Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 109 - Gear Check Aisle 5

Aprillian, Glanthur and Ashayo discuss another week of playing World of Warcraft, Blizzard's great MMORPG.

Contest Ongoing send an email to ctrlaltwow@gmail.com telling us how you play WoW, either as an altaholic or dealing with it in your family life to being placed in a drawing for a month free of WoW or a $10 iTunes Gift Card.

What We've Been Doing:

Aprillian

Decided to quad box in Hellfire Blood Furnace. Took time for the non flyers to get to the instance. Stupid Fel Orcs kept mind controlling my Succubus. Ended up having to stop halfway through. Had big decision to make, do dailies and make the journey back to the instance, or skip them. Spent the whole week going back and forth.

Felt Good getting my bank over 2000g. With my main Bank Alt selling most of the stuff he had and the money I got from selling pets, I was able to get my money back up. He also sold a bunch of enchanting stuff from my Enchanter.

Thursday night took Aprillian and Epril over to Dragonblight so I could do the cloth cool downs. Then back to Hellfire

Ashayo

Oracles - Cobra

Asheal - VoA - Got tier chest piece

Asheal - hit 445 tailoring - Glacial Bag 22 slot - 800g

Levelling Anomander - Got to 68, headed to Northrend and got all the flight points.

Heroic Oculus - Trying for achievement with just bronze drakes (dps) - no heals or tank. Close (500k), but no cigar.

Flasks - 2 for 1hr instead of 1 for 2hrs - one word : "Granularity". Waste to take a 2hr one if 1/2hr left of raid schedule.

Paid transfers are down.

Alliance of Aus 3rd birthday ; drinks, lottery, costume comp, darts, hide& seek - winner!

Glanthur

Changed guilds

Worked on dailies for Arlaerus and Glanthur

Glanthur got Crossbow skills and is now geared to play with the big boys and girls

Bladed Edge

The Bladed Edge

Hey all, Blade here...

In this trying time of collapsing financial markets one thing has grabbed my attention... two actually...
Now this isn't meant as an addon plug or anything... just my casual observations...
See... with the help of a guildie (Miy) I finally figured out some bonus features of the new(er) Auctioneer addon... and it's made a world of difference to auctioning...
Two things... one. There's a double-arrow at the top of the auction screen when you talk to an auctioneer with your addon loaded... this is your 'quick scan' feature... what *used* to take twenty minutes or more is now done in three... that makes the process *SO* much faster, it isn't even funny. I literally hop onto my banking alt, check his mail, scan the AH (called the 'getall' feature), put whatever didn't sell back onto the AH and log in about five minutes or so.
Second... the Appraiser function. It's the button at the bottom of the window. It shows you (on the left) a list of all the stuff in your bags... and as you click on each item, the display will show you how many items are currently on the AH (thanks to your getall scan mere moments ago) and will suggest a price for your items... it ALSO lets you change your stack size (if you want to sell stuff in less than full stacks) and allows you to select less than your total number of items... if you're clever, you won't glut the market with tons and tons of items... less of your items up on the market gives you a better chance of selling them at a reasonable price, believe it or not. Put your stuff up there a few at a time... cause you KNOW someone's gonna undercut you in an attempt to sell her... I mean *their* items instead.



And... Altoholic... By the Beard of my old Uncle Throgg is this a useful addon!
Everything is there for my alts... how long they've played, how much money they have, what's in each of their inventories, in their banks, what they're wearing, their professions (which are even linkable into chat, so I can instantly answer someone's request for a Master Blacksmith, even if I'm not playing my smith at the time). Now that I have it, I cannot imagine not using it.
Ol' Blade loves it, he does.

Onward!

From the Dirty Little tricks Department...
Let's talk super-combos...
There's a reason Mages are both hated and so often the target of "QQ-nerf-Mages-QQ" forum threads...
Here's one you probably already heard of... everyone must have used this one... I know *I* did...

