Patch 4.1 Doom, more doom, changes, and oooh, videos!

My computer just downloaded a ton of stuff, we have extended downtime, and they released the video for 4.1....



So, why are there no female trolls in this? Great trailer, but um, why?


And watch this trailer while you're at it. Not because of lack of females, but because it does help with some of the lore of 4.1 and also it is awesome. Plus, Zul' Aman has returned as a dungeon.

Anyway... PATCH STUFF! I am picking out the stuff I care about, so go read the patch notes for full details!
1. I love the idea of guild challenges and am looking forward to them
2. Call to Arms, eh. I'll be more likely to queue if I can get a shiny, but I rather doubt it'll favor healers any time soon.
3. Disc gets nerfed. Owie, Power Word: Barrier cooldown now 3 min, and Power Word: Shield only lasts 15 secs. I said my piece on why I don't like this a while ago, I see no reason to repeat it.
4. No more hunting for corpses for rezing. Good!
5. Interrupts off the global cooldown will now always hit. Tanks and healers no longer have to worry about their interrupts missing because they're not hit capped. YAY!
6. DKs get a battle rez.
7. Lifebloom nerfed, tranquility's cooldown decreased, and efflorescence (aka the green circle) has been redesigned. No clue if resto druids are celebrating or complaining.
8. No more pet happiness system. Oh well. Guess I can clean the pet food out of my hunter's bags.
9. No more pet leveling, anything you tame is your level.
10. Righteous fury now persists through death. Pally tanks everywhere are celebrating.
11. Dispel Magic now only works on the priest as a baseline. So, was shadowpriest dispelling really a big problem? This really annoys me, since I liked being able to help out the healers by dispelling when in shadow.
12. More mind sear damage is nice.
13. Spirit Link totem sounds cool, pity it's a totem. Looking forward to experimenting with it.
14. Dungeon finder now taking armor into account. About time.
15. You get valor points the first 7 times in a week you queue. HAPPY DANCE TIME!

There's also tons of dungeon and raid changes, class changes I don't really care about, guild changes, battleground stuff, world changes, and even UI changes. Go read the notes here,  Me, I'm going to watch Doctor Who, eat fresh strawberries, and plot hitting the new dungeons ASAP.

So there was this patch thing...and I made some gold

I've waited to comment on the patch because I wanted to give it a good trial, especially the priest changes.

I LOVE MY BUFFS!

Yes, the shadowpriest rotation has gone back to it's old complicated self, aka....
Dot. dot, dot, mind blast when available, mind sear as filler, which is a bit of a pain. For new shadow priests (and those that tend to raid tired, like me), I would recommend an addon called Spell Flash and then Spell Flash: Priest. It's basically a prompter, flashing the spell it suggests you use next. I don't believe it's been completely updated for 4.06, but I use it to prompt dot refreshes, and weave my blast and sear by hand.

Plus, mastery no longer stinks. My dps (with no changes in gear) has gone up by 2-4k because all that mastery on my shared gear is no longer a wasted stat in shadow. This is good, as I'm likely to be raiding as shadow for a bit. Our raid team's beloved main tank is taking a sanity break (much-deserved) so our shadow priest of awesome has stepped up a bear alt and we still have 4 healers, so I go shadow or the druid goes boomkin and the default seems to be me as shadow. Works for me.

The TB changes seem to be working. I'm seeing it change hands much more frequently. As an example, tonight I went in defending just before raid start and we lost it. Then while we were in raid squashing worm dude and working on the conclave, we got it back. Of course, once people adjust to the flag changes it may not switch so easily, but we'll see.

Oh, and in other news...
Remember the saronite shuffle? I've been experimenting with the elementium/obsidium shuffle. Basically you buy the ore, prospect it, then...
Green quality gems->
save blue, green, and purple for jcing dailies. Throw 3 on the AH early in the day and they'll sell for 25-30g apiece.
Use the other colors for crafting rings, the fist weapons, and necklaces. Sell the blue quality ones on the AH (200-400g apiece) and DE the green stuff, then sell the mats or turn them into enchant scrolls. Me, I've been selling the mats.
Blue quality gems-> cut and sell on AH

I invested 1k gold (elementium was at slightly under 4g apiece), and with a few gems left to sell I've made 6k. Now, there's some big ifs in this scheme, so check the Undermine Journal for your markets and make sure you understand what ore needs to be at for you to break even. Auction House Junkies is a good podcast for this sort of idea. I've been paying more attention to elementium, because the price is the same and the gems are better. More info available here at Cold's Gold Factory and here at WarcraftEcon.

Not much else going on, really. I'm gradually grinding rep on Lyl, got the rogue to 51 (I love heirlooms), and finally pinpointed the "WTF let me interact with my spells and bags" bug that's been showing up occasionally. That one was having Adobe Reader running, go figure. Monera's sadly neglected, mostly because going through the entire gearing process, yeah. Unless a guildie needs a healer for a normal, she's not running anything. Given the time investment for a heroic and the fact that Lyl still has rep and gear upgrades available from heroics, it doesn't make sense to bring in an alt.

Raiding-wise, we've got worm dude mostly on farm, and we're making really good progress on Conclave. I'm hoping that this Sunday we squish Conclave and then hit Halfus. I may even heal on Halfus, since disc is really good for that fight. We shall see what the raid needs.

DON'T PANIC! Keep calm and carry on.

It's a brave new world out there now. 4.0 is hitting (and breaking) the servers, and well, I dunno about you but I thought I had another week or so to prepare.

So, yup, I am NOT prepared. I know what pet I'm using (yay Dragonhawk), but I have no idea of hunter specs, rotations, or glyphs.  I know disc has two viable specs, smite and um, not smite, and there's this handy-dandy explanation and specs and stuff which I will be using. But shadow, yeah, shadow I have no clue. My current rotation was working in the Cat beta, so I may stick to that. As far as the pally and druid go, well, um, I know I have holy power on one and an eclipse bar on the other.

My current plans when the server comes back up are....
1) Cut and post every bold and bright cardinal ruby I can get my hands on. Lots of regemming will hopefully=good profit.
2) See what the glyph market looks like. Jump in. Again, hopefully yay profit. My gold reserves are low due to gearing Adowa, so I'm trying to get some saved back up before Cat.
3) Go get the corehound I want
4) Get Lyllea's shadow spec figured out.
5) Make a ton of mouseover macros for disc healing. I'm expecting Vuhdo to be borked. Actually I'm expecting my entire UI to be borked.

It was rather interesting seeing what people were doing last night. Many of my guildies were trying to get Explorer or Dungeon Hero achieves. Me, well, I spent 8ish hours getting this

 an item with a 1/1000 drop rate of elites in Winterspring. And why?

Because a) I knew I wouldn't be able to do it once 4.0 hit, b) it's a piece of WoW history, and c) it looks DAMN sexy. Yup, I got me the epic quiver from Vanilla WoW just before quivers turned into bags. I'm kinda hoping the appearance stays after it's changed, but I'm not expecting it. Oh, I really wouldn't recommend farming for something with a 1/1000 drop rate when you've only got hours left before it's gone forever. It's a BIT stressful. So go get those Azure Whelplings now folks! (I got one yesterday, but I'm going to try for at least one more so I can keep one and sell one for a ridiculous amount of gold).