I've recently made a more updated version and Q&A about this post here so you might want to check it out.
I had a rant about managing my guild and about ulduar, but i thought it would be better if I wait until i had cooled down a bit more before i made any decisions.
To get my mind off that, here's a how to guide from my PoV on how to tackle Flame Leviathan using a mixture of people types in a guild that isn't so hardcore. This doesn't have a lot to deal with gold making though, and more about me leaving my thoughts on how to do flame leviathan down, so bear with me!
Basically, Flame Leviathan with 0 towers up, isn't even really a boss fight, its more like Archavon, but easier. Its a Pinata Train! So skipping that, I'll move straight to 1 tower or 2 towers up.
Here's a breakdown of this long post:
a) Preparation
b) In Combat
c) Recommended Towers to leave up
d) Looting the flame leviathan
e) Leviathan the loot pinata, and how it can make you richer
Preparation:
What I had my guild do, was run 2 25-Eye of Eternity, yep 2.
2 x 20 people, the first run was a skeletal crew of tanks and healers with quite some alts thrown in for good measure. The second round had about 23 people, filled mostly with the remaining people and some family/friend members that had logged on. All in all, it will drop 8 ilvl 226 items. For the people who need it, they got their items. We got off with 5 ilvl 226 items that will be used for the flame leviathan fight that would otherwise be disenchanted.
The reason for this is, while Flame Lev. is gear dependant, it only looks at the ilvl of your gear, not the itemization. So you can be a plate wearer and chock in leather healing gear that is ilvl 226 and your vehicle stats will rise. (yes i wore robes of blanketing snow to tank flame leviathan, all our healers had it, and leather stuff, and mail stuff)
Because of that, and previous gear from OS3 and KT25, i ended up with about 1800k HP on my siege tank. For other vehicles, your HP and DMG will also scale up along with your gear ilvl.
(if your guild can't take down eoe easily, you might try running ulduar 10 for ilvl 219 gear too)
Actual Fight:
Basically, the fight has 3 phases
1) Siege engines kiting Leviathan around
2) Demolishers launching passengers onto Leviathan in the meantime to take down the 4 turrets
3) Blowing cooldowns on leviathn during shutdown, and picking up people from phase 2, following which you go back to phase 1
For the siege engines kiters:
Kite it like Grobbulus or Anub'rekhan fight, around the entire room, Leviathan will randomly select one of you siege engines (or if you're unlucky a demolisher). Simply use the boost (button3) to clear corners, and get your ass away from leviathan. Those who are not kite targets, press button 2 to interrupt flame jets (its channeling, so activate enemy cast bars). Each kite lasts for about 30 seconds, generally, 5 seconds before kite target change, you would have your siege engines spread a bit, and start running the opposite way.
For Demolishers:
Stay at max range from Leviathan, while waiting for your guild leader to call out for launches. After you launch your passengers, wait till phase 3 starts, and fire away with your saved up pyrite barrels.
For Choppers:
You have the toughest job in this fight, this role is best reserved for people who are good at playing action games, but have horrible gear. You need to spread tar in Leviathan path (generally a good way is to tar the current kite targets actual location, since leviathan will go to that spot anyway) and also to pick up the parachutes in phase 3.
With towers up, whether you succeed or not depends on how many shutdowns you can get on Leviathan before all your siege engines and demolishers die.
You will want your two best (ilvl 226 geared) kiters on the siege engines. And your most agile (in terms of reflexes) player on the choppers. The launchees simply have to be geared enough to take down the turrets while withstanding they heavy and constant incoming damage. Keep your demolishers far away and launch as soon as possible each time. Have choppers tar the area and the shooters in siege engines and demolishers fire on the tar.
With the basic gist of the fight out of the way, here's what happens when you have additional towers:
Mimiron: Flame paths succeeding fireballs
Hodir: Ice beams and iceblocks
Thorim: Lightning bolts
Freya: Lasher Adds
Generally, here's what towers you should leave up depending on your group composition (and i don't mean by class)
Group with people that react quickly, but has terrible gear (because they are alts/just came back/using pvp gear) i.e. skills > gear
Do Hodir first, it slows speed down by 20% and ice beams activate that iceblocks targets. So long as your choppers melt the iceblocks fast enough (just tar and incinerate), it acts as 20% slower movespeed on the fight as a whole. It means you just need 0.2 more shutdowns than as normal.
