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After close to two months off the grid, this is what I returned to

Shattered Glyph Market

This is the downside of using mailboxes to keep your stuff organized between you and various mules; anything not in bags evaporated into the Twisted Nether.

On the bright side, my nemesis appears to have disappeared again, and glyph prices are up from where they were when I left. I’m guessing that the number of glyph mongers have decreased faster than the server population as a whole.

Well, off to rebuild.  Has anyone seen the ‘Open’ sign?  It’s under this stuff somewhere …

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In which Actual Numbers are used to derive Actual Conclusions. Accept no substitutes.

I mentioned a while back that I didn’t trust WoWHead’s numbers on pigment yields from herbs, based on a few things.

  1. Uploads from the collection tool don’t seem to be applied in real time.
  2. There is no indication as to how often stale data is purged,
  3. … or how old is considered stale
  4. No indication as to how much of that data is from Beta, and thus no confidence in whether the data was from artificially inflated yield rates1

I also mentioned at the time that I had created an addon that would grab milling data automatically in order to obtain an alternative set of numbers that would be – to me -  unimpeachable.

The downside to this is that I could not trust the numbers I saw until I had more samples.  I think I have enough – for MoP herbs – to provide some more or less accurate commentary, which I present forthwith.

Pigment yields, raw numbers

As you probably know, there are two types of pigments yielded – common (for Ink of Dreams), and rare (for Starlight Ink).  The former is for the mundane stuff such as glyphs, the latter for the rare and epic items, quite often cards for Darkmoon decks.  So there are two thing to consider when obtaining inks to mill – what are you looking for, and what are you going to do with it?

For the average glyph monger, high yield of common inks and low cost (if buying) are key factors.  For Darkmoon Card makers, high yield of rare inks will be the overriding concern.

Common Pigment Yields

As you can see, common inks are largely clustered around the 2.5 per mill mark.  Fool’s Cap far outstrips that at 2.84 per mill. So if other factors are the same, Fool’s Cap is the way to go.  Otherwise any of the other herbs except for Desecrated Herbs are equally good. Desecrated Herbs are probably going to be overpriced, but if they aren’t, they’re marginally better than others.

Rare Pigment Yields

Rare pigments have a similar story, with most clustered around one pigment per four mills, or 0.25. Fool’s Cap again is crazy large at more than one per every other grind, but the price may make it unfeasible.  However, given it’s close to 3-to-1 superiority to the others, a bit of flexibility on the price is warranted. Even at double the price of the others, its yields make it more profitable.

Again, Desecrated Herbs have a marginally higher yield rate than the others, but not high enough to justify a premium price.

The clear winner here is Fool’s Cap, with its tremendous yields of both pigment types. You can justify quite a lot of time farming or money on the AH in order to obtain stacks of this herb. This is especially true if you are after rare inks – the other herbs don’t hold a candle to it.


  1. It’s possible, in order to get more iterations, that node spawns as well as milling yields were tweaked in beta. I have no evidence that that is the case, but I have to consider the possibility when it comes to working numbers. []

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You may not believe it, but addons are severely limited in what they can do.  Mostly, they are driven off of "events" which they can react to, or they’re re-imaging of something that already exists.

Warning, technical bits

Addons that have a lot of animation or fast reacting indicators, such as cast bar replacements ala Quartz, usually trigger off of an event called "OnUpdate".  It fires every time the current "frame" (i.e. your screen) updates, and it’s the only event of its kind. Thus, the higher your FPS ("Frames per Second"), the more often this guy fires.  If you have low FPS, all animations tend to be choppy, including your addons.

Because it fires so often and is at the heart of your FPS, OnUpdate even "handlers", such as the code routine that updates your cast bar, are supposed to be kept small and focused. All the stuff that sets the texture, size, position, and other frippery associated with the cast bar, for example, will be done elsewhere. We try to restrict the OnUpdate handler, in this case, to calculating and drawing the cast bar, nothing else, and then handing off to the client so it can get about the business of rendering.  If we put stuff here that takes a long time to do, it will drag the system FPS down.

What this means to you

There are a few conclusions you can draw with this knowledge.

Addons count

The addons you have loaded will affect your client’s performance.  Furthermore, those with no OnUpdate handler will impact performance far less than those that use one.  I don’t suggest you learn to read LUA source code as much as be familiar with what addons are high-impact with animations and critical indicators, such as Quartz or any unit frame addon. The more of these you have, the more delay there is in rendering each frame, until your FPS starts to decline.

You can’t eliminate this, but you can mitigate it.

The fewer, the better

The first principle is that the more active addons you have, the less responsive your client will be.  So if you can eliminate addons that you don’t really need, that will help performance. Sometimes it’s a matter of disabling those that you only use from time to time, such as MogIt – which does have some real-time components, but nothing you need in the middle of a raid. 

Quality Counts

Comparative testing of addons is a must, to eke out every bit of performance. The best approach is to get a little FPS addon (or just use CTL+R to turn on the built-in one), then find a quiet place to test your candidates.  For example, all else being equal, try each HUD addon and look for dramatic drops in FPS. Any obvious outliers can be given the boot.

A good place to test your candidates is in the entrance of just about any instance. Avoid those with a lot going on – e.g. Violet Hold or ICC – and opt instead for those that have nice, quiet staging areas, like Karazhan.

Easy Upgrade

All other things being equal, if your client’s main issue is with framerate under load, a simple video card upgrade may do the trick.  I’m running a Radeon 5000 series card which I purchased for under $100 over a year ago, and get on average 30 fps in cities.  I have a lot of problems in 25- and 40- man raids, though. Purchasing another identical card and coupling it with the one I have already will improve matters a lot, and that will also improve the performance of all my high-impact addons.

Or, I could upgrade to the next tier of Radeon, a 6000 or 7000 series, whichever is available in my price range from my favorite vendor (I prefer Gigabyte solid cap boards because electrolytes are icky)1.

