Black Temple gear vs Naxx epics

Currently I'm using the glyph market to fund gearing up my hunter with BOE epics/blues, who has all but head, neck, 1 finger and 2 trinkets in ilvl187 blues or better, fully gemmed. (getting a dps toon geared without a huge guild is insanely difficult btw - a major reason why I switched servers). Speaking of the hunter, I ran naxx10 last night (one drop in 5 bosses that was even useful for hunters is FTL), so yeah real crap dps, only 1600 on trash and so forth. I went from being right at the tank's level of dps at the beginning to near the top of the chart at the end. Did I get better? What do you think?

No, in fact people got worse. We had two outstanding dps but people kept leaving and getting 'bored', we were constantly 8 manning it with only one decent dps. Of course anyone who is running naxx10 3 hours before weekly reset is pretty crappily geared, so that was true in this case. Hopefully I can get another run in sometime soon.

The other thing about the hunter is that I'm slowly replacing my BT gear as noted, and by and large the so-called upgrades are not huge. For example, my halbard of desolation from black temple first boss with enchant is as good as two one handed swords ilvl 200 without enchants. Granted w/ enchants that is 100 AP difference, and one of the swords has a wasted stat (expertese). But my point being is that black temple gear is about equiv to ilvl 187 gear BUT has intellect and hit to boot. So for example I know my dps level isn't high, but 1) my mana pools are larger than they should be, and 2) I am hit capped (true I gemmed for all hit to get there). So at patchwerk I was doing 2400 dps with only 3 ilevel 200 epics. I see alot of people in my social guild who couldn't dream of pulling out these numbers because their gear is not raiding gear, its leveling gear.

So what's the point? 1) Most likely the tier 9 stuff we are seeing now is going to last to level 85 again and entry raiding at that point in cataclysm. 2) Don't be fooled by thinking that just because something has more AP and crit means its an upgrade, it's very hard for end-game raiding piece (which typically has 6 stats on it, ie stam, int, agi, AP, ArP, hit) to be upgraded by a leveling piece (which typically only has AP/crit) 3) Don't pay attention to gear score in some cases- my hunter's GS was about half of what you would expect for naxx10 level gear. Look at the person's gear. If you are sporting all T6 and Hand of Adal, that player is pretty damn good.

The other point is that I am going to buy items almost every single slot off the AH. Truely I am burning money to do that, probably 10k when it's all done. But anyone can do this. Why do people show up and insist on guilds carrying them through TOC, heroics, and naxx to gear is beyond me, and frankly pisses me off.

Glyphs and a new server

I transfered my hunter to ET, the alliance server where I do some day raids (1x per week so far), and got started in a serious way to make glyphs. Well I burned through all I made in 10 days (about 2000g), by buying herbs, parchments, and most importantly 30x books of glyph mastery. I think I am pretty close to knowing all the glpyhs. I now have the DK, druid, hunter, priest, paly, and most of rogue markets on two different bank toons (and a third bank toon for misc stuff). So I've been able to track those pretty accurately. So far things are good, about 200g in the first day just due to glpyhs, and probably another 500-600g for vellum, scrolls, offhands.

The offhands are great, they are nearly free (just 2 ink of sea and 1 frozen orb), and sell for 200-300g. That's at least 150g profit from each. The key is the snowfall ink, which is pretty worthless otherwise (useful for NR research also), also I sell about 5 vellums every day with several gold (or more) profit each day. These are huge sellers and if you are not providing vellums I ask why not.

Glyphs

Are glyphs profitable right now? I'd say yes. I ran an experiment. I have a 445 scribe hunter. I transfered the druid off to another server, and took basically all the gold except 100g and whatever goods were still being sold on the bank toon. I then started making glyphs. Lots and lots. At first I did only DK, then DK hunter, now I am doing DK, hunter, mage, and paladine. (First time with the last two). So essentially from 9 days ago I started with almost no gold and only two classes. I'm up to 2200g now, with only two classes and one bank toon. I'll try to get into the rest of the classes later next week and see how it goes.

My thoughts (random as always).

It's pretty time consuming to do glyphs. The profit for each is small. You need to accept that on some you wont make much profit.

You can also sell the two off-hands and scrolls and vellums. Most people ignore that, and these items give you just as much profit as glyphs and sell just as frequently.

Buy 10 stacks of NR herbs a day. The cheapest on our server is tiger lily and deadnettle. Then make glpyhs once a week. Make 5 glpyphs per stack.

Addons: Use QA2, Advanced trade skill window, and altoholic. Config QA; 24 hour post time, undercut 1s fall back 50g, minimum 2g 1 glpyph per posting (or maybe 2).

When you want to make glpyphs. Look to see how many you need by mouse over. Queue everything up. Then buy all the ink and parchment you need (ATSW willl auto-buy parchment but not ink). Burn through your queue. Helps to have 2 scribe bags on your scribe making toon and 4 such bags on your bank toon.