#showtooltip Pyroblast
/cast Presence of Mind
/cast Arcane power
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Pyroblast

Pretty self-explanatory... Presence of Mind makes it intant, Arcane Power ups the damage significantly and Pyroblast... well... it's a one-shot 'hey-how-ya-doin-oops-I-done-

blowed-you-up' macro... enjoy!

And here's one that wowwiki supplied (props to the writer)... Ol' Blade loves his Frost Mage...

/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide();
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Icy Veins
/cast [nopet] Summon Water Elemental
/cast [pet] Freeze
/petattack [target]
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show();

As an aside, all the /script functions block any error messages from suddenly popping up and ruining your 'Ultra-Combo!'
It's a bit tricky to pull off... the first click pulls out your Water Elemental, pops one of your trinkets and casts Icy Veins... the second press of this rather convoluted macro pulls up the targeting reticule for your pet's Freeze attack and set your pet to attack your target. Here's where it gets tricky. As quickly as possible tap the mouse button to drop your pet's Freeze attack, then cast your Frostbolt, followed rather rapidly by your Ice Lance.
The end result? At *least* two attacks that have a rather large chance of critting... if you're lucky, you might be able to squeeze out a second Ice Lance... adding it all up, and assuming all your spells crit, you should be able to drop any enemy of your level with this macro. If you don't, you still have your *own* Frost Nova in reserve... which will net you another chance at a Frostbolt + Ice Lance critical combo.

Moving on...

From Ol' Blade's Easter Egg Basket...
Mrs. Blade and I recently sat down and pulled a bit of a marathon... watched all six Star Wars movies over two days... well... that's not quite correct... we slogged through the first (meaning the latest) three, then sat back and cleansed out minds with the original three.
It seems some folks at Blizzard are quite the fans as well... from the obvious weapons-that-look-like-lightsabers (the Argent Avenger, the Blade of Wizardry and Teebu's Blazing Longsword for example...) to the not-so-obvious... but once you find them, you wonder how you didn't catch them earlier:
- Upon death, and if they spent their talent points correctly (Tier 5 in the Holy tree), a Priest can become the Spirit of Redemption, which is a feature in which the Priest (if struck down in combat) can continue to heal for 15 seconds or so before actually dying. The spell description reads "You have become more powerful than anyone can possibly imagine".
Obi-Wan Kenobi uttered very similar words to his pupil Darth Vader in Star Wars IV: A New Hope... "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine..." moments before Vader strikes him down.
Of course... he didn't appear as a Spirit Healer that way a Priest character will...
- For you Alliance types... in the same movie, a young (and whiny) Luke Skywalker utters a line to his uncle: "But I was going to Toshi Station to pick up some power converters!"... conveniently, the Alliance area known as Toshley's Station in Blade's Edge Mountains has a conveniently labelled quest for him... I mean you... "Picking Up Some Power Converters".
- Also in the Blade's Edge Mountains is another NPC (R-3DO) a cute reference to the to droids R2-D2 and C-3PO. When spoken to, it states that it knows "more than two languages", a reference to 3PO's oft-repeated phrase of "I am fluent in over six million forms of communication."

As always, an awesome podcast guys!

Loremaster Blade

Gear Questions

Questions from last week:

Email A from Jason

Hello all,

I'm very much a latecomer to WoW. I signed up for the free trial on 22
October 2008, and have been playing ever since... hard to believe it's
only just coming up on five months! Back on 30 January, my druid
dinged 80; I then rolled a dwarf hunter, who dinged 80 yesterday. I've
also got a human mage who's sitting at 70; he's my oldest toon which
I've been leveling with a friend, so play time is limited to when we
can get together online.

All my toons are still equipped with quest rewards. I've never run an
instance, so have had no opportunity to pick up purples. I've worked
out that the only (apparent) way to get the really good stuff is to
join a guild and start raiding... though that seems a little
problematic, as my gear is not good enough (it seems) for even the
easiest instances that people are still running.

