~19K HP. "Is that your tanking gear?"

You'll be amazed at the benefits JC will have. A monarch crab with x2 41 stams, and a ruby hare with def/stam gems would put you well over 20k. Sure, you could sell the Dragon's eyes, but it's so worth it. And once you hit 400 prospecting saronite (even w/out good cuts) will be a good, steady money maker. I can understand not wanting to drops a couple hundred gold on uber wotlk enchants for crappy greens, but get something! Heck, get a LW friend who wants to aoe farm skins, he makes the kits and keeps the excess.
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As everyone else has said, there's really no reason not to have at least an armor kit on your gear, where applicable.

Yes it sucks slapping expensive enchants on gear that you know you will replace. One thing to keep in mind is there isn't a single toon in the game right now that has a best in slot item. It is all going to change in month or so with 3.1. Enchanting and re-enchanting, gemming and re-gemming is the nature of the beast.

Cash isn't hard to come by. Discipline in not buying stupid crap (mounts, pets, vanity items, some nifty BoE blue you'll replace in 3 levels on your alt) is hard to come by. Spend 10 minutes at the AH a day splitting eternal fire into crystallized fire and selling it. YMMV, but that along with simple JC cuts nets me about 3000g a week on average, and I'm not really trying. My server is really low pop, and I can still make a comfortable amount of money without any kind of farming.

Stop buying dumb things. Get Money_Fu and watch where you're spending your money and stop doing it. Sounds really simple because it is.
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Lavnihs -BE Prot Pally, <Deceit> Anetheron

1/1 Hogger (pre-nerf)

BS AND JC? Are you masochistic or something? Tell me you have a Mining alt.... pleaasseee. The BOPs and gems for these proffessions are awesome, but either short term (BS epics will be replaced in Naxx) or minor in nature (JC gems, cool but not a huge difference). You're better off getting gathering professions and being able to buy yourself a nice set of BOEs with your pile of money. Raiding is expensive, Gold is more usefull then craftskills anyday.

That being said, if you can get access to the JC daily, JCs will pay you serious cash for those gems. Best daily in the game right now.
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10 points to anyone who can spot the pun.

Ranluka, I couldn't disagree with you more. You do contradict yourself in saying that JC gems are awesome yet cool and not that big of a difference. BS currently has no BoP's, and the only BoP in JC is the trinkets. This may change in future content, but as it stands now that's all there is.

You're correct that you will replace the BS gear you have with Naxx gear and beyond. However, you're never going to get into Naxx (or shouldn't in my opinion) without the proper gear to be there. I didn't level BS for the gear. Honestly I could care less about it. I did it purely for the extra sockets. The fact that I can put another 48 stam, 32 defense, 32 dodge, or whatever into my gear makes gear swaps infinitely easier for me. I won't be stuck in a situation where I get an epic drop that is a significant upgrade, yet be stuck not using it because I can't quite fill the defense holes it leaves for me. I have added slots that allow me to lose some stam and pick up what I need to make things work. Sure mining gives you 50 stam, and enchanting gives you 48, but you can't swap those bonuses to +def if you need to. That is the beauty of BS at this stage of the game in my opinion.

BS will lose this flexibility bonus and its bonus will fade once people move into T8. Once you have the gear to make up the difference in defense here and there and have replaced your high +def blues, the sockets will most likely have stam gems in them, making BS 2 stam weaker than mining and on par with enchanting. There will be new BS recipes that drop that may or may not be a strong contender for a slot.

For the more casual player, BS/JC makes more sense than you would think as well. You don't spend your time mining, or skinning, or picking flowers for your money, you spend a half hour doing it at the AH and get on with whatever else you would be doing. It gives you more time to do what you want to do, and gets rid of the time spent hunting for a crafter to make something for you. You are self sufficient for nearly every slot your character has with these 2 skills. People aren't going to stop mining, there will always be ore or bars on the AH.

BS/JC is not that hard to skill either. In BC I was JC/Herb. I was holy for about 1/2 of it, and there was pretty serious competition for nodes on my old server. Being holy and getting rofflestomped by about any other class got really old, so I went Herb. Herb was nice for the nightmare seeds once I respecced prot, so I kept it.