It isn’t just WoW that will improve, I’ve found. So many apps and games use similar mechanics for updating high-activity visual components that a nice video card upgrade.

So, protip – if you buy to last, you can stretch a PC’s life a long time with video card upgrades.


  1. Example only, but oho, looky, under $100! []

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In the “goblin” world, there are goblins, and there are those that write about goblins, and there are those of us that more or less peer in from the edges, bemused at how far one person will go to make a few gold pieces.  I fancy myself in the latter, no illusions there, but I wonder where WpW Insider’s resident goblin journo places himself?

His topic of the day was something near to my heart, inscription as a money maker.  As usual, he almost gets it right, or almost gets it wrong, but doesn’t really nail either.

Buy the Numbers

The first thing I want to tackle isn’t provably wrong – not yet, or at least not provable by me – but I want to shed some light on the statement that possibly was edited down for brevity.1

Assuming you can make a full deck for every 12 cards you produce (which is the ratio you see if you trade really well and/or produce a lot of cards), it’ll cost you 120 stacks of any herb but Fool’s Cap, or 75 stacks of Fool’s Cap. At 40g per stack of, for example, Green Tea Leaf, that’s 4800g per deck. Some decks can sell for over 20,000g.

What’s he talking about, Fool’s Cap requiring fewer stacks?  Well, basically, what he’s saying here is that Fool’s Cap yields up more Misty Pigment than other herbs do.  If he got his numbers from WoWHead, I do question them – WoWHead does not appear to purge old data that often, so the numbers up there could possibly include Beta data.  Hard to say, since they’ve become less transparent by the day.2

However, I wrote a little addon that has been tracking all milling I do in real time.  So far, the yields look like this.3

MoP Herb Yields 2012-12-28

So, everything hovers around the .25-pigments-per-mill level, except for Fool’s Cap, which has yielded around .60.  Yes, that’s more than double, which is in excess of WoWHead’s numbers.  I have no idea whether this will hold, but I’ll be monitoring it.  Right now, I don’t have enough samples from all herb types to make me comfortable publishing a link to the database, but before too long I will.

The upshot is, yeah, right now it’s worth it to buy Fool’s Cap for purposes of making Darkmoon cards.  But now that Euripides has let the cat out of the bag, I expect there to be at least a window in which it will be priced beyond reason.  Keep your eyes on the prices.

Don’t Believe it

Glyphs are a whole other beast. I’ve said a few times that this market isn’t worth pursuing, and to some extent, this still holds true. The main reason I’d advise against trying your hand at the glyph market is that everyone else disagrees with me, and that the profit per hour in this market is purely driven by competitors’ willingness to spend more time cancelling and relisting.

This shows some old-fashioned thinking on Euripides’ part.  The “work harder not smarter” attitude works, if you have no other interest in this game than to sell things and make gold. I’ve other things to do. This is and has been a side-project, in which I attempted to determine if one could make money on the AH in an intelligent way.  I’ve succeeded – if you disagree, it can only be on the matter as to what degree I’ve succeeded.  However, since I started this exercise in Wrath, I’ve accumulated over 1,000,000 gold, so I think I’m on solid ground here.

I published my methods here, so I won’t go into great detail now, but essentially these principles held, and still hold.

  1. Treat the enterprise as you would a retail outlet.
  2. Maintain a working inventory of glyphs.
  3. Cultivate a reliable, inexpensive source of materials.
  4. Rotate stuff out when its price drops too far (as opposed to a forced reset, which is too labor-intensive) and shelve stuff that doesn’t sell at all.
  5. Don’t worry about Euripides and the goblins.

#5 is the part that flies in the face of what Euripides said. He maintains that you have to undercut like a fiend.  I don’t. I sold 5000 GP worth of glyphs last night.  Does that sound like a good turnaround for an hour’s work? It does to me.  I post ONCE per day. I still sell stuff. There are a variety of reasons, but the biggest reason is that the stuff that sells, will sell.  Some “goblin” may undercut me, but if the glyph is a seller, then his glyphs WILL be bought, then mine are right there for the next buyer.

Don’t take the advice of trolls

I like angry letters, so when I have time to troll my esteemed competitors, I’ll go and post a "glyph wall" of 3 of each glyph for triple the materials cost. This is just expensive enough that it’s not worth them buying me out, and cuts the high end of the market (the 300g glyphs that cost 15g to make) out from under them. This can be fun, not unlike popping bubble wrap. I still get undercut within an hour, but since this doesn’t really drive demand up that much, I don’t end up selling anything more than I would have at the high prices. That’s generally when they’ll mail me letting me know this.

In the end, though, I can’t spend all day trolling — they just wait for me to have better things to do and then go back to their old ways.

I encounter a number of idiots like this on my server4 and I always get the last laugh, because while they’re all wrapped up in this little game of theirs, I just keep posting and selling.  They were thick as fleas on a camel when the expansion posted, but they’re gone now, and I an still making bank.  Laugh-a while you can, monkey-boy.

If you’re going to disregard my advice and try to get into the glyph market, the best advice I have for you is to make sure you have the most efficient possible setup, and undercut really frequently.

If you want to make money making glyphs, and you don’t want it to be your life, then disregard this advice and reflect on the article I linked above.  Exercise patience and intelligence5 and you’ll not want for gold in days to come.

Moving on

I’ve a couple more tweaks to make to see how far I can push this thing, but now that I’ve gotten my Million, it’s all become rather pointless. I’m not one of those one-percenters that digs the money just for being the money. My goal has been to provide a comfortable nest egg for ten toons on this server, and I’ve more than accomplished my goal. Anything else is just gravy.

Everybody loves gravy.


  1. Or uberness. One never knows. []
  2. Doesn’t mean I’m going to wax poetic about WoWDB any time soon. []
  3. Green = common yields, Slate = rare yields. []
  4. And yes, that’s a direct Euripides quote, and yes, I just called him an idiot. It’s justified. Trolls are idiots. []
  5. No comment. []

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Heads up, everybody!

