Challenge Mode Progress

Worst screenshot. Best CM friends.

We’ve been working on challenge modes for several weeks now. I realized that if we didn’t schedule a specific time and day, we’d never get them done. So sometime last month we finally got it started, choosing Sunday mornings as a time that works for all five people in our group. We do them for about two hours, which seems to be the magic number to make progress each week and end before people get too tired.

Challenge modes are both exhilarating, and exhausting. When we first started doing them we did very little research beforehand, and just did whichever one happened to be the daily quest at the time until we had worked our way through all of them. Most of the Bronze rewards are a given and we were usually able to snag a Bronze without any preparation. There were a few instances where we achieved a Silver our first time through: Siege of Niuzao and also Temple of the Jade Serpent.

The most commonly recommended “easy” first Gold is Gate of the Setting Sun but we did not find that to be the case for our group. We have Rhidach (prot/ret paladin), Itanya (resto shaman), Shaen (elemental shaman), Vosskah (Blood/Frost DK) and myself (Fire/Frost mage). When we were working on Gate, Rhidach was tanking and I was still fire. We had many frustrations with all of that initial trash. People getting killed by the sappers, people getting killed by bombs. It was aggravating in the extreme. We eventually ended up deciding to focus on another CM for awhile before coming back to that one.

Our next target was Temple of the Jade Serpent, because we’d gotten a Silver there without trying. It’s considered a medium difficulty challenge mode but it seemed like a good fit for us. As we worked towards a Gold, we really had to refine our strategy. We used invisibility potions to skip trash in-between the first boss, Wise Mari, and the second encounter. This has to be carefully orchestrated because if you skip too much trash you won’t have killed enough enemies to complete the challenge. The most challenging part of this instance was really the final courtyard and the trash packs here. Many times we wiped to those pulls prior to the Yu’lon fight. We weren’t even sure what we were doing wrong or what we could do differently. In the end, we decided to change tanks between Rhidach and Voss and see if that made the difference. It really did, mostly because Rhidach’s DPS is a ton better than Voss’ (sorry, Voss). And Blood DKs do so much damage anyway that he was actually doing more damage after switching to tank than he had been as a DPS.

It’s tough, because you want to just bring your friends in their preferred roles to CMs, but in order to get Gold we really did have to do some optimizing. We still have a tank playing off-spec though and he’s getting more comfortable in the role all the time. Just this past Sunday Rhi couldn’t use an invisibility pot because he’d used a strength potion on the boss – I was so proud. Granted, it wasn’t the best time for a potion but using potions at all is a great DPS impulse. I really appreciate that Rhi has been willing to step outside his accustomed role in order to ensure success of the group. And we did have success, snagging our first Gold from Temple just a few pulls after switching things up a bit.

We decided against using the technique to have one person pull the last three trash mobs and then lose aggro on them in order to skip them. With dragging them into the Sha’s room and alternately freezing and DPSing them they didn’t hit too hard and we were still within the Gold timer when we downed Sha. Whatever works, right?

That brings me to the other major change that happened in between some of our struggles in Gate and our success in Temple. That was when I switched from fire to frost and it made a huge difference. I don’t think on boss fights it’s necessarily as large a margin, but with Glyph of Cone of Cold and Glyph of Ice Lance the AoE burst that a frost mage can put out is ridiculous. They also scale very nicely with a lower item level of gear and so overall I felt like a powerhouse instead of struggling with my crit rating as fire. It took a few runs to really get the hang of running as frost and to truly maximize the capabilities. A well-placed Frost Bomb, elemental freeze, Deep Freeze or Cone of Cold can really make some of the trash packs more manageable. It was also fun. Not because fire isn’t fun, but because doing really good DPS is fun. Feeling like your contribution matters is also fun.

Switching to frost in CMs had the unintended effect of making me frost all the time for right now, which is okay too. I may swap to fire once Siege of Orgrimmar comes out, but current Combustion nerfs on the PTR are staying my hand for the time being. It helps that it’s enjoyable to play. I’m nervous about the new frost mastery. It sounds like it is not good in situations when you can’t accumulate Icicles quickly enough, and compared to Frostburn there are times when your mastery isn’t active. We’ll really have to wait and see, though. I think it will actually be beneficial in cleave situations, so continue to be very strong for Challenge Modes at the very least. If frost lags behind in raids, I will swap back to fire.

Our current CM challenge is Siege of Niuzao. We had our best time this weekend, a Silver very faintly tinged with Gold. The biggest stumbling block has been the second to last boss with his immunity shield and bombs. The way to quickly move past this entire area is to not pull any trash beforehand. The first time he goes immune and begins summoning bombs, you use the bombs to easily dispatch all of the additional trash as well as the trash he summons during the fight. The problem with this has been that we keep having those existing adds run at us during his phase. One time it was my stupid Mirror Images; another time it was possibly a totem. I don’t know whether my water elemental will also pull them so I’ve been dismissing him as soon as that phase starts. It’s frustrating because it feels a bit random in terms of being able to achieve it and it comes after such a long run to get to that point. I think our scheme for next week is going to work though. I’ll be sure to put Ring of Frost down on the other side of Voss to keep him from going splat the way he has been. Even if we can just buy enough time for bombs to start coming out it should work. That time saved should be the difference between a Silver and Gold run, so I’m hopeful for next week.

