Mists of Pandaria

[Azazel]

Hurm, except for the holding up of TBC as the greatest moment of WoW (though it was better than Vanilla in many ways), it all makes sense now.

[luckton]

Official preview for Farmville a la WoW

I'm actually really looking forward to this 

[Simond]

It's not Farmville.

...

It's Harvest Moon. 

[Soulflame]

Oh good lord.  I hope my children don't get wind of this.

[cmlancas]

Official preview for Farmville a la WoW

I'm actually really looking forward to this 

Something need doing?

Zug zug.

[Merusk]

The intro questline to this happens at ~level 86.  I did it two weeks ago and can see the attraction.  Bonus that you can plant crops that will give you the "primal" of this expansion - motes of harmony.   Note that unlike previous expansions these are bind on pickup, so you HAVE to harvest them yourself.  Big change there.

On the downside of the system; using tools like Watering Cans/ Bug Sprayers/ Hoes takes up an inventory slot.  You can destroy the item after you're done tending crops but you still need that free inventory slot plus the slots for whatever you're harvesting at the time.

[Paelos]

As long as they add the next evolution in bag space or a farming bag that has huge space like the other profession bags, I'm fine with that.

[Tannhauser]

I saw one of the NPC's was a brewer.  So can you brew beer or just raise crops?  What role if any does beer have to play in this? I grew up having to help tend three gardens so I'm not interested in this unless it involves beer.

Beer.

[cmlancas]

I saw one of the NPC's was a brewer.  So can you brew beer or just raise crops?  What role if any does beer have to play in this? I grew up having to help tend three gardens so I'm not interested in this unless it involves beer.

Beer.

Cooking becomes more specialized in this expansion, much like alchemy.  However, you may specialize in all three at once, iirc.

Brewing is one specialization.

[Paelos]

Yeah this is going to be a disaster on my Fall time. Luckily I don't care after October 15th. 

[Merusk]

The brewing stuff wouldn't let me touch it until I hit 90. The level 86 quest just introduces you to concepts and the faction then says "come back when you have more free time!"  I figured it was just for flavor, interesting to hear its not.

Ah - I Missed the update back in May apparently.
http://www.wowhead.com/news=203461/mists-of-pandaria-cooking-specialization-preview

[cmlancas]

Thanks for linking, Merusk.  On a phone so linking is miserable.

I think MoP overall will be worth a 3-month timecard.

[Merusk]

No problem.

For those interested - the rare mobs (Silver crest) of this expansion all seem to drop bind on pickup loot rather than the previous bind on equips of prior expansions.   Add on that the key crafting mats - motes of spirit - are also BOP  and it becomes obvious they REALLY want you out in the world hunting items rather than playing the AH.

My question is are they going to nerf the ore nodes.  There were TONS of them in beta.   So many that people stopped harvesting because it was more time consuming than questing.  Think first 2 weeks of Cata in Deepholm.. yes that many.

[luckton]

No problem.

For those interested - the rare mobs (Silver crest) of this expansion all seem to drop bind on pickup loot rather than the previous bind on equips of prior expansions.   Add on that the key crafting mats - motes of spirit - are also BOP  and it becomes obvious they REALLY want you out in the world hunting items rather than playing the AH.

My question is are they going to nerf the ore nodes.  There were TONS of them in beta.   So many that people stopped harvesting because it was more time consuming than questing.  Think first 2 weeks of Cata in Deepholm.. yes that many.

There 'has' to be tons of nodes.  Have you seen what crafters have to do to get a freakin' usable material now from the basics?  Sure, they made the universal 'elemental' item easier to acquire and use, but good god, Blacksmiths are gonna loose their shit over what MoP would have them harvest for ores.

[cmlancas]

There 'has' to be tons of nodes.  Have you seen what crafters have to do to get a freakin' usable material now from the basics?  Sure, they made the universal 'elemental' item easier to acquire and use, but good god, Blacksmiths are gonna loose their shit over what MoP would have them harvest for ores.

I think with the advent of CRZs, the nodes need to be increased.  I play on Grizzly Hills, which is pretty much the ass end of severs, population-wise.  We've seen a serious increase in people competing for nodes, so I'm sure this factors somewhat.

[luckton]

MoP zones will not be CRZ'd.

Lemme explain it this way: In Cata, you had Folded Obsidium, which was a few Obsidium bars compressed together, which required a lot of raw ore.  One Folded Obsidium took 4 raw ore being crafted into two bars.

In MoP, not only do we have Folded Ghost Iron, but Quality Folded, Masterfully Folded, and Perfectly Folded Ghost Irons.