It’s the other shoe that didn’t drop when 5.0.4 came out.  Blackfallow Ink has gotten its pink slip:

Beginning after the maintenance on Tuesday, October 9, ink traders will be converting from accepting Blackfallow Ink to accepting Ink of Dreams and Starlight Ink will become available for purchase. If you’re still holding on to your Blackfallow Ink, your time to trade it in is running short.

– Nethaera

You’ve got until you log out tonight (ish) to resolve your Blackfallow Ink issues.  Actually, this is an unexpected courtesy. Ink of the Sea got ditched without warning when 4.0.3 went live, so I was expecting much the same this time around.

The good news is this: if you have leftover herbs or Blackfallow inks, you an cash those in for Ink of the Sea now, and still blow through them in no time if your server’s like mine.  Ink of the Sea is still the highest-demand ink out there, so you really can’t have too much of it.

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I was both surprised and pleased to learn that there are already a lot of addons for the Pet Battles system.  I was also surprised there was a need for them, but upon using the system, it became apparent why that was so. They apparently keep the original design team from 2001 on hand to get the ball rolling on new interface elements. The Battle Pet interface thus isn’t unusable, but, merciful Light, it can use a bit of help.

I’ve taken some time to go through all the addons I could lay hands on, the results which follow. I hope it proves useful.

Team Managers

After the Pet Merge of 2012, most avid players have a multitude of potential battle pets to choose from, and, if you’re like Team Grimmtooth, each alt has preferences.  You may have noticed, however, that whatever team is set up for one toon, shows up for all toons, even across servers.  So what’s needed here is a way to simplify the job of setting up the battle team for each toon.  Fortunately, the WoW addon community has you covered.

PetBattle TeamsPetBattle Teams

PBT’s biggest draw is the huge number of teams you can assemble. I’d be happy with ten or so for all the alts, but this one makes sure there is plenty of breathing room. The controls for building a team take a little bit of getting used to, but the controls for switching teams is simplicity exemplified. Open your pet journal, click on the team you want, move on.

What is missing, for me, is a means to name / label each team meaningfully. Eventually, there will be a dedicated team for each of my toons here, and labels make that a lot simpler.

Which leads right up to the other contender in this category.

Battle Pet Tabs - 3 TeamsBattle Pet Tabs

This one only offers eight saved teams, which is probably plenty for most folks. It also lets you set macros for each team, and name them in a significant-to-you manner.

Battle Pet Tabs - Highlighting a team tabThe most pleasant surprise is that even with three teams configured, this addon still used very little memory. True, it spiked to around 200K, but it let go of most of that when the garbage collector came by1.

Unless you’re looking to set up a LOT of teams, this one seems to be the better choice.

Well, almost.

There’s a bug … it forgets your teams between logins. Assuming this gets fixed, this is my choice.  If not, well, good memory without nametags is better than non memory at all, amirite?

Update: I’m reading in the online comments at Curse that there is a conflict between this and PetJournal Enhanced. If I had to discard one of the two, it would be the other one. But I’d like to have both. I hope they get this sorted.

Pet Journal Enhancements

The Pet Journal contains a lot of filters and other organization tools.  But pretty much every default UI element has been enhance, and this is no different.

PetJournal Enhanced

PetJournal Enhanced

This does two things, primarily.

It adds new sorting options to the sorting menu, allowing such things as sort-by-level. Additional filters are also added, so you can, for example, filter by the zone you’re in, which is pretty spiffy if you’re in that mode already!  :)

Secondly, additional pet info is provided for all the pets, allowing you to see at a glance several relevant things about your pet, such as what kind of pet it is (“tanky, speedy, powerful”), as well as its rarity.

Now, at 285K, it’s the heavyweight of all of our candidates, but toting around a database of information can do that.  And as far as size goes, relative to some addons, it’s pretty slight.

As noted above, there may be some conflict between this and Battle Pet Tabs. Hopefully that gets cleared up. That does lower the score of both just a bit, however.

LibPetJournal-2.0

Because this addon will almost invariably show up in your searches, I mention it now.

This is a library of software routines to enhance the Pet Journal, but it is not a program that will run on its own. I do not encourage downloading it separately, as those that need it, have it incorporated.

For example, PetJournal Enhanced (above) happens to use this library, so you get it automatically if you use that addon.

Tooltip Enhancers

By far the most popular enhancement type I’ve seen so far is the tooltip enhancer. These in some way enhance your tooltips, under a variety of circumstances, to help you organize your pet collection and make decisions as to whether to engage a wild pet, or what team makeup to use, or so forth.

The really useful enhancers work in the wild, hovering over a pet, hovering over its unit frame, hovering over it on the mini map, as well as hovering over its nameplate during a battle.  Some also do this for auction house pet crates2. One or two seem to be dedicated only to AH tooltips; I didn’t really test that aspect.

BattlePet Count 2

BattlePetCount

This one is my favorite of this type. The tooltip is clean and clear, shows ALL of the pets of that type that you might already have, and works with the minimap. The Minimap tooltip is abbreviated but helpful. The in-battle tooltip works with the battle pet unit frames.

It’s a little heavy on the memory, but it appears to be put to good use.

Pet Known

This one didn’t work for me – might have been an issue with TipTac, as someone else noted, but you know what? Plenty of tool tip addons get along fine with it, so I’m thinking TipTac isn’t the problem.

That may come off a bit harsh, but trust me, I can be harsher.

Trapper's Sense

Trapper’s Sense

I liked the look of the toopltips that this one generated.  There are a couple of problems.

First of all, it doesn’t work with the minimap. This is not a show-stopper by any means, but it does fall short of a reasonable bar.

Secondly, if you have less than three of the sort of pet being looked at, you will get LUA errors. Now, with my setup, I have something that catches them (Bugsack and BugGrabber, which I highly recommend), but not everyone is so fortunate.  Hopefully, this gets fixed, because it has promise.

