People choose the paths that gain them the greatest rewards for the least amount of effort. That’s the law of nature."
Dr. Gregory House
I wanted to highlight another one of my oh-so-important thought processes today on why I decide to do some things one way and not another. My debut column at WoW Insider generated fairly positive responses. Obviously I didn’t escape much in the way of scrutiny. I clearly spelled Naxx incorrectly and my eyes are literally glued to my raid frames that are 2 inches in from the left side.
It does make eating rice rather difficult when raiding. But that’s an entirely different story.
A number of comments here and there mentioned golden fishsticks as their delicacy of choice when raiding.
Before the most recent patch, I was a bigger fan of the sporefish than the fish sticks as well, Ego writes. With the new changes to mana regen, I have yet to test the various kinds of food.
And I am very much in the same boat. The patch did bring about several important formulaic changes. I can’t even make my own calculations about the different bonuses and the like (and yes, mathematically challenged Asians are a rarity).
Here you have your Golden Fish Sticks and your Blackened Sporefish. Below you can see an image comparison of where you can acquire these yummy fish from. I won’t get into details about which fish is better than the other. Suffice it to say, Golden Fish Sticks reign supreme in the post 2.4 world. But here’s why I will continue using Sporefish.
Affordable opportunity-cost
What I mean about opportunity cost here is the fact that the overall effort required to catch Sporefish is easier than Fish Sticks. There’s a large difference in fishing skill required to fish between the two areas. It takes longer for me to empty out a Highland Fishing pool than a Sporefish pool. Couple that with the fact that it’s easier for me to kill a level 61 hydra as opposed to a level 71 water elemental.
Maybe it’s karma from all the sushi I’ve been eating recently.
PvP Problems
I play on a PvP server. I’m also a Priest in a marked guild. A holy priest sitting in Skettis with nothing but a fishing pole equipped may as well just be holding a large neon pink "GANK ME NOW" sign. It is tough competition especially when the pools are scarce enough as is.
Quantity
Zangarmarsh has four large lakes which have numerous fishing pools. There’s a lot more potential Sporefish pools out there. There are only 3 mid-sized lakes to fish from. I’m not disciplined enough to fly around all three Terrokar lakes to get said fish.
By the way, as a follow up, my Guild has retrieved the lost Hearts of Darkness and epic gems from the perpetrator. According to the GM, that player has had "justice served".
I’m glad your guild got the HoD’s back! I’m intrigued about the justice… 😉
Noob question from a PvE server player… why and how is your guild marked? That pretty much a kill on sight thing I take it?
Why fish in Sketti’s? I catch plenty of darter just standing in Allerian Stronghold leisure fishing, or from the pools around Terokkar forest. Altho on a pvp server the stronghold is probably safer. Also you’ll actually find pools of darter in TF streams. The brackish mixed schools in TF also give a fair amount of darter. The fishing skill required here allows me to catch fish with a 280 fishing skill and bait on my hunter even, though I o get a few misses I only fish skettis when I’m after furious crawdad myself.
Exactly like you said. The stronghold IS safer and that’s where everyone else is fishing. There’s little chance of me getting anything :(. The only area I can find them consistently in is up in Skettis.
The other way to acquire plenty of Golden Darter is to do the cooking daily and pick the barrel of fish. That’s how I acquire most of mine. 🙂
*laughs* The funniest thing about this is that for me, it’s much easier to get the darter than the sporefish. Sure, it’s easier to actually FIND sporefish pools than darter pools (and if you have an epic flying mount and the track fish ability, you are in like…something..that’s…very…in).
However, as the official fisherperson for our little group, I spend a lot of time fishing up crawdads.
And in the course of fishing crawdads, I run across a bunch of extraneous darters.
So I have to actually fly over to Zangarmarsh, then fly (and oh, when I was able to fly instead of run, that was a joyous occasion) to the pools that have the sporefish pools.
But I spent time in Skettis anyway, doing dailies and fishing crawdads.
So it was actually a smaller time investment to get darters than sporefish. I used to do sporefish in three-stack chunks, just to give myself padding before I had to go back and do it again.
