Posts with tag flasks

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house, and Insider Trader, which is all about professions. Email Basil (new address is basil@wowinsider.com; old one no longer works) with your comments, questions or hate mail!

Alchemy is, again, a money-maker this expansion. The market isn't as straightforward as it was in Wrath of the Lich King, but it's definitely worth the slot on a character. One of the nice things about alchemy is that there is no alchemy vendor in Twilight Highlands who refuses to come out and do business until you clean up the first quest area at level 84. Now if only I had known which professions would require that and been able to stack them on a smaller number of characters than I did ...

Today, we're going to talk about how to make money using flasks, potions, and transmutes. Two pieces of vital information: First, specialization procs account for as much as 20% extra product from the same mats. Second, while you can only have one specialization per character, you can change it for 150g by visiting the appropriate NPCs in Outland (one to unlearn, one to learn). Assuming you do your business in batches, this is probably cheaper than wasting another character's profession slot on a second alchemy tradeskill. If you need help with this badly documented process, just look up the mastery you are unlearning, and revisit the NPC that trains it to unlearn it.

Want to get Gold Capped? This column shows you how. Join author Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the Hunting Party podcast and the Call to Auction podcast.

Alchemy is an awesome way to make money in WoW. As we've said before, some businesses are proactive, requiring you to invest time and money in order to make profits. Some are reactive, allowing you to use a cooldown to craft something that's in demand for smallish volume of sales at high profit. Alchemy is unique in the sense that it allows you to both! You can craft and sell potions, flasks and elixirs, and you can transmute an epic gem once a day and Titanium Bars without a cooldown since patch 3.3.

Every Sunday (and the occasional weekday) Spiritual Guidance offers holy and discipline priests advice on how to wield the holy light and groove to the disco night. Your hostess Dawn Moore will provide the music.

I'm the fish girl.

I never wanted it to be this way. I never wanted to be that girl. You know, the fish girl: the woman in the raid who takes it upon herself to make sure all her fellow raiders are eating right by supplying Fish Feast after Fish Feast. Sure, sometimes it's a fish guy (in fact, just the other day my heal captain joked that he had brought Capri Sun and orange slices for the raid) but usually it's a woman. I guess it's a maternal thing, or maybe it's wanting to save time by always going in with max buffs. Whatever it is, I wasn't always like this. In fact, I used to wonder why my raid leader's wife would so willingly spend her feasts on our raid as we wiped all over 3-drake Obsidian Sanctum. I admired her generosity, particularly because I felt they were going to waste on stupid mistakes, and her efforts deserved better.

Then one day, after I had moved onto another guild, I found myself surrounded by raiders who were lacking vital nutrients in their diets. That's how it began: first I was helping with the fishing, then I started spending my own precious spices. The first day I laid a feast in a raid, I felt my feminist side cringe. But before I go off on that tangent, let me clarify that this article isn't about fish (not exclusively anyway), it's about the various consumables available to priest healers.

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

Last week, Insider Trader discussed the profession-only bonuses associated with Inscription, Jewelcrafting and Enchanting. This week, I'm going to walk you through the rest of them, and include a final summary and comparison at the end.

Tailoring Perks
Tailors have the ability to enchant their own cloaks. Other players can get cloak enchants from Enchanters, although the Tailoring ones are superior in many cases.

• Darkglow Embroidery: Chance to restore 300 mana on spell cast. There seems to be a 60 second internal cooldown, with a proc rate of 35%, which is equal to 25 mp5.
  
• Lightweave Embroidery: Chance on spell cast to increase your spellpower by 250 for 15 seconds.
  
• Swordguard Embroidery: Chance for melee and ranged attacks to sometimes increase your attack power by 300 for 15 seconds.
  

There seems to be a 45 second internal cooldown on Lightweave and Swordguard, meaning that for 15 seconds out of every 45 seconds (+, if you don't proc it on the next hit, but they do seem to proc within a hit or three), you have the effect. This averages out to 83 SP, and 100 AP respectively, in ideal conditions. Depending on your luck with procs, the average decreases the longer it takes you to proc it again.

For example, after 45 seconds, each spell has a chance to proc the effect. If you managed it at the 50 second mark, the average becomes +75 SP.

Casters who are not Tailors can currently choose between Enchant Cloak - Wisdom and Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed.

