Raider Time Sinks: Dailies, Cooking, Fishing and More

I’ve been wanting to post this for a few days, now, but felt I really should post now after having read Anafielle’s excellent post, Mists of Farm-daria.

Let’s be super-clear about this: I am no longer a raider. As such, I have a lot of latitude in being able to do what I want to do. But I’m in a raiding guild and I read blogs by raiders and follow many raiders on Twitter. The biggest concern I keep seeing, over and over again, is how much time people are spending doing all the non-raid stuff they feel they “should” do as a responsible raider.

At Level 90, I gather that there are a few dailies a raider “needs” to do for rep with various factions. Here’s what those factions give you:

– Golden Lotus: Tailors and LWs particularly due to the patterns available at honored, plus VP rings at honored. At Revered, Shoulders and Chests become available with VP.

– Klaxxi: Blacksmiths get their plans here at honored. There are also VP necks here at honored. VP legs and belts are available at Revered. Exalted has some blue-quality (ilvl 463) weapons available.

– Shado-Pan: VP cloaks at honored, VP trinkets and helms at Revered.

– August Celestials: Enchanting patterns at Revered, as well as VP boots, gloves and bracers.

Of course, “needing” to do the dailies is a very subjective term. From my perspective, a raider should probably maximize his or her gear in order to perform better in raids. As such, since VP gear is available from ALL of those factions (and I’m not even talking about how you had to earn rep with factions for JUSTICE point gear until recently!), raiders should likely rep up to at least revered with most of these factions.

I feel that a raider should maximize his or her gear within reason. (And bear in mind that my thoughts no longer necessarily reflect the mindset of Apotheosis!) That means I feel that you shouldn’t need to drop 200k on a heroic drop at the Black Market Auction House. It means you shouldn’t need to craft something worth 60k (possible exception for the Darkmoon Faire trinkets).

At the same time, it means that I feel one needs to do LFR weekly for upgrades, rep up for upgrades, cap VP for upgrades.

Not everyone will agree with me. Raiders who fall on the more casual side of things than Apotheosis will think I’m insane. Raiders who fall on the more hardcore side of things than Apotheosis will be more likely to say “of course, duh, PLUS you need to get those BMAH items AND craft all the things”.

The fact remains that in order to improve your performance in a raid, your gear needs to be upgraded. How you do it and how dedicated you are to doing it is all that’s in question.

That brings us to cooking.

In brief, fuck cooking.

I say that as someone who has ALWAYS had at least one max-level cook. In Cataclysm, I had 3 max-level cooks. I own three Chef’s Hats. In short, I enjoy cooking.

Whoever decided to fuck with cooking in this expansion needs a smack upside the head.

Don’t get me wrong, the farm thing is cute. I like being able to grow things. My problems with cooking are not problems with farming, although they are tangentially related. No, my problems with cooking consist primarily of the fact that it takes an incredible amount of materials to max yourself in one single Way of cooking and that unless you max all the Ways, you can’t drop a 275 stat food feast. Plus, 275 stat food feasts aren’t even as good as the 300 stat foods that are single-use! What the eff happened here?

If we look at my personal feelings about gear, doesn’t that mean I think everyone should use personal 300 stat foods? Sure. Until you look at what’s REQUIRED for 300 stat food. Say I want to make the 300 Agility food for Kurn. That’s Sea Mist Rice Noodles.

Ingredients for 5:

– 1 Rice Flour (Ironpaw Token)
– 25 Scallions (farm or 1 Ironpaw Token for 25)
– 5 Tiger Gourami (fishing or 1 Ironpaw Token for 5)
– 5 Raw Turtle Meat (farming mobs or 1 Ironpaw Token for 5)

At minimum, for a stack (20) of 300 stat food, you’re looking at 4 Ironpaw Tokens, 4 days of farming on a farm that is at least 5 plots, finding 4-5 Tiger Gourami schools and fishing them, possibly two, then killing some turtles for the meat. Or spending 16 Ironpaw Tokens for all the mats. Or mixing and matching and supplementing with the Auction House.

Imagine a typical progression raid guild can wipe 30 times in a single night. You now want at least 30 foods. Add another 2 tokens, minimum, up to another 8. For a single night of raiding.

I’m pretty sure many people will agree with me when I say “fuck THAT right in the ear”.

There are different swaps to be made, of course, something about Bundles of Groceries and trades with Spirits of Harmony and the like, but that’s still pretty rough, particularly the farming of mobs and the fishing up of fish.

