Insider Trader: New mooncloth on Monday
Each week Lisa Poisso brings us Insider Trader -- your weekly inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
As stats on tailored cloth sets ricochet between the developers, the PTR and tailors buzzing like angry bees at the prospect of changes, healing clothies continue to click through their cooldowns to create two of the best healing sets in the game: the Primal Mooncloth set and the Whitemend Wisdom set. Primal mooncloth tailoring is where it's at for healers -- and it offers some tasty treats for PvP casters as well as anyone who wants more bag space.
Just how good are the healing sets? Most priests swear by their phenomenal +healing, mp5 and set bonuses, considering them clearly superior to Tier 4 and rivaling Tier 5. Patch 2.1 will buff the Primal Mooncloth set's overall stats and ease the component requirements. As a package, the Primal Mooncloth/Whitemend combo is weak on stamina (and some say the two sets don't complement one another as well as they could), but most healers compensate with other pieces, swap in stamina gear for specific fights or rely on enchants and gems to reach their preferred stats balance.
There's been some QQing over the fact that primal mooncloth gear is BoP and the complementary Whitemend Wisdom set requires the wearer to have a 350 tailoring skill to get the set bonus. Some players say these restrictions make tailoring "required" for cloth healers. Still, most priests feel the primal mooncloth's set bonus -- 5% mana regeneration during casting -- takes the sting out of upgrading away from their beloved Transcendence three-piece set bonus.
But before we /moon you with the details of mooncloth tailoring, what if you're not the healing type? PvP casters might be tempted by the Unyielding Girdle or the Resolute Cape (buffed to 349 armor in 2.1). And just about everyone craves more bag space. The 20-slot Primal Mooncloth Bag delivers, for a mere 72 Netherweave Cloth, 8 Arcane Dust, 40 Motes of Life (4 Primal Life), 40 Motes of Water (4 Primal Water) and 4 Netherweb Spider Silk from a mooncloth-specced tailor. (Well, what else were you gonna do with all that extra gold and farming time?)
The mooncloth specialist
Tailors have the option to specialize in mooncloth (versus spellcloth or shadowcloth) when they've reached 350 in tailoring. Run the simple errand quest from the mooncloth tailoring specialist in Shattrath City and you're in business! Being specialized allows you to create two primal mooncloths per four-day cooldown rather than one.
Because tailors commonly trade cloth types with other tailors to collect the types they need for their BoP sets, you'll want to learn how to make spellcloth and shadowcloth, too (although you can't currently craft the specialized BoP sets with those types of cloth unless you drop tailoring, retrain it all the way up and respec). You'll be making two primal mooncloth every four days plus one spellcloth and one shadowcloth to trade, so it won't take as long as you might fear to build up a decent supply of mooncloth. (Insider Trader tip: Primal mooncloth has the lowest sale value of the three types of specialty cloth on most servers, so while many tailors will be happy to give you an even exchange, keep that in mind when it's time to trade.)
Enchanting is a convenient companion profession to get the Arcane Dust you'll need to create Imbued Netherweave. And brace yourself for farming motes -- lots of them. One Primal Mooncloth requires 1 Bolt of Imbued Netherweave (3 Bolts of Netherweave [6 cloth per bolt], 2 Arcane Dust), 1 Primal Life and 1 Primal Water.
Show me the moonwell
So where are the moonwells? Any moonwell in Azeroth or The Outlands will work to purify Felcloth into Mooncloth and to create primal mooncloth. Once you know what a moonwell looks like, you'll spot them all over -- in fact, you'll sometimes spy new players standing in them after combat, mistakenly assuming they'll gain increased health regen a la WarCraft 3.
The most convenient moonwells for most players are those in The Outlands.
Terokkar Forest: Cenarion Thicket (45, 24) (Insider Trader tip: this convenient yet relatively little known moonwell is just east of Shattrath City; watch out for a few mobs)
Zangarmarsh: Cenarion Refuge (80,64)
Blade's Edge Mountains: Evergrove (62, 39); Sylvanaar (37, 63)
Old-world locations are more numerous but less convenient for Horde tailors.
Ashenvale: Raynewood Retreat (59, 59); Shaeldryn's moonwell, east of Iris Lake (53, 46); Southern moonwell, east of Mystral Lake (60, 72)
Stonetalon Mountains: Stonetalon Peak
Moonglade: Nighthaven (two different locations); Stormrage Barrow Dens
Felwood: Corrupted moonwells (odd as it seems, they work!) -- Jaedenar; Ruins of Constellas
Silithus: Cenarion Hold (48, 37)
The moonwell in Tanaris: Caverns of Time (near the entrance for the Battle of Mount Hyjal) is not currently a working moonwell.
What's ahead for primal mooncloth
On the horizon, mooncloth tailors are drooling over unconfirmed tailored items requiring Primal Mooncloth and Heart of Darkness (a component drop from The Black Temple), anticipated to be for healers: the Swiftheal Wraps (bracers?) and the Swiftheal Mantle (hoped to be a cloak rather than shoulders, which would break the Primal Mooncloth set).
Finally, we leave you with stats on this tantalizing pattern being sold on the PTR pre-2.1 by test NPC Johnny McWeaksauce:
Boots of the Long Road
Binds when picked up
Feet Cloth
148 Armor
+25 Stamina
+26 Intellect
+22 Spirit
Durability 50 / 50
Requires Level 70 Equip: Increases healing done by spells and effects by up to 73.
Equip: Restores 9 mana per 5 sec.
Materials:
2 primal nether
4 primal mooncloth
4 spellcloth
2 rune thread
Wondering what to buy, how to sell, what to use, how to craft? Ask Insider Trader at lisa.poisso (at) weblogsinc.com. We'll dig up the inside tips you're looking for to get ahead!
