Greedy Goblin

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Morons of the week

Before anything else, you must see this! Some Blizz designer is not satisfied with the "badge gear for every M&S policy.

Another weekend, another set of people with limited thinking ability.

Our first one just wanted to fix the price of bags, not understanding that a market with 0 entry cost and lot of participants cannot be fixed:


The other one whispered to a reader for similar purpose, with sounding success:



The last one wanted was a healer of a PuG. My GF's friends whined that she was terrible. I checked why. No enchants, no gems, but she had ONE epic. She spent around 800G to improve her healing gear (has no DPS spec):


PS: The screenshot is only a week old, but she already found a lot of "freindly social ppl" who boosted her trough lot of content, otherwise she wouldn't have so many (yet misgemmed and misenchanted) epics.


The last genius wanted boost exactly when I was discussing Alchemy with Aosoth:

I assume he recognized that the other people cannot know he is offering money if he does not say it, so he neither answered, nor spammed anymore.

Keep sending me such pictures and please insert some signiture in the mail. I may find out your name from john.smith@something.com, but I guess you may don't want to see this name on the blog. So please sign your letters.

29 comments:

Townes said...

Dunno about the healer being a moron. Her spec is almost that of a normal holy PvE priest, plus or minus a few talent points, and where it isn't and where she's mis-gemmed and has less than optimal enchants, it seems to be geared toward PvP. She has 10,000 HK. I didn't look to see if it was a PvP server, but if not, maybe that's why she has the stamina gems? At least it's not agility.

If your PUG was for a heroic 5-man, at least one of the easier ones, I think I could heal fine in her gear with her spec from last week. If she didn't heal well, it may have had more to do with skill than being a moron, and it actually looks like she's scrambled to pick up some of the standard pre-raid heroic 5-man loot (like the wand I remember going for last year before going into Naxx) and has dived in to gear up in the new 5-man.

If your PUG was for a raid, well, yes, the gear from a week ago is shabby. The current set would probably be OK for starting to raid. I don't think I had a lot more spellpower when I started, though I had all my enchants.

It's like that great old post you had about what stats and gear ought to be "good enough". I think someone with a little skill could heal fine in that gear, but of course it depends on the content and on the rest of the group. It takes a lot better gear and skill to heal with a badly-geared or unskilled tank, e.g.

"Good enough" is real. I've raided with a priest who has sometimes had a few talent points to make questing easier, or one bad enchant, and no belt buckle, and she's still near the top of the healing meters. A few little things are just... little things.

Pangoria Fallstar said...

@Townes: The biggest reason she's a moron is that she had a robe with hit for a healing spec, with no dps spec, and she paid for it, instead of getting one of the other robes that would give her more benefit.

Smeg said...

I think we know who the real moron is here.

Anonymous said...

Well it is worth looking at the Priest's reputations.

She clearly has the PvP enchants (head/shoulders) because she doesn't yet have the reputations needed to buy the PvE equivilents.

Good on him/her for bothering to go and get them to try and improve herself by any means, even if it isn't the best yet!

The 'odd' enchants are low level, and looking at her enchanting level it looks like she is trying to raise this so I imagine this will see improvement soon.

I don't have much experience with priests but the only truely misgemmed item I see is those stamina gems, but maybe she was having a play in a BG and just logged out like that or she had run low on gold by that point and just bought something cheap to improve suvivability while she worked on her gold.

It's all very well judging and posting her profile up for ridicule, but all I see is someone who looks like they're trying pretty hard to improve themselves although perhaps it isn't all working out! Noones telling you to hold her hand and teach her how to play, but theres no need to tear someone down either.

Anonymous said...

before reading the other comments i was going to have a go at the +5 stam to boots.....but if she was just leveling enchanting i can see that.


it never ceases to amaze me how many crappy enchanting scrolls i sell.

i dont sell many enchant mats any more. instead i make random scroll of all levels. then i list them at 300% markup (above the mats price which is already at markup anyhow)

they sell consistently. vanilla enchants. BC enchants. 300% markups. i just dont get it.

Townes said...

@Pangoria - I didn't notice the +hit. Just like in-game where I have to be careful what I roll on with my priest sometimes. Or maybe I didn't pay it enough attention; when gearing up in Naxx, I started out (because we had no other clothies) making big upgrades to healing gear that happened to have +hit. The day my +hit got down to zero was a happy one but took a while.

Buying a crafted robe for dps instead of for healing is another matter, you're right. My bad.

SmokyBG said...

