Posts with tag professions

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him.

Last week here in Gold Capped, I gave you a sneak peek at the alchemy profession in Mists of Pandaria, including some of the new potions, flasks, and transmutes available to those willing to put in the work. That column apparently got a lot of you thinking, because immediately afterward, I got no fewer than three emails from players asking if they should change their professions to alchemy -- or more generally, whether or not they should switch to a better profession.

It's a question to which there's no easy answer. Each profession has the potential to be profitable -- some more so than others, sure. But one person might make millions of gold from inscription, for example, while another player struggles to make a few silver.

Aside from knowledge (which you're all getting right here from Gold Capped, natch), what's the biggest factor regarding a profession's profitability? It's your playstyle. Certain professions lend themselves to the weekend Auction House warrior, while others reward daily persistence. So what profession is right for you? And should you change to that profession for Mists of Pandaria?

Fishing is both my favorite and least favorite WoW profession. I love sitting lazily around, watching a movie and click-fishing. That seems weird, but it's very relaxing to me, considering you don't have to move as much as you do in archaeology. But I digress. Mists of Pandaria is introducing a brand new faction, The Anglers, and their adorable fishing village to the new continent. This new hub features a cast of fishing characters, their village, daily quests, and a faction to work on with, presumably, rewards. We like rewards.

The ever-angler, El, previewed the new fishing village, showing off the gorgeous buildings and the fun cast of characters. I'm sure that we'll get to know these guys pretty well over the course of the expansion, since we'll be hanging out with them on a daily basis. Well, at least I will be. In fact, hopefully Blizzard sees these new little hideaways as places players want to set their hearthstone in order to get out in the world rather than be cooped up in the capital city. If this little village has some cool features, like a secret bank or something, I might just never leave.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. And be sure to catch the return of Basil and Fox's podcast, Call to Auction!

Ladies and gentlemen who love the economic arts, today's column isn't for you. It's an open letter to Blizzard's game developers, with me begging on bent knee for them to improve our collective professions for Mists of Pandaria. Of course, you're free to read it too. In fact, I hope you do and add to it in the comment section.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a letter of complaint. Blizzard got an awful lot right this expansion, and I'm not going to be shy giving credit where credit is due. But there's always room for improvement. So let's roll up our sleeves, point out what needs fixing, and then hold the folks at Blizzard responsible for what we get next expansion.

So, you with me? If so, let's begin.

Dear Blizzard,

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

If you're trying to decide which professions to put on your character and you are considering their gold making potential, you'll want to avoid engineering and inscription. While they're not terrible if you consider their stat bonuses, they're not ideal for gold making on many realms.

Of course, every realm has its own ecosystem, and as with all advice you'll read from this column, you should check that the assumptions hold for your realm and faction. That said, by far the most common problems I have trouble helping people with are related to these two professions.

Inscription

I'll start with the one that's going to get me the angry comments first. Inscription has long been touted as a cornerstone of the money making meta game -- heck, it earned my esteemed colleague, Fox, his first million gold on Darkmoon Cards. Before that, we had "glyphsmas" when 4.0 hit and a steady level of demand for glyphs before that. We still have the stupidly profitable fortune card market that lets anyone open a tiny, Blizzard-sanctioned casino. So what's not to like?

WoW players today tend to consider the deterioration of the in-game community in terms of relatively recent influences like the Dungeon Finder and then the Raid Finder. We sometimes forget that design tweaks and new systems have been chipping away at the paradigm of Azeroth as a place to forge ongoing personal relationships for years now. Take a gander at the beginning of this analysis I wrote on the death of the Azerothian salesman all the way back in the hyper-modern era of The Burning Crusade circa 2007:

Forget the endless debate over hardcore versus casual -- there's another moniker that we here at Insider Trader hold dear: salesman. What's that? You don't know any salesmen in WoW these days? You're not alone. Times have changed since craftspeople toiled to build reputations as the go-to traders on their servers ... when Ironforge was the hub of civilization, where a few elite enchanters held court over the entire server with coveted formulae from such exotic locales as Stratholme and Scholomance.

