In particular, the aspect of this thread that strike me as particularly insightful pertain to breaking down the entire analysis to several different tiers of haste stats. By chunking the breakdown starting at +47 haste amount, the analysis ties into the psychology of players thinking of their own prospects for gear in the next two-month time frame. This is so much better than the all too common haste account that assumes we are all being blessed with BT riches.

Notes on Boomkin Haste
Part I: Basics-

Spell haste is a stat found on a limited amount of higher end items that allows for spell to be cast at a higher rate. In general, you will not be seeing many spell haste items until you can get into Black Temple or Mount Hyjal, however Zul’Aman does have several haste items and a few can be purchased with Heroic Badges.

Things to watch out for when stacking spell haste is the fact that these items will usually have lower overall stats and not contain any spell hit or spell crit. Very, very few items before Sunwell, like three in total if I recall correctly, have both spell haste and spell hit or spell crit. Although spell crit is merely a side-issue, making sure that you reamin hit capped is extremely important for raid DPS.

Part II: Stepping Stones-
If you want to start stacking spell haste, there are a few things to take into consideration first. Foremost, how much spell haste can you get right away? If you cannot hit at least 47 spell haste, then the stat is essentially useless to you and is not at all worth having. If any other piece of gear offers similar stat values, it will almost always offer better DPS out-put than the haste item you are using. After you are able to hit 47 spell haste, which stats to choose becomes more difficult.

In general, you will see the best return from spell haste if you are able to reach a new second cap off of a Starfire cast. The numbers to shoot for are as follows:

47 haste - .1 seconds
109 haste - .2 seconds
172 haste - .3 seconds
235 haste - .4seconds
314 haste - .5 seconds

Reaching these values will offer the highest return from haste rating. That being said, most people are going to be unable to reach these caps perfectly given that gear offers odd numbers and that all possible upgrades do not come instantly. What this means is that there will be a good portion of the time where a new item will put you somewhere in between these numbers. If this occurs, then it is often better to switch one of the pieces out to lower your spell haste to as close to the lesser cap as you possibly can. There are exceptions to this, obviously. If you are at 168 spell haste, then keeping your current item will probably provide the larger gain in DPS (all dependant on what you would be switching to.) But if you are at 130 spell haste, then it would probably be better to switch out to a piece that has spell crit instead of haste.

The other exception occurs at high levels of spell haste. As will be explained in the next section, the DPS gains from spell haste taper off between 109 and 215. Within this range spell haste seems to have a lowered impact on DPS than is seen in going from 42 to 109 and in hitting 235.This should only happen, however, if you are within the 1200 spell damage range. If you are able to break 1,300, then this should change.

Part III: Impact on DPS-
For this section, I am going to use a paper doll Moonkin to examine the over all impact spell haste has on DPS values in order to determine what the average amount of gains that a Moonkin would see in stacking haste. This is done by comparing how much DPS is gained from each level of spell haste to the one below it. While in the actual game will you notice your other stats change as you increase or decrease your spell haste, for the purpose of this experiment I kept all values as close to constant as possible. To achieve these DPS numbers, I used three different tests to predict changes in DPS. First is Efejel’s Moonkin spreadsheet, second is Lherin’s DPS simulator, and third were my own empirical testing on Dr. Boom.

I used Dr. Boom because, while I would have loved to test each and every variable on raid bosses, there simply were too many different variables and not enough bosses/time to do so. I have previously tested out all of the .1 second changes, however I was not perfectly able to have my spell damage and spell crit to remain constant during these raid tests which corrupts any real data that can be gained.

The stats used for the paper doll Moonking were; 1,200 spell damage, 15.** spell crit (out of Moonkin,) and at least 151 spell hit. There are no set bonuses taken into consideration, CSD is always the meta and is always active, trinkets are aways Icon and Hex Head used at every cooldown, and fights are always timed at 6 minutes. During my own testing the spell damage was never off 1,200 by more than or less than 4 spell damage and the crit percentage was as close to 15.00 as I could possibly manage, although never higher than 15.22.

——– Efejel’s ——- Lherin’s ——- Murmurs’

0 ——- 940.7 ——- 928.5 ———- 936.8

47 ——- 964.5 ——- 963.2 ——— 978.7

109 ——- 997.9 ——- 1002.2 ——- 1005.2

172 ——- 1034.4 ——- 1016.4 ——- 1022.3

235 ——- 1073.8 ——- 1063.5 ——- 1078.3

314 ——- 1127.9 ——- 1103.6 ——- 1127.5

Now, because someone comes out and says “But those numbers are pointless, they don’t show anything!” let me says that they show the average DPS increase that a Moonkin can expect to see depending on their level of spell haste. However, there are some things that also need to be considered.