If however, you have a bunch of tired people filled with ilvl 226 epics, you should opt for leaving thorim up. Thorim basically increases the damage sustained by your raid by incredible amounts , but ilvl 226 equipped players should be able to take the extra incoming damage. Otherwise the fight is equivalent to normal mode.
(Do note that for every tower up, Flame Leviathan gets more HP and does more DMG)
Using those 2 as starting points, the next one you should try leaving up is Freya.
The lasher adds can be resolved by simply having your demolishers burn them down everytime they come up, which is pretty easy for anyone to do.
Once you have successfully done those, lets get ready to loot the pinata train!
Each Additional tower increases the chance of Fragments of Val'anyr dropping.
My guild had the luck of two having dropped so far.
I have never done 0 tower up before however
But on 1 tower up 3 ilvl 226 items drop
I assume that at some point, an extra ilvl 226 item drops and later it will get converted to a ilvl 239 item. Could someone help me confirm this?
(for people doing 10 man, you might be interested to know that 2 Emblems of Conquest drops when you have even just 1 tower up)
And you should try keeping a person with engineering in your raid, they can salvage the train for around 16 random bars (I think my engineer got titanium bars) as well as random eternals. A friend has told me that titansteel bars also drop.
And thats about it, tell me if you find this guide helpful, or have any ideas on how to improve it.
Gold making element:
Flame leviathan with 0 towers can be easily pugged. And it has a chance of dropping Iron Riveted War Helm, pretty much the best dps plate helm you can get from the Auction house at the moment. Which you can probably sell for 8-11k gold depending on your server mileage.
The ideal way to do it is, organise a ulduar raid on monday nights for puggers, and invite them only if they accept that you have reserved the BoE helm. Make sure they understand that Iron Riveted War Helm is reserved for you, before they join, so that it is fair and ethical for both you and them. Zone in, kill Leviathan, loot him and run out. People will join because they get an easy 2 runed orbs, as well as a chance of ilvl 226 items that is MUCH easier to get than from Emalon. And it is the last day before reset, and a lot of puggers that have done naxx will be unable to find slots for ulduar simply because they just aren't very good. You can employ the Archavon people to zerg Leviathan and still be able to down him. If you're lucky, you get the helm and you can sell it the next day. If not, you get at least 2 runed orbs on your alt before reset.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45107
Friday, April 24, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Pvp Profiting: Kharmaa's Grace, aka turning stonekeeper shards into gold
Firstly, Yes you can have more than one Kharmaa's Grace, for further information, please continue reading about how to obtain and profit from it!
Now that 3.1 is out, you might also be interested in pvp gear you can buy with honor too!
Perhaps you're reading this as you wait for your wintergrasp to begin, if so, you're just in time. If you have all those stonekeeper shards from wintergrasp and heroics, more at hand than you'll ever want, you've come to the right place. Here, you'll be shown how to get rid of them.
In the entire 7 page inventory of the wintergrasp quartermaster, there is one, and only one, single item that is bind on equip: Kharmaa's Grace. In essence, also the only way you can turn stonekeeper shards into pots of gold is through these epic quality yellow slot gems. And you just heard it first from here!
While people save their shards for the budget mammoth mount or the twink pvp Bind to Account gear, It's your best chance at getting rid of excess shards. Every lvl 80 looking to pvp will need at least one of these gems, a unique-equipped purple quality gem that will give a whooping +20 resilience, also the only wotlk epic gem in the game so far besides the elusive fishing stormjewels.
And if you act fast, you'll be just the one to sell this gem to them! As this is relatively less well known, and there are lots of personal uses other people have for this currency, it's your chance to stockpile them before season 6 starts.
When Season 5 was at its most exciting period, I could sell these gems for 100-150 gold, but more ehave entered the AH over the past few months, increasing the volatility. However, as a result, I have been able to purchase during flood periods at 20 gold and sell it back at select hours for 80 gold, which took less effort on my part than before. (where i used my own shards)
Recently, I've curtailed liquidation, in anticipation of season 6 in a week or so. Now is your chance to do the same!
Do take note, if you do this trick too late, you might be caught in an unlucky tide where people have already spent their stonekeeper shards on everything they could, and start moving into the resilience gem market.
p.s. feel free to do this stockpiling on medivh, i've left the gem market there for more lucrative industries, just dont cut into my other servers :P
For another way to pvp to riches, check out my earlier article on liquidating honor into gems.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Patch Ulduar so far, Day 3.1
As of now, most of the people in wow are either rushing off into Secrets of Ulduar or busy spamming their screen with glyph making. As for me, I've been popping in and out of the raids, watching instance servers crash and login servers going down, and brewing coffee while looking at a perpetual loading screen of blue death.