Additionally, Trillium Bars are crafted by Blacksmiths to make Living Steel, the Alchemy Transmuted epic-material for epics.  Those Trillium Bars need 2 Black Trillium and 2 White Trillium ores to make a single bar, both ores being rare-spawns in the lvl 90 areas.

It could be that the massive amount of nodes is Bliz planning for the future in which the MoP zones will be CRZ'd, but for now, I think it's because of the mass amount of stuff needed just to make the same volume of stuff we made in previous times.

[Zetor]

I don't think I've crafted a single epic on any of my chars since vanilla (except for engineer headpieces), the main purpose of my craft skills was to increase the power of the character they're attached to. I guess crafting the i372ish blues near the end of Cata was ok to gear up alts and guildies, but that's about it.

Is there going to be any REAL benefit for a non-raider to crafting ph4t ep1x in MOP when compared to LFR / dungeon runs / rep rewards / valor and justice rewards / etc?

[Merusk]

I was playing my hunter, who's an engineer, so I hadn't checked out the quantities required for the other profs on ores.   I know I was able to max engineering using one mining-bag of Ghost Ore so I was happy.  Everything after that will be profit/ shipped to the blacksmith character.

Though, reviewing the items on WoWhead nothing looks out of the ordinary.  7-12 bars per item is pretty normal.  Plus you'll find that isn't per point of skill, either.  A lot of the recipes are using the +3/ +5 skill per combine now.   Plus it's just ghost iron, which is the 'leveling' stuff and not the Trillium that people want for level 90 gear.

I don't think I've crafted a single epic on any of my chars since vanilla (except for engineer headpieces), the main purpose of my craft skills was to increase the power of the character they're attached to. I guess crafting the i372ish blues near the end of Cata was ok to gear up alts and guildies, but that's about it.

Is there going to be any REAL benefit for a non-raider to crafting ph4t ep1x in MOP when compared to LFR / dungeon runs / rep rewards / valor and justice rewards / etc?

No more than usual, no,  which is why I've stuck with engineering all these years.  Each profession now has one or two 'sellable' things and a personal benefit.  If you're not in early on that sellable market, you may as well just pick the prof that's most fun or benefits your alts the most.

[Miasma]

At a certain point I thought I'd like to be self sufficient so I trained a few alts to max professions.  I am certain it cost me radically more money training them than I ever saved by not having to buy stuff off the auction house.  It was a dumb idea and I won't be doing it again.

I like that as engineers we won't have to leave MoP zones to go to an AH.

The thing I'm curious about is whether or not they will reduce the number of mats required to level a tradeskill through the 80-85 range.  You needed a huge amount to do that and with the zones about to go empty I don't know how any budding new level one is going to level up something like smithing or, God forbid, enchanting.

On a side note I am hording cata leather to sell to the monks when they try to max out leatherworking.  There is a horrible choke point for leathercrafting at, I believe, the thick and heavy leather level ranges too.  I need to get some of that before MoP hits, for my monk.

[luckton]

Keep in mind with your master leather selling plan that, thanks to Cata changes, some recipes offer more than just a point of skill at a time without too much additional investment, esp. if the person is gathering the mats on their own as they're playing/leveling.  Also, once you break out of vanilla's crating stuff at 300, you don't need 'too' much to get up through BC, Wrath, and Cata, as you only need 350, 425, and 500 for expansion cut-offs.

[Rendakor]

I honestly never thought enchanting was that hard to level up, assuming you grab it early on with a fresh character. I've got...4 max level chanters, I think, just because it's one of the easiest. Plus like luckton says, you never need to get the last 25 points (which are where it gets expensive with lots of Shards and Crystals) because the new expansion starts up. There are a few bottlenecks, sure, but most of those revolve around the Rods and weird vanilla mats that no one farms anymore (Golden and Black Pearls come to mind).

[Miasma]

Yeah I might wait for the darkmoon fair to get the last five points from the profession quest for free.

[Rokal]

Fresh profession leveling isn't too bad, especially for old expansions. Because an expansion covers a smaller amount of skill-ups, and there are less types of materials, it's usually cheaper than 1-300 profession leveling to be honest. The really expensive skill-ups that use lots of rare materials are usually skip-able with cheap catch-up recipes from the next expansion.

The gathering professions are somewhat harder now with CRZ. I leveled mining recently on my hunter and while I didn't notice any problems in the vanilla zones, there was an obnoxious amount of node competition in the TBC/Wrath zones.

[Merusk]

The thing I'm curious about is whether or not they will reduce the number of mats required to level a tradeskill through the 80-85 range.  You needed a huge amount to do that and with the zones about to go empty I don't know how any budding new level one is going to level up something like smithing or, God forbid, enchanting.