Spell damage and spell haste play leap-frog with each other in terms of how much they benefit from another. At different levels of spell damage, you would see a higher DPS gain from stacking more haste, and at different levels of spell haste, you would see a higher DPS gain from stacking more spell damage. The current formula of spell damage being equal to haste on a 1:1 ration at 1077 spell damage is the best rule to follow by. Trying to maintain the most perfect ration at all various levels of spell haste is completely impossible as changing one value will influence the other.

So, after all that we can see that a Moonkin can expect roughly these results from increasing spell haste:

0 to 42: 42 DPS

42 to 109: 39 DPS

109 to 172: 14 DPS

172 to 235: 47 DPS

235 to 314: 40 DPS

This does, however, make certain assumptions: that your spell damage remains at roughly 1,200 and your spell crit will remain at roughly 15% out of Moonkin. As spell damage increase, where you will see larger DPS gains changes. At 1,300 spell damage, there is only a minor DPS gain between 0 and 42 spell haste; 16 DPS. Although other levels of spell haste should see equal or slightly higher DPS gains with other levels of spell haste – 235 dips slightly, but 314 sees a much larger impact. This trend seems to continue, with the DPS gains for various levels remaining roughly equal and 314 seeing much larger jump, at all levels of spell damage. For example, at 1,500 spell damage (which I would imagine most Moonkin at 1,200 can reach when fully raid buffed) the average DPS gain from going from 235 to 314 spell haste is 63.

**Please note**

Once you hit 172 haste rating, Ivory Idol of the Moongoddess should offer a larger DPS return than using Idol of the Unseen Moon.

Part IV: Conclusion-
After running all of these tests, I would have to say that stacking haste is NOT the most viable way to increase Moonkin DPS. While the stat itself will offer a very substantial increase in DPS, unless you are in Sunwell there simply is not gear enough to support using this stat. The best returns from haste are only seen at hitting the 316 mark. While it is possibly to do this without any Sunwell gear it is NOT possible to hit 1,200 spell damage, 316 haste and remained hit capped unless you break 4 piece T6 – which would cause a much greater loss in DPS than you gain. Not to mention that your crit rating will probably not reach much higher than 17% out of Moonkin once you start stacking to higher levels of spell haste – and will only drop the higher you go.

Give the way that Balance Druids scale with spell damage and the benefits of Nature’s Grace, I would have to conclude that Rueful is correct in that stacking spell crit is the absolute best way obtain the best possible DPS as a Balance Druid. This is because the gear that allows for higher levels of spell crit often either have more natural spell damage or have more gem slots in them which allows raw spell damage to be boosted to levels that out-scale spell damage. Select pieces do break this, but nearly if not all of them are located in Sunwell – Robes of Ghostly Hatred come to mind. When coupled with Nature’s Grace, the overall DPS output is going to be much greater than found with spell haste.

This does not mean you should ignore spell haste! If the item with spell haste on it is an overall upgrade from what you are using, then it should offer higher levels of DPS and is therefore still useful.

Hopefully this is useful and that I’m not completely stupid. =P

Woot. Big week last week. I bought a second epic flyer, and continued on the spending spree to hook up a 1k crafted weapon, all the mats for red belt of battle, and all the mats for every enchant you could possibly need for a t5 level raider - all from scratch. All of this is based on only a few weeks implementing the types of strategies i’m discussing here. At this point Im bringing in about 1000 gold a week, and the best part…it doesn’t even feel like i”m trying. I’ll check ah maybe three times a day. Sometimes, I’ll hit up a daily if some of my staple markets are flooded. At his point they almost always leave me feeling like, “damn, did I just take 10minutes to make 11gold. What a waste.” Ok, but enough about me, how about you?

A simple enough idea is that you want to corner a market. However, what would cornering a market in wow require? What markets are suitable for this type of control? What’s the risk? In general, I have found that wholesale market manipulation in wow is extremely difficult. The reason is farming. If i seek to corner, let’s say, primal fires, there is a relatively high chance that someone with a lot of time on their hands will just kill 1000 of these guys on some non-raiding friday night, and inject those goods into the market. This type of activity isn’t only easy in wow, it’s highly common. Many people embrace the farm psychology. Thank god that isn’t us, but it makes for rocky water when you think you’ve finally got the distribution of goods on the AH to buy em all up and take over.