Fast forward to WotLK, I hit 80 and then dropped herb for BS. I didn't have a toon to mine any more, I bought it all on the AH. My server may be special, but saronite ore is rarely more than 22g a stack, with bars being roughly double that. One Scarlet Ruby out of 6 or 7 stacks of ore will cover the cost of ore, anything above that is pure profit. Use that money to finance your BS, the only hard spots on my server were thorium, but YMMV.

After that, use your JC profits (I prospect at least 20-30 stacks a day, others do much more I'm sure) to finance your BS. Not really that hard. I would argue that starting with 0 gold, it would be faster leveling BS as a JC than it would be if you had a toon to mine the ore yourself. It is FAR FAR faster to get up through mithril just buying mats on the AH with money you make prospecting than it is to spend the time riding all over Azeroth mining, fighting with someone here and there, etc. BC and WotLK ores are dirt cheap. If you want to recoup your losses skilling BS, have a friend DE everything you make and sell the dust. Above 350 BS, I was actually turning a profit converting bars to infinite dust. BS paid for itself after that point up to 440. This may or may not be applicable to your server.

The JC daily is a great money maker. There are far better ways to make money with those gems than just selling them though =)
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Lavnihs -BE Prot Pally, <Deceit> Anetheron

1/1 Hogger (pre-nerf)

To kind of piggyback on the previous post - this is what I've been trying to say to most of the people saying that having BS/JC is tough if you don't have a miner...

I have always been of the camp that it is far better to farm money and buy what you need than farm what you need... in almost every case...

old world materials are much more difficult to farm than outland/northrend materials... why? EPIC FLYING... I can move at 300% speed in outland and northrend... I can move at 120% in azeroth... this right here makes it more time efficient to farm in outland/northrend...

but in my opinon - find a way to make money without gathering... back in TBC before there were epic gems... I ground out 3 Epic Flying mounts... without a single gathering profession - all I did was buy and prospect ore...

Prospecting is back to around that profit margin right now... so just take advantadge of it... and you win...

find patterns you can make cheap and D/E for good money... if you need help finding those patterns... download auctioneer/enchantrix and start browsing recipes...

I'll share a little story here:

Way back in Vanilla WoW... I was a LW/enchanter on my rogue... and leveling LW i noticed that Wicked Leather Headbands sharded into illusion dust... but more importantly Greater Eternal Essences...

Cue the "upgrade your dungeon set" questline... which required 6 (i think) greater eternal essences to complete... GEE were selling for 18-20g EASILY and sometimes more on my server... the material cost for wicked leather headbands was enough that I could make as many as I could get leather for... and DE them... and rake in around 4x what I spent on the mats...

did I have someone tell me this? no - I found it while leveling a tradeskill...

my suggestion? pay attention to your market, and those things you make to level your profs... they can come in handy later...

also - watch for things that will change in the market... remember that awesome 75 stam to weapon enchant that all the tankadins are so excited about? Did you notice the mats? 12 dream shards... per enchant... every tank will want this... think the price of those shards might jump a bit?

these are the things to look for... patch notes aren't there just to annoy you... or to give you one more thing to click through... be proactive and watch the patch notes as they develop on the PTR... you can make some serious money just from that...

check out the thread in the general forums about making gold as a prot pally... it's a great thread with a link to a great blog with how to make gold...
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"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so" -Douglas Adams

Sorry about the wrong forum; I figured my question was basic enough. My bad. Thanks for the help and I'm sorry I was a bit whiny. And late in my reply. And, erm... polarizing.

Holy hell my belt is <b>6</b>9?! THAT may have been one of my problems. I thought I was wearing a pure def 79 belt. And somehow I missed that there was a tempered sauronite belt. I feel a bit foolish about that and will be picking it up tomorrow. This is one of the reasons I wanted someone to look at my gear.

