Planning for war

Anyway, with predictions that we are approaching the last phase of the Pandaren campaign, I've started planning for 5.4. I've got the best gear I can get for now: ilvl 530 for the most part, as well as the ilvl 600 cloak from the legendary quest-line, and I'm not going to win any heroic gear from the Throne of Thunder in the next month (my guild is 1/12 normal. I'm 6/12 normal, due to links with other guilds, but there isn't a hope of getting much further before the storm breaks), so I'm going to save enough valor points so that I'm capped for 5.4, in the hopes that I'll have something to spend them on.

As for raiding in 5.4, my plan is to take advantage of the Flexible Raid feature, which allows you to take anywhere from 10 to 25 raiders into a raid whose difficulty level that is between LFR and Normal, and whose loot is also between those two levels. I predict that this will replace LFR raiding for our guildies. Certainly, as soon as the new 5.4 raids open, we plan to take a look at the first fight in Normal mode (since it opens first), but I'm not expecting any kills! FR raiding will then open up and I hope we'll get a kill early in the first month, if not in the first week of the raid. There is absolutely no point in me personally doing LFR at all, as the gear rewards are mostly 2 levels below what I already have (I assume the upgrade vendor is going away on his holidays again).

I've started buying windwool cloth to stockpile. We'll need a lot of it when the new tailoring patterns drop. I've stopped making Imperial Silk. It's already useless. Instead, I'm saving my cloth to make Celestial Cloth as soon as I get the pattern, and then to make the ilvl 553 caster belt (3 weeks worth of cloth) and leggings (4 weeks more).

With the arrival of new raids comes the need for new gems and enchantments. I'll certainly be buying up tons of enchanting materials this month, and any cheap gems I see at auction - I believe there are no epic gems coming in 5.4.

The new zone, the Timeless Isle, has a new currency, the Timeless Coin. 5000 of these are needed for the next leg of the legendary quest-line, so I expect to spend a lot of time there!