Now, I happen to enjoy fishing. Prior to Mists’ launch, I had ALL the fishing achievements. I like it. But a lot of people don’t. And a lot of people may feel pressed into fishing to get that “best food”. Plus, the fact that there are SO MANY ingredients means that the AH is not a great source. There may be hundreds of carrots up, but not hundreds of Tiger Gouramis. Which leads back to tokens or farming/fishing yourself.

Now multiply that by 10 or 25, depending on your raid size. Gah.

So in terms of effort vs. gain, having the guild bank handle banquets is probably your best bet. After all, it’s “only” 25 stats. But, and I don’t know about you, it would drive me crazy not to have the 300 stat food on me. (Have I mentioned I’m glad I’m not raiding? No? I AM VERY GLAD TO NOT BE RAIDING.)

Say you want the 300 stat food and want to rep up with, oh, everything. That is a stupid amount of time investment. Plus, you still may run dungeons and LFR in addition to raiding…

I’ll be honest with you. I’ve been doing Golden Lotus dailies, Tiller dailies and Anglers dailies on Kurn. I’m a hunter. Pure DPS. It still takes me ~90 minutes to do all my dailies and tend to my farm. And I’m not even doing Klaxxi dailies because, well, ew, gross. Add in another 20-30 minutes for Klaxxi, then another 20-30 minutes for other factions as they become available and you are looking at 90 minutes to 2 hours for a not-particularly-geared DPS to earn rep EVERY DAY in order to get better gear. God forbid you’re a healer.

Then there’s flasks. Gone are cauldrons entirely. And each flask requires a Golden Lotus. Do you know I haven’t ever PICKED a Golden Lotus on my herbalist? Haven’t seen any. As such, the most reliable method of getting a Golden Lotus is trading in a Spirit of Harmony for three of the herbs. Whee, that’s one night of flasks in my guild, but hey, that doesn’t even include the herbs. Thankfully, the other herbs are only 4 of a single type, in conjunction with the Golden Lotus, so it’s no longer 8 of 2 separate herbs, it’s just 4 of one herb. Feel bad for the Strength users who pay out the wazoo for Fool’s Cap, but anyhow.

This seems as though it’s overkill. In their effort to give more, diverse things for people to do, Blizzard has only succeeded in making a lot of the things “mandatory” for many of the raiders in their game. When, then, do raiders have the time to do Challenge dungeons? Scenarios? Hunt down those rares? Level alts?

Blizzard has, in my opinion, screwed up and needs to rectify certain things ASAP:

– Banquets should be 300 stat food (450 stam for tanks)
– Cauldrons should be re-integrated into the game at a similar cost as last expansion: 3 of each flask (int/str/agi/stam) (I still think we’ll outgrow Spirit flasks, so I don’t think that’s necessary to include in the Cauldrons)
– Cooking should not be quite as brutal in terms of materials required
– Dailies should NOT be taking 90 minutes every single day

And, as was pointed out on Twitter by Rades and Vosskah, why the reversion back to a DAILY heroic dungeon for VP instead of just capping at 7 heroic dungeons a week?

Blizzard has done a lot of things right this expansion (I love a LOT of little things) but these “wrong” things are things that would drive me to quit if I weren’t already planning to do so.

11 Replies to “Raider Time Sinks: Dailies, Cooking, Fishing and More”

  1. Regarding dailies.. the first day or 2 I was 90, I was definitely in the mindset of “daily all the thingz!” But then it hit a point that instead of enjoying a new expansion, I was just “working”. I’d get home from work, and rather than want to go run a few 5mans or scenarios, I’d spend 2 hours doing dailies because I felt I had to hit all of them every day.

    Forget that. And here’s why. Reputation is not the bottle-neck, VP acquisition is. You simply can’t earn VP fast enough to be able to buy all the VP gear you want as soon as it’s available. To buy buy all the VP items from a single vendor, you’re looking at about 5 weeks of capping. To buy a single item it’s probably on average 2 weeks of capping. Think about that. 2 weeks of busting your ass 2 hours a DAY to buy an item, that by the time you can actually purchase it, you could very well have filled that slot raiding anyway. Yea, no. I do SOME dailies, SOME days; rather than everything every day.

