This week in WoW: Of The Ashen Verdict

This week Outcasts did its usual runs through Icecrown Citadel. I got to heal throughout. On 10 man we one-shotted the lower spire and and got Rotface and Festergut down until the run was called. Same with 25, except for one wipe on Festergut, and we got two tries in on the Dream Dragon. In 25s, the shield I have been lusting for did not drop, but two additional healer pieces did, and I was able to upgrade my Ashen Verdict reputation ring to the one for Exalted reputation.

I grabbed the hands and arms -- even though they broke my Tier 10 4 piece bonus -- because they added something else I also need: massive amounts of haste. With gems and enchants I went to almost 1200 haste, which is very close to the cap. Damn shammy T10 healer gloves have NO HASTE on them

For healers like shamans with few one fast healing spell, haste is THE STAT to stack. Under the right conditions my weakest heal is now almost an instant, and I can get off a chain heal in 1.2 seconds. This is blazing speed!

On the druidic front, Nartyros got his alchemy up to cap and is now an Elixir Master, so he can get more money-making raiding elixirs for those rare materials and can transmute rare gems and metals. With Tyrtrinos as a miner he can get and smelt the metals and cut the gems. Jewelcrafting, Mining, Herbalism and Alchemy work together like the Beatles. Narty is now level 70 and questing like a fiend through Northrend.

Narty and Tyrantos are paired in what they call "the Saronite Shuffle." Here's how it works: Tyrantos mines Saronite -- a metal ore that can be smelted into bars at a rate of two ore per bar. The metal bars are passed to Narty and transmuted by alchemy into rarer Titanium at 8 bars of Saronite per bar of Titanium and passed back to Tyrantos, who smelts three titanium and some elemental ingredients into Titansteel, a rare metal costing around 100 gold a bar that is in very high demand for many types of crafted weapons and plate armor. 16 Saronite per Titanium, 3 Titanium per Titansteel. The elemental components are easy to obtain; for about 30 minutes of mining and "farming" elementals in Sholazar Basin and Wintergrasp I got enough Saronite and elementals for two bars.

I've also gotten Jameece's character Clothisis involved in this scheme, transmuting gems for me to sell on a fee-per-transmute basis.

When not transmuting gems for me or making me flasks for raiding, Clothisis is working on three things in game: the Loremaster achievement (completing about 2000 quests in all portions of the game world), another for collecting 10k gold from quest rewards and a third for collecting fifty different mounts. When I'm not raiding, I help her out, of course. These achievements do not really float my WoW boat; killing the Litch King in Icecrown Citadel with Outcasts does. On the other hand, Jameece is not into raiding at all. She tried it and did not like it. Nonetheless, I feel that its important to have couple time in game, so I'll take a break from leveling Narty or making money with Tyrantos to help out Jameece on Clo or her warrior alt Ereskigal.

Not only that but Narty can create epic-grade gems, just one every 20 hours, but each gem can be sold uncut for 80-150 gold or custom cut by Tyrantos and sold for 100-plus gold each.