f13.net

Thank god almighty. We have plenty of every class in our guild except priests, and our only 60 priest was on long enough today (he's French, so his time frame is way different than ours) for us to make a Strat live run. Strat live, to put it mildly, sucks.

I'm now a hammersmith though, and since I had the plans all stockpiled, I can now make the Masterwork Stormhammer, Hammer of The Titans, Serenity, and the Enchanted Battlehammer. Now the big question: does anyone BUY these things?

What DO people buy outside of the Reaper?

I seriously doubt anyone would buy them with the unstoppable force being pretty much standard issue for every 60 that wants one.

Serenity is an amusing pvp weapon, but not that useful overall. Hammer of the Titans is < Unstoppable Force in every aspect, and Masterwork Stormhammer is blah -- it's not a good tanking weapon due to the CC-breaking proc, and mace-spec rogues are better off with the 1h mace from AV (if you're alliance) or any of the 41dps maces from instances (Hammer of the Vesper, Bonechill Hammer, etc), or a Mass of McGowan.

About the only thing smiths can sell are armor pieces (enchanted thorium, lionheart, stronghold), Arcanite Reapers (arguably better than the Unstoppable Force, damage range and all), Whitesoul Helms (alliance; horde might get to sell some of the mail pieces instead?), and fire resist gear (which requires rep with Thorium Brotherhood and a lot of MC drops to craft). Maybe the occasional Heartseeker, though it's a spectacular waste of money imo.

Oh yeah, you could also make the ZG armor for yourself, provided you are honored (revered?) with the ZG faction. You only get the set bonus if you have 300 blacksmithing.


-- Z.

This is why I don't do production tradeskills. 

All production tradeskills save Engineering suck massive amounts of ass.  Because of the grindiness.

I have just about finished my Armorsmith.  The mithril pain followed swiftly by the thorium pain and, I suspect, the dark iron pain, may actually end up causing my death.

With engineering, however, you are grinding for bombs.  Who doesn't love grinding for bombs ?

Well of course the grind is there -  but if, at the end of that long, painful journey, no one wants your shit?  Suck.

Yeah that was my point.

No-one wants your shit.  They can get better from the mobs.

Always.

Precisely why I went Engineering. Folks bitch that it 'isn't useful' but I enjoy my Mechanical Chickens, Dragons, bombs and such. Hell, it's been worth it for the Jumper Cables alone at times.   Plus I never had to blow 20 bars of anything on a single combine of an item nobody's going to buy.

Anyone who bitches that engineering isn't useful just plain hasn't tried it yet.  Not only is it useful, but it's reusable, which - as discussed - everything else ISN'T.

Chucking grenades to stun and hurt enemies is the very definition of useful.  Letting the chicken loose while you leg it is fun too.  Teleporting to another town using a gadget ?  Underwater breathing ?  Mind control ?  Slowfall ?

The list for engineering is endless.  The rest of the skills suck massive ass.  Except perhaps enchanting (EXPENSIVE) and Gemcraft (remains to be seen.  Hooray for Sockets !).

Heh, I looked for someone on Dark Iron to make me a Hammer of the Titans for almost two weeks with no luck. I finally gave up and sold back my mats I had gathered. Still using my trusty old workhorse, Twig of the World Tree. Sure I'd like to get a TUF, but that actually requires getting into an AV game, which apparently involves waiting for like 4-6 hours just to get in, I dunno, I entered the queue many times, and since I usually don't have more than 2-3 hours to play in one sitting, I never got in. Kinda disappointing when I see people running around with this weapon all over the place.

...and alchemy.  Yes, hunting for flowers sucks, but the benefits are quite nice.  Blacksmithing has the suck of finding ore, yet the results are moderate to crap in the end.  Leatherworking stinks due to the HUGE amount of leather needed.

I had 300 alchemy and herbing on my rogue.  I didn't like it.  Too much picking flowers for too little reward. 

In fact, I hated it.  At the end, only about 5 potions are really of any use and they're the same ones you keep pumping out.  So you've got about 5 zones that you need to farm for flowers which gets endless.

But yeah - this one is a personal choice for me, not really me being objective.

Engineering is great, can't live without repairbots in raids.

To be honest my alchemist is only level 45 (skill 265) so I haven't gotten into the repetitive nature of the beast.  I suppose I'll feel the same once I get there.  As I level up though, the potions have been very nice.

I am not to fond of blacksmithing. After having another character with engineering blacksmithing is really annoying to level. It takes a stack or more of thorium at the higher level to get skill ups on items you can't even sell.

I have stopped leveling it when I have seen that the few things I could make that I would want require components you have to raid to get in dungeons that you would get better items being there than the thing you are making.

Tailoring has some good stuff for the priesty folks so tailoring aint bad. Also its easy as shit to get cloth to skill up tailoring. Thorium? not so much.

Leather working again some pretty spiffy things for druids/rogues/hunters and shaman and again the resources you need = pretty easy to get.

Blacksmithing is just ass it requires way the hell to much of not so easy to get resources for items that you can easily get better upgrades in 5 man runs.