It's a brave new world in today's Outland. Most enchanters don't enchant for the general public at all, unless you provide mats and a tip. And in any profession, with so many other players on the servers who have the same patterns (even rare patterns are generally available from more than one player) and so many easy ways to make money (hello, daily quests!), there's little reason to hang around town to build a regular clientele. Components provided or created by other professions are readily available on the Auction House -- there's no need to seek out and nurture relationships with another player from a complementary profession.

Have the conveniences Blizzard has developed for today's crafters meant the death of the salesman?

Most WoW players would agree that convenience and self-service is the way of today's game. But for one stubborn tradesman on Sentinels (US), life as an Azerothian salesman is anything but obsolete. Daen, a dedicated craftsman and proprietor of Daen's Crafting Emporium, single-handedly maintains what may be one of World of Warcraft's last remaining bastions of personal craftsmanship and trade skill service -- with a twist. This proprietor not only aims to provide personal service, but he does it at no charge, with the insistence that customers devote sweat equity to their mutual creations as well.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Every so often, I get asked something to the effect of "What's the fastest way to get 10,000 gold?" It's usually asked by someone who is perpetually poor in game and is looking to get a BoE or some other sort of reward that costs gold. The fastest way for me to get 10,000 gold is to log in and check my mail. My daily haul is many times that and scales based on how much time I have to craft, list, and relist. This isn't a useful answer to someone who lives paycheck to paycheck, though. So what advice would be helpful?

First off, if you're below level 85, get to level 85. This nets you quite a bit of gold simply from quest rewards and vendoring gear you acquire. If you're already level 85, the first thing you need to do is identify how much money you can make per hour running 5-mans for valor points that you can use to sell BoEs. On my realm, I could sell a BoE costing 1,650 VPs for about 10,000 gold. That means every valor point I earn could be worth 6 gold, which makes the 150 points I get from a 5-man worth 900g. I can do seven per week per character with the requisite gear. Also, every trash kill and boss kill has a chance of awarding you with valuables, including enchanting mats (if someone can DE) and BoEs.

Each week, WoW Insider's Mathew McCurley brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same.

One of the best ways for addon developers or fans of addon developers to get their addon some attention is to have it featured here on Addon Spotlight. If you're a developer who wants to see your addon in the spotlight or you're a friend of a developer looking to do your buddy a solid because of that thing you did in Cabo three years ago with the guy's on-again, off-again love interest, send me an email at mat@wowinsider.com and tell me to feature the addon. I try to read all my email, and you'll most likely have the experience JerichoHM did.

Some time ago, I covered Skill Helper, an addon that was sent to me by its creator, JerichoHM, that made missing a skill point because of forgetting to train a thing of the past. Now, Jericho sends me another email discussing his newest addon called iLvLr, which adds new information about an item's ilevel and durability percentage to the character pane. Addons that add to the already existing user interface are some of my favorites, since I don't have to clutter up the screen with new pictures, boxes, and other crud.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a Blood Elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense.

This column is, if anything, the result of my recent switch from engineering to alchemy on my paladin. One of the biggest drivers for my decision (other than the maddening smackdown that engineering suffered after Wrath of the Lich King) was the desire to once again have a profession that bestowed some kind of meaningful bonus for raiding. Just about every facet of engineering that had some appreciable effect for tanking was neutered (as you'll see ahead), leaving the profession a dried husk and a sad remnant of previous greatness.

I don't have to tell you that profession bonuses are easily one of the best ways to get stat boosts, and using certain professions can be a powerful tool in the min-maxer's arsenal, in order to squeeze every last stat point out of their characters. Some are excellent; some are even so excellent they are overpowered; some are middle of the road; and others are just horribly lackluster. Let's take a look.

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Face it: WoW crafting is boring. Learn a recipe, put in the materials, click to create. Repeat again and again to skill up and get new recipes. The end. We have exciting-sounding skills such as engineering and alchemy, but we have no experimentation and little customization! While we've gotten crafting dailies to make the skill-ups a little more fun outside the usual materials grind, Blizzard should probably update how crafting skills work.

