Grinding Advice for Rogues

Rogues, there are only 2 things to consider when looking for a good grinding spot: Are the mobs wearing cloth, and are they melee or casters? For maximum efficiency, they must be cloth wearers. You'll go through them much more quickly than beasts or armored mobs. If they are melee, fight a few to find out what kind of damage they do to you, and judge if it's worth it. If they are casters, well, you've got it made. Low health, squishy armor, and casts you can interrupt, what more could you ask for?

Now, there are tons of spots in the world to grind mobs, but most people don't need to grind until 70, as you're better off questing before then. So, I will offer my 2 favorite spots with squishtastic mobs, and good rewards. If anyone would like me to add spots for other level ranges, leave a comment and I will!

Deadwind Pass: The ogres in Deadwind (Deadwind Brutes, Deadwind Maulers and Deadwind Ogre Mages) are actually fairly weak. As a Rogue, you should just breeze through them. They drop lots of Runecloth, and of course, some silver and copper. The birds that fly around are weak in hitpoints/armor, but do decent damage and have a DoT they constantly use. Unless you're combat specced, I'd avoid them, as being dotted will ruin an ambushing Rogue's efficiency.

The Legion Hold, Shadowmoon Valley: If you haven't guessed, this is one of my favorite places ever to grind. Look for Wrathwalkers, as they are all over the place. They drop Netherweave by the truckload, also rep items you can sell/turn in. At the top of Legion Hold, where the infernals are, you will find Shadow Council Warlocks. These mobs are just too easy, and also drops tons of cloth and good greens. Low hitpoints, and all they do is cast Shadow Bolt. If you're 70, they will likely only get through one cast before dying, which you will interrupt anyway. VERY little downtime here, folks. The respawn rate seems to vary, but even with 3 people here at once, you will never have to wait for a target. The Warlocks in particular are a nice grind, as they have the chance to drop Recipe: Fel Strength Elixer, if you're an Alchemist.

Remember Rogues, bring bandages, bring lots of food, and bring empty bags. Enjoy the grind!

Thanks!

Wow, thanks for the great suggestions!

I will be looking into Auctioneer Advanced, definitely. Class-specific grinding spots I can do as well.

Jessie, good point. I did a post about the Avenging Blades and the Sharp Cookie, from the Blade merchants in Halaa, and I'll look into the other stuff as well. Probably won't be doing a post until Tuesday, as I've got lots of homework. >.<

Direction

Sorry things have been slow lately. School has a way of doing that!

Anyway, I need some direction from you all, whoever you are. What kind of info an I lacking? What do you want to see? What addons, zones, professions, etc? Post 'em in comments and I'll knock them out soon as I can!

Thanks a lot.

Farming Felcloth in Diremaul

I've said it before: the best thing about the expansion is that some items that were intended to be hard to get are now easy to get, and just as useful (expensive) as ever, or even more!

So, here we apply that to Felcloth, which is used in high level Tailoring and Leatherworking recipes. It tends to be very hard to farm, dropping rarely off of Satyr type mobs. However,
the Wildspawn Satyrs inside of Dire Maul enjoy a 5% drop rate, which is rather decent. At level 70, you should have no problem tearing these guys apart, as they are only 54-55 elites. So, check out the Felcloth prices on your server. If it's worth it, this spot is my recommended grind spot! Anywhere else, and you risk interruptions, PKing, etc etc.

I know, wussy post. Busy with school. Don't lose faith!

Disenchanting Halaa Vendor Items

Halaa is a rather annoying place to get into. In my experience, any time you want to get into it, it will be in the other faction's control. However, if you can get into it, and you're an enchanter, here's something worth your time.

The blade merchant for each faction (Aldraan for Alliance, Coreiel for Horde). They sell a limited quantity (3) green throwing item, the Avenging Blades or the Sharp Cookie, for Alliance and Horde respectively. Aside from being very decent green items for Rogues or other DPS melee classes, they disenchant into items worth rather more than the cost of buying them (2g21s). Disenchant them into Arcane Dust or Greater Planar Essences, and occasionally a Large Prismatic Shard!

This won't make you rich, folks, but it's a good way to level up Enchanting, and a good way to turn a quick profit if you're in Nagraand.

Moving Day!

So, tonight I am busy packing, and I will be moving back to Ohio University tomorrow. Odds are I won't be posting either of those days, but once I get settled back in at school, I will resume my somewhat regular posting schedule! See you soon!

Enchantrix

Enchantrix is one of the many great Norganna addons available (same maker as Auctioneer!). Currently, it is in beta stages, and is not part of the Auctioneer pack, as it was in the past. When Burning Crusade was released, Blizzard made some changes to some key formulas for determing what an item will disenchant into, and so Enchantrix needs something of an overhaul. It can be downloaded as a fairly stable BETA standalone from this page.

The idea behind Enchantrix is simple, and much like Auctioneer, which you will need in order to use this as it is intended. Through many scans, Auctioneer gatherers a database of prices on all items it sees on the Auction House. That includes all of the enchanting materials. What Enchantrix does is check its database for what an item can disenchant into, at what % chance, and use Auctioneer data to turn out an estimated gold value of the materials you get for disenchanting it. The goal is that you find an item for sale for sale that can be disenchanted into materials worth MORE than the item.