If you're reading this, I would presume that you're facing a similar server overload on your side and can't get it, or in a scenario where you can access the internet but not wow.
You might then want to have a recap of what I've prepared on this blog for 3.1 so far:
For the level 80s in the new content,
you will probably wish to read up on
What you should look out for when buying and selling epics in 3.1
and if applicable, say if your server has lesser hardcore raiding guilds density, you might wish to check out which items you really need to sell while you still can especially if you are still doubtful about emblem of valor bracers.
If you're level 80, but not raiding at the moment, you might wish to check out:
The last lvl 70 daily you'll ever do
and certain things to look out for when you're exploring icecrown.
As for some of you out there, who might not have reached 80, there are also a few tricks and treats you can employ at lower levels, which even some lvl 80s can use with success.
For those just starting out, here's something you can do even with a level 1.
For level 20s, you might want to check this out if you're a tailor, and this if you're a leatherworker.
ac2
And that would be all for now, do check back regularly for more updates!
If you're reading this, I would presume that you're facing a similar server overload on your side and can't get it, or in a scenario where you can access the internet but not wow.
You might then want to have a recap of what I've prepared on this blog for 3.1 so far:
For the level 80s in the new content,
you will probably wish to read up on
What you should look out for when buying and selling epics in 3.1
and if applicable, say if your server has lesser hardcore raiding guilds density, you might wish to check out which items you really need to sell while you still can especially if you are still doubtful about emblem of valor bracers.
If you're level 80, but not raiding at the moment, you might wish to check out:
The last lvl 70 daily you'll ever do
and certain things to look out for when you're exploring icecrown.
As for some of you out there, who might not have reached 80, there are also a few tricks and treats you can employ at lower levels, which even some lvl 80s can use with success.
For those just starting out, here's something you can do even with a level 1.
For level 20s, you might want to check this out if you're a tailor, and this if you're a leatherworker.
ac2
And that would be all for now, do check back regularly for more updates!
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Exclusive Update: Buy Rare quality Gems with Honor Points
If you came here looking for pvp gear to purchase, you can see my list of honor gear prices here
Apparently Blizzard has started listening to the people who were objecting to the 75k honor cap, especially since there was no way to liquidate the honor once you were already at the cap. In order to solve this, blizzard has made a change that was not mentioned anywhere, until now.
They have given the jewelcrafting vendor in the Orgrimmar (alliance will have their own equivalent) the ability to sell you blue gems for 10,000 honor points. Yep, you heard right, at the honor cap, you'll be able to buy 7.5 scarlet rubies and either sell them straight away or cut them and sell. It is a pretty good way to deflate the market however, especially since a lot of people predict that gem prices will slowly skyrocket when season 6 begins and ulduar easy mode enters farm stages and people grab tons of new gear with sockets.
For the horde, you will be able to buy them from lady palanseer
It would be best to slowly sell half your stock at the highest possible price you can fetch, and then keep a watch out for the next gearing phase of 3.1, likely within a few days to a week. So for those of you who are honor capped and have nothing else to buy, do so now! You might want to spread this knowledge out to your friends as fast as you can because when word gets out (like if it makes it to wowinsider) another horde of gems will start flooding the marketplace!
You might also wish to check out how to turn your wintergrasp tokens into gold here!
Apparently Blizzard has started listening to the people who were objecting to the 75k honor cap, especially since there was no way to liquidate the honor once you were already at the cap. In order to solve this, blizzard has made a change that was not mentioned anywhere, until now.
They have given the jewelcrafting vendor in the Orgrimmar (alliance will have their own equivalent) the ability to sell you blue gems for 10,000 honor points. Yep, you heard right, at the honor cap, you'll be able to buy 7.5 scarlet rubies and either sell them straight away or cut them and sell. It is a pretty good way to deflate the market however, especially since a lot of people predict that gem prices will slowly skyrocket when season 6 begins and ulduar easy mode enters farm stages and people grab tons of new gear with sockets.
For the horde, you will be able to buy them from lady palanseer
It would be best to slowly sell half your stock at the highest possible price you can fetch, and then keep a watch out for the next gearing phase of 3.1, likely within a few days to a week. So for those of you who are honor capped and have nothing else to buy, do so now! You might want to spread this knowledge out to your friends as fast as you can because when word gets out (like if it makes it to wowinsider) another horde of gems will start flooding the marketplace!
You might also wish to check out how to turn your wintergrasp tokens into gold here!