On a side note I am hording cata leather to sell to the monks when they try to max out leatherworking.  There is a horrible choke point for leathercrafting at, I believe, the thick and heavy leather level ranges too.  I need to get some of that before MoP hits, for my monk.

Item 1) they addressed in the AMA and said they were going to be making adjustments to them.  I'd guess these aren't in already or we'd be seeing the effects on live by now.  Item 2) you're right.  That's dead on where i stopped leveling my rogue's leatherworking because it was too damn much effort to do.  I should really drop it for another gathering skill but :effort: to level-up.

I'd agree in principle on attempting to be self-sufficient - it's pointless for a number of professions.  Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Tailoring  - aka the profs that are good only for gearing-up alts and not even that now that Heirlooms are everywhere.  If you've got someone maxed for Gemcutting, Inscription and Enchanting I think it's still worth it.  Particularly since you can always feed greens to the enchanter plus mats you pick-up in dungeons for ease of leveling.   In no case have I seen a benefit to Alchemy since the nerfing of potions & flasks to near uselessness.

All my primaries are miners or herbers so Gemcutting & Inscription are pretty easily fed.  It  helps that neither is particularly picky about what you feed it.  5 stacks of whatever will give you the mats you need to level.  Easy-peasy vs. the insanity of Smithing & Alchemy where you have to buy some damned expensive mats just to level-up.  Double bonus in that scribes have items that sell fairly well long after the expansion has been out a while because people are always making new alts.

[Ingmar]

I don't think I've crafted a single epic on any of my chars since vanilla (except for engineer headpieces), the main purpose of my craft skills was to increase the power of the character they're attached to. I guess crafting the i372ish blues near the end of Cata was ok to gear up alts and guildies, but that's about it.

Is there going to be any REAL benefit for a non-raider to crafting ph4t ep1x in MOP when compared to LFR / dungeon runs / rep rewards / valor and justice rewards / etc?

Benefit for the character who had the craft skill isn't a 'real' benefit?

In any case, I got a shitload of use for me and my guildmates out of the epic blacksmithing weapons/shields at the start of Wrath (less so with the ones in Cataclysm, since the stupid Chaos Orbs were much harder to come by than Frozen Orbs, and the recipes needed more of them on top of that), and a lot of personal use out of the upgradeable armorsmithing breastplate during TBC - not sure if you are lumping that in with the 'you get an extra gem slot' type benefits or not.

[cmlancas]

Go visit the pale roost in Deepholm if you're interested in really fast leather farming.  Pretty nice farm area.  :)

[Zetor]

I don't think I've crafted a single epic on any of my chars since vanilla (except for engineer headpieces), the main purpose of my craft skills was to increase the power of the character they're attached to. I guess crafting the i372ish blues near the end of Cata was ok to gear up alts and guildies, but that's about it.

Is there going to be any REAL benefit for a non-raider to crafting ph4t ep1x in MOP when compared to LFR / dungeon runs / rep rewards / valor and justice rewards / etc?

Benefit for the character who had the craft skill isn't a 'real' benefit?

In any case, I got a shitload of use for me and my guildmates out of the epic blacksmithing weapons/shields at the start of Wrath (less so with the ones in Cataclysm, since the stupid Chaos Orbs were much harder to come by than Frozen Orbs, and the recipes needed more of them on top of that), and a lot of personal use out of the upgradeable armorsmithing breastplate during TBC - not sure if you are lumping that in with the 'you get an extra gem slot' type benefits or not.

Yea, I count that as a benefit. Here's my rundown (I didn't play all of my chars during all of the expansions):

Lock [tailor/ench]: the only character I really crafted epic max-level stuff on.. but only for myself, really (especially since vanilla/BC had those specializations and I was the only lock in the guild). Robe of the void in vanilla, frozen shadoweave in BC (which was better than Kara stuff). I got some decent mileage out of enchanting my other chars' gear after they put vellums in (instead of having to pay the gougey prices on the AH)
Shaman [jc]: the BOP trinkets, some of the fancy JC-only gems, crafting gems for my other chars
Warrior [blacksmith]: crafted Thunder in BC, but getting the higher-level orbs was stupid so I just pvp'd for a better weapon instead. Didn't bother crafting anything in WOTLK, and saw no point in levelling cata except for maybe the skeleton keys and the new belt buckle... but eh.
DK [leatherworking]: I crafted maybe 2 items total for my shaman for use while levelling (which was all of... 4 hours of gameplay before I found a better piece)
Druid [alch]: made the philosopher's stone du jour for myself (both tank and boomkin flavors) and maybe a few pots.

I've crafted armor for guildies very rarely... maybe once or twice total, including the time when I made a set of (blue) jewelry and cloaks to get some fresh 85s past the ilevel hurdle of COT heroics. Never crafted anything better than a blue, because like I said, there was no point.