Challenge Modes have been a great way to push ourselves to play better and to think creatively. They might just be my favourite thing added to the game during Mists – and that’s saying something, because there are so many things about Mists that I have enjoyed. My only regret about CMs is that unlike raids, I don’t get to do them with all the people I like to play with. I just don’t have the time to dedicate to two separate CM groups. Have you tried Challenge Modes at all yet? How have they been going for you?

Blog Azeroth Secret Santa (Zoxy): How To Beat The Auctioneers?

I hope you had a great holiday if that applies to you, if not I hope you’ve had a good week regardless. This post is from the Blog Azeroth Secret Santa exchange. Bloggers were randomly paired with other bloggers and given the task of writing them a post on a topic they might enjoy.

The post that I wrote can be found at Pixelated Executioner, where I wrote for Pix on the topic of draenei, lore, and gingerbread! You can roll on over there to read about that if you like.

My guest post was from Zoxy – not an easy task for him, I’d imagine, considering I pretty much never talk about making gold and that’s his blog’s focus. He noticed that I’d mentioned I wanted my latest druid alt to make her own gold for flying and be self-sufficient, and so he wrote some auctioning tips for me. Thanks for the post, Zoxy!

How To Beat the Auctioneers?

So at Trading with Zoxy I normally blog about the best ways to make gold but after reading this blog realized that my normal tips on how to make gold didn’t exactly suit.  But part of a recent post caught my eye about being self sufficient. So what I want to do is look at the ways to make your gold go further when buying off the AH .

So sellers such as my self will work with a couple of key strategies in mind to make the best out of the markets that we sell in.

Buy on The Weekend

Sell in the Week

If you don’t ask you don’t get

Is it above vendor?

Shuffle and Convert

Be Prepared

Patch notes and Hot Fixes

So those are the main strategies that I use to make gold and the best of the market but what actually are they?

Buy on the Weekend

The weekend is really a buyers’ market and not a very good time to sell, the reason is that a larger volume of casual players are online and because of this there is a much larger of volume of items being listed and as most players use an add-on like auctioneer and set it to automatically to undercut. So this means by the afternoon on Saturday that the market has already dropped a big amount. I normally wait till Saturday evening when people log off 11pm to 2am and then will buy most of my stock then.
Sell in the Week

This is another important point that if you are selling then remember to sell during the week . A great example of this is people need consumables for Raiding . So on a Wednesday post those items that raiders use . Also on the flip side of this after the raids people will need new enchants and gems so make sure there posted up after raid resets too. Overall during the week there is lower demand and less supply so the prices will increase .

If you don’t ask you don’t get

Many Sellers such as myself are resellers , this means that we look out for rare items and then flip them for massive profits. An example is recipes: I find many rare recipes for a few gold and then flip them and sell them for their actual worth. I normally make 1 or 2k from a single recipe. So because of this our profit margins are normally really high and so make a offer if there is an item on the AH that seems above your limit. Just today I managed to get one of my main competitors to sell me a recipe I wanted to for my main at 50% of their list price.

Is it Above Vendor?

Saronite is a great example here I have been buying massive amounts of this must have about 3000 ore now, and I paid a maximum of 12.5 gold for it per 20. In simple terms if the market is low don’t sell you items without checking the vendor value.

Shuffle and Convert

One way to make a lot of gold is to shuffle items, an example is if you have a jewelcrafter . I buy all the Eternal Earth under 3 gold and make into Stoneguard Bands giving me Infinite dust and Greater eternal essences. So each Ring normally nets between 4-7 dust or 2-3 essences. Meaning that these are great item to profit on . This is also now working with the new Cata ores too.

So with this always be on the lookout for what can be converted. Did you used to convert your frozen orbs to eternals or just sell the orbs?

Be Prepared

We are currently in the festival of winter veil and I have made around 10,000g just from selling the winter veil items . So my advice here is to make sure what items you will need prior to these events as if we take Small Eggs for a example , they normally sell for about 50s each but during Winter veil they have been selling for about 4g each . So why pay 20g when you only needed to pay 2?

Patch notes and Hot Fixes :

Patch day is always a massive opportunity to make gold, so don’t get caught out. My simple bit of advice is don’t buy anything on a patch day that would be classed as a Big Ticket item. My example here is a recipe: Savory Deviate Delight. Pre Shattering it sold for 2-3k on my server but now only sells for 100g . On that day I managed to go out and farm 3 for myself in 30 mins due to the changed drop rates and then sell them for 1k each before people were aware. So be careful and make sure you have read those patch notes.

Summary

• Buy on the weekend toward the end of the day
• Sell in the Week to respond to the raiders
• If you want a high ticket item send an offer to the Seller
• Make sure you’re not giving gold away check the vendor value
• Can you shuffle it to make it worth more ?
• Be prepared – Don’t wait until the festival to buy the items you need for it
• Be Careful on Patch day don’t buy high ticket items.

So thanks for reading and I hope the tips help your gold go further and understand what us auctioneers are up to when were doing odd things . If you have any questions then please ask.

Well have a good festive season all.

Zoxy