"Some Blizz designer is not satisfied with the "badge gear for every M&S" policy."
I think it's more of "Some Blizz designers are making fun of "forum raiders" whining" :-)

Ayonel said...

We've been having netherweave bag wars for almost two weeks. It's finally settling down. I think I win, though we are somewhere between a cartel and all-out war. The price-fixers don't really get it, but there are enough of them who sit at AH all day that it is hard to ignore them. The other goblins have the same mentality as you, and will cut prices mercilessly while posting huge volume. So it's hard to win. However, I usually manage 10-20 bags a day with no time spent in AH or undercutting, and some days, like yesterday, for some reason there are no bags posted at all, so I can sell 40-50 at top dollar.

The funniest thing is that the price fixers are the ones who sit in the AH all day cancelling and reposting to undercut everyone, while the goblins seem to pick a strategy for the environment(match fixers or hugely undercut) and go away.

I so wanted to send you a screenshot from a conversation in which I tried to explain economics to one of these guys...

Anonymous said...

I have myself some other Morons to go on the list. I didn't encounter them myself, but a guildie asked if he could borrow 500g and in return would give back with 50g interest about an hour later. I agreed, since I have the gold and who wouldn't want 50g for free basically. Anyway, when I asked him later why he wanted it, he said he had been buying something off people (I think saronite bars, but I cant remember now) and selling them to VENDORS for a profit. It was also apparently not just one person selling to him stupidly. I trusted he wasn't being stupid and adding up the prices incorrectly, so didn't check, but if so they definitely deserve M&S of the week status.

Phanttas

Tanelor said...

Unfortunately I didn't get a screenshot, but today's M&S special for me was on a PUG nexus hc run.

pugger: "Let's all roll Need on everything."
me: "Why?"
pugger: "For the achievement! [Needy]! You can trade it all afterwards anyway now."
/sigh

"Achievement"? Did Blizz have any idea what sort of pain they were opening us up to with this trade after you loot nonsense?"

Townes said...

@Ayonel - I started a DK tailor on a new server partly because of this blog, and experience the same. The "cartel" is usually online and reposting and undercutting umpteen times a day. Many days they've bought out all the netherweave cloth. But they can't always be online, and I have always been able to sell at the volume you describe. They're on my friends list, so I know I can post a lot of bags to sell quickly when they're gone.

This week one of the netherweave bag suppliers is selling runecloth for 3g/stack. So instead of undercutting his netherweave bags, I'm selling runecloth bags for 6g, and they're selling well because the netherweave bag prices are jacked up without me in the market. I think everyone's happy.

Anonymous said...

I also am not so sure the priest is in the wrong here. Certainly that is not the best rob for her spec. But it's not the worst of all possible robes either. And none of us here know that she actually bought the robe. Maybe a social friend gave it to her because she had little gold.

I actually used a +spellpower trinket on my cat for a while because it also had a huge amount of +hit. So it is possible that for her this robe is the best she can get at the time and in a week it will be gone.

Until I knew more about the situation I would not pass judgment.

Sid said...

@Tanelor: I don't see any problem with that. To the contrary, I think it's a great implementation to the game, because now there's no excuse for those "sry I pushed need accidentally I didn't want to steal your loot" ninjas, AND people that really pushed need by mistake can easily solve the problem without making a huge drama over it.

And the "M&S"'s idea to roll need for achiv and then distribute loot correctly was very smart in my opinion. I don't see why you call him M&S.

Anonymous said...

Fun read, thanks for the post Gevlon.

Anonymous said...

The priest probably doesnt realise it in their choice of chest but healers need a hit set if they are are trying to dispel a buff from a boss. Missing a fusion punch dispel usually causes a wipe

Anonymous said...

To the anonymous above me,

You can't miss a dispel on another player - dispels can be resisted in pvp if players talent for it, but you can't miss dispelling fusion punch. :p

ZachPruckowski said...

"he said he had been buying something off people (I think saronite bars, but I cant remember now) and selling them to VENDORS for a profit"

I see this a lot with icy dragonscales. People undercut them on the AH right down to the vendor price (1g), and sometimes idiots undercut even that.

Esteban said...

It could be that the +hit girl used to be shadow, but decided to switch to healing, without a complete set being built yet. So she's using the best she has with spellpower.

That said, I don't mean to troll, but this is exactly what gives -me- pleasure in the game. Serious raiders wondering where the heck my ill-specced friends got their ill-gemmed, ill-enchanted yet highly-advanced gear.

