Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Enchantment prices (and LFR)

The PuG update: Ultraxion down (no screenshot as there is no corpse). 2 healers setup. We are currently #12500, as no one can farm on first week, this is the baseline. If I'm right and farming is just wasting precious raid time, we'll elevate, if I'm wrong and gear is needed, we'll slip back.


I can't help being totally amused by the inability of the masses to learn from their own mistakes. Every single gear reset brings the enchantment prices to stellar levels. Despite they always pay premium price for enchantments, people still can't don't stack them up before the patch.

It isn't hard to estimate the enchantment demand. You can buy a scroll to every slot and store it in the bank. There shouldn't be price jump on patch day. The message for today is short, simple but essential: look beyond your nose! Stock up for your own use even if you are not speculating with the items.

Of course you can also get lot of gold selling the items that the unprepared people buy. But that's hardly new to any AH player. Stormforged shoulders are still our friends.


The LFR feature is a positive surprise, despite it deserve its nickname "looking for retard". Below-tank DPS is common, the average raid DPS is 15K. However there are surprisingly few dance fails, it explains why Blizzard stick to the dance: it provide "I did it" feeling to 12K DPS players too. After all, it needs no brain, just hand-eye coordination. We cleared the first 4 bosses in 1:40. It is 25-men and provides ilvl 384 PvE gear with 250 valor at the end. So it's completely viable way to gear up. Just don't be surprised when 3 oozes with half HP reach Yor'sah. This is part of the deal.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yor’sahj the Unsleeping

The Aggro Radius has been properly adjusted for all difficulties of this encounter.
Slimes, Mana Voids, and Forgotten Ones have had their HP reduced by 20% on Raid Finder difficulty.
Pets cannot be summoned during the decent into this encounter.


It has begun, guys.

Selkhet said...

I'll tell you, I'm having SO much fun with this reset! Cut Inferno Rubies are going for almost 400g on my server! Ember Topaz, too, some cuts go for almost 100g, and for some reason both Hessonite and Cinderbloom are dirt cheap.

I'm a happy rogue. =)

Clockw0rk said...

I did LFR the second night it was out as my alt...I found it amusing that we killed all four bosses while basically ignoring all the mechanics so far as I could tell. Aside from "move out of stuff the boss does and kill adds that everyone else kills" I basically DPS'ed the boss...kind of amusing how easy LFR is.

But clearly it's still too hard as (courtesy of a hotfix):

"Slimes, Mana Voids, and Forgotten Ones have had their HP reduced by 20% on Raid Finder difficulty."

In the aforementioned LFR run we got the appropriate slimes down with half the group ignoring them and sticking on the boss....I wonder if a hard sneeze will kill them now.

Bobbins said...

The availability of enchantment after a patch is a supply side issue. After a patch everyone knows the demand increases and yet supply never raises to the challenge.
Anyway Wow has so much gold in it at the moment it is meaningless.

Aethryl said...

I think for this raid, while unnecessary, farming will provide much more of an advantage as compared to previous raids. This is because of how disgustingly powerful many of the set bonuses are (hunter 2 piece is a LOT of dps, tank 4 piece are fantastic, etc. etc.).

Gesh said...

"... it needs no brain, just hand-eye coordination ..."

I'm not sure why memorizing a DPS rotation counts as 'has brain' and hand-eye coordination is a 'no-brain'. Why didn't you write about the dance when Heigan and the Four Horsemens and Malygos were hot stuff?

Antivyris said...

If you are on a server where the stormforged recipe is above 100g like mine, there is a standby I love that puts a floor on the max of a shard or crystal.

Firelands cloaks can be disenchanted. This puts the floor for non-goblin lvl 25 revered at 200g. That's 100g for a heavenly shard. Add bountiful bags, and I just laugh at the people trying to buy out shards at 150g trying to relist them higher.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure why memorizing a DPS rotation counts as 'has brain' and hand-eye coordination is a 'no-brain'. Why didn't you write about the dance when Heigan and the Four Horsemens and Malygos were hot stuff?

Because those encounters also had mechanics in place that required a higher level of personal performance. Malygos had an enrage timer, and the Horsemen had the "mark" mechanic. If you didn't have enough DPS, you couldn't kill them. The argument against "the dance" in Cata, is that these personal output requirements are practically non-existent. There is no mechanic in place to require individual players to perform at a certain level in order to succeed. The emphasis is entirely on "the dance" itself.

Anonymous said...

@Xintia-

Did you even do those raids? The marks from the Four Horsemen were a test of the raid's ability to swap the bosses, pure and simple. Execute it properly, and you could keep the fight going almost indefinitely because the marks dropped off. Anybody blows a swap, and everyone dies, no matter how good your rotation skills. As for Malygos, only Phase 1 was a race of your standard skills against the timer. Phase 2 was all shoot and skoot, and Phase 3 was a freakin' vehicle fight.

At least you didn't try to claim Heigan was a skill fight too.

Anonymous said...

Not that healing meters matter at all but going LFR is a way to completely dominate them. We went through yesterday afternoon evening pulling Yor'sahj with the last set of trash slimes and one shot everything.

