History of Proudmoore and the Briefe and True Account of the Purpose of Dailies

This post from Lukov on the WoW Forums does a super job of succinctly describing the Proudmoore server, which just happens to be where Jal lives. From it, I found this section just interesting enough to blog about in particular (though anyone interested in Proudmoore should take a quick read):

Server Economics:
As a day 1 server with a well entrenched raiding population, the server suffers (or benefits, depending on your perspective) with inflated prices on many items. This is much more obvious on Horde due to Alliance, as the population imbalance results in a limited supply with a similar level of demand.

Do your dailies and you'll be fine for cash, even with 4 nights of raiding a week.

(emph mine)

Well, at least we've come clean. I've been a little upset over the inflation that the dailies have caused since my return, even if it means that I'm up over 450g now playing on a very part-time basis. I'm not sure how I feel about it in this context, though -- specifically that the dailies aren't so much about bribing players to stick around until the expansion, but are rather so that more casual players can start raiding without knowing where to go for cash. Now, if you've tried a daily quest or two, you darn well know where they're printing hats of money.

In other news, I decided carrying around only one idol, and one that was only useful for those few minutes I'm in cat form and decide to attack, was sooooo lvl 58 and that I should start hunting up a new one. Enter the The Idol of the Avenger. No, it's not too powerful, and I'd rather have one of the Moonfire idols, but here's the key -- this one is a simple quest reward that doesn't require 300 riding skill (5000g) and running a heroic instance or whacking random trash mobs. It requires only a good, fixed amount of time, which is apparently something resembling 2-4 hours. The gold is about as good as running dailies to boot.

Now, every Wrath I cast is at least 25 points stronger. Woohoo. When you're a Wrath-spamming boomkin, every bit helps.

Idol of the Avenger
Binds when picked up
Unique
RelicIdol
Equip: Increases the damage dealt by Wrath by 25. 

Source: wow.allakhazam.com

Oddly, I mostly ran the quests related to getting the idol in panzer mode. Melee mobs still seem more sustainable when panzer'd up. The picture, above, was when I'd just about put the sustainability theory to the max, as I cycloned one last mob to sneak in a Healing Touch.

Swappin' Idols

If you didn't realize you can [now?] swap idols like you can now swap weapons, without any cooldown penalty, well, realize it. The following macros and ones like them should help a ton when shift happens.

EDIT: Science adds a useful comment...
You actually do encounter a GCD from swapping, but on casts longer than the GCD (such as Starfire), there is no penalty, but on instant casts (Moonfire), you encounter a slightly longer GCD due to the idol swap.

So be a little more careful than I and the following post make it sound like you should be; there are times when the global cool down (GCD) will effect your spellcasting, mainly if you jump to Moongoddess without pausing in between (more important on raids, I suppose).
end EDIT.

Re: Ivory Idol of the Moongoddess
Score 4.3 Vote: [-] [+] by Vartharazun, 5.0 months ago
You can use every single different Idol for every single different spell you cast without causing any sort of GCD delay.

#showtooltip Moonfire
/cast moonfire
/equip Idol of the Unseen Moon

#showtooltip Starfire
/cast Starfire
/equip Ivory Idol of the Moongoddess

#showtooltip Wrath
/cast Wrath
/equip Idol of the Avenger

Copy and Paste these macros for pve moonkin pwnage.

Spirit, smear it

Here's some text-ige from WoWWiki on spirit:

With the exception of primary healers, most notably holy priests and restoration druids, most players tend to consider Spirit to be the most useless Attribute, since it is only good for restoring Health and Mana.

... the small increase in Health regeneration is nowhere near as great as restoration through food or bandages.

Now why is this any different for mana? The regen from drinks is a level of magnitude more important than spirit regen.

I find that when I'm in boomkin mode that I'm out of mana much too quickly for mana regen to be worth much, even md5 regen. Wrath is a very cheap spell at 255, but when your battles last less than 30 seconds, typically, you'd need 8 mana regen per second to make any difference worth mentioning. So I'm usually maxing out damage rather than mana regen when I'm picking out boomkin gear

Innvervate is useful, as it allows full spirit regen during battle, and I can use it to keep a steady stream of wrath & moonfire coming down. That's about the only place spirit seems to be horribly useful for me. Even Elune's Touch seems to be more helpful than mana regen without innervate.

What am I missing?

I'll post later, but for this week, I've mostly been running Isle dailies. This has given me the opportunity to get really used to fighting the same mobs. I notice that it's easier to boomkin the warlocks, but it's more sustainable to panzer the meleers.

Sustainable, as always, means how much time I have to take recovering between mobs. With panzer, I can quickly bandage and continue, and with the right timing, using innervate and treants to keep the party rolling. With boom, I'm typically going down for drinks and food (with a shadowmeld) between each mob. So boom's not sustainable; panzer, at least with melee mobs, is.

Cheap balance/moonkin DPS staff

Found the following staff on the Auction House for 32g today, and there were five others from 32.3 to 80.7g. For 32, it's a deal. As you can tell from my screengrab (click for readable size), my previous balance weapon gear stunk. This is a bit better.

The Bringer of Death
Binds when equipped
Two-HandStaff
106 - 196 DamageSpeed 2.40
(62.9 damage per second)
+32 Stamina
+31 Intellect
Requires Level 70
Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 121. 
Equip: Improves spell critical strike rating by 42.

Source: wow.allakhazam.com

Lightning Capacitor

Hello, Boomkin item. Saw this walking around on a Demonic Reich player today.