So basically the crafters get all those benefits for themselves and maybe craft one or two items as well as serve as an annoyance reducer for "why aren't there any +stats enchants on the AH for less than 600g" moments. I certainly had zero use for crafting any of the max-level epics -- by the time I could get the insane amount of materials for them, I'd have better options from drops, jp, vp, or pvp.

[Ingmar]

The Wrath epics had very reasonable material requirements!

[Rokal]

I did make quite a lot of gold selling the leatherworking BoE epics in Cata, but that wasn't the primary benefit of the profession. It's the power increase and the cheaper version of enchants/kits. For my leatherworking rogue in Cata this meant that every time I got a new pair of pants, it only cost me two black dragonscales (~40g total) to enchant it instead of 20 black dragonscales and 1 primal leather (~800g total). I also got cheap/excellent character-only bracer enchants.

There is plenty of incentive to level crafting professions besides "make money".

I didn't know about the mobile AH engineers got, that's pretty tempting.

[Miasma]

I don't think it's mobile is it?  I thought it was the same thing as in wrath where engineers could access that auction bot in Dalaran.  Mobile would be cool.

[Merusk]

Yeah that's my understanding of things.   The mobile item we get is a forge & anvil.

http://mop.wowhead.com/spell=127131

And this gem of free monies!:

http://mop.wowhead.com/spell=127129

[cmlancas]

Played the scenario with my girlfriend tonight and another friend.  Was ridiculously easy, but had a very nice lore piece to it.

Overall, was a nice segue, but isn't mind-blowing.

[Azazel]

I did it with my wife and a friend last night. I actually really enjoyed it. No healer needed, and something fun and pretty casual that we could just jump into. They'd want to have quite a few of them though, to keep us interested. There'd be a big risk of them just becoming as boring as the three HOT instances.

[luckton]

Crafting changes from Bliz.

Mostly QoL stuffs. 

- You no longer need harvesting tools to get ore/herbs/skins, but if you still keep them in your bag, you'll get a +10 bonus to the skill.  Gnomish Army Knife will give a +10 to all three harvesting skills.

- Alchemists will get discoveries more often, but they will mostly be with whatever mastery they're spec'd into.

- BS, Leather and Tailor will all use the same single meta element to purchase the recipes for and craft end-game stuffs.  Each craft will have a faction that will cater to their recipe needs, and the new 28-slot bag for MoP is going to be just as much a nightmare to make as the Illusionary Bag, so start saving mats.

- Enchanting materials can be upgraded and downgraded on demand and as needed.  Note that downgrading materials will come at a higher cost than upgrading.

- Engineers get MoP versions of all the stuff they loved from before (gliders instead of parachute cloaks, the Blingtron instead of Jeeves, etc.)

- Herbs are now a bit zone specific, and are specifically designed to work with certain stats (You wanna make Intellect pots?  Go farm Silkweed)

- Miners: Ghost Iron is the new Obsidium.  It's freaking everywhere and used for essentially everything.  Deal with it.  Trillium is the new Pyrite, but you have a 50/50 chance of it being either black or white trillium when you mine it.  You need a little of both to make n actual bar, which goes on to being used for end-game blues, or transmuted by Alchs into Living Steel for end-game epics.  Kyparite is another unique ore that can be mined in certain locations; it's what's used to gain faction and buy end-game BS recipes.

- Skinning's been simplified to Exotic Leather and Magnificent Hide.  50 Exotic leathers can be rejiggered by LWs into end-game leather mats of their choice.

- Jewelcrafters will no longer do a daily to get JC currency for end-game recipe cuts.  Instead, you attempt to get a jewel color (of the six) of your choice for a random discovery of that color.  Unique JC equipable gems have been reduced from 3 to 2.  In exchange, JCs can now prospect their own meta gems and find meta recipes as BoP world drops that will show up only for them (because fuck you Alchemists). 

- The First Aid changes in Cata worked well, so they're repeating it with MoP.  You can make decent bandages early on, and once you max it, you'l need fewer mats to make the same decent bandages.  Also, no "Make 5000 end-game bandages" achieve this time around.

- Fishing is getting love with another Fishing-specific faction that's more better and more awesome than the Kalu'ak were.  And Nat Pagle is with them.  And a new Friday night fishing tourney is joining the Sat and Sun afternoon ones.  What else you want?  Oh, your own private fishing boat?  Done.

[Fordel]

Herbs are now a bit zone specific, and are specifically designed to work with certain stats (You wanna make Intellect pots?  Go farm Silkweed)

How is that different at all? Certain Herbs have always grown in certain zones (and even in specific terrain types in certain zones).