Anyway, I was very much relieved when Aprillian indicated she was in a
similar situation. I'm not the only one!

I'd like to take you up on your offer to provide gearing suggestions
for listener toons--I realise that you'll probably get quite a few
such requests, so I won't mind if I miss out. My druid is the one I
want to gear up for raiding; he's currently feral-spec'd, though I'll
probably dual-spec him as resto when patch 3.1 comes out (meaning I'll
need two sets of gear... sigh).

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Proudmoore&n=Aeonel

I really enjoy listening to you three discuss your experiences
in-game; it's amazing how many useful tips turn up when one of you
mentions something in passing. Count me as another dedicated (if
late-arriving) listener!

Best regards,
Jason.

Email B from Ginsue

Aprillian,

I love you but my dear you are a noob. I say this in the kindest way possible.

We all start out as noobs and I think your altaholism has contributed to this for you. You really should gear up one of your toons and see some end game content, even if its just the 5 mans and heroic 5 mans. You need to join a supportive guild and try to stay out of the guild drama. They all have some.

Take heart there is a cure. Ashayo is correct about wowwiki.com is a great place to start to find out how to play your toon and what types of stats you should be looking for. For your hunter you need AP and AGI first and some intel for mana pool. If you hover over each stat on your gear window it will tell you what each one does for you.

Once you get a better understanding of your toon try checking out www.elitistjerks.com they have everything you would want to know and then some.

Once you figure out what stats you need go to www.wow-loot.com. They have done a great job with loot. You can sort by class. Then you can look at where your loot drops or what rep factions you need to get your loot. There is a tab to change it over to heroic mode for the instances as well.

Since you are a HUGE podcast star I'm sure an Earthen Ring guild would love to have you. If not transfer to Anub' Arak and we (Warpath) will take you. Once you are in a good guild and spend some time on vent with good well educated wow'ers you will learn a lot.

When you run instances that you do not know. You will screw up. You will cause wipes. We all have and we will again. That's just part of the game so don't be worried.

Email me with any questions you have and I will try to help. I have been playing for a few years now and I don't have all the answers but I know where to find them.

Good luck this week in Kara and as always "Happy Hunting".

Ginsue

Ginsue Part 2

More hunter info

Hello Aprillian,

We guys have a habit of trying to fix things so I have taken it onto myself to help you find more information to help you along in learning the things that every top notch, mob slaughtering hunter should know.

Being a podcast queen you have prolly heard about this already but, there is a podcast out there called "Big Red Kitty" and I think you will find it very helpful. The host talks a bit fast but he is very wise in the ways of hunters. The latest episode goes over the talent tree and hit rating cap. I haven't listened to a ton of them but it seems to be a very informative without a lot of the silly stuff you get from some podcasters. Not that thats all bad.

I hope the web page suggestions I sent were helpful.

I'm not looking to have these emails read on the show. These can be just between you and I. I figure the more informed you are the more informative you will be to listeners thus helping your podcast stay on which helps keep me from nodding off into the stuper that doing daily quests causes.

Keep up the great work an I will send you more info as i trip over it.

Happy Hunting,

Ginsue


Email C from Eranth

Well met, guildmates Aprillian, Ashayo and Blade!

Greetings and Salutations, Glanthar of the Alliance.

Just finished listening to 107 podcast from Monday and wanted to fire off my response to the request for how we’re blundering through WoW with our gear and/or gaming as a casual player.

You’ll find Eranth on the Armory here: http://tinyurl.com/Eranth

You can find my Be Imba! Report here: http://be.imba.hu/?zone=US&realm=Earthen+Ring&character=Eranth

I’d add a link from http://www.wow-heroes.com, but I can’t seem to find a way to do that, but it looks like my score is 1195 there. I think I need some minor upgrades on enchants there, but right now I’m so casual, I’ve been just buying them off the AH, so I’m getting items that score 12 instead of 15 on that scale. I need better trinkets and rings.