Wisdom grants you a measly 10 spirit, as well as a now obsolete 2% threat reduction. The +23 haste rating is nice, but provides neither mana nor spellpower.

Enchant Cloak - Major Agility grants you +22 agility to cloak. Agility is inefficient to everyone except rogues, hunters, shamans and druid cats, who would get +22 AP from it as well as the crit/dodge/armor. In terms of attack power alone, the Swordguard enchant is the clear winner.

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

This week Insider Trader will be discussing everything craftspeople need to know about patch 3.1. By the end of this article, you will know what you should be doing to prepare for patch day, what will be changing, and how the community is reacting to these changes.

I have been covering these topics to the best of my abilities as information has been released and altered over the weeks, but as we draw closer to patch day, the post-patch scene is becoming increasingly easy to visualize.

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

Patch 3.1, for all of its grand changes, has also dedicated itself to imposing smaller tweaks aimed at making some mechanics more convenient, logical, and fair.

The application of applying a glyph is one of the latest in a line of positive changes that we'll be seeing on patch day. While the old (current) process is an annoying charming ritual, the new method is better for the Azerothian on the go.

Currently, applying a glyph requires that the player be standing in front of a Lexicon of Power, usually found in main cities. With patch 3.1, this will change, and we will be able to re-glyph at will.

This means that if you asked your buddy to hook you up for the raid that night, and it arrives in the mail a few minutes before go time, you can just switch it in without having to hearth and be re-summoned. Heck, I'll just be happy to be able to do it from the mailbox rather than having to ride through the city!

While some may complain that this makes the process less special, it might be wise to consider the glyphing change that is accompanying dual specs. Once we glyph our main and off-spec, we will not need to glyph again unless we change our minds on which glyph we want, or spec to our third spec.

The only hitch is that you cannot switch them during combat, in Arenas, or in Battlegrounds once the fight has started, which sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

Another major, and welcome change, relates to flasks, which brings us to our topic of the week. I will be addressing the new mechanics of flask creation, and discussing the benefits of the new system.

There is a new build out on the Patch 3.1 PTR tonight (Build #9722 for those of you keeping track). MMO-Champion is already data mining the stuff, and fresh from this build comes a rather important change that everyone will need to know about:

All flask recipes will now create 2 flasks for the same amount of ingredients, but flasks will only last half the amount of time.

This means where you used to make one flask of awesomesauce, you now get two flasks of awesomesauce. That's a lot more awesome for the same amount of sauce.

We can speculate that this change is in part to due to the difficulty ramp-up that will occur in Ulduar. We know that Ulduar is going to be harder, and so this change will help soften the time required to come prepared. And as someone who flasks and eats food religiously, this is a welcomed change.

Of course the downside to this change is that flask prices will drop on the AH, meaning people will earn less money off them. But at the same time, raw materials will likely go up a bit since folks will be wanting to have their flasks made for them now more often. We'll have to wait and see to be sure, however.

Edited on 3/23/09 at 9:40 p.m.: Updated with more recent information.

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Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

Patch 3.1 is looming ever closer, and things are about to change in a big way. Today I'll be discussing how the patch is going to affect your professions, and how you can take advantage of this by maximizing your profits on the Auction House.

Players have become increasingly bored with raiding because the content that was released with the expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, was too quickly conquered. Across the board, players are showing up to raids on an inconsistent basis, and many people now spend much of their time on the Public Test Realm playing through Ulduar.

This has contributed to falling prices on the Auction House for raiding materials and consumables, because not only have many people stopped raiding, many others have decided to save their gold and raid without being buffed to the gills.

What should you do in these tight times? Aside from the things for which you are currently saving, the patch will bring with it a 1000g bill to learn how to dual spec, costs to fund raid wipes, bring new consumables, and enchant and gem new gear.

By learning what to sell and purchase and when, you can minimize your post-patch costs and make some gold while you're at it.

I just hit 80 last night, and was the first in my guild to do so, so we won't be hitting Naxx for probably a couple weeks. Still, when I get there, I want to be prepared, so I did some quick spreadsheet math to figure out what consumables I should show up with as a deep holy priest. I'm basing the numbers off this very well-research post on A Dwarf Priest. Since I'm sure Disc will be rising in popularity with its newfound tank-healing viability, I did the math for Discipline values as well, but it didn't change the rankings in almost all cases. The best consumables are best for both Holy and Discipline.

