The Queue: The roof, the roof
by Alex Ziebart 
Jun 9th 2009 at 1:00PM
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.
Jack Spicer asked...
"With each expansion Blizzard seems to be bringing underused talent specs around and making them highly desirable. In TBC, it seemed to be Feral Druids, Prot Pallies, Shadow Priests and BM Hunters. In Wrath, they really brought up Survival Hunters and Retribution Pallies.
But I'm curious. From a PvE perspective, which talent trees are still universally lacking and laughable?"
Oh boy, this one is going to be debated pretty viciously today, isn't it? From a purely min/maxing point of view, it's largely the very strong PvP specs that are lacking in PvE, and that's probably by design. A Shadowstep spec from Rogues isn't going to perform in PvE. A Frost spec for Mages, and I mean deep Frost and not some hybrid Frostfire thing, is pretty lacking in PvE. Both of those are strong PvP specs... usually. I think that's intended though and I'm not convinced that will change anytime soon.
I can't think of any PvE-oriented specs that are actually failing in PvE. Some specs aren't as good as they could be, but the gaps are much, much smaller than they were a couple of years ago.
Fuseitana asked...
"The Bosstiary that WoW.com featured a few days ago was really informative, I wish Blizzard would put out the same for their other raid instances. MY question is whether there is in-game lore that gives the information in the Bosstiary. IE, without it would we know that Auriaya was the archivist?"
I don't think there's any other information that says Auriaya is the archivist of Ulduar, no. Auriaya, Kologarn and the Assembly of Iron were all largely mysteries until the Bosstiary. Luckily, they're mostly in the minority. There is definitely a lot of information on the Keepers and Yogg-Saron floating around. You can figure out the roles of Ignis and Razorscale with some informed guesswork. Ignus is Generic Titanic Blacksmith #1058462. Razorscale is the only notable Proto-Drake in the place, and Thorim is missing Veranus, so you can put two and two together there. And General Vezax? Well, it's pretty obvious what he is.
Tharesar asked...
"If I create a Death Knight, play until I get all my blue gear then sell everything, send all the money to an alt and repeat again and again, will I get a reasonable amount of cash? Or is this a huge waste of time?"
A colossal waste of time. There could be worse ways to spend your time, but if your goal is to make gold you're much better off doing daily quests. Faster, significantly more profitable.
Twothing asked...
"After reading the post "Interview with a Scammer" and discovering that buying the TCG loot cards for ingame gold isn't a breech of TOS. I wanted to know can I buy time cards for ingame gold?"
No, because game time has a cash value. It costs real money to play. The item from the TCG card does not have a price attached to it. It's a free, costless bonus from buying the trading cards. You can absolutely trade in-game gold for things with no cash value. If you pay attention to the contests we run here on our site, you might notice that we don't have big, crazy legal rules attached to TCG loot giveaways. That's why. The TCG loot has no cash value, thus we don't need to worry about legal issues at all.
However, game cards do have a cash value. We pay $15/month to play WoW. If we here at WoW.com wanted to give away some game cards, we would need to get some old fashioned legal such-and-such written up because money would be involved. Gold for gametime would basically be a roundabout gold selling and buying service. The money would just come in the form of 30 days of WoW printed on plastic.
Now I wrap this up with a shout out to Oghorille of Grizzly Hills US. Hi!
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW.com crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Avan Jun 9th 2009 1:04PM
If memory serves, all of the starter DK blues will only net you a silver or two.
Reuben Jun 9th 2009 1:07PM
Yeah, all of the Death Knight blue's only fetch a few silver or copper. That poor fellow would surely be wasting his time.
Reinard Jun 9th 2009 1:29PM
Actually, I think they're only worth a few copper. I could be wrong though.
Candina@WH Jun 9th 2009 1:34PM
DK starting blues sell for 10c.
The DK blacksmith even makes a comment about it.
bswopes Jun 9th 2009 1:55PM
The blues may be worthless, but my DK had about 25g from quest rewards and vendor trash by the time he completed the starter quests. Was handy when starting off on a new server. I created the DK to quickly level up and join friends, but with all that gold, I sent some off to a lowbie alt in a class I actually want to play at 80.
Friday_Knight Jun 9th 2009 2:12PM
It's still not worth the time. The question was about selling the starter gear, which is clearly a waste of time since it all sells for a few coppers.
Even if you do the whole questline to break away from the Scourge (one of my favorite questlines in the game so far), which does make you a few gold, you've still taken way more time than it would take you to do a couple of dailies and get a good bit more money.
Just go do some Argent Tournament dailies. Get some gold and some rep as well as tokens toward some pretty nice rewards. You can get gear, pets, mounts and titles. Don't waste your time trying to exploit something that Blizzard clearly thought through.