The Lightning Capacitor
Binds when picked up
Unique
TrinketMiscellaneous
Requires Level 70
Equip: You gain an Electrical Charge each time you cause a damaging spell critical strike. When you reach 3 Electrical Charges, they will release, firing a Lightning Bolt for 694 to 806 damage. Electrical Charge cannot be gained more often than once every 2.5 sec. 

Source: wow.allakhazam.com

The player also was carrying a Saga of Terokk in the off-hand. Look, I know that's good, but as far as wrath spam burst damage, even this boss boon isn't as good as my cheesy Slavehandler Rod of Nature's Wrath. Which means I really, really need to figure out why extra Intellect is good.

Throw less dots.

Zul'Aman, soulbound Leatherworking, and additions to the Moonkin blogroll

Okay, Zul'Aman stunk. I couldn't go anywhere. I like to scout out instances solo before running them, judging about how difficult the first pat or two is and going cat to get the layout down before playing. No luck here. It's a raid instance, so I got a guildie to group me so I could drop by, but then there's this danged door that won't open unless you have 5 party members banging on some gong. Thanks, Blizzard. Perhaps I could do the "die and get by" trick that allows you to enter a few other keyed instances, but I didn't see a good ledge nearby nor any mobs to aggravate. Lots of wasted time. Ran to the Shattered Sun to do a few dailies.

Welp, I finally remembered my goal before I took my seven month break: Make the specialist leatherworking soulbound set. Unfortunately, elemental leatherworking's soulbound set is essentially for feral druids (and rogues, etc). I'm not into respecializing, as that runs me 100 gold. Here's the down-low from WoWWiki:

First you must unlearn your current specialization. To do that, go back to the original quest giver for your Leatherworking specialization and pay 100  to remove your specialization (this cost varies depending on your level, 25  at 49 for instance. See herefor more.) You will lose only patterns that require that specialization. Note: you will not lose any patterns available prior to The Burning Crusade since their specialization requirements were removed when the expansion was released.

You can then learn a new specialization by going to Narain Soothfancy and reading a book. He is located north of Steamwheedle Port in Tanaris. The book on his table will teach you either the Dragonscale, Elemental or Tribal leatherworking specialization skill.

Seriously? Now anyone can dream up a Helm of Fire that I spent what seems like years repping to get? I know they don't sell for crud any more (though I did bring in a few hundred gold before the market crashed out), but this is horrible. And now I just read a book to respecialize? Tempting, but I'm only at about 220g right now. Part-timers don't carry much cash.

And then there's the question of if a panzerkin should be purely into balance gear, which seems almost clothkin-esque. How does the feral gear spec out if I supplement with +nature dmg or more traditional balance fare? Looks like Primalstrike might be something to get simply to help when you're wailing with your staff. "Equip: Improves hit rating by 12 (0.76% @ L70). Equip: Increases attack power by 108." Not too shabby.

Here's a post to thottbot that talks about feral/rogue gem choice for the Primalstrike vest.

Re: Primalstrike Vest
Score 0.75     Vote: [-] [+] by Ethral <The Gladiators>, 6.1 months ago
Yes, if you decide to keep your primalstrike (it won't hurt you at all) you will use it until Tier 4, and unless your guild is already working on Magtheridon, you're probably 2+ months away from getting it.

You should be slapped for not having hit rating in that chestpiece as a Rogue.

For a yellow socket you want:

+8 Hit Rating

Red:

+4 Hit Rating +4 Agility

Blue: (depending on what you need more)

+4 Agility +6 Stamina
Or
+4 Critical Strike Rating + 6 Stamina

While I'm at it, here are a few new moonkin druid blogs I've dug up and need to read a bit to get back in the swing of things. I've already started into a few, but haven't gotten too far.

http://ferociousbite.blogspot.com/ (enjoyable read!)
http://moon-queen.blogspot.com/ (post on joining a raiding guild)
http://waradwen.blogspot.com/ (looks like a pretty serious raider)
http://neighborhoodmoonkin.blogspot.com/ (starting the moonkin gem research)
http://laserchicken.blogspot.com/ (he'll be back)

Off the wagon

Well, fire up the WoW Insider blogroll, because I'm finally off the wagon. Not the most panzer-ific shot, but it looked cool dropping the hurricane on some Zaxxis-ites. Took a while to remember how to play, I'm afraid. I forgot about my treants for about an hour or so, and, having rearranged my action bars so that I could have a bear/cat soloing bar and a separate panzerkin PUG bar, I forgot where my healing spells had been placed. "4" no longer threw in a healing touch, which is how I'd had it since I'd first learned the spell.

Not real sure what's next. I accidentally did a Scryer rep quest forgetting I needed to save them until *after* I'd passed Honored. *doh* Right now I'm running Griftah's quest to see what's happening at Zul'Aman. Resting in the Eastern Plaguelands chapel for the time being.

Hopefully more fun Panzerkin info to follow.

WIll the death knight bring me back?

I'll probably be back before the next expansion, as my EVE Online trial is out, my month of UO reminded me why I quit (43 months in), and I'll be about done after 14 days if City of Heroes isn't worth much. So I get excited when I see Blizzard is learning to do expansions right this time.

From WOW Insider:

We know that the DK will start out at a relatively high level. It is not known exactly what that level will be; probably somewhere between 50 and 70. My guess would be 55, if that turns out to be the level of the DK-unlocking quest. The stated reasons for DKs starting out high-level are that players are tired of the early levels...

Not only am I tired of early levels, I don't have an alt over level 7, I don't think. Start me at 55, though, and I just might enjoy it. That's worth a shot.

I'm looking forward to the Death Knight. I played a few Blood Elves and Draenei, but the fact that the starter missions are geared to newbies made it less than enjoyable. At 55, you're pretty good at the game already, so even if you group up a bit, that should make for a fun run.