Comments

Comment by 7344

I understand that Motes of Water can be fished up from the swirling pools along with special fish

Comment by Lobo2me

According to thottbot Mote of Water has 140% chance of being fished from Elemental Plateu in Nagrand. I can't get there normally, so this might be a place restricted to lvl 70 with flying mount to ease the farming of Primal Water. Can anyone confirm if you have over 100% chance of fishing Mote of Water from it?

Comment by Arador

Highest drop rate is from the Crashing Wave Spirits on the elementals plateau in Nagrand. You need a flying mount to get there.

As per fishing, I suspect that they drop at the highest rate up on this plateau as well.

Comment by 15788

This may drop more on Elemental Plateau, but have you ever been up there? The elements are 70-71, dont drop the Motes of Water that much and if you die up there, theres no way to get your body, you gotta raise at grave yard! If that sounds fun to you, good luck with grinding. I however prefer getting them from the Lake Spirits around the throne. They're lvl 64-65, pish easy to kill (im a frost mage n still kill them with about 4 spells) and seem to have the same drop rate as the Crashing Spirits. Plus, if you mess up or go afk n die, you have easy access to your body!

Comment by 15788

Ah i must have just died in a really stupid place then. I still reckon Lake Spirits are better though.

Comment by Lobo2me

Tried the fishing at Elemental Plateu. Fishing normally there doesn't give anything better, but there is a school there called Pure Water, which will let you fish 3 times and gives 1-2 Mote of Water each time. Average drop rate is 4,2 mote of water from each school, there are 6 spawns there with 1 hour respawn time.

This is the same place with the mobs that drop Mote of Water.

Comment by 17690

I'd have to say that the fastest place to grind these is from the Shimmerscale Eels. With a 70 lock I can swim around Sylmer Lake, and never have to stop while farming. Assuming there isn't competition, I can usually net about 4 primals per hour (which includes a drink with each lap of the lake.), with very little effort. Since the mobs are lvl 64, they drop fast, and there is much less competition than on the elemental plateau. If there is competition, it tends to be lower level folks, who can easily be shoo'ed or ganked.

This location does have the drawback of being water, so you'll benefit from a waterbreathing buff, or a swimming speed buff; but I can still farm fast without either of these. You also have to go to the banks to eat or drink, but that isn't too much of a problem. (you can drink under the right waterfall without being attacked.)

What's more, this is a quick ride away from Shattrath, and does not require a flying mount, and you can head back to town easily to empty out your bags.

(The drop tables for them were changed several weeks ago when they primarily dropped motes of mana, hence the low drop rate which I feel isn't accurate. It should be around 25%)

Comment by Glucose

If you wanna farm Mote of water, then get your fishing skill to 330, and attach a +100 fishing lure make sure you got +2 fishing on your gloves (buy some grey cloth gloves) and you got a +20 fishing pole.

Then make your way to nagrand, start with the water at halaa, and move along the water from there upto the water elementals (flying mount/form is needed)

Comment by 28138

Another good spot for non fisherman farming is the lagoon in Zangarmarsh.
The 61-62 eels in that lake have a 16% drop rate. They also drop a lot of greens.

Close to the lake darkcrest sentrys floats around in the naga villages, they have around 30% drop rate. They call for help before dying so be sure to pull them away from naga mobs.

As a warrior i farm very slowly compared to other classes but i can manage at least one or two primals an hour.

Comment by 24674

I got a from a pure water in nagrand... it was kind really disappointing

Comment by Searah

Another Thumbs up for Skettis area. Especially if you are a Warlock: The elementals are pretty squishy, so bring out the Felguard if you have it and cast unending breath on yourself. Got 5 primal water/hour there with only 2 other people in the area.

Comment by seidule

Skettis Surgers and Shimmerscale Eels are EASILY farmed with an Azure Silk Belt and Hook of the Master Angler (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=19979#00zc). See my comment @ the Hook page for more info.

