They're doing WHAT?

A steam-powered auctioneer has been added to the Dalaran Like Clockwork engineering shop, allowing access to one's faction auction house. The steam-powered auctioneer was programmed with a superiority chip, and will only interact with grand master engineers.

Forget that rogues can eat me in one faceroll, or that paladins can solo ANYTHING. This is the only thing worth fighting for in the whole of WoW. I want a dalaran auctioneer too, dammit!

Carpentry for beginners

Kaliope of the excellent WoW crafting blog is campaigning for improvements to the professions system in the next expansion. I'm a big fan of professions and would love to see a lot of her suggestions implemented. If you get chance, pop over to her blog for a browse, and don't forget to vote in her crafters' wishlist poll.

Looking at the professions system, I've long thought there is a gap for one that works with wood — call it carpentry. This would tie in wonderfully with Kaliope's observation that there are some rather large gaps in the list of things that can currently be crafted. But I think the profession could be something more than just a gap filler. It could be what engineering tries to be but fails — the one profession that provides all-round benefit and application regardless of your class, regardless of your spec. The armour professions are class specific; alchemy and enchanting, while powerful, are quite specialised. Carpentry is the perfect all-rounder, an ideal profession for the very casual player.

So here are my top ideas for carpentry items:

• Staves, bows and crossbows — what I see as the core of carpentry. I think these are the only weapons that can't currently be crafted (not sure about polearms) and fall very neatly under the scope of woodworking. And while we're at it, what about fishing poles?
• Basic shields and maces — at later levels, these items would more obviously be crafted by blacksmiths, but low-level items could easily be made of wood.
• Wooden rods for use by enchanters in rare and epic wands. In fact, the scope for synergies with the other professions are endless — bowls for cooking recipes, parts for engineers, handles for weaponsmiths, looms for tailors and frames for leatherworkers. Ok, maybe not endless, but plentiful.
• Saps to provide temporary weapon or armour buffs, similar to oils, and also for use by other professions. (You see? More synergies.) Perhaps these could only be applied to wooden weapons. It would be good to be able to add temporary enchants to ranged weapons and wands for a change.
  
• Idols, totems and relics — it wouldn't be stretching the concept of carpentry to imagine them carving intricate little idols and totems, although I admit relics might strain the imagination (give relic recipes to jewelcrafters?) These are the only three slots that can't be crafted. Casters can carry wands, other classes get ranged weapons. My shaman levelled all the way to Nagraand before picking up a totem. Unlucky? Maybe, but it highlights a general shortage of these items in the game, which is why I think it would be fantastic to have crafted versions.
• Consumables with on-use effects — in my mind, carpenters would be able to craft a range of items that could heal or protect. I've been mulling over the idea of seeds — the carpenter plants a seed on the ground that takes root and provides a buff for a short duration, say a hot, damage reduction or aoe dot. Seeds are a bit removed from the practicalities of carpentry and probably fit more neatly into the realms of herbalism, so I'm not sure. An alternative would be a range of totem-like items, but then you're stepping into shaman territory.
• Spears, poison darts and rudimentary traps — the wooden equivalent of an engineer's bombs.
• Hitching posts — hunters have long bemoaned the pain of stable slots. You might be able to own three pets at once, but this is effectively reduced to two if you want to pick up new skills from other animals. I'm not proposing to radically alter that system, but a hitching post could be a neat way around it. It would enable a hunter to temporarily deposit a pet on the ground (hitched to the post, natch) while he trained a new pet and learned the skill. Perhaps the post would expire after 30 minutes and the pet would be abandoned if not reclaimed — long enough for the hunter to take care of business without the need for another stable slot.
• Temporary post boxes — how cool would it be to whip up a mailbox in the middle of nowhere and empty your bags back to an alt? Engineers get repair bots, so this isn't so much to ask for.
• With the advent of siege weapons in Wrath, carpenters could provide essential materials or perhaps have their own epic variety of engine.
• Standards — consumable flag posts with your guild logo on them. Might be fun in BGs?
• Toys and trinkets — like wooden trains, non-combat pets, deck chairs, artificial Christmas trees etc. I'm not really into this side of professions, but I know a lot of people get a lot of joy from it. Carpentry is perfect for this kind of stuff.

Clearly this isn't enough to justify a whole new profession, but I'm sure the creative minds a Blizzard would be able to expand on the basic concept.

You would require a gathering profession to support it of course — either via a new profession of woodcutter or lumberjack or through the existing herbalism skill. There are plenty of trees around Azeroth to support a profession, or you could add fallen sticks and logs instead.
I'm sure it could work. I've already cleared my bag slots for chisel and lathe. What do you think?

Making money

If you are an avid reader of WoW Insider then you will already know about this new blog — and if not, why not?

WoW Investor promises to boost your in-game finances with auction house and trade tips and suggestions. They say: "It should only take you about 10 minutes once or twice a day to make the necessary purchases and sales; and the only travel it involves is running between the auctioneers and your mailbox - easy right? and sure as hell beats mindless farming!"