And the minimap thing would be nice, too.

Pet Counter

This is one of those that I’m not certain if I was supposed to restrict myself to auction house crates or not, but as said above, I didn’t test that3.

At any rate, in the wild it did nothing.  Tooltips under all circumstances tested were unmodified.  And then it got worse.

Whenever this addon was active, WoW eventually became unstable and crashed to destktop.  I am always amazed when this happens with an interpreted language such as LUA or Python, because what it’s actually exposing is a defect in the interpreter – in this case, WoW – that isn’t being handled properly.   So I’m half alarmed, half impressed, at this.

Pet Caught 2

PetCaught

Sometimes the best thing you can say about a tool is that it does what it says on the tin. That’s what we have here. At 9K memory consumption, it does a pretty decent job in exchange for very few resources. It even works with the mini-map.

Battle Mods

Battle mods affect the actual pet battle frames that are used in some way, adding enhancements, altering appearances, etc. They seem to fall into two buckets – functional, and cosmetic.

Pet Battle Pokemon Mod

This one does exactly what it says; it plays Pokemon music and sound effects. For aficionados of the old classics, this will probably be a lot of fun. For neophytes like myself, it really doesn’t do anything useful.  But, hey, I know the nostalgia thing, and this will no doubt feed that.

Technically, I liked its easy setup, its well-put-together configuration pane, and the fact that my volume control worked. :)

Pokemon Trainer 2

Pokemon Trainer: The Pet Battle Mod

The purpose behind this mod is to get the important information about your pets and the opposition where you can see them. It does this very well, and as you see above it does it in a fairly intuitive manner.

It also provides the same sort of information in the tooltips for creatures found in the wild.  Unfortunately, it also apparently nukes the tooltips from other battlepet tooltip addons, so, for the time being, you have to pick one or the other.

Pet Battle Music

This one requires hackery to configure, i.e. editing a LUA file in a text editor. Out of the box, it really doesn’t do much of anything, and it comes with dire warnings that should make the average person’s hair stand on end.

GotAwaySafely

This eliminates the confirmation dialog if you forfeit a battle. I’m not sure what problem this solves, but it does exactly what it claims.  And its footprint is so tiny that it doesn’t show on any memory meter I had on hand.

rPetBattleAnnouncer rPetBattleAnnouncer (StreetFighter)

Purely cosmetic, but you street fighter fans will probably get a kick from it.  The above presents itself every time you start a pet battle, and also offers something nobody else does: a way out before you get started.

e

Pet Battle Quality Glow

I heard about this one on WoW Insider, and it’s a really good one.  All it does is put a quality-indicator glow around the border of whatever pets are on display; above, the opponent’s beetle is Uncommon, thus its border is green.

It also provides the same glow and verbiage (common, rare, etc) in tooltips.

This is excellent and simple and very tiny; things I approve of in an addon.

Others

BattlePets List

Update: Before you read my comments, note that Reader Thelandira/Sheeturself pointed out in comments that the results you get from this addon are dependent on how you have your filters set up in the Pet Journal.  It won’t show anything that doesn’t get through the filter.  Thanks for pointing that out!

It’s also possible that PetJournal Enhanced may interfere with it since it has its own additional filtering, and BPL may not be getting anything it can use as a result.

This is a chat window tool, and, according to its description, it should show you the list of available battle pets in a specific area.  Unfortunately, it never did work as advertised. The best I could get was for it to tell me of pets I already knew in Stormwind.

It’s very tiny. Maybe its database didn’t get shipped with it. I’m not really sure what else to do with it.

One other thing that I did not like was that it CAN take the name of an area, such as “Stormwind”, and give you a list of pets in that area (Assuming it worked); however, “stormwind” would not work, because it is case-sensitive.  I sincerely believe that case sensitivity is the Devil’s work.  I realize that WoW itself has that issue, and this addon is probably relying on WoW stuff to get info, and thus inherited that weakness, but it’s still the Devil’s work.

Additional Considerations

While this is not related to Battle Pet addons per se, something to look for is interaction with the Battle Pet interface. Especially, things like addons that might get in the way, such as those that alter the Viewport such as Fubar or Sunn. ChocolateBar Broker Display, as an example, has a configuration setting to hide it when you are in pet battles4. As you can see by some of my screen shots, IceHUD does not (but here’s hoping.).

Some Conclusions

Mem Chart

I’ve broken down the memory results for all the different addons. Some explanation of terminology seems to be in order:

  • Base – The memory used after the game loaded and I logged in, and after I kicked off the garbage collector5. This represents the addon in its quiescent state. Any addon that used LoD6 was not forced to load, as the intent here was to see what it looked like just idling.
  • Open – The memory used after using the addon. This does not include configuration windows. For pet journal enhancements, this means after opening the pet journal; for tooltip enhancements, after getting an appropriate tooltip to appear. For battle enhancements, it’s measured during battle.
  • 1, 2, and 3; for those addons that worked differently based on the number of pet teams involved, I tried to break down the additional load per pet team.

The tool I used to read memory was Addon Control Panel, which is unwieldy as all hell, but does allow direct reading of individual addons and components, something none of the other tools I tried will do.

