Showing posts with label Profession. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Profession. Show all posts

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Update on Power Leveling Engineering

The easy part of power leveling a profession are the skill-ups. Well, they aren't that easy on the old gold pile, but basically plunk down your gold, find a forge and start hacking away at schematics easily obtained from trainers. For engineering, all of the schematics needed to get to 300 come from Ironforge. Conveniently in proximity to the AH, bank and mailbox. Well, after repeating that for 300+ skill levels, I am now left with the task of obtaining all of the recipes that I actually want- the schematics that make engineering fun.

This list should be a relatively comprehensive list of patterns that a level 70+ power level would be interested in:

Feralas-
Barrens-
Winterspring-
Azshara-
Hinterlands-
Southshore-
STV-
Blackrock (Depths or Spire)-
Stratholme-
Dire Maul-
Gnomergan/Thermaplug-
Rare World Drops-
Quested-

More to come after I get past 300!

Good luck leveling!

Sunday, September 7, 2008

What is More Druid than Engineering?

Note: This is a post in progress regarding powerleveling of Engineering. It is currently changing as I finish my leveling experience and may not be chronologically consistent.

Well, I've given up on Alchemy. Thrown in the towel, the vials and flushed all of my reagents down the toilet. Actually, never seen a toilet in WoW. I suppose I will need to trek to Un'Goro to relieve my toon some day.

While alchemy provides nice buffs, the potions are overall quite boring and there really isn't much advantage to the Masteries. The procs are just too rare to bank on and just aren't fun.

So, I've powerleveled engineering, which went very well according to the guide (just remember to go back to the trainer after each step). The entire thing can be done in Ironforge, which is very nice. There is also a guide from Ten Ton Hammer, that helped ease the post-300 skill level.

Currently, I'm 300, which took about 6-7 hours and somewhere in the neighborhood of 800-900g. Overall, the experience was quite doable and I'm looking forward to obtaining some of the rare items with lowbies or as a soloing project. I've always wanted to have a soloing experience, but never could come up with a justification for soloing in BRD or Gnomer. Now, I do.

As such, I think changing a profession is a great way to get out of the pre-Wrath doldrums for a casual player, especially if your class has some soloing potential or you like PvP. For a druid, we can't benefit much from the guns, but everything else is quite usuable indeed. Just remember to keep a gathering profession, this is the casual gamers path to money making.

As for the answer to the post-title question: Gnomish Engineering. Yes, I've gone Gnomish, as I plan to play a healer in end-game and the crowd control options available with gnomish seem quite nice to me. PvP will also be a much bigger part of my play in Wrath, as it takes up much less time. Being an annoyance with the Mind Control Cap against a Grand Master Greifer should be a lot of fun.

Anyway, I'm off to gather up the cool engineering stuff, while taking my time and enjoying the scenery along the way. It appears that I will be taking a tour of the old world.

I had the money making scheme well dialed-in with alchemy (make a transmute every day), so finding the niche and markets for Engi stuff should be fun too. For all you economics lovers, changing professions is a great fun.

On the Gnome State Engineering Curriculum are:

101 Trainer Gizzes
180 Quests
195 Transporters
210 Gnomish Stuff
250 Drops
376 The WotLK Stuff
501 Rep Stuff

I will keep a log here of my success in training and report on the utility of my new gadgets.

Any Engineers out there with suggestions or items I've missed?

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Lament of the Fel Lotus: Part II

Fel Lotus gathering must be generating too much money....

From the patch notes 2/26/08:

Herbalism

* Ancient Lichen now has a chance to drop a Fel Lotus where it used to drop a piece of random green jewelry.
* Black Lotus replaced by Fel Lotus in herbalism skinning tables for Outland creatures.
* Increased the chance that Felweed, Dreaming Glory, Ragveil, and Flame Caps will contain a Fel Lotus.

Gather and sell Fel Lotus while you can! The new Sunwell areas should increase Raid volume and demand for this lovely little Gold maker.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Druid Profession Choice

What are the advantages and disadvantages of various professions for Druids?

The two top choices for druid primary professions are probably Alchemy/Herbalism or Leatherworking/Skinning. I will only discuss these two combinations, though certainly other combinations are possible.

Casual players and money farmers should note that the king of moneymaking is probably a combination of two gathering professions. However, gathering is not as much fun as crafting something, hence the remainder of this post.


Features of Alchemy/Herbalism:

1) Druids can gather herbs in any form, which markedly increases the speed that druids can collect herbs. With the use of Hibernate, Entangling Roots and Soothe Beast, druids can incapacitate nearby enemies and beasts, making herb collection simple. Gathering may not be available in Swift Flight Form.



2) Alchemy provides a constant source of buffs at little cost. These pots/buffs will allow you to level faster and spend less money on healing and mana potions, which are necessary and can be expensive.

