Melasahnd (remember her? Level 62 horde death knight) has been helping out Philly by collecting herbs for her. Melasahnd is a pretty junior Herbalist, but it's the lower level herbs that Philly needs the most, anyway. JB, who is a Grand Master Herbalist, felt that she was "too senior" for such low level work. No matter, Mela got to improve her skills at herbalism while at the same time helping Philly out.
Based on the early results Monday morning, Philly is pleased with her glyph sales. She had set a standard price of 50 gold for each of the 27 initial glyph posts (with a couple of exceptions), even if the current price was much higher than that. All 27 glyphs that Philly posted had starting prices on the AH of at least 50g. About half of Philly's glyph's have now been underbid by other scribes, but that was to be expected. In most cases the underbidding was by a small amount, demonstrating that the 50g standard price was pretty close to the mark. In a couple of cases there were some low ball posts - Philly bought them and reposted back up at the 50g threshold. Happy has long since learned that enchanting mat sales dip in the first part of the week, but Philly doesn't know if that will be the case with glyphs. Philly is intentionally not building a large stock of glyphs since it isn't necessary. As long as she has the herbs, she can instantly make anything that she wants. If the underbidding is aggressive enough, however, she may make extras so that she can maintain her position as the most consistent and lowest cost provider. For right now, though, Philly would like to try to maintain a price point of 50g; or at least re-establish that price come next weekend when in theory the buying should ramp up. Philly has spent half her stake of gold getting all of this put together, with no monetary help from Happy. It better work.
Glyph update - Philly has sold about a dozen glyphs and has been replacing them on the Auction House. Mela has done a great job of collecting herbs to make more glyphs, including some of the rarer herbs that had stymied Philly from making several popular glyphs. Following the Tuesday maintenance break will be a good time to take stock of how Philly has done. The maintenance is planned as a "normal" one and should be done by 11am.
The Monday night pvp did not go off. Both EZ (horde) and Java (alliance) popped in and out of game until around 9:30pm. The DER family must still be having problems with the patch. Things were so bad that Blizzard said that the entire WoW game, from Vanilla WoW to the latest patch, had to be reinstalled. That is hours and hours and hours of effort, fraught with opportunities for bugs and glitches. Blizzard should provide compensation for all the lost game time that is causing. Sis likely didn't make it as I believe her classes have started again.
EZ and Java weren't just standing around, though. EZ needed glyphs, so Philly hooked her up with what she could. EZ also played around with her spells and abilities, getting a better rotation and priority list of attacks together. Mery has sent EZ a ton of materials for raising EZ's cooking profession (detritus from all that farming she did for leather), but EZ has done so little with cooking she needs to ramp up some very basic stuff before she can use what Mery sent her.
Java finally got around to settling on his talent spec. The patch changed death knight specs more than most other classes. Before the patch Java was Blood spec as it was generally the best spec for leveling. Mela, also a death knight, was Unholy spec, which is the first death knight spec I learned. I like that one, too, because Unholy specs get a permanent ghoul pet. Non-Unholy spec death knights only get a temporary pet on a cooldown.
After the patch the Blood spec was restructured emphasize armor and stamina and defensive abilities, making it the preferred spec for tanking. While this spec improves survivability, it is the worst of the three specs at doing damage. High damage specs are generally preferred to speed up leveling.
The third DK spec is Frost. I've never tried that spec, but some DK players liked it pre-patch because it has a dual-wield ability. It was a little more complicated to get the best out of that spec, and I just never tried it. Then I ran across a post on wowhead specifically addressing a non-dual wield spec (a two-hand weapon is used instead of two one hand weapons) for Frost post patch that many people were really liking. Basically, what I got out of that is that post patch this spec is the best for leveling up until 80, when dual wielding will become better again. Java already has an excellent two-hand weapon, and had no plans to dual wield. And, since I've never tried the Frost spec before, now seemed a good time to try it out.
Java was also close to leveling up. He was 98% of the way to level 29, and would need only a few kills to get there. Java specced into Frost, but as recommended in the post, set his aura to Unholy. That combination was supposed to provide the highest damage. To test that out, Java had to go somewhere where the mobs were around his level, and the nearest zone with high level 20s mobs was Ashenvale. Java was in Exodar, so it took a boat trip and a long flight to get to the Alliance city of Astraanar in Ashenvale.
Things got even more interesting when Java asked around Astraanar for some quests. Might as well pick up some easy ones to do while testing out Java's new spec. Two of the quests Java picked up were for a place called Forest Song. I'd never heard of it. Then I remembered something Melasahnd had mentioned a few days ago.
Mela spent some time farming herbs in Ashenvale to get her skill level up after Philly asked for help. I thought I knew that area well, but she ran across an area that I swear did not exist the last time a Wild toon was in that zone. The pics Mela took aren't the best, but this is what she saw:
The large blue banners were Alliance banners. Mela entered far enough inside the compound to see that the npcs were also Alliance, and hostile. Mela could have slaughtered them all, since she could see none higher than level 27, but she had other tasks to accomplish at the time. It was an unsolved oddity.
Back to Java. With those two quests in hand, Java went searching for Forest Song. Given what Mela had seen, Java had a good idea which direction to head. The road she had to take went right past the Horde outpost, and I knew that there were several horde npcs watching that road. Java was able to slip past the horde defenders without aggroing any of them. Java soon found Forest Song, at the far northeast border of Ashenvale. And yes, it was the same place that Mela had found.
Java entered Forest Song, got his two quests completed, and leveled to 29. There were an abundance of quest givers there, and in talking with the npcs the true nature of Forest Song became clear. Ashenvale is a contested zone, with both Alliance and Horde outposts. However, the Horde hold most of it, and have long been working on expanding control of the zone. The Alliance have been helpless to stop that expansion, despite the effort at Forest Song to increase Alliance influence. I had originally thought this outpost had been added by the patch, but further research revealed that it has always been there. As a mainly horde player, I'd never even noticed it, tucked up at the edge of the zone and butting up against a high level elite dragon area that everyone avoided. In Cata the war between Alliance and Horde will grow to a fever pitch in Ashenvale.
Ok, I've gotten a bit far afield here. Java did make level 29, as mentioned, and he did test out his new spec on many, many hostile satyrs and spiders around level 29. It was an exhilarating slaughter! With new AoE spells and a much better rotation of attacks, Java was astonished at the improvement. In prior dungeon runs Java was doing about 70 DPS, well below what other DPSers were doing and very disappointing for Java. Against the mobs of Ashenvale, his DPS doubled to more than 140 DPS. Java was often two shotting mobs, and when he got tangled in a group of four mobs at once, it was thrilling just how fast they all went down.
I think our Monday pvp group will want Java to remain at level 29 for awhile, but it will be very tempting to level this bad boy up. Perhaps Jocelyne should get another look - she's a paladin, like Java, but is only at level 21, I think. Hmm.
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