Sunwell Trash

I got my first taste of Sunwell last night. After our raid we decided to give the SWP PuG a go. We got about 10 people from Unorthodox and maybe another 10 from outside the guild. We were lucky to get 5 mages, which made it a lot easier. The idea here, if you are not familiar with it, is to clear the first robot patrol, and the first multi-pack. Then on the 2nd pack you kill everything but the dragonhawk. After you have everything down you zone out, that entire pack respawns, and you zone back in to clear them again. The first mob is on an 2 hour respawn timer and you can basically go at it as long as you have the group for it.

Some groups doing it have been lucky to see weapons or patterns drop. For our first foray into SWP we saw a lot of Sunmotes, a few gems, and the Wand of the Demonsoul. I was hoping for either of the JC designs Hard Khorium Choker or Hard Khorium Band. Neither dropped in the hour or so we were in there but I was happy to settle for a Sunmote. I will save these and when I have 5 I'll find someone that does have the pattern for the ring and pay them to craft it for me.

Farming vs. Buying

I need to get the Aldor rep up on my Warlock which means Marks of Sargeras and Fel Armaments. If your server is anything like my server, Muradin, then Scryer rep items are cheap and easy because of all the Blood Elf killing quests that came out with patch 2.4, which has led to a flooded market of those items. Whereas the Aldor rep items are less frequently farmed and significantly more expensive. In fact it's kind of ridiculous with the Marks being four times more expensive than the Signets.

Being aghast at the exorbitant prices on the AH and having a bit of time I decided to see what farming would yield. I farmed for 45 minutes making a loop around the bottom part of Legion Hold in SMV. I disenchanted the greens, vendored the greys, and made Heavy Netherweave Bandages our of all the cloth that dropped, then vendored those.

 30 - Gold (from greys and drops)
 24 - Arcane Dust
  1 - Greater Planar Essence
  5 - Super Mana Potions
  2 - Super Healing Potions
124 - Netherweave Cloth
 36 - Marks of Sargeras
  2 - Fel Armaments

The total haul I estimate is worth about 244 gold, or 325 gold per hour. Considering even an afternoon of power-questing can only net 200g per hour at best, I must conclude farming is better than buying.

But then isn't that like anything in life? Everything is a time/money trade-off. Either you have the time or the money, rarely both. No time to travel: take a flight. No money to travel: take a bus. No time to build a deck: pay someone else to do it. No money to pay someone: do it yourself. No time to farm: buy mats. No money to buy: farm 'em. Of course sometimes you have neither which significantly limits your possibilities, whether in real life or in WoW.

One final note: I can't help but paraphrase a great quote I read on the official forums...
Aldor & Scryer are like women--they pretend they want you to go out and do heroic deeds in their name, solve problems on their behalf, and put forth great effort. But really the fastest way to winning their favor is to just go out and buy shiny things to give them.