3) Many herbs can be sold for great profit to other classes for quests and some potions sell well to PvP and raid users. Many herbs sell for more gold than the potions you can make from them.

4) Transmutation allows players to make gold easily (read without grinding extensively), albeit at lower rates, by finding inexpensive reagents (Primals) on the Auction House and turning them into valuable products (more valuable Primals). With Transmute Mastery, multiple products can be made from one set of reagents. Transmute Masters may be able to sell the "chance" of extra products to other players or keep extra products obtained when using other player's reagents. I cannot comment on Potion or Elixir Mastery, but the ability to sell finished products is generally more difficult that selling raw materials.

5) The drawbacks of Alch/Herbs include low rates of "discovery" of new potions and reportedly low rates of extra products from Mastery (despite appx 400-500g cost of Mastery). Though, the probability of extra products is reported to be 20%, which is quite high.


Features of Leatherworking/Skinning:

1) Leatherworking will allow players some freedom from trolling the Auction House for good gear and the time required to find quests that have desirable gear rewards.

2) The high-level leatherworking patterns are probably the best non-raid/non-PvP gear in the game. The patterns are expensive and rare. If your destination is player versus environment (PvE), you do not plan to raid and gear is very important to you, leatherworking should be good for your purposes. You could always buy most of this gear (that are not BoP) from a leatherworker, but the BoP's (which require leatherworking to wear) are the best. If your destination is PvP or a raiding guild, leatherworking will hold less value.

3) If you have friends or alts who are druids, rogues, low-level shaman or low-level hunters and you want to craft gear for them, leatherworking could be fun. Your guild will certainly benefit from having a leatherworker for armor kits.

4) Don't take leatherworking to make money. There are many posts on the official forums about the slow pace of leveling leatherworking and about products selling for less than the cost of their ingredients.

5) Skinning takes very little time, as many mobs that are killed and looted can be skinned. This is an advantage over many other gathering professions that require extra travel-time to a node or herb. Tailoring has its own gathering profession without even having to dedicate a primary skill toward that gathering profession (cloth drops from all humanoids).

In summary: Most Druids should probably take Alchemy/Herbs as this combination will create the most profit and allows for upgrades while leveling and for end-game. Alch/Herbs seems to be much easier to level than Leatherworking due to readily available recipes that allow yellow and red skill-ups. Those players who enjoy crafting their own armor or enjoy crafting for friends, and who do not need to make a profit from a profession, should consider Leatherworking/Skinning. Again, those soley interested in a profession for money making potential should take two gathering professions.

For additional information, see this discussion thread on the Druid Wiki, which has many great perspectives on this issue.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Engineering Goodies for Druids

I was writing a post as part of a series (what does profession X have to offer for Druids?), when this gem showed up in the official druid forums. There are basically no items other than some of the low level dynamite and the Ornate Spyglass that non-engineering druids can use and my post was off to a very short start. I would put the Ornate Spyglass on my list for PvP, as it will give that extra notice of encroaching opponents, but the real decision is whether to replace or start with Engineering as a profession. Here is the original, excellent post. All credit to the author for a great informative and short communication on this subject:



"The purpose of this post is to acquaint the druid community with the amazing potential that the Engineering trade offers us. Since Engineering is at the height of its popularity right now (thanks to epic headgear and the rofflecopter), I thought this would be a good time to share my meager knowledge with my fellow druids.

The first and single most important statement I must make is that Engineering is NOT a money-making profession. There are a very scant handful of items you can make and sell that non-Engineers will want, and those few items will sell relatively slowly at that. If you're going to be an Engineer, be prepared to make the financial commitment that this decision requires. You will literally be pouring money and materials into your trade, and the final stretch of Engineering is one of the most expensive profession grinds in the game.

If I haven't scared you off yet, then you must also consider this: Engineering is not an I-Win button in ANY scenario. Most of the devices we make have a chance of backfiring and (at best) failing to work, or (at worst) working on US instead of our target. Engineering can be used as an ace in the hole, but it can also cause you many deaths when things go awry. So being an Engineer requires you to not only know what items to use but also when best to use them. And you have to accept that sometimes, things just go badly for Engineers. And that's not to mention the fact that many of the devices you can make become virtually useless the moment you hit level 60. Plus there's the fact that your bags will be in a perpetual state of overflowing, with all the parts and pieces and schematics and trinkets and explosives you'll be carrying. Imagine a class that has to deal with soul shards, ammo pouches, mining bags and dozens of reagents, and you'll start to come close to the logistical nightmare Engineers face.

Still with me? Good. You might just have what it takes to be an Engineer afterall. Now that I've outlined some of the negatives of Engineering, let me tell you this: Engineering is by far the most fun profession in the game. It allows you to do things that simply shouldn't be possible. There's so many fun toys and quirky gadgets in Engineering that you can never get bored. And the first time you manage to pull off something so amazing that your jaw drops, you'll know why we Engineers are addicted to our trade.