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Buying and selling: Things to note when selling bracers
Now that ulduar is out, more and more people are desperately liquidating their purplish assets before they drop drastically in value. I've seen several more opportunities, and had a few more questions directed my way. One of the more common ones is the prices the bracers should go for.
For people looking to sell their emblems of valor, if you have 60 of those then the next logical choice would be to convert them to bracers and sell them. As it is currently, I discourage the conversion to either frozen orbs or scarlet rubies if you have more than 60 emblems, as while the bracers will now embark on a process of devaluation, the decrease in price is not so sharp as to be less then the next highest alternative cost. That is, converting 60 Emblems of Valor into 60 Emblems of Heroism and following that into 6 scarlet rubies.
At least for the next two weeks, I do not expect the EoV BoE bracers to fall below 2 x the price of 6 Scarlet rubies/frozen orb (whichever is higher). That is, a good ballpark in which you should sell your bracers at would be.
Let's just call the price of a cut/uncut scarlet ruby/frozen orb a liquidating unit, where we take the value of whichever one of those three end products at its highest value.
On Medivh, that would be about 85 gold for a cut gem.
Minimum (for quick sell) = 9 x liquidating unit
which would be 765 gold, the lowest price I would sell at on medivh
at least for the next few days
Maximum price = 12 x liquidating unit
which is 1020 gold
If I can sell a bracer at around +/- 100 gold of this sum then I would consider it to have been a good trade.
Some of you might wonder why I use 9 units instead of exactly 6. Well, you must consider that if you try to sell say six runed scarlet rubies, you risk the chance of flooding the market, causing you to relist the same product several times, or even worse, deflating the value of that particular gem market. Furthermore, converting all the emblems to gems and so on and so forth would in real like curtail a processing charge. A rough estimate of all these will give you the 50% markup on prices I provided above.
An idea to keep in mind is that market price is not the intrinsic value of the item, but the aggregate price in which a purchaser is willing to pay for it.
If you're reading this page because you intend to buy bracers to jumpstart your ulduar career, and you wish to see how an equitable price for the bracers can be calculated, then you can factor the above breakdown into your considerations. If I were to buy bracers in these few days however, I would seek to purchase them at at most 6 x liquidating units, as I believe that is the minimum floor level the bracers will drop to for the next 4-6 weeks. That is, for medivh, 510 gold.
The key component in all these trades however, is that you must act fast, be it in buying or selling. Everytime a new patch breaks, markets has never failed to fluctuate violently, and you'll see prices go up and down to incredible highs and lows. The best way is to ride the wave as fast as you can, and retreat early to safeguard your profits. I hope that answers the emails I receieved :D
Cheers! Ulduar in 12 hours!!!
For people looking to sell their emblems of valor, if you have 60 of those then the next logical choice would be to convert them to bracers and sell them. As it is currently, I discourage the conversion to either frozen orbs or scarlet rubies if you have more than 60 emblems, as while the bracers will now embark on a process of devaluation, the decrease in price is not so sharp as to be less then the next highest alternative cost. That is, converting 60 Emblems of Valor into 60 Emblems of Heroism and following that into 6 scarlet rubies.
At least for the next two weeks, I do not expect the EoV BoE bracers to fall below 2 x the price of 6 Scarlet rubies/frozen orb (whichever is higher). That is, a good ballpark in which you should sell your bracers at would be.
Let's just call the price of a cut/uncut scarlet ruby/frozen orb a liquidating unit, where we take the value of whichever one of those three end products at its highest value.
On Medivh, that would be about 85 gold for a cut gem.
Minimum (for quick sell) = 9 x liquidating unit
which would be 765 gold, the lowest price I would sell at on medivh
at least for the next few days
Maximum price = 12 x liquidating unit
which is 1020 gold
If I can sell a bracer at around +/- 100 gold of this sum then I would consider it to have been a good trade.
Some of you might wonder why I use 9 units instead of exactly 6. Well, you must consider that if you try to sell say six runed scarlet rubies, you risk the chance of flooding the market, causing you to relist the same product several times, or even worse, deflating the value of that particular gem market. Furthermore, converting all the emblems to gems and so on and so forth would in real like curtail a processing charge. A rough estimate of all these will give you the 50% markup on prices I provided above.
An idea to keep in mind is that market price is not the intrinsic value of the item, but the aggregate price in which a purchaser is willing to pay for it.
