1721

I wouldn’t do it until this change is live:

Some tradeskill crafting recipes will now grant multiple skill-ups relative to the difficulty of the item. For example, the tailor-crafted Deathsilk Robes grants 3 skill points upon crafting!

I don’t know if that’s 4.0.1, 4.0.3, or after Cataclysm hits, but there’s no way I’d level any profession until that change is live.

1722

Except that I read that inscription now takes 3 inks instead on 1.

1723

Good point, and WoWhead seems to agree with you. I hadn’t seen they were upping mats for some things.

1724

Yeah, I was impressed. It’s a hobby, obviously. Think of how much time the model train guys spend building their tracks.

1725

If you want(ed) to make gold with inscription, you should take advantage of 4.0.1. It’s where the big glyph explosion will happen again. It will be still profitable in the future but not on the crazy levels that it is now.

1726

The problem with this is that there are a huge number of glyphs that can only be learned with various research, and thus will not be obtainable on short notice.

1727

It’s a good idea to buy a copy of every glyph that you might possibly want, now, to have them ready for 4.0.1. The glyph system is changing so that a character just needs to learn a glyph once, and then it’s “known” forever, with a simple process to switch between them at any time. You can go to the glyph list and pick your class, to see all the glyphs that will be available, with their new stats. Some of them can’t be crafted until the patch hits and Inscriptionists learn the recipe for them, but most can be bought now. It’s worth getting them cheap on the AH now, instead of waiting until the mad rush after the patch.

1728

LFG pugs with no accountability are jerks? No way! Best advice there is to suck it up and get back in there to improve your skills and gear. Combined with coming across noobs who despite being 80 clearly had no clue what they were doing doesn’t help fight that bad attitude. Then you meet the noobs who truly are arrogant and upset you dare call them on their idiocy. H POS after about 3 months became a “which pug dps dies on Garfrost or Ick today due to not moving out of range” game. I lost track how many times I’d end up 2-3 manning that fight in some combo.

The best part was ripping on the “your gs is too low” types when they themselves weren’t playing well or when that low gs noob was doing better than they were. Blizzard’s internal gs system for the ICC 5 mans didn’t help the situation. A 30k HP tank really really should not be in H FOS on the last boss, even in regular mode its tough.

1729

Uh…what?

1730

I soloed one of the drake boss in heroic oculus as a pally tank once.

30k hp tank is fine as long as paladin!!

1731

Yeah, 30k should be ok. In my experience the main problem with H FoS is people DPSing when you aren’t supposed to, which kills people. I put up a little reminder of this before the boss, which seems to help. The second problem is people standing in front of the boss when he spins around.

1732

That’s been my experience too. DPS sucking at the fight is what usually causes wipes, either from eating the face laser and not having enough damage to bring him down, or by not stopping DPS. With overgeared healer and tank you can just heal through it, and people who’ve only been carried in that fight think that the tank and healer suck if they can’t handle it because they don’t realize that they are actually the ones with the critical part to pay attention to.

1733

And Blizzard has disabled mass AH posting. Honestly, about time. Apparently there’s some work around but I’m sure that’ll be disabled too. There were too many people who were forcing others out by posting thousands of auctions a day. It had gotten to be ridiculous on some servers apparently. On the other hand, this may result in higher prices, we’ll have to see.

http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/10/08/gold-capped-news-critical-ah-addons-broken-by-patch-4-0-1/#continued

1734

As a Warrior tank, I took more damage from the trash than from that boss. Spell Reflect also out-DPS’d the entire rest of the group combined, sometimes.

1735

That’s not what I was implying at all. I was saying the average WoW player couldn’t survive Wrath heroics in level 70 epics, but I didn’t say they needed Naxx gear. T5 and T6 gear is worse than quest rewards in the later Wrath zones, so the numbers just don’t work in your favor unless you’re running with other fantastic players who already know the content and/or are overgeared for it.

I have no doubt that someone like you, who hangs out with a group of great players (and lives with a tank ;) ) had no trouble with jumping right into 80 heroics. I’m just saying that situation wasn’t typical back when gear wasn’t as stupidly easy to come by as it is now.

1736

Not much worse, and not many items. It was only really the blues from long quest chains that were upgrades to my T6, and even then, it was only a half-dozen slots; I went into Naxx with about half of my gear being still level 70 epics, even after picking up some ilevel 200 Heroic epics. Some slots (Wand, for example) simply had no upgrade until you hit the raid instances, unless you wanted to farm up the Ahn’kahet wand (which nobody wanted to, of course).

Of course, even the level 78 (I think?) Kalu’ak hammer was better than the Sunwell mace that I was using. Hilarious!

If you were in full Sunwell gear, which I wasn’t, you could easily be going into Naxx without upgrading anything but your weapon and maybe the helm, if you wanted to blow a ton of money in those first couple weeks on a Titansteel piece.

1737

So here is my profession dilemma. I have an alt DK that I use to tank. She has 1 free profession slot. Do I rush to powerlevel inscription before 4.01 or would Engineering be a better profession for a lesser played alt? She’s already a miner.

The plus for Inscription is she could feed glyphs, cards for my alts and get shoulder enchants. The plus for engineering are the epic items that I can craft that she probably would not get easily since I don’t play her as much. (I also have a 50 rogue that I would eventually put one of these professions on eventually).

1738

I use JC and alchemy on my tank. JC for the three +51 stamina gems, and alchemy for the mixology bonus to flask potency and duration. JC would, of course, go better with mining.

1739

Relative to other professions, engineering is mostly good for fun little extras (the engineer only enchants are roughly equivalent to the other profession bonuses). In WotLK at least the engineer-only crafted items were rapidly rendered obsolete by new gear, so I wouldn’t consider profession-only BoP items anything more than a little bit of a head start.

It is nice to be able to make your own glyphs, given the absurd prices of glyphs on the auction house, but be aware it is rather time consuming and expensive to get all of the glyphs. The inscription enchants are pretty crappy for a plate class. The tank enchant gives you dodge not stam and the dps one gives you AP not strength.

Disclaimer: I don’t know how much of this is still true in Cataclysm.

1740

JC and Blacksmithing are a great combo, too.