So how does Engineering suit a druid? Perhaps better than it does with any other class in the game. One of the main weaknesses of the Druid class is our lack of utility abilities. The WoW gods have decreed that we Druids shouldn't be allowed to have nice things, what with the fact that we can opt to heal, DPS or tank with just our one class. By the devs' thinking, since we can be good at several different roles, we should sacrifice tons of utility to pay for it. Engineering helps get around that by giving us HEAPS of utility to play with. Below is a list of some of the gadgets Engineers can make, and how they benefit our class directly.

Explosives - Druids lack spellcasting interrupts in caster/moonkin form, but explosives can sometimes serve that purpose. Their built-in stuns also suppliment the stuns we already have available from our Feral forms, and they can allow us to get a headstart on a hasty retreat, or buy time to get a crucial heal off.

Seaforium Charges - Although we can stealth and DPS like rogues, one of the things we lack is the ability to open chests, doors and lockboxes. C4 allows us to take the not-so-subtle approach to that problem.

Goggles - At low levels, these give us access to headgear to place into a slot that would normally go empty. And later on, there's even some crafted leather versions that can outdo instance drops. And the ultimate goggles rival anything Tier 5 has to offer.

Jumper Cables - Although our battle rez is mighty, it's also on a long cooldown. Jumper Cables give us access to a second rez for when our Rebirth is on cooldown. Instead of being able to rez once every 30 minutes (or 20 after the patch), we have a chance of being able to rez twice in that time. And with the XL version, the chance is really pretty good.

Pets - The various crafted pets make great ghetto tanks on NPCs to allow us to make a retreat, or they're great at distracting enemies so we can loot a quest item or resource node.

Net-O-Matic Projector - This works like Entangling Roots without having the restriction of being usable only outdoors, and if it backfires we can just shapeshift out of the net, making this an excellent tool. Unlike other classes, we don't have to worry about this one backfiring.

Parachute Cloak - Until we get Flight Form, this is a great way to not worry about long drops. You can safely leap down the Great Lift or into Un'Goro Crater, or jump off the Aldor Rise, and live to land gently on the ground. And nothing is funnier than a flying bear drifting gently in the breeze. Nothing.

Rocket Boots - The various forms of Rocket Boots are a great suppliment to our ability to Dash and our Travel Form, making flag running in Warsong Gulch that much easier. What's more to say?

Deepdive Helmet - Sure, we can already shift into Aquatic Form to breathe underwater, but this allows us to breathe underwater while in other forms as well, making it easy to fight underwater without having to shift in and out of Aquatic to catch our breath.

Recombobulators - Sure, it's extremely situational, but being able to dispel a Polymorph can come in really handy in PvP.

Elemental Reflectors - These may only be useful against enemy players under level 60, but they're useful against NPCs all the time. I can't count the number of times a Reflector has saved my life. We lack spell mitigation, so these can be remarkably useful.

Nigh-Invulnerability Belt - Damage soaking may not be a problem for Feral druids, but Balance and Restoration druids will prize the ability to soak damage until their tank regains aggro. This item can easily save a group wipe!

Transporters - We can already get back to northern Kalimdor easily, so with a pair of transporters you can bounce around Azeroth and Outland at will, saving lots of travel time in some cases.

Gnomish Poultryizer - Oh god I love this trinket. Not only does it give a fantastic boost to Stamina, it also allows you to instantly shut down enemy casters in both PvE and PvP, and even melees will see a massive drop in the damage they can deal while in chicken form. And if it backfires and you get turned into a chicken, you can simply shift out of it since it counts as a Polymorph effect. All the positives and none of the negatives make this trinket fantastic for any Druid.

Goblin Rocket Launcher - If you opt to take Goblin Engineering instead of Gnomish, you'll have this instead of the Poultryizer. A free, easy burst of massive damage helps your DPS and tanking, and it gives the same tremendous Stamina boost.

And of course, that list doesn't even take into account all the fun stuff in Engineering, like the crafted non-combatant pets, or the flares and fireworks, or the Mote Extractor for farming primals, or the Voice Amplification Modulator that helps you get out of Silences and Interrupts faster, or the Targetting Dummies, or the Explosive Sheep (which is so singularly funny the profession is worth it just for this)... Engineering isn't for everyone, but it offers so much added utility to Druids that it should almost be mandatory. It makes up for so many of our weaknesses and boosts so many of our strengths that I don't think I could ever play a Druid without Engineering. It's a slow, painful, expensive grind, but believe me when I say that it's worth it in the end. So if you're considering taking up the path of the Schematic and you're willing to accept the drawbacks of Engineering, I hope you stick with it all the way! You'll have fun! If this is the path for you, I wish you the best of luck. And if you have any Engineering-related questions, feel free to ask and I'll help if I can."