Ratings

At this link are some arbitrary ratings for all the addons tested, base solely on my own testing.  3 = worked and didn’t crash; 0 = didn’t work at all; 4 means it was actually enjoyable, and 5 is reserved for home runs. :)


  1. Garbage Collection in programming terms is the reclaiming of unused memory. Sometimes a program will need a big chunk to sort things or make a list to show the user or something, but afterwards it doesn’t need it, so the virtual machine (VM – WoW, in this case) that it is running in will occasionally reclaim any memory it can to use for other things. Failure to do so results in what is called a “memory leak” and can eventually lead to an out of memory condition for the VM. []
  2. There are some serious bugs in the Blizzard code for crated pet tooltips – so much so that the native bag frames and auction frames are pretty much broken right now when it comes to crated battle pets. This does NOT apply to pets that have not yet been brought into the journal and then crated, only to those that you crated within the journal itself. Some addons, such as Shefki’s TBag, have managed workarounds, but expect changes to take place on Blizzard’s end as well. []
  3. To be honest, I see little need for that sort of coverage without coverage for wild pets as well.  Maybe I’m being shortsighted. Maybe not. []
  4. If I may, for a moment; I am amazed that the new Blizzard frames were bound to the screen size instead of the viewport size. That seems to violate normal style guide rules for this sort of thing. []
  5. It’s a thing. []
  6. Load on Demand, a technology that keeps an addon from loading until it’s actually needed. []

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I’ve often used WoWHead and other similar sites to compare stats on items as I gather them, but most if not all have a couple of flaws.

  1. They often don’t include all viable stats, just the major ones, in their comparisons – or at least not that I can see.
  2. It’s usually impossible to compare 2H to DW or 1H+OH ratings; for example, a staff compared to a wand and an orb. But that’s what you need to know when comparing staves to wands and so forth.

I started working on a solution to the latter and ended up creating a full blown worksheet for item comparison.

Coincidentally, Rating Buster is losing its mind, so this is somewhat timely.

Rating BasherWhat it does and how to use it

  • In the blue box on the right of the sheet, select your toon’s class + spec.
  • In the left hand column entitled Equipped / MH, put the stats for the item you are currently using.
    • For any stat that doesn’t have a weighting value (Column I), you don’t need to populate it, because it will not count.
  • In the column entitled Of Interest / MH put the stats for the item you are considering.
  • If you’re comparing dual-wield stats or MH + OH stats, you’ll want to fill in the offhand value as well, especially if comparing 2H (say, a staff) against a one-hand with offhand (say, wand + orb).
  • If any of the items have gem slots and/or bonus stats, you will need to populate the bonuscolumn appropriately.
    • No, I haven’t pre-loaded those with common values for gems and other bonuses. Read your tooltips.
  • In the little yellow box at the lower right, you will be informed if it’s an upgrade or not.

I realize this isn’t optimal like WoWHead or something like that, but it’s better than a lot of the available tools right now, and it does things I like that they don’t, or they do something silly like say that a wand by itself is an upgrade over a staff, even though the wand + orb combo doesn’t even come close to the same stats when put together1.

This worksheet is protected against modification; you will have to make your own copy to use, since this is an interactive device.  If you don’t have a google account – which is all you really need – why not? Drop me an email and I’ll float you an invite.

I still haven’t figured out a way to mass-import the stat weights yet (right now I’m doing like everybody else and looking at Mr. Robot).  What this means is that until I do, I’ll just be doing one major update per patch unless I see reason to do otherwise.

The version number will reflect the patch level that the gizmo coincides with. As you can see, right now we’re still not up with 5.0.5.  In a couple of days, Light willing.

Technical Notes

You can add specs to this yourself.  You will need to add the name of the spec to the list entitled “Specs” which is on the “Classes” tab, and you will need to come up with a little mnemonic for it.  For example, “Rogue, Assassination” becomes “RoA”. Then you will need to create a spec weight table as a named list, this time with the name being the mnemonic.  You will find all these on the “Weights” tab, but there is nothing that says it has to be. In fact, if you create your own tab for your own stuff, you won’t have to worry about it getting overwritten whenever the main sheet is updated.

In summary:

  1. Create a name for your spec and insert it into the “Specs” named list.
  2. Create a mnemonic for that spec and include it on the same sheet, next to your spec’s name (row B).
  3. Create a named list and name it after your mnemonic. Populate it with the stat weights you want, in the same order as seen on the “Weights” tab.
  4. ???
  5. Profit!

If all of that made no sense to you, custom weights are not something you should attempt. WoWHead or Rawr is probably your best bet.

Hope you enjoy using this tool! And if not, I’ll refund your complete purchase price provided it is purchased directly through the Grimmlabs Swag and Incidental Crap store.


  1. Yes, looking at you again, Rating Buster. []

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WoW Insider’s addon columnist recently posted about a bag addon that intrigued me – AdiBags. What interested me was how it stashed things based on what they were, and had many ways of doing this, so many needs could be met.

AdiBags (showing bag interface)While my old standby, Shefki’s TBag, was still working just fine, it had one annoying lack: I could not get it to sort items by level. Some of the alts have huge piles of equipment stored up against future leveling and it’s always a chore to pick out the right ones when they achieve a new level.

Adibags not only sorted items in descending order by level, but it broke them up by type as well.

Having seen this, I went to give this new toy a run for a couple of weeks.  And it went well, until tonight.

Tonight, I needed to find something, and realized that AdiBags did not support the crucial feature of searching all your alts on a server for items.  As you have no doubt guessed, TBag supports this, and more.  It’ll let you look at your bank (non-interactively) from anywhere. It’ll let you look at somebody else’s bags (your alts, that is) as well as their banks.  It’ll search them and highlight what it finds, and dump a report into the chat pane.

AdiBags' filtering optionsTurns out, there are five things that TBag lacks compared to AdiBags:

  • It doesn’t label the categories
  • It doesn’t have as many useful categories
  • It does not collapse multiple stacks down to one slot (including empty slots)
  • It is not as easy to change out bags.
  • It doesn’t seem to support filtering by category

AdiBags’ deficits are:

  • It does not allow for comprehensive search across alts
  • TBag viewing bank contents remotelyIt does not allow you to view alts’ bags and banks
  • The bottom bar is a little busy (but nice attempt)
  • The overall view is sometimes difficult to get your head around.

Those last two are subjective, I realize and fully cop to.

Tbag search featureAt the end of the day, the lack of search is pretty hard to get around once you need it. On the other hand, there is little missing in TBag that I cannot live without.  If I absolutely must have the sorting feature, I’ll just turn it on when I need it.  Easy enough to do.