Comment by 38680

I made a quick outline of where all the best places to farm motes are. Very useful if, like me, you are farming many of them for a recipe of some sort.

Layout:
(Zone) NPC name - Coordinates - % drop rate - link to page at Wohead

Mote of Air:
(Nagrand) Storming Wind-Ripper - 69.21 (Throne of Elements) - 33.9% - http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=22310

Mote of Fire:
(Nagrand) Raging Fire-Soul - 69.21 (Throne of Elements) - 34.1 - http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=22311

Mote of Water:
(Terokkar Forest) Crashing Wave-Spirit - 63.17 (North-Western Throne of Elements) - 33.7 - http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=22309

Mote of Earth:
(Blade's Edge Mountains) Sundered Rumbler - (Basically above and all below Area 52) - 18.8 - http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=18881

Mote of Mana:
(Netherstorm) Mana Wraith - 36.60 and 31.73 (Anywhere above Area 52 and more below. While you're at it, kill the Nether Rays as well, they have just as good of a chance to drop and are mostly in the same area) - 25.8 - http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=18864

Mote of Life:
(Zangarmarsh) I didn't find any specific place to farm for these because the zone is just rich with them. But I would suggest farming the Bogg/ Starving Bogg Lords and Fungal /Starving Fungal Giants because they are all very close. - The Spawning Glen (SW Zangarmarsh) and East of there is the Quagg Ridge - Very similar drop rates on all 4 mobs that I pointed out, 18.2 to 18.8 - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=22575#00Rmz

Mote of Shadow:
By far the most commonly found mote. This is dropped in almost every zone and can be easily farmed anywhere. But there may be a few exceptional areas just because npcs that drop them are close together, non-elite, and easy to kill. Here's one spot in a few that are exceptional:
(Nagrand) Voidspawn - Again, no specific coords, but all around Oshu'Gun, the bigass crystal SW Nagrand. - 18.4 - http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=17981

Comment by 2338

Fishing in the Pure Water pools that spawn on the Elemental plateu has been as fast if not faster than any solo or group farming I've done for motes. This includes both 2 man farming the plateue which cause us to have to wait for spawns, and group farming the mobs in sketis.

Each pool yields 3-6 motes and you can grab 4-6 pools until you have to wait for them to respawn which I believe is around 30 minutes. Takes no more than 5-10 minutes to fish them depending on your skill level. I would recommend buffed fishing skill at around 450+

For any non-farm-friendly classes like me a holy priest this has been a great way to get primals. About 2 primals per trip to the plateu with no killing involved at all.

Comment by Sweetcakes

Motes of Water can be fished out of the "Pure Water" puddles you see in edge of the waters almost near the coasts in big lakes. You can loot about 1-2 from each cast, can catch up to 4-8 per "Pure Water" Puddle. They are all over in Nagrand - Zangamarsh - Terokkar Forest in the big lakes near the coasts. Most I've gotten from a "Pure Water" Puddle was 8 motes of water. I gotten 4 times 2x Mote of Water I guess i was very lucky on fishing them.

Comment by 54709

Can anyone confirm the fishing skill required to obtain these from Pure Water? 450+ skill seems steep for a fishing spot in Nagrand.

Comment by 68347

Since Motes have a use function, you can drag them to your Action Bar to easily track how many you got while farming.

Comment by 78329

waht fishing skill do i need to fish it?

Comment by Cutter

I have compiled a mini guide which is useful for pasteing into addons sucks as nIce Papyrus (notepad type addon for easy reading)

Simple Mote Grinding

Mote of Mana - 2g (BO wowhead average)

(Netherstorm)
Mana Wraith 36.60 and 31.73 - 25.8%
Nether Rays
Warp Monstrosity
Mageslayer
Mana Seeker
Void Monstrosity
---------------------------------------------------------

