Igni

Are BoP craftables better than anything available outside of a raid-instance or Arena reward?

The reason I'm asking is because I'm debating whether to urge guild members to pick up trade skills complementary to their class. I'm interested in doing so because of the various BoP armor sets and weapons. Grinding for them is comparable to the way might farm consumables for PvE. It will give you that edge you need to get that first kill or a boost in your Elo score.

Doing so as a guild has certain efficiencies of scale:

1. When everyone is focused on getting their BoP craftables, finding people willing to do a Heroic instance with you becomes much easier.

2. Once you identify all the tailors and which specialty they are, you can do a cloth exchange. All the cloth-wearing tailors could send in their unused transmuted cloths in exchange for the type of cloth they need. If you figure out the types of cloth imbalances you'll get (a lot of demand for primal mooncloth but not so much for spellcloth) we can specialize our alts appropriately and buy materials off the AH. Depending on which type of excess we get, we can just make the BoE craftable epic that uses that cloth (Shadowcloth, Spellcloth, Primal Mooncloth) and purchase the material we're short of off the Auction House. This shortens tremendously the time involved with tailors getting their sets.

3. With regards to PvE, if people are crafting their own epic, raid-equivalent weapons, the guild as a whole gears up faster since you're sourcing gear from mechanics of the game other than raid drops. This leads to you getting your whole raid geared up faster since farming for your gear is limited only by the amount of time the individual has as opposed to the week-long lockout timer.

4. It provides an advantage in the Arenas over those people who are just using Arena gear to equip themselves. For example, if you forge your own weapon, you could use the Arena points you would have spent on the Arena weapon on an armor piece instead. By gearing up faster, it leads to increasing returns since - all other things being equal - having a gear advantage will enable you to do better.

5. The weapon craftables keep on giving down the road. If people do get raid drops or make Arena purchases that are better than their crafted weapons, they just bank them. Later, when they make the next tier available, you just upgrade it and once again you're on the leading edge of the 'technological' advance.

But the unknown is how much time is actually involved in making these items? And is comparing the grind for BoP craftables to grinding herbs a fair one? Has anyone in beta gone to the effort to make the BoP craftables and be willing to share their experience?

Note that I'm not arguing whether the BoP craftables are better than what's available in raids or Arenas. Certainly they aren't. However, making that comparison is pretending you have that choice which you don't on a practical level. You can invest time into making the craftable items by grinding. Raid drops and Arena points are both locked out on a weekly basis. So the real comparison is the one I began the post with: are the craftables better than anything available outside of a PvE raid or Arena reward? And inherent to that question is the time investment required.

Ignie Ferroque translates from latin to "with fire & with sword." It is a stock phrase used to describe the results of a destructive raid into an enemy's territory, whose sole purpose is to generate fear, terror, and destruction.

 

Zurai

Primal Air is a bitch to farm because there is not a single concentrated camp of air elementals. Other than that, the rest of the primals are all fairly easy. I was able to craft my Ebon Netherscale set (something like 40 primal fire, 40 primal shadow, plus various quicker components and 3 primal nethers) with maybe 12-18 hours spent farming, not counting the instance runs for primal nethers because I got other loot out of those as well.

 

Ngita

The craftables for blacksmithing at least were made on beta. While I dont have any exact time frame t,he first seemed to be crafted within 2 weeks and the next level were crafted within a month of primal nethers starting to drop. Part of the problem being that people that were ready to run heroic 5 mans at 70 in beta where not the same people as the ones that had spent time on blacksmithing.

Of course the minor difficulty is that for every person that follows this path their is more competition for the raid drop of Nether vortex.

 

Aezoc

Maybe this is old news, but is nether vortex confirmed as a raid (and raid-only) drop? I was under the impression that the crafted BoP epics were supposed to be an alternative to raiding or arena combat. If the upgrades are eventually going to require raiding anyways, I'm having trouble seeing why it's worth the money and time investment instead of just picking up a comparable raid-dropped weapon.

 

Ngita

Looks like I am guilty of posting a assumption as truth. I had checked to see if their was any record for drop on thottbot beta etc but their is'nt.

They did not drop from Gruul, Other than that most guesses are transmute or unseen 25 man raid.

 

Omelet

I leveled to 70 on beta as a Hammersmith.

I decided I'd try to make the 1H Hammer (Drakefist Hammer)

http://www.thotbott.com/beta?i=8752

Materials

20x Primal Fire
20x Primal Earth
12x Eternium Bar
8x Khorium Bar

Just from normal mining I had the Primal Earth, the Eternium and the Khorium. I had about 10 primal fire, as they are found in mining nodes, but at a lower rate than Motes of Earth.

There is a farming spot that requires a flying mount in the Northeast of Nagrand, with a concentration of elementals (70+). The drop rate was fairly decent here and I was able to farm 30 Motes (3 Primal Fire) with a 2-man team in about an hour. However, there was no competition for spawns, as most people aren't going to be grinding on beta for materials. I purchased the rest of the Primal Fire at the AH.

I made the hammer probably a day or two after leveling to 70. It was a massive upgrade for the previous 1H I had, and was nearly the same DPS of my Claymore of Unholy Might.

However, the 2H, Thunder is a different story.

20x Primal Air
20x Primal Water
6x Hardened Adamantite Bar
12x Khorium Bar

Again, the bars aren't an issue. However, the Primals are a problem. Upon reaching 70 I had 4 Motes of Air and 7 Motes of Water. I would have had to farm 19+ of each primal and that was something I wasn't too interested in for beta. Again the Elemental Area in Nagrand would probably be the best bet for farming, otherwise you'd have to depend on the AH or transmutes.

I've seen two Primal Nethers drop in instances, both from the final boss of a level 70 instance. It's going to take a serious time investment to get the second upgrade, since you aren't going to be the only person in the instance who can use the Primal Nether.

 

7Sam

Omelet,

How hard will it be to gather some Primal Might? seams as the 2H sword: Lionheart Blade is mostly based on it.

Thanks =)

 

◊ zeidrich

Well,

It would be about as hard as gathering 1 primal earth, air, fire, water and mana and finding an alchemist with 350 alchemy.

So if it takes a day or two to get 10 primal fire and the primal earth was got through levelling mining normally. And the other motes have about a 25% drop rate from elementals around level 65. I would say, "not too bad". Some 250 kill on average for your 10 primals. 750 kills for the water/air/mana.

Competing with farmers come release will probably be the harder thing as everyone and their dog will be trying to get them.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
-Mel Brooks

 

7Sam

well then the only problem is competing with others.. (like whats 750kills lol, and alchmy ppl? pff...guildys..)

as for competing, now that I think of it, even azshara is empty betwen 2-8am :-)

 

◊ Kaubel

You must be exhausted after the effort put into that post. Go get some rest. You earned it.