    As far as farming goes, I totally agree with you that maxing out a single way is excruciating mat-wise, and the 300 stat food is pretty awful as well. That’s why I tend to stick to the 275 stat food. For agi I can get a 20 stack in about 20 minutes of work. At our current gear levels, 25 of a stat is really a drop in the bucket. Barely noticeable. Yes I know the min/maxers are gonna say every little bit helps. But unbuffed, I’m sitting at just under 12k agility. What difference is an extra 25 going to do? That extra 25 of a stat could very easily be negated by 0.5 seconds of lag during a boss encounter. Again, yea no.

    To summarize, yes I try and do some dailies when I have the time or inclination, but I’m certainly not breaking myself to get everything maxed as quickly as possible, because to me, the end simply doesn’t justify the means.

  2. I’ll admit when I first saw the RT that led me here that my first thought was “Oh, Jesus. Hasn’t she quit the game yet?!”

    But then I clicked the link and read this and it resonated quite a bit with me. I also made the decision to stop raiding recently and it was for these very reasons and then some.

    I felt like all of Blizzard’s talk of making raiding more accessible was complete hogwash. I can’t imagine that a “casual” player or someone who has a history of being more casual, who may be playing on a limited schedule, or have a limited attention span is going to want to do all of these things to be able to raid more effectively – much less someone who has a history of being a bit more serious or “hardcore.”

    I felt like I was having to jump through more hoops to prove that I was serious about raiding or that I wanted it bad enough and it seemed like a slap in the face to me. My priest just hit level 90 last week and I still don’t even know what the exact “process” is for someone who just dinged to get raid ready.

    It’s incredibly vague, and overwhelming, and conflicting, and completely unnecessary. It upsets me because I feel like I would still be raiding if it weren’t for this. I feel like this, all of this, drove me away and I’ll be honest, I’m quite bitter about it. It didn’t have to be handled like this and I will never understand why it was. All the blue posts, all the Tweets from Ghostcrawler himself will never help me understand why they took raiding and the preparation to raid in this direction.

  3. On Saturday the Dailies finally broke me.

    Since hitting 90 about 4 days after Release I’d been doing:

    Klaxxi
    Anglers
    Golden Lotus
    Order of the Cloud Serpents
    Tillers

    All of those took me about 1.5-2 hours every day. I finally hit Exalted with Cloud Serpents (done!) and then Revered with Klaxxi and Golden Lotus, which…opened up more Dailies.

    Shado-Pan
    August Celestials

    After a few days of Tillers, Klaxxi, Anglers, Golden Lotus, Shado-Pan, August Celestials I finally was broken. I just don’t have the time or energy to spend 2 hours on Dailies. When the expansion was new (the first week) it was still exciting. Now Dailies are just work and I’m sick of working.

    Now I’m doing Klaxxi because I want the Scorpion Mount. That’s it. When I’m done with them I’ll consider resuming a different faction.

    As for food, its ridiculous. I haven’t even considered farming for 300 stat food. The mats are absurd and despite the fact that I’m inclined to seek every way possible to enhance my personal performance, I’m not even considering 300 stat food. Hell, I don’t even bother with 275 stat food and when the 250 stuff I have left over from leveling runs out, I’m not sure what I’ll do.

    The lack of cauldrons is another huge problem. Cauldrons were put in as a “quality of life” improvement. Has the importance of the quality of life diminished in Blizzards’ eyes? The answer is apparently yes.

    Too much grinding in this expansion. Grind for rep. Grind for Valor. Grind for food. Grind for gear. Grind for Motes of Harmony. Grind, grind, grind.

    I feel like I have to “sacrifice” my raid preparation (grinding) in order to do Challenge Modes or PvP. Since when should actually playing the game be something I have to consider _not_ doing so I can “work”?

  4. I really think the dailies are a non-issue, for the reasons Daydon posted.

    I do like that doing a daily gives you a few valor points. I suppose the fact that I’m not raiding gives me more time to do random stuff, but I’ve easily capped valor every week without it being a chore. Now that dailies are getting a bit stale, I’ve dropped to just doing two factions a day, and it’s not so bad.

    Yes cooking is a burden, but in a month the serious raiders who care about the extra 25 of whatever stat will be done with required rep grinds and tending the farm will be the main reason to log on outside of raids.

  5. I came to an immediate decision that i was just going to ignore the 300 stat food. It doe’s not exist as far as I am concerned so I will never use it.600 cooking is actually quite good. The +25 bonus stats to the feasts of the way is a interesting decision. Essentially the +25 is in the stat that way boosts. But the top level feasts should really be the same as the top level food. Even if only by offering +25 stats to all if you are a master of the way. Do the work, benefit from the work. Mats? Meh almost every alt lives in Half hill, in 20 minutes I learn a JC pattern,create a scroll of wisdom, create a darkmoon card ,create a imperial silk and two living steel plus 100+ veges.

