There’s a Tank on my server selling Heroic runs for 30 gold – touting that he is an ICC geared tank which qualifies his value.
I asked trade if healers could sell runs for 15 gold since you don’t wait long with them – I could make a business out of this, could even take undergeared tanks – with the idea of bruteforce healing them.
I think 30 gold is a bit steep – I mean kudos for being entrepreneurial and cashing in on people not wanting to wait up to 15 min – but it’s not far off what you would make on the run. Say it’s your frost badge run – your practically losing any profit, plus the tank would also be getting gold amd chance of DE mats or vendored loot from the run so he would make a tidy sum. I guess If you were 3 dps you could pool your resources and pay only 10 gold per person, which would make perhaps having a good tank and insta queues worth 10 gold.. but I would feel jipped handing over most of my profit from doing a first Random Heroic on a day.
However what is the price of convenience? If he wasn’t an Ahat.. then it could be a good business arrangement. You get to run your heroic when you feel like it, and don’t have to prance around ironforge for 15 min waiting.
Prances, Finds a corner to hide in, looks at bank contents. Checks Alts listings to see if they are still there, jumps a little. Gets on Bike, rides around in circles. Stare at mailbox hoping for a letter.
As I write this I’ve been waiting 8 min ( so far) to try out my new weapon Heroic Midnight Sun, (and YES I’m using it for my mainspec. #12 for one handers on the Shadow Priest 3.3. gear list . Gained 96 sp 16 haste.. and lost 54 crit. I think that’s an awesome trade considering I’m still on 31.82 crit)
There was some discussion as to who should get it – it was a pug 1o ICC – and the only other person who rolled was a Mage. He won the roll, and it was a healer that argued for me, ( even though I was MS Shadow) that it was a healing weapon, and it did not belong with the mage, and it would be better going to me The Raid leader did take on board that I was ‘hired’ / pugged to be Dps – switch to heals as necessary later on – and I got the weapon.
I’ve done pretty well off pugs. Heroic Muradins Spyglass last week, a new weapon this week. I’m not bound by Guild DKP, or have to take it in turns. Sure my chances of doing more content is greatly reduced, but I am doing ok for myself. Need the 25’s now though for better loot and T10 tokens, I have 3 pieces, ( though only use 2) and the badges for a 4th – which will depend on what token I can get my hands on before I purchase my last piece.
Provided by 
Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog 
I use to make 50-100g selling runs as a healer back at level 60. The old relative to level 60 was worth far more money than than it is now. (Most I ever got was 275g to do LBRS).
I don’t think either 30g or 15g is steep. Honestly, if I wanted to do a 5-man heroic, I would be willing to spend 50-100g easily on a heroic tank.
Of course, as far as I am concerned, I wouldn’t pay for a tank unless I explicitly wanted to do a certain dungeon or a certain achievement/boss. I would just queue up.
For some of the harder ones – perhaps – but for say HOR – you need a decent healer and a decent tank to make it a success – then your really hiring mercanaries – but that would have been a decent chunk of money back at 60
Yeah, more or less, I referred to myself as a mercenary priest back then.
I didn’t go out of my way looking for it, but since I am frequently bored I would pay attention to trade chat (well LookingForGroup). After a few people offering to pay (most likely out of desperation) it just became easier and easier.
I remember, the “275g” event, was from a Blacksmithing looking to find people to complete some quest in LBRS. He was offering 200g per a person to help him do the final part of the quest, with no biters. Finally, I found 3 of my guildies who would assist.
The five of us cleaned our LBRS, and the Pally was so happy he tipped 75g to all of us.
And this was quite the haul, 275g back when Epic mounts cost 1000g.
But the more I think of it now, this isn’t so much different from level 70 or level 80. I’ve been in groups selling Amani War bears for 20k and Sartharion titles for 10k.
Funny, I saw a tank doing the same thing yesterday on my server, but he was charging 35g. My thought was, as I had just logged on for the first time that day, what a waste! I quickly queued in and then went to pick up my daily jewelcrafting. As I was just finishing turning in that daily the “Enter Dungeon” popped up in the middle of my screen and I went in, 35g never changing hands and I was productive while waiting for the queue.
