Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 134 - RAF=Referring Actual Friends

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 or an Authenticator, they are back in the store.

What We've Been Doing:

Aprillian

My New Toon: Sebastiån = http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Earthen+Ring&n=Sebasti%C3%A5n
and David's : Vrishna = http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Earthen+Ring&n=Vrishna

Used a brewfest ram to get my level 22 Troll Priest to Sin'jin village to get her raptor mount. She only had 3 mounts to choose from

Got the Elek on Epril, going to try to get it on Aprillian. Not going for any achievements.

Saw more Violet Proto Drakes

Running Wailing Caverns with BF/David

Got Grunty on

Dark Iron Dwarf cog

Feeding pets

Switching aspects and forth

Spent about 45 min FP jumping with Vrishna

Did a 1.5 levels grinding Yeti in the cave in Hillsbrand

Won 3 Arathi Basin BG's

Ashayo

3.2.2 surprise release - Disconnect bug?

Raids 'n Stuff
- Ashayo ran ToC 10 man this week and won [Icehowl Binding] off the Northrend Beasts. Still struggling with Faction Champions - haven't tried since 3.2.2 nerf.
- Ashayo ran Onyxia 25 man - wiped on trash! A few tries, but got her down.
- Jekle ran VoA for the first time - felt noobish getting achievement on older bosses. Won the tier 9 legs off Koralon. (Don't even have those on my priest or warlock)

Brewfest!
- Coren Direbrew - won the remote. Lost the BoE mace, and 3 mounts. Did the old "summon everyone's alts" and killed him about 20 times in one run
- Going to miss out on Brew of the Year - have to renew subscription!

Pants on Head
- Ran Arcatraz - instance server shutdown just as we started the last boss
- Tried a 5 man ToC group with PoH. Tempeste on her priest, Wych on his hunter, me tanking in dps gear/spec, Grimrok on his warlock (who never runs instances) and Manbone. After a couple of wipes managed to get 1st boss down, but couldn't manage 2nd boss (priest that spawns an add, combined with fears) Went off to Utgarde Keep to kick some butt with Hyp.
- Ran Halls of Lighting on Shadowthrone - pretty much 1st Northrend dungeon. Blizz reset instances AGAIN during the run - at least the 3rd time this week.
- [For the Horde!] run - Got down the Darnassus and Exodar bosses
- Completed Karazhn


Needed 2 more quests in HFP - neither in BF counted. Digging around revealed two "drop" quests that finished it off. Could also have headed to SMV to start chain for Shattered Halls key, which sends you back to HFP
Asharis dings 65 - time for Alchemy specialization quest

Glanthur

Lore Topics:

Uldum and Bael Modan

Home away from Home. The only decent thing in The Barrens. ;)

Oh, I also got the Brewfest Kodo mount. Hehehe.

Bladed Edge

/cry! We miss you Blade. Please come home soon.

Emails

Email #1 from Xesu

Hey there, Aprillian, Ashayo, and Glanthur, Xesu here again. (Yes Ashayo, you were correct, "X-e" produces a "Z" sound, when pronounced properly).

It seems every few shows, someone mentions how they have limited play time. Due to school, I seem to only get in on the weekends. I raid one night a week, that being Friday nights. The rest of the time I do heroics, maybe some arena, or general Guild Riff-raff.

My first piece of advice is: Find people with a similar situation. If you can only raid one night a week, find other people that can only raid one night a week. There is no since being in a guild where you just sit and twiddle your thumbs, hoping an opportunity comes your way. There's also no since sitting in LFG all weekend, trying to PUG a group, that will go nowhere.

Second: Find a guild with great people. I have the luxury of being in AIE, where even if I sit in guild chat, or vent, and just enjoy the people around me, I still feel content at the end of the day.

Third: Find your niche. Maybe you have raided your entire career, because it was what your friends were doing. Try arena, try battlegrounds, try it all! If you are someone who loves to have a "Hardcore" challenge, without a "Hardcore" schedule, definetly give arena a go. All you need is one person, who has generally similar time available to them, and you still get purple pixels.

Well, it seems like I will probably take up 1/2 of the show with this Fortress of Text, but keep up the great work guys, I enjoy tuning in every week.

Xesu

Email #A from Nevik

Hello Aprillian, Ashayo and Glanthur,

I'm writing in because I'm one of those dreaded rogue mains and I might be able to help Turbos with his DPS issue. I'm not an end-all source on all things rogues, but I can definitely give some advice to point Turbos in the right direction.

When I got home to check his armory, I noticed that he's in a lot of PVP gear. He mentioned that he's obtained a lot of gear through pvp, but this kind of gear is really only good for pvp.

The major stat he's missing that is hurting his DPS is his +hit. In his pvp gear he's sitting at +102 hit and should be aiming for at least +237 if he's hitting mobs with debuffed with Imp FF or Misery, otherwise he needs to get up to +315. Hitting +315 will ensure his poisons do not miss if they proc.

He's also running with a very low expertise, sitting at 13, (10 from talents, and only an additional +3 from gear). Ideally he wants to get this up to 26 to remove boss parries and make life easier on the tank. This isn't as important, but should be kept in mind.

Then there's also the issue of him not having gems socketed into his gear. For where his gear is currently, he should be gemming for +hit first, then +agi and maybe +expertise if he doesn't get more pve oriented gear. He needn't worry too much about matching socket colors, but should pay attention to it if it offers a decent return.