Mote of Air - 3g

(Nagrand)
Storming Wind-Ripper - 69.21

(Shadowmoon Valley)
Enraged Air Spirits - 63.59

---------------------------------------------------------

Mote of Fire - 3.5g

(Nagrand)
Raging Fire-Soul - 69.21

(Blade's Edge Mountains)
Vile Fire-Soul - 30.82

(Shadowmoon Valley)
Enraged Fire Spirit - 48,45

---------------------------------------------------------

Mote of Water - 2.3g

(Terokkar Forest)
Crashing Wave-Spirit - 63.17

(Terokkar Forest)
Skettis Surger - 64,69

---------------------------------------------------------

Mote of Earth - 3.4g

(Blade's Edge Mountains)
Sundered Rumbler - 31,61

Comment by Bawlss

in throne of elements area you can get 6 primals per hour without fishing if theres no competition

and im a healer. holy priest

Comment by 75994

Mote Fishing:

Where: Elemental Plateau. They spawn more at night than during the day regardless of the spot. Repop roughly 10 minutes per spot. here are six spots.

Loot: Average 6-8 motes per spot, curious crate (fel iron ore, knothide scraps, etc), inscribed scrolls (levl V).

Fishing 225(+100)

Comment by 95917

I advise people to farm mote of water of Shimmerscale Eel

I walked in to the lake, started a jimi hendrix album and grinded for 1 hour and 20 minutes, got 5 primal.

They respawn very fast and are easily killed.

Comment by 102386

As a frost mage, hunting water elementals is quite a pain in the behind, so I went for the Eels above Shat.
Result: 5 Primal Water in 40 minutes.
Costs: 2 Nagrand Berries, ~1g of repair costs. Easily covered by the regular drops (9 stacks of greys, ~20g).

Pulling groups, AE them when they're together while swimming away backwards, then freezing them, Cone of Cold, and another AE to finish it off. I'm a regular frost mage who turned 70 a few days ago, but hasn't worked on gear yet. +470 damage, 8k mana.
Still, almost no downtime. When you can't find big groups, you can wand them one by one to let your mana regenerate, and before you know it, you're good to go.
Ate/drank 2 times in 40 minutes. Evocation covered the rest.

Comment by 24592

Great place to farm for a holy priest. If you have Holy Nova you can easily AOE these things down. Just SWP to pull, and gather up a many as you can, probably 4-5 before risking a reset.. 2-3 Holy Novas and let the dots finish them. The shadow priest and warlock grinding next to me couldn't even keep up... After an hour I had 53 motes, 10 stacks of the fragments and such, and 6 greens. Not a bad haul for a holy priest.

Comment by 41236

As of 2.3 you can see the gas clouds on your mini map. But I think they only appear if you have a helm that shows you vortexes. But I can see them with out one..it probably wont show up on the mini map.

Comment by clarkeyboy

Farmed up 10 Primals in 2 hours in Skettis on the Skettis Surger. Boring, but an abundance of mobs and lots of other things going on around you keep it interesting.

Drop rate seems to deteriorate over time though.

Comment by gingergod5

i can confirm that these are 1 of the best mobs to farm mote of water from, 1 nagrand cherry and 30 mins later i had killed over 60 mobs and i came out with over 70g worth of motes and drops, as a 70 fury dps warrior i found it extremely easy to kill these and 3 hits was all it took to kill them, i often found that my charge ability wasnt cooled down in time for my next victim :D

never went below 10500/10964 even when taking on up to 3 of them at once.

Comment by 27932

The Hydrocane
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=9452
Best Gnomeregan drop for a class without water-breathing and with the ability to wield a staff.
I still use this thing at lvl 70, and can't see myself ever taking it out of my inventory.
Great for any of these underwater mobs that drop motes.

Comment by 141811

If you have an alt that you don't play as often, a strategy to use for farming these would be to level their fishing to 375 (tedious I know, but worth it), then log them in elemental plateau. There are 6 spawn locations for "pure water" which yield 4-10 motes each. They are about a 30-minute respawn. On lower-population realms you can usually log in every 30-45 minutes, fish 3-6 of these pure waters & then log off. Takes 8 minutes to fish all 6 if you have no competition.