Carrying people can be rewarding. I realise that Ayn Rand hated the idea of Robin Hood, but I bet he had more fun than she.

Of course, now Blizzard is doing our job for us...

Belsebub said...

With all these people getting mails from angry people I feel I must be doing something wrong as I don't get any.

Unknown said...

I never get angry email from an one, I must not be a good enough goblin

Wooly said...

I have to say I'm starting to dislike that those people are immediately considered morons. They're just not hardcore traders. They write decent requests, and too bad for them that they've lost their business, but to consider them morons goes a bit too far.

And that priest with the ebonweave robe could have been shadow in the beginning and changed. Or just had that robe offered for a very low price. Just because something has a wasted stat doesn't mean that is isn't an upgrade. I have had the kirin tor healing robe on my lock for a while for the simple reason that is was a huge upgrade at that time and was extremely cheap. The fact that she can't heal makes here a moron, not the robe.

But that put aside, the link to the 2 emblem sales guys is epic.

In fact, it's has given me a bit of faith in the developers of wow again. They're aware of it, great gear is given away to all that can walk a straight line and push a button. I have a feeling blizzard, like most big companies, can be compared to the Dilbert strip: marketing idiots decide that more money can be made by keeping the retarded majority happy. This, instead of having a game where skill, intelligence, teamwork and some discipline decides how far you will get. I guess the dungeons are just hard enough to give that challenge to those that dare to PUG: the challenge is in being able to carry your group through. The challenge remains as they'll likely ninja your gear away. It's some sort of balancing.

Sean said...

"You can't miss a dispel on another player - dispels can be resisted in pvp if players talent for it, but you can't miss dispelling fusion punch. :p"

You can miss a fusion punch dispel actually. This is a known issue:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=9521239463&sid=1

And like a few posters have said, I wouldn't call the priest a moron from the evidence presented. +hit gear can indicate a switch from shadow to holy. Mis-enchanted items due to leveling.

Too many people are quick to jump and use the M&S tag without really checking out the full story.

Anonymous said...

Don't assume the healer is a moron. And also don't assume that that gear is bad for an easy heroic. Also pvp gear does work in the lower difficulty heroics contrary to popular belief.

I never understood why you have to have T8 gear to run a heroic. Aren't you supposed to run the heroic to get geared up to get the raid gear?

There is a guy on my server that I would put on ignore if he wasn't good at pvp which is my favorite part of the game. He spams trade for Daily Heroic Pugs and requires a certain gear score which is high enough that you pretty much need the epic achievement(213 in each slot) to get.

I meet his requirements but I won't group with him. He is a jerk, that happens to be a good player.

Anonymous said...

Also consider that +hit is considered a necessity for doing Arena. Perhaps she is gearing for that?

Rat said...

Atleast this post explained to me why people undercut so low. They do it so you can sell mass amounts without fear ands till make somewhat of a profit.

It also discourages people from trying to market, like what happened with me and netherweave bags.

I gotta do that. I gotta get my market back. How low do I sell? Barely making a profit or none at all?

MyName said...

As far as the chest goes, like other people said, healer could have been shadow and then respecced. The spec is lousy though. On top of that, the person has maxed Horde expedition reputation (999 exalted) but hasn't gotten enough rep with the wyrmrest or kirin tor to buy the head enchant?

Also, while the stam gems might be somewhat useful for pvp, the fact is that, judging by reputations, the "healer" has spent most of the time in Alterac Valley (good place for honor, but a hardcore pvp player would have gone more places), and again, doesn't even have the good holy pvp talents (or very good pve holy talents). A pro pvp healer would be discipline spec, BTW.

Oh well, this person still probably is not the weakest link for most groups, but I'd have a little talk about gear and spec before going into ulduar if they were in my guild.

Bristal said...

@Rat
Welcome to the Goblin King Sam Walton's (Walmart) brilliance. It's all a matter of math in how much profit you need/want to make. 10G profit x5 items = 2.5G profit x20 items = 1G profit x50 items.

Obviously it's dependent upon the volume you can sell. Lower prices increases your volume as more people can buy, and undercutting close to or even under your profit margin briefly chases your competition away, further increasing your volume after they go away (or take a break).

Flies in the face of the old adage about "flooding the market", but it works.

But you do have to pay attention to market fluctuations of your materials, and have a feel for the volume limit of sales.

Anonymous said...

What does "M&S" exactly mean?

Zed said...

It's Morons&Slackers =)