I suppose the raw math you present could work, but it still seems like a waste when you (I, whomever) could easily be doing other things, including making money via a daily or farming or AH manipulation, etc. I applaud the initiative of these tanks, but I thought it was funny as the second I finished my run and for many hours later I saw that same tank still spamming trade. If he wanted to make money, sitting around a capital city doing nothing for hours isn’t really the best idea.
sometimes you run out of things to do though – and on a pvp server getting ganked 3 times while doing the fishing daily can be distracting when waiting for queues – hence while I was writing a post during my wait
I am one of the tanks that has been paid for my tanky tanky services and I must say its really nice, and at the time I was benifiting too with the badges I got for my alt BOA gear. I have advertised once or twice and ran one run or so for 30g, but there was a rogue dps that was spamming trade asking for a tank to run multiple heroic, I saw it and said sure why not I was waiting for my BF to come on anyway.
So the deal was I got 25g per heroic and 30g+ if I did it fast. We ran 8+ heroics all of which I made it my personal duty to pull as fast as I could innervating the healer as required, I went the pace that the healer could keep up with, and we actually had an amazing healer run at least 3 with us, and out of the lot of them there was only one bad one, it was a matter of ppl not doing inturupts, not cleansing (hello resto shammy you have a cleansing totem!), the healer not healing… wut?! and ppl auto running into mobs when we were still on the previous pack but as painful as it was we got through it.
It was funny I know GS can mean nothing but most of the time you have the idea that they will know what they are doing to a point, but the shammy with a 4900gs was a million times better than the one with the 5900gs made me laugh a 1000gs difference and one was spot on we had zero whipes, zero trouble and he urged me to go faster, using his totems (tremour, cleansing etc properly) and the 5900gs let ppl tick to death with little to no healing, didnt pop down any totems that we needed so we were feared/poisioned with no relief in those sections and seemed to heal some of the dps before the tank constantly, I used every cool down when it was up and still died more than I should have.
I made quiet a bit, the rogue and I chatted as we went it was a really good experience 🙂 he got all the emblems he required for gear and I made a hefty sum off of it and badges. I would do it again in a heart beat.
sounds like a win win for both of you – and would make gearing up a dps alt a lot quicker – and he still would make some of that money back with the dungeon gold / completion / drops/ enchanting mats
You know, you’re suddenly making me want to purposely ruin my “gs” and do pugs.
I happen to have gear that’s all 213/226 from doing Herald of the Titans achievement recently…
Of course, I have no clue what my “gs” is in either set of gear.
I would do it for cash if I could be bothered.
I just am tired of tanking 😦
And depending on the DPS it could be an interesting experience. I don’t want to solo Herald Volazj? from 200k to 0 again because I kill the dps and healer in Insanity…
This isn’t related to most of your post but your last sentence gave me the impression that you think the tier tokens in ICC are for specific slots, like they were before ToC. They’re not. If you get a token for your class then you can use it to upgrade any tier piece. So you should go ahead and purchase your fourth set piece so you can get that bonus. Just pick whatever piece works best for you stat-wise.
You know artoo.. I don’t think I have actually read the token.. never really thought I would be 25 man raiding much- and the ones I have when a priest tier token dropped I either wasn’t allowed to roll because I was only a member and not a raider – that changes a few things. Still not sure I want to wear the 4 set though. Need to work out what I’m losing – but cool. Cheers for pointing that out – you were right
I am relatively sure wearing the 4-set, even 251, is worth it. The .5 second reduction to Mindflay is a huge huge dps increase.
You’re quite welcome.
And from what the shadow priests in my guild have told me Shiva is correct. The t10 4 piece is a significant bump in dps. But it changes your rotation, I think all that happens is you drop mind blast so you can mind flay more. So you no longer provide replenishment, but your dps goes up.
A shadow Priest not mindblasting! – The healers would have a fit, unless there was another source of replenishment. A few of the things I have read don’t advise to take it out completely, just more only do it once every now and then. I did some testing on a dummy and it’s about the same dps with my current gear, ( i ,may have been mindblasting more out of habit – however I can see it being a lot more useful when having to move a a lot more. I did a lfg random and found I could kill mobs quicker then I have been able to before – so I will see how I go.
It’s not worth taking out unless you have a lot of haste otherwise.
However, it is worth noting when under heroism, mindflay spam will be superior to a lot of other things with sufficient haste and the 4 piece bonus (this is because of the gcd, and when things get reduced too far below 1 second, it becomes a loss since the game will hard prevent most things from being that fast).
However, the 4 piece is a significant speed-up, and it’ll definitely take getting use to. Channeling 1.4 second mindflays gets to be pretty fun though.