Kole Jun 9th 2009 3:03PM
Everytime I decide to try out a new server, I start a new DK, go through all of the opening quests (which IMO is the ONLY fun part about the DK in its entirety) then become the scary naked DK banker. Then my alts have a nice 20-25g cushion in which to start on, plus a banker all ready and able to start auctioning...
impurezero Jun 9th 2009 3:10PM
Friday,
Yes, but the guy above you is talking about getting starter gold for an alt on a new server. If you're starting on a new server...who are you going to do dailies with? You can, however, make a quick DK on that server and have a free 25 gold for your new level 1 priest, which will actually help him with early leveling quite a bit...
Sleutel Jun 9th 2009 9:33PM
As has been observed, this depends on your definition of "reasonable amount of cash." I've used the disposable DK strategy for financing a new alt on a new server before, and it's certainly better than nothing. The starting quest chain takes probably about two hours from start to finish, and you end up with about 25-35g from quests and drops. (Like people have said, the gear itself vendors for a trivial amount.) Can you make more money in two hours on an 80? Yes. Can you make more money in two hours on a brand new Level 1 alt? Hell no.
Bubsa Jun 9th 2009 1:04PM
"I can't think of any PvE-oriented specs that are actually failing in PvP."
Well, depending how you would define 'fail', I'd say a Holy Priest is nearing this category :P
JKWood Jun 9th 2009 1:16PM
I haven't been particularly successful with my Holy Pally in PvP. I suppose now that I have Holy Shock, I should give it another try, though.
Alex Ziebart Jun 9th 2009 1:29PM
That was a typo. :\
It was supposed to say, "I can't think of any PvE-oriented specs that are actually failing in PvE."
Meaning I think all specs are doing fairly well. At least, much much better than they used to be.
Bubsa Jun 9th 2009 1:58PM
Ah. Like every single druid having to be resto in Vanilla WoW.
Gotcha!
Dart Jun 9th 2009 2:20PM
Fire Mage?
Worcester Jun 9th 2009 2:31PM
Don't forget that deep-Sub rogues still have Honor Among Thieves. Personally, I pick up Shadowstep too. It costs a few extra points, but it also delivers a damage bonus and threat reduction each time it's used. Not bad in a boss fight.
My gear is significantly lower than most other rogues I run into in raids, but my DPS is usually not too far behind.
Mattimus Jun 9th 2009 2:33PM
"Ah. Like every single druid having to be resto in Vanilla WoW."
And Paladins having to go Holy and look at nothing except the 5-minute timers on 40 people, warriors being THE only tank... I'm so glad that we've taken such huge steps away from class pigeonholing.
Riley Jun 9th 2009 4:54PM
I tried HAT once, didn't really like it
other than the time i tried it, I don't think I've ever seen a raiding sub rogue
LloydPancakes Jun 9th 2009 1:08PM
I'd say out of existing PvE specs Elemental Shamans and Balance Druids need love
Robert M Jun 9th 2009 2:04PM
Does this apply only since Ulduar? I know that I have seen a ton of information on lost DPS for both of those specs as Ulduar logs were broken down.
I think the lightning overload was to help correct this because the developers can't figure out why ele shaman are hurting.
I know this is obvious and I'm sure has been said before, but is there a nature resist possibly in Ulduar that was programmed in and no one noticed?
Angus Jun 9th 2009 2:35PM
Robert: the issue is actually more like the following:
In a lot of the ulduar fights, you have to move. AE is causing issues, things are able to 1 shot you if you don't get out of the arc, and in general they have a lot of cast interrupts.
Elemental shaman are turrets. They have to sit there and spin up casts. If they break from this or have to move, they lose a ton of DPS. They have almost nothing to do in the time they are moving. They also bring a large portion of their raid buffs with them. Other casters have dots ticking, instants to reapply or throw for damage and are getting a ton of buffs from the shaman. The shaman does not get as much, is hurting from the loss of DPS when mobility is required and has itemization nightmares due to how poorly thought out the whole lava burst thing was. If 30% of your damage comes from an auto-crit, crit rating is only helping 70% of your damage. If that same 30% has a set CD, haste does nothing unless it can somehow get you an extra cast in the 8 seconds. Otherwise it is better DPS to sit and wait for the CD to be over and then repeat the cycle.
So all elemental shaman get 100% returns on is spellpower. If haste or crit could do more for them, it would be better for itemization, but as it stands, not so much. Crit helps, but only on LB, LO, and CL. That new set bonus is also meant to make crit better, but it is such a small amount of their damage anyway that it isn't much.