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Insider Trader: Gadgets for the modern Engineer
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Engineering has quite a few useful tools in addition to their famous repertoire of toys, but not every player knows how to make the most of them. There are many reasons for this, including: Not being informed on the latest improvements. Consumables may be less cost-prohibitive, for example, than the last time you checked. Believing the "Engineering is useless" hype that lingers from darker days, and feeling creatively blocked after an expensive and tedious leveling process. Being an irrational yet strangely normal cooldown and consumable saving individual. Awkward Zombie illustrates the latter nicely, and we've talked about stingy cooldown use in the past. This week, Insider Trader is going to discuss a handful of the Engineering tools that you really should be using to the fullest, and why.
Insider Trader: Patch 3.2 keeps getting better
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.I love it when a content patch includes some professions love. As the details keep surfacing, patch 3.2 is looking better than ever. In fact, with the upcoming patch, Engineers will finally be able to drop their Gnomish and/or Goblin specialties ("for a fee")! This has been one of those issues, like ugly and buggy cat forms, that has dragged on and on. The materials for Jeeves have also been updated (get the schematic!). If you're wondering just what you should be saving, hop on through the break for that and other patch 3.2 news!
Insider Trader: Profession-specific buffs part 2
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Last week, Insider Trader discussed the profession-only bonuses associated with Inscription, Jewelcrafting and Enchanting. This week, I'm going to walk you through the rest of them, and include a final summary and comparison at the end. Tailoring Perks Tailors have the ability to enchant their own cloaks. Other players can get cloak enchants from Enchanters, although the Tailoring ones are superior in many cases. Darkglow Embroidery: Chance to restore 300 mana on spell cast. There seems to be a 60 second internal cooldown, with a proc rate of 35%, which is equal to 25 mp5. Lightweave Embroidery: Chance on spell cast to increase your spellpower by 250 for 15 seconds. Swordguard Embroidery: Chance for melee and ranged attacks to sometimes increase your attack power by 300 for 15 seconds. There seems to be a 45 second internal cooldown on Lightweave and Swordguard, meaning that for 15 seconds out of every 45 seconds (+, if you don't proc it on the next hit, but they do seem to proc within a hit or three), you have the effect. This averages out to 83 SP, and 100 AP respectively, in ideal conditions. Depending on your luck with procs, the average decreases the longer it takes you to proc it again.For example, after 45 seconds, each spell has a chance to proc the effect. If you managed it at the 50 second mark, the average becomes +75 SP. Casters who are not Tailors can currently choose between Enchant Cloak - Wisdom and Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed. Wisdom grants you a measly 10 spirit, as well as a now obsolete 2% threat reduction. The +23 haste rating is nice, but provides neither mana nor spellpower. Enchant Cloak - Major Agility grants you +22 agility to cloak. Agility is inefficient to everyone except rogues, hunters, shamans and druid cats, who would get +22 AP from it as well as the crit/dodge/armor. In terms of attack power alone, the Swordguard enchant is the clear winner.
The state of Engineering in 3.1
In case you missed the memo, the short list of changes to the Engineering profession that have been posted for patch 3.1 are all you are going to get come patch day, like it or not. Bornakk confirmed that Blizzard feels that the "perks work out" compared to what other professions offer, and that they "have no changes planned at this time."The relevant forum thread has grown to over 1300 replies and more than 50,000 views, suggesting that while Blizz might be satisfied, much of the Engineering community is not. In fact, many are threatening to drop the profession and take up Jewelcrafting, which is something I hear about a lot. Of course, if your profession is really, honestly inferior to all others, then why is everyone trading up to the same one? Pass through the break for a list of the upcoming changes, the major gripes, and a comparison of Engineering to other professions in order to put this all into perspective.
Insider Trader: Your livelihood after patch 3.1
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Although patch 3.1 is still a few months from going live, it is already shaping up to be a positive force on the professions front. So far, we've been made aware of the following changes: Two new Engineering enchants (attn: tanks and spell power users). An engineered bind on equip blue trinket. A +hit elixir for the level 19 twink community. A deliciously ridiculous number of new glyphs, along with glyph changes. New Blacksmithing bind on equip epics covering spell plate, dps plate and tanking plate, as well as a spell dagger. New juicy, expensive enchants. Finally, a productive use for Black Diamonds. A new Jewelcrafting trinket. Lots of new Leatherworking goodies. Several Tailoring items, including a 32-slot herbing bag. Many current recipes, including Old World and Outland ones, are being rebalanced and updated. For details and analysis, follow me through the break. Keep in mind that these are subject to change, and that we will likely see even more developments in the future.