I do this on my priest that I never play & usually fish up 2-3 primals per log-on. Also NOTE: that when you fish up one of these "pure water" pools, it often triggers an event to respawn another one. If you are on the far east or far west side of the map & fish 1 of the pure water pools, check the other side to see if another respawned before you decide to log out.

Comment by 364

If you are an engineer, then it's possible to farm for these motes using the Zapthrottle Mote Extractor in Zangarmarsh. When running around Zangarmarsh, you'll come across glowing blue clouds hovering overground. With the Zapthrottle Mote Extractor, you can suck the motes of water right out of them.

Usually you can get between 3-5 motes per cloud this way.

Engineers get the schematic for this device by completing the quest "The Zapthrottle Mote Extractor!" ( Horde // Alliance ) in Zangarmarsh.

You can use this extractor to acquire motes from other regions of the Outlands as well.

Comment by 64664

Since Zangar is quite a huge area it can be very hard to locate the clouds.
Though the clouds give up to 3-5 motes, so getting 3 clouds is most of the time 1 Primal.
On the long run it's probably very boring to run through the area for hours.

Comment by 80158

All of your comments are helpful, especially since water and air are the two hardest types for me to get. However, being a miner, I have a built in advantage for motes of fire and of earth. These drop regularly from all mining nodes in Outland, the fire from fel iron nodes and the earth from any nodes.

Comment by johannhowitzer

Another nice spot for Motes of Water that is frostmage-friendly:

Muck Spawn in Nagrand. Make laps around the base of Halaa, they'll respawn by the time you make a lap, and the drop rate is 1% better than the eels in Terokkar. If you don't like swimming, fight Muck Spawn instead - the water's shallow enough that you never have to dive. Saves in waterbreathing potions if you prefer to ignore breath. Kills slightly slower but I find it's less of a bother, I hate underwater fighting. Not immune to frost spells.

EDIT: Maybe the biggest reason I like these better is that they feel faster - I was able to clear the entire pool of Eels and had to wait for respawn. Downtime = bad, and makes the Eels not any better than the Muck Spawn if you have a lot of bonus damage like me.

Comment by 313595

For all the farmer for the mote and traders
Do not merge those motes,
if your bag space allow!

The are no way that can convert Primal Water back to motes of Water now
And there are 3 receipts that use motes of water, in which set the price of mote
more expensive than those primal
(since the primal had little value than mote for leveling)
So, don't merge them!

in my server, one primal sold at 10g,
while one mote sold at 70s
don't be a poor soul like me, who lost 6g on a single right click

Comment by Gortalak

I strongly suggest farming these from the Skettis Surgers in Terokkar Forest. Not because of higher droprates, but because you cannnot kill them faster then they respawn.

I.E a unlimited supply of mobs to kill

Comment by xxxstonie

Carefull !
You can turn 10 (9) Motes of Water into 1 Primal Water.
BUT You CANNOT Turn 1 Primal Water into 10(9) Motes of Water !

Comment by ziggy29

I can confirm that you can fish the motes in the Elemental Plateau in Nagrand with a "real" fishing skill as low as 201, as I just did it. I used an Aquadynamic Fish attractor lure (+100 for 10 mins) and Nat Pagle's FC-5000 rod for another +20, bringing me up to 321 apparent skill. But I was having no trouble fishing these up, getting 1-2 motes with maybe 2/3 of my casts and assorted stuff with the rest.

Comment by Jdekik

Actually seems like you don't need higher fishing skill to try on those "pure water" pools in this patch 4.2.2, I tried with my 30 points fishing skill getting 1-2 motes per cast as you can see here http://oi54.tinypic.com/330v1tu.jpg so you can do a full rotation killing these Water Elementals then fishing, killing, fishing, and on and on, you'll be surprised on how many Motes of water you can get at the end.

Comment by 105897

One interesting thing I just found out

Mote of Water is the only elemental Mote you cannot turn into Primal when you are mounted (and in air).