You might also want to look at http://gear-wishlist.appsot.com/ for upgrades on gear. Eranth can be reviewed at: http://gear-wishlist.appspot.com/wishlist?character=eranth&realm=earthen+ring&region=us&site=Wowhead with the Wowhead settings.

This really leads me into this question: Has anyone collaborated on some sort of ‘guide’ on how to play a class for the casual player, in a sort of step-by-step manner how to gear up after you hit 80? I’ve seen guides, even generic ones, to get you to 80 pretty quickly, which a guide from http://www.wow-pro.com/ to give me a jump start, which I liked. http://wow-pro.com/leveling_guides/james_horde_leveling_guide and there’s an Alliance one there too. I still point people at those guides if I’m asked. But, now that I’m 80, as Aprillian says, I’m going to have to go do some more research about what I should be doing to gear up, to be ready, to improve myself for the end-game.

I occasionally get to do some Heroic runs, and I always start by letting people know if, or how many times I’ve done something, because I don’t want folks to be frustrated if I make a mistake. I just want them to tell me so I don’t repeat it, and hope that I don’t make us wipe! As most of the runs I make are guild-based, with just a little PUG added if we need it, then that’s usually not a problem. I do love to run with guildmates. It makes it so much easier to sort out loot, ask questions, etc. But, I could go on about that. I just want to not be in a position as I get to do Heroic runs, that I’m the reason we can’t put someone down because I’m ill-geared. Thus, some sort of end-game guide for classes would be a really useful tool. But, I also know that as a casual player, I’m not the one who could really put something like that together.

I look forward to your input if you have any for me. Always happy to take constructive suggestions!

Keep up the good work!

“Be well…”

Eranth

Beastmaster Hunter of AIE

Email D from Keelhaul

Hi guys. Great show last week as usual. I am glad that my little intro guide to dual boxing has helped a couple of people. In game I have been splitting time between my Tauren Druid who is now level 79 and my Dorf Hunter who is 80 and working on his Oracle rep. I think I have about one more sweep of dailys on him until he is revered and can start buying eggs!!

Thank you so very much on the cooking daily tip about looking for the half empty wine glasses in the dalaran sewers, that has made that quest so much easier for me. It was my least favorite since I also had difficulties clicking on the glasses like Aprilian. Now make sure you remove that tip from the archives and dont tell anyone else :D

During the week I usually only have time to do a handful of dailys before I start the day off getting the kids ready for school and heading off to work. The weekends are normally my days to explore dungeons. Last weekend I was able to run two instances on my Tauren Druid. He is feral so I typically tank. The first one we ran was Gun'Drak, which I had ran before on my hunter but the second was the Oculus. I have heard alot of folks complain about this instance in guild chat, but I ran it on a PuG and we had a blast. I thought it was very cool fighting on dragons! I hope they add more instances like this into the game.

Thanks again for the great show.

-Keelhaul

Email E from Caydyn

Hi Aprillian, Glanthur and Ashayo. I want to start off by saying that I love your podcast. I have a wierd work schedule so I can't listen live most times but I enjoy listening to the archive while I am sitting on the river bank grinding my fishing and cooking :) I have the same alt addiction that you all have and was thinking it would be helpful to get some group therapy. Have you ever thought of picking a server and starting a Ctrl Alt WoW guild for your listeners? I think it would be a lot of fun to get together with other people who are into the alt thing and who listen to the show each week. Thanks for the good commentary and keep up the great work.

Caydyn (Kay-Den)
Altar of Storms

PS Grats to Aprillian for the Kara run :)

Email F from Valathilia


Hello guys and happy early birthday April :)
Valathilia here
Ok so latly I haven't been able to play any of my alts there just boring :(
But I do have a interest in a holy pally or restro shaman
Which should I choose? They both seem like fun but I can't decide which to lv. Any pointers?
Great podcast guys
For the horde
- Valathilia

TWEETS

Xandarr2112@Aprillian @Ashayo @CtrlAltWoW what RP alliance server is Glanthur on?