Anonymous said...

"Just don't be surprised when 3 oozes with half HP reach Yor'sah. This is part of the deal."

This made me laugh 'cause it's so true.

chewy said...

"no screenshot as there is no corpse"
True but you could have a screenshot of the team standing by the ship.

(I don't doubt you did it I'm just pointing out an alternative shot).

Anonymous said...

@Anon-

I think your memory of those fights is somewhat selective. Yes you could, in theory, extend the Horsemen fight indefinitely (or at least until your healer mana runs out). But I think I can safely argue that it was implied in the mechanic that a certain level of DPS is expected in order to complete the encounter as intended, and that the "marks" were intended to enforce this, especially in its original incarnation.

As far as Malygos goes, I think people tend to forget that his enrage was pretty demanding when the encounter was "top tier" content and before you could outgear it. Just because it ends in a silly gimmick doesn't mean that personal performance was not important in those first two stages. If Timmy the Warlock does less DPS than the tank, you cannot complete phase 1 (or 2 for that matter) with enough time to complete the encounter. Before Blizz scaled the "vehicles" for phase 3 (and you could get sick amounts of gear) that phase took a certain amount of time no matter how well you did it. If individuals fail to perform in phases 1 and 2, this becomes an issue.

Jon said...

LOL at all the "anonmymous" elists in this comment thread.

Yes, WoW should definitely cater to the 1% that are the elitists. Let's see how long it sticks around after that happens.

Want a challenge? Do heroic modes. LFR is a blessing for the 99% of us who aren't hardcore raiders.

And if you really think LFR is so damaging to WoW - how about putting your name behind your thoughts.

Anonymous said...

On Malygos there was a pretty strict DPS requirement for phase 1, but it was more matter of correct handling of the sparks than personal output.

Unknown said...

I die the first new raid last week in Raid Finder when it became available. There was only one wipe. Last night I used Raid Finder to kill Deathwing; again, only one wipe.

Clearing all of the new content within 8 days of its release is disappointing at best. I got out of the Auction House for a few days, but have got right back. The game offers little entertainment/challenge lately.

Anonymous said...

@Jon:

> Yes, WoW should definitely cater to
> the >1% that are the elitists. Let's
> see how long it sticks around after
> that happens.

It did so. For whole vanilla and most of TBC. Times when number of subscribes were going up, not down.
Of course it wasn't just this that did bring those subscribes, but there is some relation to catering to ones that know the game.
On the other hand how many people whined about 15min AoE borefest dailies in Wotlk (and probably Cata too, lately) or trade pugs / LFRs when you can get senile just from watching how dumb some people can be? A lot, not without a reason. Themepark MMO has to challenging otherwise it's simply boringn and not worth subscribing.

> Want a challenge? Do heroic modes. LFR
> is a blessing for the 99% of us who
> aren't hardcore raiders.>

And once again someone is mistaking hardcore with normal (or "able to read and perform at some level). Congrats on getting yourself mixed in M&S filth?

Squishalot said...

Gevlon: "The PuG update: Ultraxion down (no screenshot as there is no corpse). 2 healers setup. We are currently #12500, as no one can farm on first week, this is the baseline. If I'm right and farming is just wasting precious raid time, we'll elevate, if I'm wrong and gear is needed, we'll slip back."

Wrong. Your target is #10k. If you slacked off and only did 2 bosses, you would be #20,000 instead, and would you then claim that moving up to #12,500 validates your idea, when in reality, said 'improvement' is merely due to the poor baseline?

You had a target from the outset. Don't water it down now.

Bristal said...

Evaluating LFR in the first week when it's novel and populated with hardcore and clearly better players than I typically saw in a Z heroic is pointless.

LFR fights were tuned for unguilded players who raid rarely, and are ilvl 364.

The fact that you might be able to ignore mechanics is an anomaly, and certainly hasn't been my experience. In a month or 2, knowing the fights and a good raid leader will be necessary.

The real win of LFR to me is that I have now seen the content, and I'm likely to be able to perform better, and actually be able to talk my way into a normal mode PuG.

Jon said...

@ Anonymous

That sure means a lot coming from someone who's too chicken to even put their name behind what they're saying.

I'm a casual player - definitely not M&S. But thanks for the name calling, definitely helped prove your point.

Jon said...

@ Anonymous, again-

Correlation does not automatically imply causation. Just because subscription numbers were climbing in vanilla/BC does NOT automatically imply it was because of the difficulty level of the raids. More likely it was because the game was fresh and the NOVELTY factor was still there. WoW has been around 7 years now, and the elitist jerks such as yourself are simply getting bored and need a new hobby.

But then again, I wasn't expecting to have a mature and logical conversation with someone who can't even be bothered to put their name behind their words. So how about growing a pair?

Anonymous said...

@Jon
not the previous anon but had to step in. The idea of anon is not simply hiding from accountability. It is also about taking the message at face-value and not discarding it cause its jimmy and not prof. Hawkins

tbh i like lfr and think its great for the transition to raiding normal mode. I think most flamers are just people doing it for vanity which is getting not destroyed but certaintly diminished by lfr.