Hey — I’ll take it. Early yesterday, Blizzard decided to make up for their previous nerfs (they nerfed 2pc T8 & WiseEclipse), by buffing Eclipse.

Eclipse now increases damage done by Wrath by 40% (up from 30%) and the critical chance of Starfire by 40% (up from 30%)

Like I said — I’ll take it.  This should balance out the DPS loss that most people were going to experience by switching out their 2pc T8.  I’ll wait for Graylo to do math, but I think the Eclipse buff + 4pc T9 > 2pc T8.  Sure, you lose 1% extra damage to Wrath, but 10% crit and 4% damage to Starfire are definitely better than 15% crit to Starfire.

I understand people’s complaints about this buff, and how it even furthers our dependance on Eclipse and makes movement flat out kill our DPS.  However, I don’t think its going to affect us that much.  As I read elsewhere, I’m sure that Blizzard will not ‘fix’ Eclipse or change anything significant about moonkin DPS till Cataclysm, so let’s just stick with what we got and be content

In other news – I have finals and final papers next week and the week after.  I haven’t taken a final in like 2 years!! x.x

Updates to the 3.3 Patch notes came out yesterday via MMO-Champion.  Is it just me, or does it seem Blizzard’s reaction time when it comes to nerfing us so much quicker than what it takes to buff us?  Whatever, I still have faith that we will be balanced in some other way, although it seems that 4pc T10 buff is not going to balance out the loss of WiseEclipse.

Eclipse: This effect will not activate again within 15 seconds of either type of Eclipse effect firing, in addition to the existing 30-second cool-down for each type of Eclipse.

We all knew this NERF was coming.  Everyone using WiseEclipse, at least, knew this day was going to come eventually.  Still, it hurts.  Chain proc’ing a Solar Eclipse almost always after a Lunar Eclipse was awesome, and honestly, was usually a guaranteed thing (especially if you were using 2pc T8).

Whatever.  My DPS will live and continue to be competitive, for the most part.  GC confirmed that the only reason Eclipse was changed was to make sure that no add-on was mandatory for raiding moonkin — which WiseEclipse definitely was.  Still, if their intent really is for no add-on to be mandatory, then what Blizzard really needs are in-game DoT timer counters as well as cool-down timers.  I don’t believe that any raiding moonkin can perform at his best with Squawk and Awe or a similar addon.

Druid T8 Balance 2P Bonus – Increases the bonus granted by Eclipse for Starfire and Wrath by 7%. (Down from 15%)

Funny enough, we all knew this was happening too, and honestly, I’m surprised this nerf didn’t happen as soon as they changed Eclipse back in patch 3.2, but whatever.  I actually swapped to 4pc T9.245 although I didn’t blog about it.  To be honest, even if they hadn’t nerfed 2pc T8, I probably would still use 4pc T9 by now, which is funny, because I had previously blogged about keeping 2pc T8 over 4pc T9.  However, things change, and as I am rather ADD I got tired with 2pc T8, and the increased dependence on Eclipse.

So, while this is also another NERF, it is one we were all expecting, and one that won’t really affect me.  In fact, it helps us out in the long run in terms of making sure we upgrade to T9 and eventually, T10.  Which leads me to the next item of importance – 4pc T10 was BUFFED!

Druid T10 Balance 4P Bonus – Your critical strikes from Starfire and Wrath cause the target languish for an additional 7% of your spell’s damage over 4 sec. (Up from 5%)

Without even looking at math or numbers, its safe to say that I was looking forward to upgrade to T10 anyways.  Interesting set bonuses are always fun – I love it when they steer away from the generic, “5% extra crit, 4% extra damage” or whatever regular set bonuses that are around.  I already covered the moonkin 2pc T10 set bonus, and the 4pc sounds cool too.  Since I doubt I’m going to spend any DKP on T9.258, T10.251 seems like its going to be what I’ll be upgrading to as soon as possible.  Check with Graylo for math, but I’m positive that the T9 to T10 transition will be an easy one.  I will miss critting Moonfires, however, maybe they will add it to our talent tree in Cataclysm.

