A Shark among Fish

Call of the Crusade: Patch 3.2 afterthoughts

Patch 3.2 in World of Warcraft has been out for a week now. I'd like to give some thoughts on what I like about the patch and what things are not exciting.

1. Prospecting Titanium

In 3.2, jewelcrafters now have the option to prospect Titanium for rare and epic quality gems. On my server (US - Ysera), titanium ore stack of 20 goes for about 200-300 gold. At most, you will get only 1 or 2 epics out of a stack, if you are lucky. Saving up 180 ore, I prospected all of it, only getting maybe 3 or 4 epics. Prices have gone down on these gems a few hours after the patch went live on the servers. I was actually lucky in selling mine from 2:30 AM - 6 AM after my server was up and fixed after the patch for about 300 gold per. The uncut epic gems sell for 100-150 gold. So your best bet is actually to just sell the Titanium ore in the Auction House as ore, save the titanium for your jewelcrafting/engineering/blacksmithing, or have someone make Titansteel bars from them. Titansteel bars sell for a bit more than an uncut epic gem, and only uses 6 titanium ore per bar. This leads into my next point about if epic gems are really worth the price tag.

2. Epic Gems

As noted above, uncut epic gems are only selling for 100-150 gold. The cut ones are going for at least 250 gold or more. The rare cuts of the gems are still selling between 30 and 70 gold, depending on the cut and popularity. The big question that I bring up is: "Are epics gems that provide little more stats really worth the price tag?" I will use the example of my rogue to make my point, comparing prices vs. stats.

Stacked on my rogue are gems with attack power, agility, and hit rating. Being a jewelcrafter, I get special gems that I can only use. One of them is a Bright Dragon's Eye, which gives me +68 attack power (of which I can only socket 3 Dragon's Eye's into my gear). If I want to stack more attack power, I have 2 choices. The first one is to use a Bright Scarlet Ruby (rare quality), which gives +32 attack power. My second choice would be to use an epic quality gem called Bright Cardinal Ruby, which gives +40 to my base attack power. In my opinion, 8 more attack power isn't a big difference to me, so I would keep that socketed. There are some people in this game who like to have the best of the best gear. Now, for me to obtain the gem and cut it, the epics would cost me around 125 gold to cut, versus nothing for the rares (since I save up all the rare gems that I get). Most people are impatient, and just decide to skip getting the uncut epic and go straight to buying the cut ones. This adds approximately 150 gold onto the price tag of the gem. Why would anyone want to pay 250 gold for a cut epic versus the 70 gold maximum they would pay for a rare? It's a money sink in my opinion.

3. Emblems of Conquest/Emblems of Triumph

This is one thing I like about this patch. All heroics and raids outside of the Trial of the Crusader drop Emblems of Conquest now, as opposed to heroics and each raid dropping different types of emblems for different levels of gear. As like many people, I do not want to spend hours upon hours of my life every week raiding for gear. This is a set-back to us when we do want to join raids, and we get booted cause we don't have the best epic gear. This now allows the casual player to get gear comparable to what is found in Ulduar without having to waste their lives on World of Warcraft. Now many people in the game that are "hard-core" players are upset that casuals are able to get gear that they've spend the past few months of their lives obtaining. My opinion is that it's just a game. Just because someone doesn't have the time to raid doesn't mean they shouldn't have the same gear as you.

As for the guild I am currently in, many people in their have not had the chance to experience level 80 raiding yet. If they haven't raided, they can't get the good gear, which means raid groups won't take them. As for the past few days, I have seen an increase in the number of newer 80's running heroics for the badges. This is a great addition to the game helping the newer 80's gear up. (I've even volunteered to run heroics with them to help the other lesser-geared 80's get their epic gear.) And since the new daily dungeons and daily heroic dungeons drop 1 and 2 Emblems of Triumph, my fellow guild members will get gear of the quality that the people that waste all their time raiding get. It will take a much longer time than the people raiding, but the casual players can now be triumphant in their gaming.

Patch 3.2 general remarks

My other opinions on the patch are the new lower level mount system is great. My level 62 Death Knight has her flying already, and she is already prepared to get Cold Weather Flying at level 68 and Epic Flying at level 70. I saw no problems with the new talent changes they did to Death Knights. Being able to mount on your flyer in Wintergrasp finally (as long as there is no battle going on)! Not dismounting while flying over Dalaran and Wintergrasp is a plus too. To reiterate my whole post: Titanium prospecting = bad, epic gem price = bad, the new emblem system = excellent.