Forget about cornering markets. There are much more subtle manipulations you can do that not only require less of an initial investment, but also feature less risk than looking to claim an entire market to yourself. Here are three different scenarios.

Getting in under the red.
I feel like it has to do with the timing of when wow-ers tend to use the AH. It seems to me like people list things after a night of playing, and buy things when they come home from school, and again around 7pm before raids. This fits nicely with a 24hour listing period, to create all sorts of situations where items are coming down in fat groups while a vastly different priced tier of the same item is freshly listed, as shown in the following image.

In these scenarios, you want to scoop up everything under 80% and list significantly higher. How much higher? I would not put these dreaming glorys at 21g, but closer to the 100% mark, to discourage other people from coming in and getting under my red post. Red is like beaming a message at sellers, make a profit on this guy’s high price.

Breaking items down
When asking players how they make their auction riches, one thing comes up time and time again - breaking big stacks into smaller stacks. However, if you dive into adamantite with this strategy you’re going to get burned. Here is a scenario perfect for breaking stacks down.

Buy up that 20 AND 11 stack, breaking it down into 6-ers (because thats how much you need to make a flask or a few pots), and mark them at the 120% mark.

The Corner
Finally, here is an example of a great opportunity to corner. Now, sometimes there are 50 black lotuses on the market. I had watched these lotuses dwindle after about 2 days, and felt safe in that there would probably be another day or so before a big fresh flood of them into the market.

Buy up all of these bad boys and re-price at something like 10g50 a piece, maybe more. Gratz, youve just cornered black lotus. Get ready for 200% profits.

• Deadmines
• Shadowfang Keep
• Blackfathom Deeps
• Razorfen Downs
• Razorfen Kraul
• Scarlet Monestary Graveyard
• Scarlet Monestary Library
• Scarlet Monestary Armory
• Uldaman
• Maraudon
• Dire Maul
• Sunken Temple
• Stratholme
• Scholomance

That’s right, thats the list of all the fantastic 5 man dungeons I never got to do. It’s actually 20 different instances, if you count all the wings of Maraudon and Dire Maul. And, keep in mind that’s only the list of 5 mans. If we were talking about other, larger pre-BC raids, we’d have to add another 10+ instances on there. What a drag that Blizzard hasn’t found any way to not only keep all the content they designed fresh, but keep it applicable to the rest of the game.

Ah well, I guess. The only perk is that now that I’m in Outlands, it’s infinitely easier to find runs for all the Outland instances, even though you’d think no one would want to do a normal Ramparts run. But, I do miss the days when cashing in 5 quests would give me 25% of a level! But, it’s worth it, because I’m just that much closer to jumping in on our 25 mans with a radically different toon compared to my mage, and that’s what this has been all about. Stay tuned! Next update, level 65!

• Tip #1: Do all the quests (except the gathering ones) with a buddy. This is probably the best pointer there is, and I know Scarpia already mentioned it, but it’s absolutely worth bringing up again. Killing quests go twice as fast with a friend, and you’re less likely to get ganked (probably the biggest time waster of all). I often just invite whoever I’m by that I see questing, and say hello once they’ve joined the group. Or, if you fly to the Isle from Ironforge, you can start asking in the general channel as soon as you zone in. Either way, this is the biggie. If you want to do the gathering quests, I recommend doing those solo. The drop rates sort of suck, and it takes twice as long if you’re waiting for a buddy to get his 4 Mana Remnants, too.
• Tip #2: Play Zone Defense. Another big time waster, which you’d never think about, is looting. Kill a mob, run to him, loot him, kill the next, run over, loot him too, etc. You’ll save a surprising amount of time by standing in one spot, pulling all the mobs you can reach over to you, letting them stack up, and loot them all at the same time once there are no more mobs that you could easily hit. This way, not only are you regenerating health and mana faster (since you’re out of the 5 second rule longer), but it’s just more effecient.
• Tip #3: Don’t forget to blow coolddowns and trinkets all the time. The faster you’re killing a mob, the faster you’re finishing quests. Sometimes we only go into all out DPS mode when we’re all jazzed up for a boss fight; don’t forget you can super nuke regular mobs, too!
• Tip #4: Never touch the Horde. Unless you’ve got an extra 30 minutes to burn, and enjoy being camped, don’t pick fights. If you see a menacing hode near you, you can even DoT up his mob, or help him out for one second. They like that. You could even wave. I know I know, I die a little inside every time too, but whatever saves time by keeping me from being ganked, right?
• Tip #5: Pick all the quests up at the same time, and cash them in together. Once you’ve decided how much time you have that day to do dailies, pick all the quests that you’re going to do up for that zone, and only cash them in once you’ve finished them all. Running back to an NPC to cash in one quest, when you just have to run back to him 2 minutes later to cash in at the guy standing next to him is another time burner.