Conclusion

At any rate, sorry for being backed up on posting – I started writing this the other day, but I keep finding less and less time each time to do anything else other than work/school (and I’m still skipping tons of classes).  PLUS – they just moved my desk from my nice isolated corner to RIGHT IN FRONT of my boss’s office.  Good times.

On another side note – Warpath got A Tribute to Insantiy (25 player) last week.  Pretty awesome.  Can’t wait for ICC now.

What I’m looking for from you guys are some of the ways you make gold, preferably by selling things on the AH.  I’m going to share a few of the items that I sell consistently that keep my gold stash growing, even though raiding (enchants, flasks, repair bills) are very costly.  Obviously the profit margin varies significantly per your server’s economy, but the server I am currently on is a high population server (actually, Illidan is FULL), so that generally means that while things may sell for cheaper, they sell at a faster rate.

I am by no means an expert gold maker, I know people at gold cap (200k+), and even a few people with several toons at gold cap.  Still, based on the minimal amount of time I take each day to make gold, I am pleased with my results.  Feel free to share your experience in flipping/selling items on the AH in the comments section below — trust me, only about 1k or so people read this blog a day, and there are over 13million WoW players.  There is enough gold to be made by us all   That said, below are a few of the items I sell continuously:

Brilliant Spellthread & Sapphire Spellthread

Whether you are on a high population or a brand new server, these should sell like hot cakes all the time.  Why?  Every single caster has to choose between either one of these two, unless they are a Tailor.  Easy enough.  The mats are as simple as: 4x Eternal Fire (for Sapphire), or 4x Eternal Life (for Brilliant), 1x Frozen Orb, and 4x Iceweb Spider Silk.  The eternals can cost you anywhere from 15g-30g each, the Frozen Orbs are down to about 20g each.  The Iceweb Spider Silk, however, is a little trickier to find.  The prices are often inflated, but average around 5g each on the AH.  If you really want to keep your margins low — go out and farm a ton of this.  I think there is a cave near the Hodir dailies place to farm this.  Either way, let’s say you pay 20g for each of the eternals (80g) + 20g for the Frozen Orb + 20g for the 4x Iceweb Spider Silk, your cost per spellthread is 120g.  Check the prices on your server, but Brilliant usually stays at about 180g/each on my server, and Sapphire is usually 200g+.  Easy money for very little effort, and very little risk of losing your gold.

Wispcloak Selling

Ah.  The Wispcloak.  Easy enough of a pattern to obtain (I think you only have to do all the Northrend Heroics), and depending on your server, can either suck to sell or make you rich.  Back on Stormscale, I made a KILLING selling these, and that’s back when the mats could easily cost me 500g-700g (Siren’s Tear were VERY expensive in T7 content).  During T8 content, these stopped selling on my old, medium population server, and I stopped selling them.

However, in Illidan, I’m pushing a couple of these a week, never having more than 1 on the AH at any given time.  They mats are super cheap (6x Eternal Life = around 120g; 1x Frozen Orb = 20g; 4x Eternal Water = around 20g; and some Imbued Frostweave [75 Frostweave, 10 Infinite Dust]).  Fortunately, I am a Tailor/Enchanter, so I already have tons of Frostweave and Dust sitting around in my inventory, so I can produce these for around 160g or so, and easily flip them every 1-2 days for 700g+.  Damn good profit, if I do say so myself.  Keep in mind you can still get Wispcloaks and the spellthreads crafted by even if you are not a Tailor – just make friends or check your guild for a Tailor!

Flask Selling

I am not an alchemist (or herbalist), but I still flip flasks, from time to time.  Usually, the goal is not to make money when I sell flasks, but to see if I can make enough flasks and sell some to keep 1 stack of flasks for free.  And usually I manage to do just that.

I’m not going to go into too much detail here – but it all really depends on the price of Frost Lotus on your server.  Flasks on my server go for about 25-30g each, and Frost Lotus is usually 35g+.  Since you get 2 flasks for every Frost Lotus + other mats, the goal is to make sure the other mats cost you less than 25g.  Let’s say flasks are 30g each, and I spend 50g to make one (not hard to do).  It won’t be difficult to make those 50g back by selling the two flasks, but, proc’s are really what’s important.  I honestly don’t care if I make 10g from selling a few flasks — I want to see flask proc’s that make 10 flasks instead of 2, or something insane like that.