When you want to turn it in Primal it only show you "You are mounted" message. Other elemental Motes will turn into Primal with no problem even when flying in air.

Comment by Deathfrog93

So, if you are on a character at around the level when you enter Nagrand, and you are in a tight spot gold-wise, Primal water is a nice thing to farm. I bet you there is plenty of other stuff to farm at a lowish level, but I found this to be very easy. in nagrand, just under Halaa, there are A TON of s around Halaa basin in Nagrand. if you make a solid circuit around the lake, while killing all the elementals, by the time you reach where you started, they will have all spawned by then. also, if your lucky, the elementals will sometimes drop . one more thing is that you only have to be around level 64 to farm these, although, if you are level 85, you could farm much quicker, but then again, as level 85, these will not give as significant an amount of gold as some other stuff. in the auction house, primal water can go for at least 100g, but nowadays with everyone putting everything in the auction house for at least 200 gold higher than they are actually worth, it all depends. hope this was helpful!

Comment by JuliaHB

Mote of Water (and therefore Primal Water, which you get by combining 10 Mote of Water) can be harvested from killing water creatures, but I found the absolute quickest and best way to get them is from fishing in the "Pure Water" Pools (I found six so far at the small lake above the Throne of the Elements in Nagrand and two down at Skysong Lake near the Throne of Elements). These "Pure Water" Pools, like fish pools, can be tracked by using your "Find Fish" ability, and I noticed that they have more of a bluish tint then regular fish pools (hovering over them with your pointer will also label them as "Pure Water"). You can fish from them anywhere from 2-4 times, and from these eight pools I got 48 Mote of Water. Much faster than killing creatures!

As a side note you can kill the Crashing Wave-Spirits or Lake Spirits while waiting for the Pure Water Pools to respawn. These elementals will mostly drop Elemental Fragment and Elemental Shard, but you will also get Mote of Water occasionally.

Comment by 903726

Best way to do farm the motes is by fishing Pure Water at the Throne of the Elements, you get 1-3 motes per attempt and sometimes an offhand or chest, the elementals surrounding the pools can also be farmed for the motes, but at a lower rate, I managed to farm all the motes I needed in a matter of hours, using Raid Finder and Heroics to pass the time between respawns for the Pure Water.

Comment by mykro9

I found that resetting Black Temple before the first boss is a very easy way to farm motes of water. The 2 groups of the small water elementals (one group before the pipe leading up, and one group out of the way) and the 2 big guys right in front of the first boss are great sources. You can also kill and loot the water elementals in the packs with other mobs and ignore the rest of the mobs, or vanish/invisibility to drop aggro.

Pic with second group most people skip while farming BT
http://i57.tinypic.com/21jorro.jpg

Comment by Kurasu

One trip through the trash in Black Temple netted me 55 motes. That's a total of 5 primals worth for only a couple minutes work as a bear druid. Kill the trash, avoid pulling the boss, leave and reset, and you can keep doing it for pretty much as many motes as you need (until you reach your maximum instance limit, that is).

Comment by blabblez

If you are using your Zapthrottle Mote Extractor to farm Swamp Gas in Zangarmarsh, Here are some Tomtom coords from the swamp gas page.

Feel free to comment and add more. These will need 3 separate macros. Make sure to only use them in Zangarmarsh :)

/way 61.5 66.5
/way 61.8 35.2
/way 19 23.63
/way 26.14 32.86
/way 31.48 58.54
/way 33.18 54.97
/way 41.74 52.75
/way 52.39 66.2
/way 34.49 34.97
/way 33.65 39.2
/way 59.92 48.37
/way 85.40 28.48
/way 40.4 61.9
/way 31.6 66.27
/way 24.35 58.88

Provided by Odorous
/way 85 49
/way 78 79
/way 75 83
/way 65 73
/way 63 66
/way 60 54
/way 58 52
/way 59 35
/way 46 58
/way 45 56
/way 38 58
/way 24 56
/way 9 51

/way 30 50
/way 34 42
/way 32 38
/way 31 32
/way 32 30
/way 28 24
/way 16 20
/way 48 31
/way 72 35
/way 50 58
/way 26 61
/way 12 46

Comment by woofpuppy

I get about 26 per run killing ONLY the Aqueous Swarm as you come into the instance. There are 2 big groups of them to the right and around the bend. If you are a hunter turn on track elementals and you will see the 2 big groups.