Both of these tools are outstanding, both are currently supported, both are good to go with MoP on the horizon. I have my preferences, but I really don’t see much of a downside to either.

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This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series MoP Beta - Inscription

Let’s start this off on the right foot.

I was wrong.

Not catastrophically, pitchforks-and-flaming-torches wrong, but not 100% right.

Most, if not all, of the “dead” glyphs did not go away, turn into dust, evaporate, or otherwise become worthless.  They were changed into whatever MoP now currently has the same ID that they had in Cata.  So the correct action should have been to just stash those in the bank, at worse, and break them back out when the patch dropped.

So, apologies, if you didn’t make out like a bandit on that particular aspect.

Well, moving on.

Otherwise Glyphmas 2012 has been cracking good.  I’m sure I’m not making out as well as others, but my goal is to get some sleep and keep some of my soul, so that’s the way it shall be.  Two days, around 17000, and not really trying as hard as the server’s resident glyph bandit who seems hellbent on running me off the server.  He’s even gone so far as to roll two level 1 bank alts in Darnassus1 and he alternates between them.  I’m pretty sure glyph prices on Alleria would be a lot higher if not for his efforts.  Well, everyone wins; I sell in bulk, you get cheaper glyphs2.

Even after stockpiling inks before the patch dropped, I went through every one of them before the end of the first day. I’m now out farming for herbs.  I HAVE heard that the ink trader still accepts Blackfallow ink, but that’s clearly not intended behavior, and is sure to go away at some point, and hopefully nobody gets punished for exploiting the bug, if bug it be.

The current bonanza is just a preview of day 1 of MoP. We’ll get access to Ink of Dreams, and have a use for Monk glyphs.  My suggestion – if you’re willing to take it – is to have your Monk glyphs made already, if possible.

Oh – and visit your trainer!  Learn those new glyphs!


  1. OH HOW CLEVER. []
  2. And I haven’t even made a single “trickle down” joke yet. []

Comments 2 Comments »

This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series MoP Beta - Inscription

It’s probable that there will be some changes between now and the 28th, but we’re close enough that we can consider the numbers we have now to be fairly stable. So let’s consider the stats and what they mean for you.

Note: I am not linking to any of the items on WoWHead because after a very short time, those links will be invalid when the MoP database becomes the real database.  Obviously I can’t link to the real database for items are going to change. Sorry.

First and foremost: Blackfallow Ink is not your friend. On the 28th, it will not be usable to buy other inks. It will only be good to make glyphs. And there is only one glyph that you can make with it.  So, before the turn of 5.0.4, you need to convert Blackfallow Ink into anything that’s useful.

Topic the First: what’s useful.

First of all, at the end of this article will be a chart showing all glyphs that are active in MoP. In case you want to skip the brilliant analysis.

So what inks are useful? This chart shows the distribution of ink utilization in MoP.  Obviously, you can’t buy Ink of Dreams, but everything else is fair game.

Ink Distribution (MoP)

As you can see, Ink of the Sea is by far the most useful.  Basically, 30% of your ink-exchanging should be for this glyph, followed by Ethereal1 at roughly half that. Blackfallow is that little sliver.

This chart confirms Blackfallow as officially the most useless ink in the game.  You can make one glyph with it, the market is going to be flooded by people skilling up, and you can’t buy anything else with it. Useless. Unless you directly need to use Blackfallow ink for some sort of skilling up activity, don’t bother grinding Cata herbs. Sell them to alkys.

One thing to take into account: all this chart does is show the utilization of inks. It does not show how well the glyphs that are made will sell.  We won’t know that until we start rolling those glyphs out on the 28th.

Ink Comparison and Distribution

Surprisingly, utilization of Ink of the Sea increases in MoP. This is despite moving several glyphs to different inks from what they used in Cata. It bewilders me that they didn’t bring Blackfallow up even with at least Ink of Dreams. This has always been a thing that confuses me. It seems that a glyph’s ink should be on par with the glyph’s level, and the glyph’s level should be on par with the level of the skill that it is modifying. But none of the glyphs learned between 80 and 85 use Blackfallow Ink except for Colossus Smash.

Glyph Distribution

Within a few percentage points, glyph distribution in MoP is pretty even. DK seems to be hurting the most.  Compared to Cataclysm’s distro, it looks like this:

Glyph Distribution Comparison

First of all, note that there were close to fifty (50) glyphs added between Cata and MoP. Of those, Monk accounts for around 35.

Big winners were Warrior, Priest, and Paladin.  Hunter did well, while everyone else held even or lost one or two spots.  Which is bad news for mages, as roughly 1/2 of their glyphs are now variations on Polymorph2.

Following is a full list (as of today, 8/17/2012) those glyphs3 that will be supported as of 8/28/2012. Enjoy!

Note: this table defaults to 25 entries, but has over 400. Please use the drop-down at the top of the table for navigation.  There are little pagination buttons at the bottom, too.