And it happens.

Flask making is a gamble, but you usually won’t lose money anyways.  Last time I bought enough mats to make 20 flasks, and walked away with 44 flasks.  I sold about 24 of them, kept 20 for myself, and still MADE GOLD.  Awesomeness.

Conclusion

Anyways, that’s really the bulk of what I continually sell.  I step into a couple of other markets sometimes, sell Crusader Orbs or even buy and sell BoEs, but these are my consistent endeavors that keep my gold stash growing.  If you guys have any items that have yielded you success consistently, let me know .  I’m trying to hit 100k gold in my inventory before 2010, and hopefully I won’t have anymore setbacks like losing 10k gold to a 12 year old or anything like that.

Adios,

Ballerkin/Macbook

First off — I apologize for the lack of posting.  I haven’t really been too busy (I have been rocking some good grades out at school and doing OK at work), its just that, I have really only been logging into WoW to raid a little ToC, maybe a little Ony, then I’m offline.  There just really aren’t many ‘moonkin-related’ topics that I’d like to find myself blogging about.  Really.

Really quick, however — I’d like to throw a shoutout to a recently new Moonkin blogger — Quith of Quiths-Quips.com.  Stop by, show him some love, subscribe to his feed — you guys know the drill.  Just don’t overload his blog because its on my server!

Anyways, back on topic.  ToC raiding has really been kind of a drag.  I feel I may have touched on this in another post or comment here (or maybe even on my Twitter), but honestly, the same bosses, the same drops, 4 times a week, is overkill.  Funny enough, one thing I didn’t realize is that if you do 10man ToC heroic, and have over 45 attempts left when upon completion, you get like four pieces T9, i245.  So while at first, I was initially hesitant to switch to 4pc T9, I am considering it now, due to things like a) Tired of using T8, b) High gear score increases my epeen, c) Larger Starfire crits are cooler, d) No more worry about being increasingly near to the soft crit cap during a Lunar Eclipse, etc.  Sure, my DPS may go down, but it will also make swapping to T10 easier to do.

What are you guys expecting to experience in ICC?

I really want some of the raiding experience that BC offered, during T6 content.  I know that those days can never be brought back — I’m sure Blizzard is determined in keeping 10m/25m versions and even Heroic/Regular versions of the same dungeons available — I understand their point, but I don’t necessarily agree that everyone should be able to see the same content.  From a business perspective, its a smart move: Create one set of boss mechanics, and scale down damage and certain mechanics and create 4 instances.  Genius.

Why did I like BC so much? As much as most of us don’t like to admit it, a large portion of WoW players play WoW for some sense of pride, or something.  I remember feeling ‘cool’ (as ‘cool’ as one can feel in an MMO) when raiding Black Temple or SWP.  Not many of my friends could raid T6, and they would whisper me whenever they saw me in there.  There was also a different feeling for progression — I remember working on Reliquary of Souls for weeks.  At the time, I was in a 3x/week raiding guild, and it took us forever to down RoS.  While Ulduar had a little bit of that feeling with bosses like Mimiron/Yogg/hardmodes, the feeling of downing something new in Ulduar25 is really minimalized when you have already downed that, and 5 other hardmodes in Ulduar10.

Maybe I’m weird, who knows.  All I know is that I’m expecting Blizz to make ICC interesting.  I haven’t had a chance to step into the PTR, and part of me likes that.  I want awesome loot, interesting mechanics, fun trash, challenging things.  I really don’t want to have to run the same dungeon four times a week, and know that if I choose not to run ToC10/10H/25/25H each week, I will be behind my guildies in some way, or missed out an opportunity to get loot.  Part of me wants to go back to raid a little bit of Ulduar, but when ToC25 Heroic gear is so superior to Ulduar 25 (even hardmode) loot, who wants to go back there?

I think I’ve begun to ramble and I really should get back to doing some work — but let me know what you think.  Is there anything you guys are expecting from ICC?  On a side note, I heard the new LFG is pretty badass — can’t wait till I get a chance to try it out.  Also – let me know if there is anything you guys want me to blog about, as I’m still running low on ideas

Adios,

Ballerkin