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Perenolde&n=Chilie

Hey guys, Xandarr again. You mentioned in your last podcast that you would take a look at toons and double check our gear and such. So here is one of my main alts. Could you help me give her a beastmaster makeover?

Emails

Audio Submission:

Well met Guildmates Aprillian, Ashayo and Blade!
Greetings and Salutations, Glanthar of the Alliance.

I thought perhaps I should take a moment and contribute a brief bit of audio for those who have wee-ones, little mini-moo's as I like to think of them being of the Tauren race.

This is sometimes called "Night Time Lullaby" and the tune may be familiar, but the words are more in a Tauren way of thinking, at least to my mind. Something more simple, something in tune with nature and a quiet life.

"Be well..."
Eranth
Beastmaster Hunter of AIE

Email #1 from MO

Hello gang,

sorry I have not emailed the last few weeks. With work and last week going to Vegas to spend my gold, I mean money, it has been a busy few weeks.

I have unfortunately not been playing much wow either but would like to write to you about your last cast, ep 108.

Aprillian, you are so right, in that this game is to have fun. I think we all know that we all are different people and have different playing styles.
I also like to believe we should all respect each other that way.
I too like to mainly solo and do at times enjoy start leveling a new character from level 1.
It would be great if I could raid but for me so far that has not been the fun part of the game.

Also if you do not have this addon, i recommend it.
RatingBuster, there may be other addons similar to it, it basically shows you stats on your gear.
if you have ever looked at BRK's site, you will notice when he used to post pictures of his gear, it would have stats on the bottom too.
oh and sorry to see you go BRK and we will all miss you.

well thats all wowfolks, i have a month left on my raf and hope to have alliance characters to 60 and Glanthur you should definetly level hord; you are always welcome to Balanzzar, a very low and dying realm.
you wont have a sugar daddy but you will have mo your podcast friend who can lend some bags and instance run throughs, just let me know, you can look up the Uptown Tavern guild.

Take care all and thank you for your great work Aprillian, Glanthur and Ashayo.


--
Mo

Email #2 From Eranth

Well met guildmates Aprillian, Ashayo and Blade!

Greetings and Salutations, Glanthar of the Alliance.

I wanted to drop Aprillian a note after listening to the last podcast. I thought I’d share my feelings on getting to group up with other folks from the Guild to do instances, heroic runs, etc.

While I’ve not had enough time in one sitting to run a Raid with the guild, (or anyone else), I’ve had several occasions to get to group up with other Guildmates to run Heroic and non-Heroic instances in Northrend. Your experience isn’t unique! I’ve even had the chance to be the one to pull everyone together, then pass off leadership of the group because I just tell folks up-front, I’ve run this instance X-times, or not at all. I’m happy to follow direction, take instruction and do as I’m told! I also ask for everyone to remember that I’ve not run a lot of instances, and I will make mistakes. I’m happy to go full-tilt-boogie through and work for time. I profess to be a DPS Beastmaster, but I’m not going to say I’m the top-of-the-damage-meter guy. My setup isn’t perfect, and I’ve sent in what I have for my character previously.

I think it’s really awesome that we have a guild that’s filled with folks who help us experience things in instances and have no qualms about letting you take the good loot, ‘cause they’ve already had their drink at the fountain. Share and share alike. You’ll get to pass it forward some day too. I could gush and go on for longer, but you and other guildmates know what I mean.

Now, Ashayo…you’re luck with random dice rolls is JUST like mine. I rarely roll high, I almost ALWAYS roll average when I throw them bones. And I’m a tabletop gamer from way back. It doesn’t seem to matter what sort of ‘dice’ I use, I either throw very poorly, right down the middle, or on the very rare occasion, I get the top of the roll several times in a row…then it’s done for a long while. We need to get Aprillian to blow on those dice before you roll them. ;-)

I’ll be looking forward to your input on folks in the 109 show!

“Be well…”

--Eranth

Beastmaster Hunter of AIE