GlyphInkTypeComment
Adrenaline RushCelestialChangedFormer Prime, New Ink
AfterlifeJadefireNew
AmbushEtheral
Animal BondEtheralNew
Anti-magic ShellSea
Aquatic FormLion's
Arcane ExplosionEtheralNew
Arcane LanguageMidnightNew
Arcane PowerEtheral
ArmorsSeaChangedFormer Prime, New Ink
Army of the DeadSeaNew
Aspect of the BeastSeanew
Aspect of the CheetahSeanew
Aspect of the PackCelestial
AspectsJadefirenew
Astral RecallJadefire
Avenging WrathCelestialnew
BarkskinCelestial
Beacon of LightEtheral
Black IceDreamsnew
Blackout KickSeaNew
Blade FlurrySea
Bladed JudgementDreamsnew
Blessed LifeSeanew
BlindJadefire
Blinding LightShimmeringnew
BlinkLion's
BlitzSeaNew
Bloodcurdling ShoutMidnightNew
BloodthirstShimmeringFormer Prime
Bloody HealingSea
BloomingLion'sNew
Blurred SpeedMidnight
Borrowed TimeMidnightNew
Breath of FireDreamsNew
Bull RushShimmeringNew
Burning AngerDreamsNew
Burning EmbersEtheralNew
CamoflageLion'snew
Capacitor TotemSeanew
Carrion SwarmEtheralNew
Cat FormLion'sNew
Certificate of OwnershipCelestial
Chain LightningSea
Chains of IceSea
Charm Woodland CreaturesLion'sNew
Cheap ShotSeaNewFormer Prime
Chimera ShotEtheral
Circle of HealingSea
ClashDreamsNew
Cleansing WatersEtheralnew
Cloak of ShadowsEtheral
Colossus SmashBlackfallow
CombustionSeanewForner Prime, New Ink
Cone of ColdJadefire
ConfessionDreamsNewFormer Prime
ConflagrateSea
Conjure FamiliarMidnightnew
ConsecrationCelestial
ContemplationLion'snew
Corpse ExplosionEtheralnew
CounterspellShimmeringnew
Crackling Jade LightningCelestialNew
Crackling Tiger LightningSeaNew
Crimson BanishLion'sNew
Crippling PoisonSea
CrittermorphSeanew
Crow FeastDreamsnew
Curse of ExhaustionJadefire
CycloneShimmeringnew
Dancing Rune WeaponEtheral
Dark ArchangelSeaNew
Dark BindingSeaNew
Dark SimulacrumEtheralnew
Dark SoulSeaNew
Dark SuccorShimmeringNew Ink
DashJadefire
Dazing ShieldSea
Deadly MomentumSeaNew
Death and DecaySeaFormer Prime
Death CoilShimmeringFormer Prime
Death from AboveEtheralnew
Death GateEtheral
Death GripShimmering
Death's EmbraceEtheral
DebilitationLion'sNew
DecoyMidnightNew
Deep FreezeCelestialFormer Prime, New Ink
DelugeShimmeringnew
Demon HuntingEtheralNew
Demon TrainingSeaNew
Demonic CircleSea
DenounceSeaNew
DesperationShimmering
DetectionSeaNew
DeterrenceCelestial
DirectionDreamsNew
DisengageCelestial
DisguiseShimmeringNew
Dispel MagicJadefireNew Ink
DispersionEtheralFormer Prime
DistractLion's
Distracting ShotSeaNew
Divine PleaSea
Divine ProtectionMidnight
Divine StormEtheralNew
DivinityLion's
Double JeopardyLion'sNew
Drain SoulMidnightNew
Endless WrathSeaNew
Enduring Healing SphereDreamsNew
Enduring InfectionSeanew
Enraged SpeedMidnightnew
Enslave DemonJadefire
Entangling RootsLion's
EvasionMidnight
Everlasting AfflictionSeaNew
EvocationJadefire
Expel HarmDreamsNew
Explosive TrapLion'sNew
Expose ArmorLion's
Eye of KilroggLion's
FadeLion's
Fae SilenceEtheralNew
Faerie FireLion's
Falling MeteorJadefireNew
Far SightJadefireNew
FearLion's
Fear WardShimmering
FeintEtheral
FelguardSeaFormer Prime
Feral SpiritEtheralFormer Prime
Ferocious BiteMidnight
FetchLion'sNew
Fighting PoseSeaNew
Final WrathLion'sNew
Fire BlastSeanew
Fire Elemental TotemSeaFormer Prime
Fire from the HeavensJadefireNew
Fire NovaLion's
FireworksJadefireNew
Fists of FurySeaNew
Flame ShockMidnightFormer Prime
Flash of LightMidnightNew
Flying Serpent KickSeaNew
Focused ShieldSea
Fortifying BrewSeaNew
Foul MenagerieSeanew
Freezing TrapShimmering
Frenzied RegenerationEtheral
Frost NovaMidnight
Frost ShockJadefire
Frostfire BoltSeaFormer Prime, Renamed
Furious SunderingSeaNew Ink
Gag OrderMidnightnew
GarroteLion's
Ghost WolfLion's
GougeJadefire
GraceMidnightNew
Grounding TotemSea
GuardDreamsNew
Gushing WoundLion'snew
Hammer of the RighteousEtheralFormer Prime
HamstringLion'snew
Hand of Gul'danEtheralNew
Healing StormLion'sNew
Healing Stream TotemCelestial
Healing TouchLion's
Healing WaveSea
Health FunnelLion's
HealthstoneMidnight
Heavy RepercussionsSeanew
HemorrhageSeaFormer Prime
HexSea
Hindering StrikesCelestialnew
Hoarse VoiceLion'snew
Hold the LineJadefirenew
Holy FireEtheralNew
Holy NovaEtheral
Holy ResurrectionDreamsNew
Holy ShockCelestialFormer Prime
Holy WrathMidnightNew Ink
HonorDreamsNew
Horn of WinterEtheral
HurricaneSea
Ice BlockCelestial
Ice LanceSeaFormer Prime
Ice TrapEtheral
Icebound FortitudeShimmeringnew
Icy SolaceSeaNew
Icy TouchShimmeringFormer Prime
Icy VeinsSea
IlluminationLion'sNew
IllusionEtheralnew
Immediate TruthSeaNew
Imp SwarmLion'sNew
InciteDreamsnew
Inner FireLion's
Inner FocusSeaNew
Inner SanctumLion'sNew
InnervateSea
InquisitionLion'sNew