Amen to that. I'm going to start by looking into their advice on spellthreads. I'm lucky enough to have both the scryer mystic spellthread and the aldor silver spellthread patterns by virtue of my reputational volte-face. I'm slowly scrabbling my way up to aldor exalted to get the golden spellthread too.

I wonder how universal their advice will prove to be. Auction house prices tend to fluctuate wildly by server, and there's a chance personal experience will not match the advice. Still, I appreciate any and all help I can get to boost my flagging funds and will be keeping a close eye on future tips.

What not to wear (part 2)

So if you followed my advice in the last post you will be well on your way to an obscenely large pool of shadow damage. There are several ways to get it.

I touched on tailoring last week, and recommend this route for all aspiring raid shadow priests. The three-piece frozen shadoweave set is some of the best caster armour this side of 25-man raids and well within reach of even casual players. The downside: it is bind on pickup, the patterns are only available to tailors with the shadoweave specialisation, and spell bonuses apply only to shadow and frost damage, so your bonus healing will take a hit.

Not all the epic tailoring sets are BoP, so whether you are a tailor or not, you should definitely consider the two-piece spellstrike set and the girdle of ruination. The patterns are rare drops from high-end instance bosses, so not easy to get hold of. But if you have the time or money to invest in materials, you will usually be able to find someone to craft them for a modest fee (about 100 g on my server).

While we're looking at crafting professions, it's worth considering the eternium runed blade, which with 168 spell damage is one of the best main-hand weapons outside of raids. Be warned though, it'll cost you. Materials may stretch you to 900 g and you can expect to pay 1500 g at auction. If you don't have easy access to the materials, you're probably better off going down another route.

There are some very shiny quest rewards, reputation rewards and boss drops out there which we can loosely lump together as running instances. Tempest touch gloves, a quest reward from the caverns of time, and terrok's legacy, an offhand reward from sethekk hall, are a very good place to start, both because of their nice stats and the fact that you can easily get them before 70.

After that, there is a whole plethora of lovely blue and purple toys for you to covet but it can be hard to know where to start. Bosses never drop what you want, and reputation grinding can be too tedious to bother. If you try to do all things at once you'll probably never finish anything, so my advice is to pick one item at a time and focus on getting it. Heroic rewards can be a good route to go. You can earn badges of justice from any heroic boss, plus get extra from the daily quest, which takes some of the tedium out of running the same instances over and over. In return, you can snap up the orb of the soul eater and carved witch doctor's stick, arguably the best off-hand and wand respectively in the game.

Reputation-wise, the gavel of unearthed secrets is a good alternative to the eternium runed blade if you can stomach auchindoun long enough to reach exalted with lower city. And, although not strictly gear, the glyph of power from the sha'tar at revered is the best choice for a head enchant.

The final route for gearing up pre-raiding is PVP, either through battlegrounds or areans. A lot of my guild mates have followed this route with some success. I am reliably informed that, for battleground honour at least, it's an easy grind, and certainly the items can look very appealing. They are much higher in stamina and intellect than PVE equivalents without seemingly compromising on spell damage. As you might have guessed, I know very little about this subject, not being much of a PVPer myself. But even with one envious eye on my colleagues, I can take comfort in the knowledge that my inferior gear is more suitable to raid DPS in one small but vital way, because while PVP gear is loaded with resilience, mine has spell hit.

And now I've rambled on for long enough. That promised look at spell hit will just have to wait till next time.

Primal scream

When you hit 70 you have no choice but to suspend all enjoyment of the game and go grind elementals until you are cross-eyed and dreaming about them. This is because they drop motes, which are the basis of the most evil economy known to man (or troll, or gnome etc).

Many high-level crafted items require primals — powerful elemental ingredients that are created from ten motes of the same element. And the elementals drop the motes. Occasionally. If they feel like it. On a good day. You collect ten motes, right click on the stack, and hey presto you have a primal.

If, like me, you are a tailor, you will spend mind-numbing hours nuking the little buggers for slow progress on your epic set. Ditto blacksmiths, leatherworkers and engineers.

Even if you don't need to make something, you need 5,000 gold for your flying epic mount and primals are one of the best ways to get it.

You will be competing with gold farmers, sociopaths and 12-year old boys.

The result is a world of cut-throat camping and competition that reduces even the most noble of paladins to dirty, underhand tricks. If there is a night elf hunter within firing distance you can bet the scum-sucking bastard will time an instant shot while you're casting your first spell.

If you try to buy your ingredients you will be permanently broke, begging every mage in Shattrath for water and emptying your bank for silver.

The worst thing is, I really have nothing better to do with my time. The frozen shadoweave and spellstrike sets are widely considered to be the best items out there before raids. And I'm too busy grinding primals to raid. (Is that what you call a circular argument?)

So if you see me in Nagrand with a harried, haunting look in my eye, please be kind and find another area to grind in.