Then post on your bank toon. I post in the morning, 5pm, then as i log out. This ensures a steady flow. You can just post and tab out for 5 minutes (like I'm doing right now)

Mage project closed down

I decided I didn't really want to level a mage from scratch, they are too slow. Especially on a new server. I'm still selling all of the patterns and pets I bought, and am up to 600g. That's 12x return on investment of 40g. Still its a fun server, i may revisit it someday.

For now I'm doing the halloween event, and dipping into inscription. It pays surprisingly well. I'm already up 1000g after just a few days of posting. I look forward to increasing my volume.

Volume and having the right mods is crucial. Doing it by myself using auctioneer was just horrid.
Even though the market is crowded if you are nimble enough you can get in. I dont AH camp, i just check every day or every 12 hours and see what sold and repost. Basically i'm not trying that hard. I want to use the funds to help my first toon Gibs all geared out as much as possible. Now that I have space for 3 more toons the inscription project becomes more and more practical.

Questions to ask while on a pile of gold

This is from Phase 3 Profit!

1. How long did you spend on making gold every week?
2. How much you earn a week ?
3. Do you really need that much ?
4. Where are you going to spend your extras ?
5. Is there anyway can increase the amount you can get ?
6. Is there anyway can decrease the time you need ?
7. Will the method you are currently gather gold be obsolete soon ?
8. What’s the last time you get a new method for profiting ?
9. Is it fun at all ?
10. Planning to share what you had learnt ?

1. I spend about 1-2 hours each day making money. Right now my Dawnbringer market has cooled and I'm just not that interested, so I am switching to my little mage.

2. Its quite variable. At the height only 2k or so per week. Most weeks less than 1k. I don't really make money for the sake of making money. At 15k now I dont see much point of making more money.

3. Not really... See #2 But as of now I still can't afford the gold-sinks.

4. I will probably leveling professions in the next xpac and hopefully use this as seed capital. One thing I've learned in WoW, you need money to make money. I spent my entire fortune on crusader orbs to reap a 2000g profit. And who knows how much things will cost in the next xpac (cataclysm).

5. Yeah I have some nice businesses, when they work it works, but its actual work, ie not fun. That takes a few hours of making and a few days of selling for 1-2 k profit.

6. Can I decrease the time. No not to my knowledge, I can't. The game doesn't allow automation.

7. Not really. I don't depend on fad items to make my gold. I stick with tried and true methods.

8. All the time. Last week. There is always something new to be learned. My colleagues are so much better at making money, that's why I peruse econ blogs and forums regularly.

9. I think its fun, but that's just me. At a certain point the rest of the game is somewhat static. I enjoy 'beating' other people with something of tangible value at stake. Yes, you may have ganked me 10x in BGs, but I just took your last cent from your stupid under-cost auctions.

10. I do what i can herein. Although since nobody reads, I guess my secrets are safe!

Is it hunter loot?

Okay, this is just too funny, and I (well almost) never call people out. But there is a polearm that drops in ramparts that every idiot seems to think is their loot. Its got str, sta, and +crit. It's called Hellreaver. It looks cool to boot. So, as a death knight it drops, and I roll. Oh the tears of anguish from the hunters.

Lets review. Stamina. Check. Crit. Check. Strength? I guess if you are a melee hunter this is your loot. But if you are playing the class as it was designed, you pass for someone which its a better upgrade. Ie a DK or a warrior. So, gratz huntards! Oh I didn't quite get the last roll in the screenie, the other hunter rolled and one won. That's right, two hunters rolled on non-hunter loot.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, the othe loot I ninjaed? A plate belt. So, yeah i'm evil for rolling on plate and a melee weapon against hunters.

A new deathknight tailor

After getting sick with the amount of profit wasted by the idiots who post netherweave stacks, I decided, heck with this, i'll be a major player in this market. I think I could make a small killing either making bags or making tailoring and DEing it (I'm not sure about the later, but possible). Or I could make imbued netherweave bags.

So I rolled a DK, of course a gnome! Got him out of the starter zone, sold everything I collected that could be vendored, sent the rest to the bank (including a BOE blue!). Ended up with 22g. Hmm, not much. I bought what linen cloth I could and powerleveled tailoring until the omg hell wool stage (level 100) I then decided, well now I have alot of random crap on my hands. So I learning enchanting, and decided to push that as far as it'd go. I got to about 90 I think. I then ran stockades to see what the wool drop was. Not bad, was able to make 5 items. I only have to make 20 to get out of wool stage. So a few runs will do it, and give me some more stuff to DE. My plan is to just DE what I can and hope its enough to get past the next stage, not worry about enchanting too much. I want this to be a break even power level, so lots of AOE grinding in instances. Its a damn shame I cant bring the mage!

My plan is to powerlevel the professions, hit 60, push to netherweave bag stage, and just make a ton of them.