Contrary to everything I said in this post I wrote a few months back, I have done the unexpected and have turned my back on healing altogether. My Priest lives in The Silken Fields waiting for her cloth cool down to reset, while the now feral Nerisanda is out doing all the adventuring. I reached level 90 a mere three days after release and have since been clawing, biting and scratching my way towards raid readiness. I am enjoying my new, low pressure role immensely, but I won’t lie and say I’m any good at it! Usually I wouldn’t care, but it has presented me with a unique conundrum and I have a short time frame of which to make a decision.
Should I spend 20 Scrolls of Wisdom to create a staff for a spec I am terrible at, or do I instead use them to create 20 Darkmoon Card of the Mists and enjoy being fabulously rich?
“Dearest Inscription, why do you taunt me so?”
The Staff
When I first laid eyes on the Inscribed Tiger Staff I was in love. What little research I had done into Feral Kitty DPS at the time suggested that my damage output was tied to my weapon quality, and here I was looking at an epic that I could create! The Elitist Jerks Feral Cat Guide has the Inscribed Tiger Staff listed as third best in slot, even for those who are clearing raid content. Hooray! Having a profession at cap is about to pay off! I was certain that once I hit 90 and had some gear behind me, my DPS would improve and I was excited to do my fellow Ferals proud!
A week and a bit later and I’m now at 452 with little improvement. I’m a massive carry in dungeons, with my Elemental Shaman husband and guild mate both absolutely dominating me while wearing the same level of gear. I now have the best in slot pre-raiding weapon, Snowdrift’s Bladed Staff, and yet I’m barely pulling 30k. I continually fail to keep my DoT uptimes running smoothly, I get frustrated with positioning (“You must be behind your target” errors are the bane of my life.), and I am yet to master the art of using my offensive cool downs at the right times. My keybinds feel awkward and the DPS charts make me doubt my decision to switch. I know everything I need to do in theory (Except for Ferocious Bite, which some say to use as a filler, and others say not to use unless the target is under 25%), but when it comes to implementation, the wheels fall off. I don’t understand why these issues are causing me such a headache when I can play my rogue with no problems. Perhaps it’s because my rogue saunters into raids towards the end of an expansion where she can just stand around furiously stabbing at a dragon’s leg, or perhaps because she’s not four inches off the ground and has a better view of what’s going on, but I do not recall ever having the problems with her that I am now.
“Perhaps if I roar loud enough, he’ll get scared and run away?”
The Gold
While the staff probably will not improve my DPS as much as I hope, it will probably do more to improve my performance over the 200,000-odd gold I could fetch for selling Darkmoon Cards. Sure, I could buy some Bind on Equip armour, or maybe even get lucky and create all 10 of the cards needed for the Agility trinket (Ha! Like that will ever happen!) which would all be improvements on my current gear, but since I am not on a raid team as of yet, thus not under any pressure to gear, I’ll probably hoard it or waste it on junk. I could buy a Grand Expedition Yak without dipping under a bank balance I’m happy with, and still have spare change to throw around on random crap! Deep down, I’m left with an inkling that as epic as that Yak is, it will not make me feel any better about decision. Isn’t there a saying about this somewhere?
I suppose the question I really need to ask myself is where do my priorities in-game lie? Why lose a massive income boost when I’m currently not raiding? Alternatively, why even bother playing the gold game if I’m not working towards items that will improve my performance?
One alternative is to just go ahead and get the staff and then turn it in for a refund of 10 scrolls if I decide that DPS and me were never meant to be. I definitely will not make the kind of gold that I could if I sold my collection this month, but at least I would not be left empty handed. Hmm…
What would you do?
The staff is both useful and beautiful, so I’d be really tempted to make it. However, if you’re not on a raid team right now, and not certain which spec you want to play, than the gold might be a better investment.
The thing is, this isn’t really an either/or decision, it’s more deciding what you want to do first. You can continue making the Scrolls of Wisdom every day if you want to. So you just need to decide if you want to make the staff now and the Darkmoon Cards later, or vice versa.
Here is the situation as I see it:
- You don’t have the pressure to gear up for raiding right now
- You aren’t sure what spec you want to play
- Darkmoon Cards will probably lose value as the expansion continues
- The Darkmoon Faire is starting this weekend and people will be desperate to finish their decks and trade them in for trinkets
- You can always make the staff and/or more cards later
Therefore, in my opinion, you might as well make a bunch of Darkmoon Cards and sell them now, then save up Scrolls of Wisdom to make your staff after the Faire is over. After that you can decide whether you should continue to make cards or maybe sell some off-hands. But there is no wrong decision here! It’s only a matter of what you’d rather do first.
I’d probably make the staff but then my financial common sense or rather the lack of it would make a goblin burst into tears.