Hope those little pointers help. Is there anything you do to make your dailies go faster? Any other little tidbits you’ve found speed up the process?

This is so important. Here’s some background. Since patch 2.4 launched void reaver stopped announcing his orbs. He also stopped turning towards players whom he was targeting prior to launching an orb at them. Since you only have about 3 seconds after an orb launches to get out of 18yrd range from the orb’s detonation point, for guilds working on ssc, and just starting TK, this was the death knell of their t5 shoulder farming - my guild for instance. We were pretty good on void reaver’s 10minute timer, but, we were’t pulling it off if we lost 3 or 4 dps half-way through the long fight.

The key to taking down void reaver on EZ-mode is a little mod called void reaver alarm. It announces when and where the orbs are coming. It also gives a crystal clear display on a palyer’s ui showing exactly how far away they are from the future detonation point. Unfortunately, it only worked based on combat log announcements, which got all messed up in 2.4

To make a long story short, Void Reaver becomes a mechanical wuss again because combat log announcements for arcane orbs are coming with patch 2.4.2, allowing a void reaver alarm fix. Woot.

The wow-ers over at woweconomist were keen to point out a phenomenon that is obviously taking place on our server, inflation, which occurs when more capital is injected into the economy. This is why americans are getting extra checks this tax season, to inject more cash into the system and to cause inflation to bring the value of the dollar back up. So with everyone and their mother grabbing 100g+ every day in their dailies, as well as getting more gold from farmable raid material, things are heating up. But, inflation is a major opportunity to make some serious gold. I have found that the high price for many of my items is now the standard going price, with many noobs still dropping things in the AH at the low-side of prices from several weeks ago. Here are some specifics:

1. In addition to prices going up, demand for large prismatics couldn’t be higher. When that armory unlocks, all of a sudden everyone needs 15 shards. But since all this is happening relatively soon, it’s easy to score shards still for around 24g. Grab that. You can safely post in the 30g range, or play it risky and try controlling to push upwards around 32,34g.

2. Prices for all power-profession leveling are also locking into their higher prices. Heavy Leathers, large radiant shards, vision dusts, and dream dusts have been some serious winners for me recently.

3. Twink items see the boost. Zealot blades in the 80s. Scarlet chestpieces solidly at 180g+, and twisted chanter’s staffs hitting 120g pretty easily.

I’m not saying you couldn’t sell at these prices before. But now you don’t have to wait around to flip these things. Inflation is pushing the average value up, so plan accordingly.

One of the great things about 2.4 has been the rapid upgrading of any SSC t5 content raid group. In a previous post I introduced the world of crafteds that are relatively new territory, and criticized many people’s excitement as being unwarranted due to the sunmote requirement for many of the items that are associated with the 2.4 content. But, more interesting than 2.4 rep recipes, and in addition to the badge reward items, are all the TK, and SSC craftables that can now be made with ultra cheap, 200g (at my AH), nether vortexes. Find out what progressed guilds can make. Here’s what’s on my list:

Belt of the long road. This was some dream item that appeared in the top of the wowarmory breakdown for +healing and you never expected to see it because of its low drop rate on SSC trash. This thing is amazing. Throw a few gems in there and youve got a belt with +105 heals and +33 spirit. AMAZING. Cost, 2 vortexes and some waters and lifes. You can fish 10 waters up in an afternoon, hovering over elemental plateau and only logging in once an hour when you check your email. Every alchy in your guild has 10 lifes sitting in the bank. But lets say you buy everything - vortexes at 220g a piece, something like 700g. THATS IT. Or, thinking in terms of badges again, 30 badges and something like 300gold. Now try finding a boss before BT that even drops a healing bet, and there you have it. This item is one of those not-to-be replaced items. Take that weak kara belt and chuck it out the window. Cincture of will? This thing is like an extra 40 heals AND 8 more spirit. That’s chump change for that stat increase. GET IT.

But dont be greedy. Boots of the long road? not worth it unless you’ve got the nether’s eating up your bank space. Luckily, i did. There are a lot of great boot drops in raids to come and the kara boots you are prolly toteing are not that bad compared to the boots of long road. Not a big enough up when those badges could go to killer 2.4 badge rewards like the chest or getting the figurine made.