MoP Tanking so far

Compared to how well I do playing some of the squishier classes, I find tanking to be a fun alternative in MoP. Even for heroics, despite the occasional mechanic that throws me for a loop til I grasp how to react to it, their is little pressure and a lot more fun going on than I recall experiencing with Cataclysm heroics. For Cataclysm I cannot recall tanking much of anything, at least not until the last 3 heroics came out in the last major patch.
I just popped over to the Eastern Kingdoms tonight to see about doing the Greench quest. I got there to find the boss mob up and I was the only one around for a short bit until a BElf Priest showed up. As I was on my pally, I switched specs to tank, geared up and and trusted the priest to start healing me. She did and a long-ish fight ensued. Some other folks showed up but at no time was I ever at a point where I felt out of control of the fight. Once it was over I shouted out about the great heals and even got a compliment on my tanking!! That always feels nice.
Such a nice change from Cataclysm to be able to switch over like that, start tanking and never have to really worry about not being geared up enough. While I don't think I'm there for tanking LFR, I've been handling almost every heroic fairly well.
Tanking in MoP is making tanking in WoW fun again!!!

Best and Worst Auction Markets in MoP so far

OOPS! I goofed a bit, no surprise there, I do that often. I "THOUGHT" I remembered what Cold's  Blogging carnival's next topic was but got it a bit wrong. No big deal though, as this is a subject upon which I've an opinion or two. It bears repeating, I highly recommend Cold's blog for WoW related content, particularly if you are into making gold in WoW.

     Some people have a toon they use as their auctioning "main" - at least that's my impression from what I've seen in blogs and on my server, Cenarion Circle. I used to use my Rogue for that for some time, then I found he was a blast to level, but he still tends to be my go-to guy for auctioning.

     CC is a great server, I play primarily on Horde-side, but I dabble over on Alliance every so often. I mention that since my observations and opinions in this post come from my MoP experiences on the Horde side. I haven;t had the greatest luck with buying things and turning them around for profit. Part of that is lack of patience for playing the 'long game' in the AH. I like getting out in the world and hopefully profiting from doing things that are fun for me while I'm out there.

On to the meat of the subject at hand: What I think has been best/worst in the auction market so far. 

     For what's been the best, I have to say I've had a great luck with Cataclysm leather, specifically Savage Leather. That really has been a nice (and profitable!) surprise. I have several toons that have skinning as a profession and I find skinning to be oddly satisfying. Way back in Vanilla I would see all these bodies of things laying around the environs surrounding Crossroads in the Barrens and I thought it was a shame, so I took up Skinning and Leatherworking for my Druid and had a blast doing what I still refer to as 'battlefield cleanup duty' running around skinning all the dead mobs. There are places in Cataclysm one might go to consistently get mobs to skin, and so far in MoP it has been consistently worthwhile and rather nicely profitable! If I could find a place to gather Embersilk Cloth and Frostweave Cloth in large enough amounts consistently, I believe the market for them is also reasonably profitable as both types typically sell very well. Also worthwhile, though a bit...spikey is the best way to describe it, would be the enchant market. Be it inscriptions for shoulders, threads for mage legs or any other type of enchant I see and on occasion do well in it, but find the spikiness to be a bit off-putting for regular profitability. Then again, I may not be as consistent at these things as some folks.
     As for the Worst Markets, my first nod is to the pet market. Pricing for battle pets tanked and the entire pet market just seems largely chaotic. I can still sell the occasional pet for a marginally decent amount, but it usually takes too long. Next, the glyph market. BLAH! If I need a glyph for one of my toons that I don't have, it's just as easy and cheap to get one from the AH as it is to bother to have my max skill scribe make one.

For what it's worth, that's my take on the MoP auction market so far. One thing I really enjoy about being somewhat active and knowledgeable about the auction market on my server is getting familiar with who the real major players are on my server. We have some very creative folks on CC, and I'd like to throw a huge thanks to Lovina for her always entertaining barking for her stylish clothing business! 

Mist of Pandaria: Likes and dislikes

My first post for Mists of Pandaria is going to be submitted for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival. I highly recommend Cold's blog for WoW related content, particularly if you are into making gold in WoW.  (I goofed about what I thought the topic was to be for January...WHOOPS!! guess it'll be my 2nd MoP blog post for the carnival, LOL)

Unlike a lot of folks out there that were complaining about MoP being a ripoff of the 3D Jack Black Kung Fu Panda movie, I never thought so. Blizzard has a great track record of providing rich, engaging story-lines with WoW in which you can immerse yourself in many ways with the huge variety of races and classes available to players.

One thing I am REALLY enjoying in MoP is the incredibly rich lore they have created for Pandaria. I am   impressed that they have done a great job of showing that Pandaria was connected to the rest of Azeroth with things like the inclusion of Zandalari Trolls and the story of how Pandaria was separated from the Azerothian mainland at the time of the sundering.. I must admit that I am not a deep scholar of all the lore of Pandaria, with just a single level 90 toon.  As can be expected, I have a lot of questions with Pandaria having seemingly been part of the original mega-continent of Azeroth, but that in no way distracts from the rich lore they have created within Pandaria.

Now for the 'not so much' stuff.
The early levels and zones for 85 and 85 are super easy for the most part. I remember (maybe not exactly fondly, hehe) that the stuff in Hellfire Peninsula and Zangarmarsh, at least right after BC launched, had mobs at 61 and 61 that deserved a significant amount of respect sue tho the (then) massive amount of damage they dished out. I don'tr recall Wrath or Cataclysm being AS drastic, but to a certain extent it was there since you never really went into a new area with most of the mobs there being at a level BELOW the previous expansions max level. You HAD to respect the mobs, even if they were at your level (anyone remember the Nerubians just outside of Warsong Hold in Borean Tundra, they could and did teach you to respect them very quickly, if for no other reason than they could get a gang on you rather quickly. But the next irksome thing I am discovering is that the difficulty level seems to grow exponentially once you start doing quests at 87 and into 88. You get accustomed to a certain level of difficulty from what you encounter at lower level then start getting into questing areas where you can get your ass handed to you over and over again - and get overwhelmed VERY quickly by too many mobs in too tight an area. I've run into quests that are supposed to be for level 87 that I have shied away from doing on certain toons.

That gets into a parallel gripe that some classes are just gonna have a hard time leveling by doing quests in an area FOR their level. There are things in KunLai Summit and Townlong Steppes that seem atrocious for the alleged levels for which they're 'designed.' A lot of stuff seems better suited for tackling only after you've hit level 90 and have a minimum item level of 450 or better, preferably better. I've never considered my druid or my rogue to be particularly squishy until I started trying to do some of the quests in those zones at levels 87 and 88. I'm finding that my warlock is able to take on some very amazing challenges that I could NEVER duplicate with my druid, rogue or warrior (though to be fair, I haven't gotten my warrior up all that high yet in this expansion ever since discovering my prot pally has amazing survivability and usefulness in gather leather from big pulls and from herbing nearly anywhere she wants.

The nice thing is there is a lot more life left in Mists of Pandaria and I am looking forward to everything I haven't gotten to yet that is already out, and for things yet to come.