The tourney is "technically" CRZ. Basically, the way it works now is that EVERYONE on CRZ starts the tourney at the same time, but prizes/achieves are given on based solely on your own server. So, theoretically, 15 people could have gotten to turn in before me, but because I was the first on my server to turn in, I won the tourney.
Also, run hotter on the loot. 3 lootz in 3 bags is really good.
The item upgrade is going away next tier, so don't worry about it, unless you plan on picking up progression raiding in the near future.
flying around spamming general lfm for sha, i come across two rares in karasang. both drop BoE epics. And I do another scenario afterwards (queuing scenario + instance is the nut high for dps, i gotta say) and get a 463 dagger from the reward bag. Awful stats on it, but better than what I was using otherwise. Then I get a better itemized belt from the heroic that pops at the end of the scenario.
Guess having crappy gear is sorta nice, for there is almost always an upgrade.
Think when I move alliance I'll go gnome. Free expertise will be most useful at the ilvls I'm at.
Gnomes can pick Goblin engineering and vice-versa.
When I first leveled Engineering I had no idea what the difference between the two was. Gnomish is supposed to be more reliable, like precision crafting, where Goblin is supposed to be more, "Let's put these alligator clamps on his nipples and shock him back to life!"
I've been killed by my rocket belt/boots during at least a couple encounters. Pretty miserable feeling to wipe at sub 5% and think, "Gosh, if I'd been able to DPS for the last minute or so instead of being killed by my profession 'perk' I wonder if this would have ended differently." Gnomish Army Knife seems to have about a 5% success rate in rezzing, I don't know if the Goblin Jumper Cables are any different.
I more meant, with the extra 15 points in engineering gnomes get, will I have to grind out those points again? My profession is already maxed. Will I need to make 3 things that give 5 points each?
An interesting point on that: I was leveling engineering and got to where I'd only need to craft one more item to get to 600/615. The guild had all Professions except Engineering leveled to 600 and we wanted the achievement. A guildie gave me 5k worth of mats and I crafted the last piece we needed. Nothing happened. No achievement, guild achievement, or anything of the sort.
I opened a ticket and basically said, "There's an achievement for having 600 skill points in a profession. I have 600 skill points in this profession but do not have the achievement." I don't remember the ticket ever being answered, maybe I put it in as a bug report or something.
Make a point to compare your achievements before and after you switch, if you do indeed switch. Between that and the 9000 achievement points disappointment and wasting my friends' money on trying to get the guild Engineering achievement, I wouldn't be surprised if after you faction changed you ended up with 700 skill points in Architecture.
Bottom line: don't trust that Blizzard has their numbers straight.
Sadly, I coulda told you hitting 600/615 wouldn't get you the achievement. Been there, done that, it's a total PITA. The cheeve should just be for hitting "max level" with the prof, since that's what it really is about.
So, last week, another 10 man guild wanted to merge with the guild I'm now in to form a 25man guild. This guild is 5/6H, and was on the same progression as us until yesterday (They've been stuck on Heroic Will for 3 weeks, we cleared it in 2 days.) This guild also apparently was apparently one of the top guilds on the server in the past, so we decided to do a trial run on 25man normal ToeS with them. Oh my god. They are awful. To start it off, our RLs talked with them days ago, and they said they had a 25 person vent that we could use. Come raid time, all of a sudden, they realize that it's only a 20 person vent, so the ask US to spend our money to upgrade OUR vent, despite them saying they had vent covered. Once we finally DID get our communication somewhat in order, we realized that it didn't matter in the first place. Their tank didn't speak, at all. The one time he did speak, he "taught" our tank how to tank normal Protectors, like he's never done the fight before, which was kinda insulting. Their DPS did not listen to call outs, at all. They just did their own thing and ignored what was being said. Constantly standing in Nightmares on Tsulong. Constantly stood in fears on Sha. Oh, and to top it all off, both guilds combined didn't have enough to raid 25, so "friends" and "pugs" were brought to fill 3 or so slots. Then the lol part after we cleared ToeS (2 hours and multiple wipes later. As comparison, we can clear ToeS in about 45 mins on 10man.) we went down into our private channel to "discuss" if we wanted to try heroic MSV on 25 man. I've never heard so many "no's" and yelling in a raid before. We were pretty much all pissed off that we essentially pissed away a night of progression with how bad they were. We had trouble counting the things that were bad, because there were so many. Glad we never have to raid with them again.
Cliffs:
-Trial 25man run for possible merger with a similarly progressed 10m guild to form a 25man guild.
-Other guild lied and asked us to spend IRL money to cover their mistake
-Other guild played like dog****
-My guild pissed due to wasted night
Well, on the plus side, you have that experience now. And you know not to do anything with anyone from that guild ever, so there's that too. And you know you're better than them as gamers, so that's an added plus!
Man.. this game just keeps getting better and better. From the PoV of people who play like me. Like, pre-Mists raids no longer requiring a raid group? AWESOME! New raid pets that can get you an ach and a Mr. Bigglesworth pet? **** YES! Everything that's coming in 5.2? Yes please!