I'll be giving the values in parentheses after each item, first Holy and then Disc; for the math behind these, see MK's post. Old-world (BC or classic) recipes will be italicized.

TL;DR version: Use Firecracker Salmon/Tender Shoveltusk Steak and Flask of the Frost Wyrm.

Recently in the Wrath of the Lich King beta, Alchemists were given a Passive ability called Alchemical Blood. More recently it was renamed to Mixology. Mixology's tooltip states, "You receive an increased effect when you drink any elixir or flask you are able to make."

Not bad! I mean, it sounds not bad. It doesn't really say what that effect is. A few guildmates and I decided to do a little bit of testing to figure it out, though. Using a few high-end Burning Crusade elixirs and low-end Wrath elixirs, we came to the conclusion that the bonus is around 25%. I would say 25% on the dot, but we ran into some conflicting numbers. Nearly 30% in one case, a little under 25% in another. That was probably the result of talents altering the outcome.

With the same 25% applying to flasks, that would add another +20 Damage to the Caster DPS flasks. Flask of Pure Death, for example, would now supply +100 Shadow, Fire and Frost damage. Not a bad deal, really. 20 damage doesn't quite match up to an Enchanter's ring enchants, but I think Wrath's Crazy Alchemist Potions will make up for that. Wild Magic, anyone?

Alright. Let's call a spade a spade. I nubbed last week's installment by putting down Agility as a stat. Agility is good -- still not a Retadin's primary strength (pun intended), but definitely part of the equation. An informative article can be found on WoWWiki comparing Strength to Agility and determining the point where investing points in Agility gives better DPS returns than investing in Strength. Unlike Rogues or Hunters, who will never reach a point where Strength gives better returns, there is a certain point for Paladins (or Shamans and Warriors, for that matter) where it becomes better to invest in Agility. It's quite a bit of math, but suffice it to say that the equilibrium point is pretty high and not achievable by a fresh 70 gearing up for Karazhan.

I also dismissed Expertise (pfft, why make one mistake when you can make two!), a new stat introduced in Patch 2.3, which reduces the chance a mob will Dodge or Parry your attacks. If you can manage it, you should always attack from behind, negating Parry to begin with, but barring that, Expertise is a good stat to pursue after you're Hit capped. In fact, as some readers pointed out, the Shard of Contempt is the best melee DPS trinket in the game right now as it prevents even yellow, or special, attacks from being Dodged or Parried. With all the technical stuff out of the way, let's move on to the last part of this series, where we'll take a look at all the permanent enchants, gems, and even consumables that you'll need to do a good job in Karazhan.

Bad (good?) news for Alchemists and the people that love (hate?) them. The latest Beta build has introduced something called Potion Sickness. The tooltip reads as follows: "Unable to consume potions until you rest out of combat for a short duration."

In other words, you can drink one potion per encounter. The debuff itself has absolutely no duration. It sticks on you until you drop combat. This is largely meaningless to the casual player, but what it will do to raiding will be rejoiced as well as reviled. Alchemists are going to take a huge hit to their income if this goes live. Yeah yeah, I know most Alchemists will say their profit is from Herbalism, but after seeing the insane prices on Haste Potions, Super Mana Potions and Flasks, I beg to differ.

I love you, WotlkWiki, I really do. First you bring us specifics on Inscription, and now we get the effects of the new potions, elixirs, and flasks that your friendly neighborhood alchemist will be cooking up in the frosty north. We got all the names for these items a few days ago, along with details on the transmutations (I'll take any excuse to make a pretty diagram), but the effects of them had not yet come to light, until now.

There's nothing stunning, I'm afraid; more like some nice upgrades to current favorites. But I certainly expect be popping flasks and pots in Naxx at least as much as I currently am in Zul'Aman. Anyway, let's see what we've got. I'll compare to the BC or old-world versions where appropriate.

Seeing as how Alchemy is not yet officially implemented in the Wrath beta, we don't know all of what's in store for the masters of elixirs, flasks, potions, and transmutation. However, we can get some idea, given that the spells themselves seem to be in the game files, so we know the names of some alchemy spells and products, if not their actual effects (though some recipes are easy enough to guess).

• Flask of Endless Rage
• Flask of Pure Mojo
• Flask of Stoneblood
• Flask of the Frost Wyrm