Comment by 975146

To speed things up in the old Nagrand lake, I use Hook of the Master Angler to turn into a fish and swim much faster using "/cancelaura Master Angler" in my attack macro to remove the fish transformation when I want to attack. I then put it back up as soon as combat ends and swim like a fish to the next elemental; get around way quicker.

Comment by Haitham

The very best way to get these quickly is to go into Black Temple and kill only the water elementals. Be sure not to kill the boss. Then go out and reset the instance. You can easily gather up over a hundred motes in under an hour.

Comment by Mayo77

More testing is required for sure but, this reagent (talking BT runs) sure feels like it was nerfed since 7.3.5!

I got about 30% less motes of water than i "normally" would pre 7.3.5..

can anyone else verify this? or upvote if you agree!

Comment by Lilus

Here are up to date farming numbers for 8.0 if you plan to hit the Black Temple. First, a quick recap on the method:

You are specifically hunting down the water elementals in the Karabor Sewers. While you can kill the other trash mobs for additional gear drops and gems, I would only recommend it your server has a strong transmog market. The gems are bound to be hit and miss at this point as well since leveling jewelcrafting through Burning Crusade content is no longer needed.

It should go without saying, but use caution with the two Aqueous Lords located near Naj'entus! Don't use abilities that can chain between enemies, and try not to kill them too close to him. Pull them away from him with non-damaging skills, and kill them at a distance that won't aggro Nej'entus. The last thing you want to do here is pull him into a battle or kill him by mistake and cause an instance lock. If you don't think you can reliably attack them without triggering him, then don't attempt it.

Anyway, here are my mote numbers over four runs:

1st run: 13
2nd run: 9
3rd run: 19
4th run: 16

One clear of the sewer takes about five minutes. Average drop rate over four runs is 14 motes. If we assume you can clear the area 12 times in an hour, then you should realistically expect a minimum of 160 Motes of Water/16 Primal Waters in an hour (rounded down).

Of my four runs, if you were somehow lucky enough to hit, or even exceed my best run on every attempt, you could possibly be looking at 230 Motes/23 Primals per hour in the best case scenario.

Assuming worst case scenario? Expect about 100 Motes/10 Primals.

Comment by Hootling

Saw all the comments here and tried Black Temple. After doing that for about a half hour I went to Nagrand to try that out.

The lake near the Throne of the Elements - I was getting probably 3x as many motes of water here than I was grinding the sewer of BT.

If you have a Loot A Rang and a ranged attack - you don't even have to get in the water.

I did this on a priest so I could levitate, very handy.

If you fish it's even better, because there are pools in the lake you can fish the motes from as well.

Comment by vbezhenar

For me steamvault normal farm was the fastest method to get few primals. There are three patrols of elementals near entrance and they drop 10-15 motes, it takes 1-2 minutes to kill them.

Comment by dsiacono

I killed every single Crashing Wave-Spirit I could find & they dropped 0 Motes of Water. Maybe WoW made changes but I found that fishing up from Pure Water pools gave me 100% Mote of Water with each fishing throw! The pools of Pure Water are found throughout Nagrand in Outland.

Comment by ArchdruidOak

The best place to farm these is Black Temple's first area. Destroy all water elementals up the the exit pipe. Do NOT fight boss. You can leave and reset the raid as long as no bosses are down. 30+ motes per clear of the first area trash.

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Mote of Water

Item Level 11

Use: Turn ten Motes of Water into Primal Water.
Crafting Reagent

Max Stack: 1000

Sell Price: 4

Vendor Locations

This item can be purchased in Netherstorm (2) and Terokkar Forest (2).

Mote of Water

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