I'd like to add a note concerning Northrend rares and the change in camping strategy since Cata launch.
Before Cata launch, Northrend was a pretty busy zone, criss-crossed by farmers, questers, and other random/bored people, so the average time that any rare remains undiscovered after spawn was pretty short, so the best way to aggressively camp a rare is to continuously monitor all its spawn points. Patrolling at intervals is very likely to cause you to miss the spawn and for someone else to tame/kill it. Thus, the total time you spend camping a rare is most likely to be shortest if you patrol continuously.
However, nowadays, Northrend is fairly deserted, and I believe that changes the spawning pattern of rares due to the rare spawn cap. Because there are a lot fewer people roaming about, the average time that a rare remains undiscovered is much longer now, which has two consequences. Firstly, you do not need to be at the spawn point ASAP to catch it, and so the payoff of continuous camping versus patrolling at intervals diminishes. Secondly, due to the rare spawn cap, the existing, unfound rares could be holding the your rare spawn back by a significant length of time. Of course, this isn't to say that you won't run into other people who want the same rare you do, and thus creating much much more competition and putting timely presence at more of a premium. However, if you consider that camping continuously without regard of the other rares could cause you to wait several times the usual respawn timer, I think if you weigh by probability, total time spent per rare is likely to be lower if you do quick patrols at intervals, and if you were able to get someone to help you or get on a second account and start killing/rehoming other rares in the meanwhile, it could significantly shorten your wait-time.
In short, my advice to anyone looking for a Northrend rare currently is to just check at random intervals (I usually check every hour or so) instead of going full-out search-and-destroy mode (well not so much destroy obviously but you know what I mean). This is a purely probabilistic approach to minimizing total time spent, and obviously your actual time spent could vary wildly depending on conditions and luck, and of course if you just absolutely had to have the next spawn, the only way to ensure that is still continuous monitoring. I hope this is helpful to people setting out on their search, and best of luck to everyone
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He's one of the rares that did not get put back in.