Course, I also fish on my hunter. And I just let the pet tank the adds. *winks*
Ahhh yes…
Pre 2.3 i was also a devotee of the Blackened Sporefish. With 2.4, however, making spirit even tastier… and it’s added impact to +healing…
My fish of choice has been Feltail Delight. 20 stam, and 20 spirit. If you really feel like getting fancy (for more stam-centric fights) Fisherman’s Feast offers a whopping 30 stam and 20 spirit.
Another thing from your article Matt… I take the time to get Brilliant Mana Oil. You have to farm a little bit of ZG rep, but I’ve found that the more balanced stats of 25 +healing and 12 Mp5 are better than simply 14 Mp5. I was a little surprised none of these consumables got a passing mention. (I also heavily recommend keeping at least a 5-stack of Super Rejuv pots.. for those times you just gotta heal yourself NOW but don’t want to “waste” the mana pot cooldown)
Loved the article!
I remain, your devoted daily reader:
Wynthea
Leaving aside the relative merits of the various fishes, have you considered a wardrobe addon?
I don’t reside on a PvP server, transferred off of an RPPvP server thank you very much, however mobs are annoying enough. My wardrobe addon, Outfitter, has a Fishing outfit. The cool thing is that if you go in to combat it automatically switches your fishing rod for the weapons of your current outfit. I’m sure the other wardrobe addons would do the same thing.
Wynthea: I hit exalted with them ZG fellas a while back =). Just a bit lazy to go into old world instances to pick up the oils. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for maximization of gear and stat output.
But I’m also the laziest sonofagun on the planet.
But… But…
The mats are on the AH! And so cheap!!
Okay, not as cheap, maybe, as Superior.. but if you have your epic flyer, what else are you gonna do with all the cash the bosses drop now?
(and, anyway, after farming a million billion times for my Ace of Beasts (UBRS 12, Wynthea 0) I’m up to my eyeballs in Large Brilliant Shards… QQ)
I do the cooking daily aswell and take the barrel of fish. Plenty of golden darters there. Also you can just pick the easy cooking quest like the manaberries or nagrand. And on the plus side you get some gold aswell for doing a 10 minutes quest. As for materials for the cooking quest. Most of them come out of the crate of meat. So pick up a few of them and get cooking.
Alltho myself i really like the mp5 food aswell.
I keep a stack each of feltail, sporefish, and fishsticks on me at all times.
As far as time goes, I find that I can fish up all I need for the week in an hour or two. And I do it without ever flying around looking for pools. It’s like a 15% catch rate for darters in the Terrokkar lakes. I use slymer lake right outside Shat. The drop rate for sporefish is about 15% also just fishing open water near Cenarion refuge.
What I lose in catch rate compared to a pool I more than make up for by staying in one place and hauling in fish instead of flying around.
There’s another good source of Golden Fish Sticks: Cooking Daily. While it’s not a steady source of fishes, you get enough to go by for a week.
This is where I point out the fishing quest in my soon to be post “Around the World…(of warcraft) in 25 Daily Quests”
The fishing quest will net you enough fish to eat like a king forever. Each quest gets around 6-10 quality fish. Golden Darter, Furious Crawdad, and yes even your beloved Sporefish.
Just do the quest noob. 😛
cooking quest not fishing. my bad. haha
I would much rather pay some poor sap some kind of a subscription based fee to supply with said fish sticks for a week.
hahaha, I’m keen to receive a subscription for Golden Darter Weekly, I hear it’s a great read 😛
Every single fish stick I consume either comes from the brackish fish pools in Zanger or daily cooking quest, well the odd couple picked up during the daily cooking quest.
Ratingbuster tells me fishsticks’ +spirit is giving me 5.6 mp5 along with the +heal. That’s pretty close to 8 mp5 from the sporefish.
Also, golden darter are found in the same frequency within the three elevated lakes as they are within the other rivers of Terrokar, if you don’t count the pools.
You could just fish in open water in Terokkar.. I can get a stack of golden darters in usually 20mins, along with feltail, fish for my hunter friends etc. etc.
Yeah golden fish sticks drop more frequently for me. Well, you know what i mean, the fish that provides the food. In Zanga i fished serpent lake for a while and hit upon nothing but brackish pools and flotsam. Came away with a stack of goldens and a bag full of misc junk. And two sporefish. And I’m a hunter. Cry.
I would definately recommend a non-squishy toon as your fishing extraordinaire.