Yes, I have a mining alt. The main thing I'm doing right now is getting him to 80. I'm doing a Recruit-A-Friend with my girlfriend, which is a reason I haven't been running that much. Thankfully she's rolling an enchanter; I've thrown every green I got while leveling her way. This alt is also the main reason I've been as lazy about questing as I have; after powerleveling three BC levels I really don't feel like questing on my main much.

If you weren't aware, leveling both JC and BS requires somewhere around 500 mithril or and another 300 thorium. I decided to mine it all myself without buying any off the AH, since prices are ridiculously high right now. Around a gold a bar. At the time I wrote the post my mind was beginning to deteriorate. I haven't run a proper instance in weeks at this point.

Regardless, I'm going to focus on my alt until I have a crab, JC gems, and bonus sockets. It doesn't sound like there are any good quest reward stam trinkets that I missed, which I suppose was what I was hoping for.

In summary:
1. Buy the Tempered Sauronite Belt (d'oh)
2. Level profs, level alt
3. Run non-heroic instances with my GF until we have them all memorized
4. Get enchants and gems
5. ???
6. Profit!

This is my first toon and I only joined WoW in october. Please be forgiving. In particular, I'm sorry if I annoyed you, Majiben, you always have really helpful posts.

Thank you all so much!
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Stevadin, Level 80 BE Paladin, Maelstrom. BS/JC.

LFG Zul! The one with the trolls!

I know my transition was relatively easy to heroics as I have a RL friend who is my pocket priest, and he's good about taking care of me =)

Your spec is fine, replace your belt like you said. You don't have any huge holes in your gear, you have the defense you need, if nothing else take it slow in heroics and you will be okay on the easier ones. Use CC, and take your time until you get your gear.

Puggers that give you crap are just that, crap. Don't let them bother you, as your gear will improve over time, their attitude won't.

I still recommend you put BS on the back burner until you get JC leveled. As far as thorium prices go, if they are 1g a bar, you're getting lucky =) they were 4g a bar and up on my server. It can be painful, but stick with it and you will get there =)

You're doing good for new to the game, and you came to the right place for knowledge. There are several sharp people here who know quite a bit. No need to apologize, as I'm sure no one really intended to be rude to you, sometimes people seem short in posts. Hard to convey tone in posts / email sometimes.

Good luck and have fun.
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Lavnihs -BE Prot Pally, <Deceit> Anetheron

1/1 Hogger (pre-nerf)

so... you're not buying the mithril/thorium because it's 1g per bar?

seriously?

let's do a little math here... even in the best of conditions for thorium (no other miners, not having to stop to fight a lot of mobs, etc) - I think the most I've possibly hit up was 2 stacks of thorium bars (4 stacks of ore) in an hour...

so doing the math... that's about 40g per hour...

considering that you could do 3 dailies on your 80 and make 40g in 20 min... I think you're looking at it all wrong...

Farming the ore seems cheaper because you're not paying gold for it... but you're spending time... which can be just as valuable... i can make easily over 200-300g an hour mining in Northrend... why would I go back to old world where I only make 40-60g an hour doing the same thing?

remember, it's not about the amount of time you spend, it's about how you spend that time...
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"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so" -Douglas Adams

Phaqueue, you're starting to scare me. We think too much alike =p
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Lavnihs -BE Prot Pally, <Deceit> Anetheron

1/1 Hogger (pre-nerf)

Farming old world mats is only a good idea when initially leveling mining. Even then be sure to buy the ore and smelt it till it's gray at every opportunity. Selling the bars makes back or exceeds the money you spend and cuts down on the farming a ton.

Focus on dailies and quests on your main until you get JC to 400. I spent over 7k gold yesterday between epic flying, cold weather flying, getting engineering to 440, and making my goggles (with appropriate block value meta of course.) That money came from DEing (a lot of which were things I'd made with JC) and prospecting and cutting. Get the 24 stam sky sapphire cut first. I can't sell them fast enough and on my server they go for about 20-25g profit even buying em off the AH.

Also, Stoneguard Bands. Good rings, cheap to make, they sell pretty well, and even if they don't they DE well.
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