Still I have gotten a lot of use out of my key making ability and my 30 second fear immunity trinket from the blacksmithing quests.

kaid

I dunno, I found blacksmithing VERY useful as I leveled to 60, since even with level 60 guild members taking you on candy runs into every single instance over and over again you can keep yourself pretty nicely filled out if you keep your Blacksmithing a bit ahead of your level.

The vendor-taught weaponsmithing items are all pretty good outside of Blight, and the Imperial Plate set is the best for filling in slots you don't have blues in yet. Outside of the reaper though there just isn't shit for good end-game weapon plans that don't require INSANE grinding. The best weaponsmith plans that don't begin with Arcanite and end with Reaper are the plans you get from the obscene grind that is the Thorium Brotherhood faction.

I went hammersmith mostly since I get physically ill seeing reapers everywhere. I wanted something different. I'm not an axe-spec (nor will I EVER be, I hate axes) and swordsmith plans blow the worst out of all the specializations, so it just seemed to be a fit.

I am in a set group where I am the only plate wearer at the moment. So basically I have diremaul or other high level blues in every slot. Other than some odd bal things like the ZG recipes or thorium brotherhood recipes that require molten core stuff there just isn't much incentive for me to keep working on it.

Weapon wise other than the arcanite reaper there just does not seem to be to much around at the high end thats worth the huge arcanite costs.

It also dosn't help that I am closing in on exhalted in AV so I should get my unstoppable force in the next few weeks.

kaid

I love love love enchanting.  It doesn't matter how uber the gear gets enchanters will always find work.  In fact as soon as someone gets a new piece of uber gear the first thing they do is look me up.  Both "grinds" ive done for enchanting have netted me thousands of gold (crusader enchant back in the day paid for 3 epic mounts, agility enchant still sells like hot cakes even now).  I'm also a big fan of alchemy and engineering, back when i did bgs non stop those freaking bombs saved more freaking flag caps than i care to count.  Nothing like a single rogue with two vanishes and some stun bombs holding off 8 people at a flag while reinforcements come to make you love engineering. 

Yes our guild enchanter is enjoying his craft. Since we are a set group basically anything that is not an upgrade for one of the group is given to him. This has allowed even in a small guild for an enchanter to level to 300 have some damn good recipes and not go broke in the process.

Hell I wanted crusader so I camped it my damn self and gave it to him so now I can get crusader slathered on whatever weapons I want.

Blacksmithing started pretty fun and early on had some good upgrades but once I got into the high 50's what I could make was nowhere near as good as what could WAY more easily be gotten from drops or hell even bought for world drop items.

kaid

Flower picking and alchemy for the shaman (cos you can pick flowers in ghost wolf form), engineering for the other characters, enchanting and tailoring for a bank alt. Raid guilds need an armorsmith, let it be somebody else's problem. Some characters should be engineer/skinner, some engineer/miner if you have that many on one server.

Armor smiths deffinatly could be useful for a big raiding guild but if you don't think you will have ready access to lava cores don't bother.

kaid

Just made Honored with TB and I also learned Dark Iron Smelting.  Having now been told what I now need to advance, I'm thinking of jacking it all in and suiciding.

:(

Gratz mate.  Okay I got a hammer question.

* takes a deep breath *

Looking at the warrior arms tree - it seems the special effect of a hammer is stun (vs. the critical for axe) - this ability is irrelevant against any boss mob correct? 

Not sure how the hammer is handled by other classes - but in the warrior case it just seems that the hammer is unfairly balanced vs. sword or axe for raiding.

when's the last time you saw a rogue with mace spec?

That's right, not since release. That's becuase it's worthless. Some talents/weapons are clearly better than others.

Mace spec rogues have SOME utility in pvp... they are the only build of rogue that can maintain a perfect stunlock (if they get lucky... my rogue is mace spec). But yeah, mace spec sucks for warriors, axe/polearm spec is better, sword spec is WAY better (assuming a high-quality weapon)


-- Z.

Fiery Cores and Lava Cores.

Unavailable anywhere but MC.

So what is my ickle Armorsmith supposed to do now ?

Nowt, it would seem.

Yeah, I long ago looked ahead at what was coming for blacksmith, tailoring, and leatherworking.  I concluded at that time that crafting is really given the shaft in WoW.  They directly link 40-man raiding to high end crafting.  So far, alchemy and enchanting have been my best best.  I'm now turning to engineering because it seems to be useful without having to sell my soul to an uberguild to get the materials I need.

I will say it again - 40 Man Raiding is a curse that should not be present in an online game.

The more I think of it in WoW, the more misplaced it seems.

Make Fiery Cores drop in ZG, you fucksacks.

ZG actually has some pretty good black smithing recipes if you can get your faction up in there. Plus one blacksmith set that gives you a set bonus if you are a 300 black smith.

kaid

Nothing compares to the coolness of the Dark Iron Armor.

(http://wow.allakhazam.com/images/fashion/hannibaldarkiron.jpg)

Why do you feel the need to rip every pair of pants you're given.  They were perfectly fine the way we gave them to you. Nobody wants to see your kneecaps.

hehe

There is the EQ2 approach - by the time you are fully armored - barring being a gnome or Ogre - nobody can tell what race you belong to anymore once you're sealed in one their armor tin cans.  Bah.

/derail off