Personally, I'd love a system that favors some creativity. Imagine if materials for alchemists were in certain classification: increase or decrease, physical or mental, strength or speed, endurance or power, etc. If you mix an increase reagent with a physical, mental, or power one, you'll make a strength potion. Choose decrease, mental, speed, and endurance, and maybe you make a consumable potion that lowers mana/rage/energy/runic power/focus to targets within the blast radius. No premade recipes, just players experimenting with the game. I can see a similar situation for cooking (mm, spicy chocolate gator bacon!).

Gathering could be redone a bit, too. Imagine if you could break down items to get certain materials, sort of like enchanting. Skinners can break down leather for rare hides, miners can melt down armor to retrieve rare minerals, herbalists could ... pick mushrooms out of pies?

What would you like to see change in WoW crafting? Dyes added to change armor color results? Choosing blades and hilts when crafting a weapon? RP leather armor and whip options tied to custom emotes for those nights in Goldshire?

---

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. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

TradeSkillMaster is the most powerful addon used to automate crafting and batch posting, and today, we'll be learning how to fine-tune the number of items created based on your selling history. Generally, when you started using TSM, you set up a default number of items for each trade skill group that you wanted it to keep in stock. For example, I told it to:

• Always craft enough scrolls that I had two on the auction house when they were profitable.
• Always craft enough of each meta-gem cut to ensure that I always had three on the AH when they were profitable.

Now when I hit the Restock Queue button in enchanting or jewelcrafting, it queues up enough stock to bring my inventory levels to two scrolls or three gems. What if I invested in some recipe I sell a lot more of, though?

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. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

When was the last time you saw trade chat used to actually trade more than Chuck Norris jokes? Interestingly, it can actually be used for making gold! This might be a bit of a paradigm shift, so bear with me here.

Trade chat is simultaneously one of the most overused and underused tools in our toolbox. Non-auctioneers sometimes use it almost exclusively because the addon-free auction house is intimidatingly badly designed. Gold-making pros sometimes get so wrapped up in their own business that we miss out potentially profitable chats.

So how can you use trade chat to profit?

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

In my non-WoW life, I am the complete opposite of mechanically inclined. This caused my dad many problems as I was growing up, as he is a natural handyman. My mind is artistic, while my hands are not. This is probably one of the reasons I like to play WoW: I can craft. My only limit is the materials needed to craft. Outside of WoW, I have plenty of materials -- just no skill.

Though I love to collect tabards, mounts, and pets, crafting is my passion. I have maxed out all of the professions except for leatherworking and tailoring. Hopefully within the next week, those will be maxed out, too.

My favorite crafting profession is by far inscription. I love to make glyphs. I love to make Darkmoon Faire cards. I love getting my shoulder enchant at level 70 despite no rep with Hodir. My favorite thing to craft are Netherweave Bags. Honestly, this was the only reason why I wanted to have a tailor. I love making the bags and giving them away free to new players.

My least favorite crafting profession is probably jewelcrafting. I enjoy all the perks, but the grind from 500 to 525 ... ugh. It is still hard for me to do the daily quest for my jewelcrafter.

Here are my rankings of crafting professions:

1. Inscription
2. Engineering
3. Cooking
4. Alchemy
5. Tailoring
6. Blacksmithing
7. Enchanting
8. Leatherworking
9. First Aid
10. Jewelcrafting

What are your favorite crafting professions and why?

---

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. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

When Cataclysm launched, it brought with it a new design for low-level crafting alts. In order to progress to the most desirable items, players had to get access to a "trader" NPC located in a phased area of the Twilight Highlands. This could not be done until level 84. A lot of auctioneers leveled a lot of alts they otherwise wouldn't have just so they could max out professions. I, however, was not one of them. And my laziness (or prescience?) seems to have paid off, because as of patch 4.1, all the previously locked profession content is now available from your friendly local profession trainers!