If you're reading this page because you intend to buy bracers to jumpstart your ulduar career, and you wish to see how an equitable price for the bracers can be calculated, then you can factor the above breakdown into your considerations. If I were to buy bracers in these few days however, I would seek to purchase them at at most 6 x liquidating units, as I believe that is the minimum floor level the bracers will drop to for the next 4-6 weeks. That is, for medivh, 510 gold.
The key component in all these trades however, is that you must act fast, be it in buying or selling. Everytime a new patch breaks, markets has never failed to fluctuate violently, and you'll see prices go up and down to incredible highs and lows. The best way is to ride the wave as fast as you can, and retreat early to safeguard your profits. I hope that answers the emails I receieved :D
Cheers! Ulduar in 12 hours!!!
Monday, April 13, 2009
To buy or not to buy, pre-ulduar
When I logged in today, I had a flurry of guildies whispering me about tomorrow's maintenance.
For the record, I do not believe the patch will take place tomorrow.
Although if it does, I'll be logging into blogger and editing this statement. (joking :D)
There are two questions that are probably floating around out there, so I might as well address them now before the patch, and then copy and paste from my post into gchat/msn later :D
1) While 3.1 will most probably not drop tomorrow, 14th April, tuesday, might herald the end of season 5. I personally think blizzard will probably delay season 5 till a week after, or at the very least initiate freezes of one sort of the other. Do note that while points and rating are being reset, honor and hidden ratings will carry over.
What this means is that, you can probably expect less demand for pvp oriented enchants and gems and slot augmentations. Basically, anything that has the word resilience in it! That goes for crafted pvp gear too! If you still have those, try to limit your production of those goods. For me, I'm holding back my resilience gems and scrolls until at least one week after season 5 ends, so that when season 6 begins, a new flood of buyers will come in and snap up the augments at elevated prices.
2) My friends have been noticing that BoE epics from 3.0x have been dropping sharply in price with all the doomsayers forecasting the bombing of prices post-ulduar. While I do not doubt that prices will drop, it will not have such a rapid decrease as some people seem to think. In this confusion I've snapped up excellent deals like a surge needle ring for 70% of usual prices, I purchased it for 5500 gold and sold it around 5 minutes later for 7200 gold. The same went for a nobles deck, where I purchased all 8 cards for 4200 gold and sold it back to the market as a deck for 6000. Those are some of the items you can watch for on your server, as they are ilvl 213 epics that will still retain their value even into ulduar. If you have the money to throw, I recommend you pick them up once they hit 60-70% of their usual price, and then try to push them back into the market as fast as you can. Another good item would be arcanic tramplers or boots of impetuous ideals. Certain interesting ones would be Je'Tze Bell and Tears of Bitter anguish, but I would advise greater caution when dealing with those.
For the record, I do not believe the patch will take place tomorrow.
Although if it does, I'll be logging into blogger and editing this statement. (joking :D)
There are two questions that are probably floating around out there, so I might as well address them now before the patch, and then copy and paste from my post into gchat/msn later :D
1) While 3.1 will most probably not drop tomorrow, 14th April, tuesday, might herald the end of season 5. I personally think blizzard will probably delay season 5 till a week after, or at the very least initiate freezes of one sort of the other. Do note that while points and rating are being reset, honor and hidden ratings will carry over.
What this means is that, you can probably expect less demand for pvp oriented enchants and gems and slot augmentations. Basically, anything that has the word resilience in it! That goes for crafted pvp gear too! If you still have those, try to limit your production of those goods. For me, I'm holding back my resilience gems and scrolls until at least one week after season 5 ends, so that when season 6 begins, a new flood of buyers will come in and snap up the augments at elevated prices.
2) My friends have been noticing that BoE epics from 3.0x have been dropping sharply in price with all the doomsayers forecasting the bombing of prices post-ulduar. While I do not doubt that prices will drop, it will not have such a rapid decrease as some people seem to think. In this confusion I've snapped up excellent deals like a surge needle ring for 70% of usual prices, I purchased it for 5500 gold and sold it around 5 minutes later for 7200 gold. The same went for a nobles deck, where I purchased all 8 cards for 4200 gold and sold it back to the market as a deck for 6000. Those are some of the items you can watch for on your server, as they are ilvl 213 epics that will still retain their value even into ulduar. If you have the money to throw, I recommend you pick them up once they hit 60-70% of their usual price, and then try to push them back into the market as fast as you can. Another good item would be arcanic tramplers or boots of impetuous ideals. Certain interesting ones would be Je'Tze Bell and Tears of Bitter anguish, but I would advise greater caution when dealing with those.
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