anyone done shaman epic start to finish since latest patch?

[Silent]

Just wondering if anyone has done the shaman epic start to finish in latest patch, I started up a shaman on red and I noticed some things were acting wrong. One was peg leg which I read in the bug forums obviously isn't just me(spirit doesn't spawn when you kill peg leg). But anyway, I did the epic about a year ago and it was no problem. I can't seem to find the notes about any shaman changes regarding faction grind or anything like that.

Basically here is what I am stuck with:

Killed rathe mnt mob for tiny gem(turned it into NFP to get opaque gem to start erud crossing)

Did test of patience in erud crossing, went to WK turned gem in(amiably) + woe/envy/marr still amiably as expected.

Went to Spirit in EJ was able to now get the journal to combine 6 pages in(would not speak at indiff to me anymore) combined pages, turned the finished book into him and it was eaten, no faction gained.

I know I skipped black dire for the boots, as it was simply easier to go straight to ej and turn the book in because I didn't have the people able to kill black dire. But it makes me question had I actually got black dires pelt would the spirit in EJ just have eaten that on turn in also like my books? Is amiably all you need to do the sow boot quest? Does it somehow give you a ton of faction that BUMPS you out of amiably and allows for the books from CoM to be turned in?

Last time I basically did all of this, but I was able to turn the combined book in at amiably for faction. Someone told me one of the patches nerfed this to stop people from 'faction grinding' this way because it was too easy to get faction once amiable to max ally?

Any help is appreciated, I know there is the wiki and tons of other guides but nothing so recent to whenever this patch happened that changed something. Mostly I am curious about how I am going to get my faction now other then doing sets of woe/envy/marr turn ins(sounds annoying but I have like 9 sets ready on mules, just have to bind/gate get ported or something for turn ins). Also I do not want black dires pelt to be eaten if this is bugged.