Intimidating ShoutSea
InvisibilitySea
JabDreamsNew
KickSea
Killing SpreeEtheralFormer Prime
Lava LashJadefireFormer Prime
Leap of FaithEtheralNew
Leer of the OxEtheralNew
Lesser ProportionMidnight
LevitateJadefire
Life CocoonEtheralNew
Life TapMidnight
LifebloomSeaFormer Prime
Light of DawnSea
LightspringShimmeringNewFormer Prime
LightwellSeaFormer Prime
Long ChargeMidnight
Loose ManaLion'snew
Mana GemEtheralnew
Mana TeaDreamsNew
Marked for DeathSeaNew
MarkingDreamsNew
Mass DispelSea
Mass ExorcismDreamsNew
Master's CallJadefire
MaulMidnight
Mend PetSeaNew
MendingLion's
Might of UrsocSeaNew
Mighty VictoryEtheralnew
Mind BlastSeaNew
Mind FlayCelestialFormer Prime
Mind FreezeEtheralnew
Mind SpikeEtheralNew
Mirror ImageSea
Mirrored BladesMidnightNew
MisdirectionMidnight
MomentumMidnightnew
Mortal StrikeSeaFormer Prime
Mystic ShoutMidnightnew
Nature's GraspMidnightNew
NightmaresSeaNew
No EscapeJadefireNew
OutbreakEtheralnew
OverpowerJadefireFormer Prime
Path of BlossomsSeaNew
Path of FrostEtheral
PathfindingEtheralNew
PenanceEtheralFormer Prime
PestilenceEtheral
Pick LockLion's
Pick PocketMidnight
Pillar of FrostEtheral
PoisonsLion's
PolymorphSea
PounceEtheral
Power Word: ShieldMidnightFormer Prime
Prayer of MendingSea
Protector of the InnocentSeaNew
ProwlCelestialNew
Psychic HorrorSea
Psychic ScreamMidnight
PurgeEtheralNew
PurifyCelestialNew
Raging WindEtheralnew
Rapid TeleportiationJadefirenew
RebirthJadefire
RebukeEtheral
RecklessnessJadefirenew
RegrowthSeaFormer Prime
RejuvenationMidnightFormer Prime
Remove CurseSeanew
RenewJadefireFormer Prime
Renewing MistsSeaNew
Resilient GripEtheral
Resonating PowerSea
RetreatSeaNew
Revive PetMidnight
Righteous RetreatDreamsNew
RiptideEtheralFormer Prime
Rising Tiger KickDreamsNew
Rude InterruptionLion'snew
Safe FallCelestial
SapJadefire
Savagerylion'sNew
Scatter ShotLion's
ScatteringSeaNew
Scourge ImprisonmentSea
Seal of BloodLion'sNew
Shackle UndeadLion's
ShadowLion's
Shadow BoltJadefire
Shadow RavensMidnightNew
Shadow WalkSeaNew
Shadow Word: DeathDreamsFormer Prime, New Ink
ShadowflameSea
Shadowy FriendsDreamsNew
Shamanistic RageShimmering
Shield SlamSeaFormer Prime
Shield WallLion'sFormer Prime
Shifting PresencesShimmeringnew
ShivCelestialNew
ShredShimmeringNew
Siphon LifeMidnightNew
Skull BashSeaNew
SlowEtheral
SmiteCelestial
Smoke BombSeaNew
Snake TrapSea
Solar BeamSea
Soul ShardsEtheralNew
Soul SwapCelestial
SoulstoneCelestial
SoulwellSeaFormer Ritual of Souls
SparringSeaNew
Spell ReflectionEtheral
SpellstealSeanew
Spinning Crane KickSeaNew
Spinning Fire BlossomDreamsNew
Spirit of RedemptionSeaNew
Spirit RollDreamsNew
Spirit WalkSeaNew
Spiritwalker's GraceSeaNew
SprintShimmering
StampedeMidnightNew
StampedeSeaNew
Stampeding RoarSeaNew
StarsSeaNew
StealthEtheralNew
StoneskinSeaNew
StrangulateSea
SubtletySeaNew
Surging MistSeaNew
Survival InstinctsEtheralNew
Sweeping StrikesEtheral
Tame BeastMidnightNew
Telluric CurrentsLion'sNew
Templar's VerdictSeaFormer Prime, New Ink
the Alabaster SheildSeaNew
the Battle HealerDreamsNew
the Bear CubMidnight
the Blazing TrailDreamsnew
the ChameleonJadefireNew
the CheetahJadefireNew
the Falling AvengerDreamsNew
the GeistEtheralnew
the Harsh WordSeaNew
the HeavensDreamsNew
the LakestriderMidnightNew
the Luminous ChargerJadefireNew
the Master ShapeshifterSeaNew
the MonkeyLion's
The MoonbeastCelestialNew
the Mounted KingMidnightNew
the OrcaJadefireNew
the PenguinMidnight
the PorcupineMidnight
the PredatorJadefireNew
the Spectral WolfLion'sNew
the StagSeaNew
the TreantJadefire
the Val'kyrDreamsNew
ThunderEtheral
Thunder StrikeSeanew
ThunderstormSea
Totemic EncirclementJadefireNew
Totemic RecallCelestial
Totemic VigorMidnightNew
Touch of DeathSeaNew
Touch of KarmaSeaNew
Tranquil GripEtheralnew
Tranquilizing ShotEtheralNew
TranscendenceDreamsNew
Tricks of the TradeSea
Turn EvilSea
Unending BreathLion's
Unending RageMidnightnew
Unholy CommandEtheralnewFormer Prime
Unholy FrenzySeanewFormer Prime
Unleashed LightningSea
Unstable AfflictionSea
Unstable EarthSeaNew
UpliftSeaNew
Vampiric BloodEtheral
Vampiric EmbraceDreamsNewFormer Prime
VanishEtheral
VendettaEtheral
Verdant SpheresSeaNew
Victory RushSea
Water ElementalEtheralnewFormer Prime
Water RollDreamsNew
Water ShieldShimmering
WhirlwindEtheralnew
Wild GrowthEtheral
Wind ShearLion'sNewFormer Prime
Winged VenganceMidnightNew
Word of GloryEtheral
Zen FlightDreamsNew
Zen MeditationSeaNew

  1. Yes, I realize it’s mis-spelled in the chart. []
  2. Just kidding! []
  3. Plus Certificate of Ownership []

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