First thing's first. Download Enchantrix, unzip to your Addon folder. Now, we need to do one thing before getting started. Go to your Enchantrix folder in your WoW directory, and open "EnxConstants.lua" with Wordpad. Look for the table labeled "const.StaticPrices". This is where Enchantrix gets the info on how much the Enchanting materials are worth. Change these to reflect the prices on your server to make Enchantrix more accurate. Please not that in the file, the prices are listed in terms of COPPER. 100 copper to 1 silver, 10,000 copper to 1 gold. Keep this in mind when fixing prices. If you want to change the price for a Large Brilliant Shard to 10 gold, that is 100,000 copper.

Make sure you enable it at the character select screen, and log in to your banker!

Enchantrix should load automatically. Just in case, type in "/enchantrix on". This makes sure that it will display the information on the item tooltip (mixed in with the Auctioneer data). Now, type" /enchantrix show" to bring up a nice GUI to mess with your settings. Generally, these are find how they are. If you change them and restrict the results you get from your searches, you're only hurting yourself. In the end, it's YOU, not Enchantrix who will determine if something is a good purchase. The program can't do everything. :p

Let's make some sense of what you're seeing. When you mouseover a disenchantable item, you will see something like this:


Obviously, the highlighting is my own. What do these values mean to you? Well, from the top

1. 99% Small Prismatic Shard x 1.0 -- There is a 99% chance to get 1 Small Prismatic Shard. (If a 2.5 or something comes up, no you won't get 2.5. You could get 1, 2 or 3 of them)
2. 1% Void Crystal x 1.0 -- There is a 1% chance to get 1 Void Crystal.
   
3. Disenchanting requires skill 225 -- Self explanatory. You need 225 skill to disenchant it.
4. Disenchant value (HSP) -- This is the "highest sellable price", or an optimistic estimate of what Auctioneer thinks you can sell it for, based on information from past scans.
5. Disenchant value (median) -- This is the value based on the average selling price in all historical auctions. It's usually the reliable one, as it's based on your ever-updated Auctioneer data.
6. Disenchant Value (baseline) -- This is the value of the pieces as determined by a website like Allakazam or Thottbot. As those tend to derived from multiple servers, this may or may not be accurate on your own server. My advice is to ignore this value, unless you fixed the lua file as I explained above.
   

That sums up the basics of it. Simply check the Median value and see if the pieces are worth more than the item you are buying. HOWEVER. Some annoying players will try to list their materials at far, far more than they are worth. If you scan these, it will screw up your values. Check directly what materials are worth before putting them up for auction, as the results from Enchantrix can be inaccurate.

So, how do you make money with this? Here are the slash commands you need to know to search your Auctioneer data. Yes, these 2 are all you really need to know.

1. "/enchantrix bidbroker " -- Same as Auctioneer. So, "/enchantrix bidbroker 50" will return items that can be sold for AT LEAST 50 silver. If you put it 500, it would be the ones that sell for at least 500 silver, or 5 gold, so always think in terms of silver.
2. "/enchantrix percentless " -- This will return items that have a buyout a certain % LESS than the disenchanted pieces are worth. "/enchantrix percentless 50" would return only items that have a buyout 50% less than the disenchanted materials could be sold for. Higher values yield higher profit results, but fewer of them

Being successful with Enchantrix requires some patience, and a willingness to take risk. After all, you might buy that item hoping to get a Nether Essence, but against all odds, you get only a small radiant shard. It does happen, and it WILL happen. Of course, it can happen in reverse, too! If you want to play it safe, only stick to items that can be disenchanted into ONE thing. That way you know what you'll be getting. Bear in mind, this will somewhat restrict your buying options.

Also keep in mind, if something is listed at a high profit, say 20 gold, and there is a 10% chance of a Nether Essence, or something else very valuable, but a 90% chance of worthless junk, that 10% is inflating Enchantrix's estimation of the items value. Don't let Enchantrix do all the work! If you don't understand stuff like this, and just buy everything listed as profit, Enchantrix (like Auctioneer) will lose you money.

As one of my readers pointed out in the comments, Enchantrix isn't a huge Auction House money spinner. Like I said (also in comments!) it is almost always more profitable to sell an item than disenchant and sell the parts. But yes, sherretz has a good point in that perhaps the best use of Enchantrix is on random greens you pick up Thanks, sherretz, and for the number error too!

And I can't believe I forgot to point this out. If you're level 70, hit Scarlet Monastery or ZF, or Uldaman or another instance. Those BoE blues the bosses drop have decent odds on disenchanting into decent materials, probably worth more than the item itself. I did a post about Scarlet Monastery like that, if anyone is interested. Same principle works in any instance, but SM is probably the most efficient.

I'm going to do some more posts on this, including good Disenchanting items from vendors, and crafting ones if I can find some decent ones. See you later!