    The 2nd week I had a day off from dailies once I was valor capped, This week I continued on with august celestials and Shado pan, mainly because of enchanting patterns. The plan was to get rep to revered in everything and then just do the grind to exalted while I am not valor capped. Having said since i can’t seem to roll win a roll on a healing mace for nuts and their is also an epic ring from Exalted klaxxi I have more then once regretted not continuing with that.

  6. The grind finally broke me, I was also contemplating quitting after the annual pass (be curious to see if their numbers drop a lot when those expire), and if I don’t seen any changes I know I will now. Its just not fun, it feels like work which is not what you want in a game that is supposed to be an escape.

  7. After reading this, I’m also glad I’m not raiding anymore! (So far I’d managed to pretty much ignore all the information that didn’t interest me directly.)

    On the plus side, I’ve been proven yet again that my guild is great. The officers understand that some people simply don’t have time to do all this, so they aren’t requiring people to bust their asses on dailies. Having to do ALL THE DAILIES to get a piece that will probably get replaced in 2 raids is silly in my opinion. Worth it for people who don’t raid regularly, but a waste of time for progression raiders.

  8. Count me among the “25 stat points from food is not worth ten minutes of work per food”. I’ll keep a stack of 300 in reserve for those 1% wipes but there’s no reason to burn time and money when what you really need is just more practice with the encounter mechanics.

  9. I want to start by saying I agree with the general theme. 25stats isn’t that big a difference, grinding dailies totally sucks.
    However, I made my decision from the get go, I was going to max my personal “Way” of cooking, and do 3 different reps. I was NOT going to burn out on dailies. I needed to do enough “work” to cap VP and none of the gear would be worth it by the time I got there anyway, and if it was (like GL rings) then that would be a bonus to me.

    So I started the 90 grind with all of that in mind ahead of time. I moved all my alts to Halfhill, and decided on Golden Lotus for the LW and eventual AC and ShP reps, Tillers for food, and Cloud Serpent for ME, not to mention the overall bonus it gave of helping me level fishing and archeology for those pesky achievements. In addition, I group up for dailies as much as possible. Yes I can easily solo just about anything in my path, but it goes much much much faster and far less stressful when doing things with 2, 3, 4 people. Take the first set of Golden Lotus dailies for example. 4-5 different objectives 2 that usually directly relate, Group of 3 people, each takes a quest and does it. You’re done in 5 minutes.

    My big point with all of that is people tend to forget this is a MULTI-player game and big tasks are far easier when done with multiple people. If you’re choosing to do them alone, then bite off smaller chunks. In the end you’ll be far less stressed and far more happy.

    I think using this approach has helped tons. I don’t feel overworked, I feel like I can skip a day and not be a totally bad raider, and I can still do all the other things like running dungeons or scenarios or pvp if I choose to.

    Enjoy your gaming =)

  10. I got to say, i approve what they have done with cooking!

    Those extra 25 stats? Reward for effort. If you cannot put that effort for miniscule 25 stat reward, “it’s not for you”. If you _think_ you can, but burn out fast, again, “it’s not for you”.

    275 stat food/feast is still too much effort? Drop down to 250 (after all, “it’s just 25 stats” step repeated), and each food becomes one single ingredient without any tokens required. Even that too much? 200 secondary stat food drop everywhere, and can be done with ingredients you buy from vendor.

    Theme of expansion is “never run out of things to do”. And yes, it means that if you try to do them all it pushes you to the point where you say “i cannot do this”. Or “I don’t have time for this”. Which is perfectly fine!

    It’s like trying to eat “all you can eat” buffet. You cannot eat it all, by design. “Working as intended”.

    Long-term? You’ll get all cooking maxed in a month. You’ll have 16 spot farm. Your love for fishing will become moneymaker that will cover things you don’t like to do with gold – and not lowering requirements will mean it will be bought all the way through expansion. You’ll find spots with infinite respawns for meat farming – there is at least one for turtle meat around Pools of Purity, for example, where you literally don’t move and kill them as fast as you can loot them. Cooking tokens will pile up, or maybe you’ll dedicate one free evening to farming spree (since there are things you can buy with 50 tokens).

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