exploring alternative methods of farming that got me finally thinking.

Farming cloth for tailoring for disenchanting is certainly one way…

But since when are Tailors the only crafters that make greens?

I am such a dumbass.

I have other characters. I have max level Herbalists, Miners, Jewelcrafters, Blacksmiths, Scribes… surely SOMEBODY can make SOMETHING useful, so I don’t have to farm all this damn cloth!

I looked to my Blacksmith, and asked him… what can you do for me in Northrend greens done dirt cheap?

My Blacksmith had an answer.

If I farmed Cobalt Ore, which is plentiful in Zul’Drak, then one Cobalt Ore smelts into one Cobalt Bar, NOT the normal two ore per bar BS.

There is one delightful item, the Horned Cobalt Helm, that costs only 8 Cobalt Bars to craft, and is a level 75 green. As most of you may know, the *5 point in items is where a crafted item goes from small return on D/E to a larger return. Any green from equippable level 75-79 will give you more mats per disenchant on the average than a level 71-74 item.

So, whether it’s ore or cloth, it’s still farming. The difference is, I can take my max level Blacksmith with fastest flight off on a route around Zul’Drak, and after a measly hour of farming easily be able to craft over 30 high level Northrend greens to disenchant. As opposed to grinding mobs or quest rewards? Oh, yes please!

Yeah, Cassie and I blew through Northrend in a single night of ore farming.

But then we had two enchanters looking for Cataclysm mats.

OMG, right?

Ah yes, but can my Blacksmith make anything now? I like farming the new ores.

Hmmm, before I check on that, why not see what kind of stuff my Jewelcrafter can make? I vaguely remember leveling JC by crafting rings and necklaces.

HOLY SHIT!

It turns out that Jewelcrafters can make rings and necklaces, all right. And the mats are a JC vendor jewelry setting costing a couple gold or so, and two green uncut gems per crafting. There are four recipes in total;

Jaspar Ring (ONLY ONE Jaspar)
Alicite Pendant (2 Alicite)
Hessonite Band (2 Hessonite)
Nightstone Choker (2 Nightstone)

Finding these four recipes in my crafting list was like being hit by lightning, but in a good way. Kinda like, hmmm. Getting a few beers in and then hitting a roller coaster. Dazed, a little woozy, but thumbs up!

The reason these didn’t really register was you needed two per point, and the resulting item’s enchantment is completely random. So, when I leveled I made them but also focused on cut gems for most points per gem.

Fast forward to now, when I prospect ore I’m looking for the blue quality gems, and these greens are either worthless, or can be used for the daily JC quest. I don’t save only the gems needed for dailies, I don’t look that closely at it. I just stuff gems in my JC bank. How many? Well, I typically keep about, oh FORTY of every kind of green gem before I start vendoring the leftovers. I figure, 40 of any given green quality gem is enough, right?

You use 3x Jasper for the Ogrezonians daily, 3x Zephyrite for the Nibbler daily, and 3x Nightstone for the Present for Lila daily.

I had mats on hand to craft 80 green items to disenchant just out of what I had lying around in my bank, and I don’t even want to think about how many greens I could have crafted from vendored gems over the last year.

I like farming ore. Did I say that already? It’s true. It’s like Hobbes saying “Smock”, I just like farming ore. Smock, smock, smock. It IS a good word when you think about it.

The way we level these days, the accelerated pace of it, it can be so damn hard to gather mats at the same pace we level. It’s good to know that if we do make new alts, the ‘traditional’ methods of feeding the fire isn’t the only way to go.

I could wish I would have checked earlier, but I’m damn glad I didn’t think of it AFTER we hit max level!

I truly hope that someone out there thinking of leveling an Enchanter will be helped by my experience in this, and I also hope that anyone wanting to make a little cash off a Blacksmith or Jewelcrafter keeps in mind some of the non-obvious ways your cast off mats can make money.

Green quality gems are far more valuable than I thought!