He just needs to make sure he picks up a good meta-gem to toss into his head-piece and make sure he has the right colors to activate the meta. Which leads me to enchants in general. He absolutely needs to immediately grind out Sons of Hodir and the Knight of the Ebon Blade for the shoulder and head enchants respectively.

His weapons are decent welfares from the Argent Tournament and he's rocking the best combat talent build for what he has (although he might entertain replacing the glyph of eviscerate with killing spree), but his weapon enchants need to be changed immediately. With the drop in prices on abyss crystals, he really should be rocking dual beserker enchants on his weapons. Or at the very least beserker/mongoose even though mongoose is still pretty pricey especially after the cost of beserker dropped dramatically.

But when it's all said n' done, a rogue lives and dies by his weapons. Upgrading your weapons will upgrade your DPS more than pretty much any other min/max'ng. While raiding may be out of the question, Coren Direbrew drops an awesome dagger for a mutilate build and an awesome BoE mace for a combat rogue (both are rare drops).

If he can't manage a Naxx pug, his best bet is to hope for the best and slowly upgrade his other slots with gear from heroic Trial of the Champion and emblems from running heroics.

One final piece of advice that ties all of this together is to pay attention to his rotation. It's not overly complicated as a combat rogue, just keep SnD (Slice n' Dice) up 100% and you'll keep your DPS up. (The majority of rogue DPS comes from their white damage) After ensuring SnD uptime he should try to keep rupture up as much as possible and weave in eviscerates when SnD and rupture still have a decent amount of time left in them.

BTW, the default UI is awful for keeping track of these, so I'd suggest an addon such as Rogue Power Bars that can help him keep an eye on his SnD and Rupture uptime. He might also want to practice his rotation on a targetting dummy in Org or wherever to learn how to pull that little bit of extra DPS out of his rotation.

Hope my advice is useful to him, he can venture into the Elitist Jerk's forums if he's patient enough to read through the looooonnnnngggg threads. (He'll often see references to plugging stuff into spreadsheets, but I don't think he needs to min/max to /that/ level, especially since Cataclysm will change everything anyways).

Okay, I've rambled on long enough and I'm sure Ashayo and Glanthur are either fast asleep or are experiencing uncontrollable seizures from this wall of rogue-text. Sorry about that and in ammends, don't include this letter in the drawing. Helping out a fellow rogue is reward enough.

Nevik, lv80 Troll Rogue (Main!)

Kroven, lv80 Orc Deathknight

Schmelzen, lv72 UD Priest

... on Cenarius.

Email #2 from Makling

hello CAW crew

i just listened to your latest episode and i'd like to share some of my experiences with recruit a friend. i've done it three times now, the first was with my sisters husband, the second was with my other sister's fiancee, and the third and the latest one is with someone at work. both of my brother in laws dont play wow anymore, but i did get a zhevra from the first one. i really dont remember if he read all the quest text, but he did get a dk to 73.

aaron, the guy here form work, said he played those free online games. he saw me playing wow one time, so i got him a 10 day free code form recruit a friend. he's still in his 10 day period as of writing, but seems really interested enough to go get the full game. he made a troll hunter, and i made a blood elf priest to lvl with him. im having fun explaining all the stuff in wow, from the chat box to the linking of the items and quests, and locating vendors in the minimap. i hopped on my mage and ported him to the major cities, and he got his first ride on a flight path from TB to org. i can just imagine how it looked like to him, seeing the view from the sky and traveling across the plains and desert of he barrens.

so if this email wins the roll at the end of your show, i;d like a free 1 month of wow for me to give to my co-worker =)

in other news, the new patch went live today! i got into an onyxia 10 man pug, but wasnt able to beat her because my lag kept disconnecting me. apparently a lot of people are having serious lag, but i hope these problems are solved by the time of airing of this show.

my priest dinged 71 just by doing dailies in howling fjord and doing a few quests. i want to get in to 10 man toc raids, but people want the achievements before they let you in their pugs..

i loved the new lore part of your show. but im also interested in what glanthur has been doing in his wow week, so i hope we still get to hear about that.

i want to ask you guys what your experiences are with the STV fishing tourney. ive been trying to get it in the past few weeks, but i always lose to someone when i've only gotten up to 30-35 fish. because with the way things are going, that would have to be the hardest achievement in game as there is only 1 person to get it per week.

well, thats all for now. for the horde!

twitter.com/makiling_mage

Email #3 from Tracey

Love listening to the podcast - my wow playing is limited due to spouse aggro but I still get online a bit. I rolled a blood elf pally - one of the only horde toons I have tried. NOTHING would get me to stop playing WOW - except spouse aggro - friends got me started and I love working out my life frustrations with WOW! Thanks for the great job.

Go Hand of Destiny guild from dkhumpdy.

Aka Tracey

Sent from my iPhone

Email #B from our wonderful Buddy Kyle

Hello all!

So I came across something interesting again, though I'm sure it's news I probably missed somewhere. While leveling my DK in the pants on head guild on Jubei'Thos I had finally dinged 67 and ventured to Shadowmoon valley for my last level before outlands. I go check with the riding trainer there for some reason unknown to me because I knew I didn't have enough gold and I could've just gone to Thrallmar anyway. Well to my great suprise the riding trainer in Shadowmoon Valley was offering to teach me expert riding (i.e. flying) for only 250gold! Now I swear last I check in Thrallmar it was still 600gold, and the letter in my mailbox from the flight trainer also says it's 600gold. So either I missed something and the amount required for flying is down to 250gold, or the Shadowmoon Valley trainer is lonely for lack of business what with everyone going to Thrallmar and is giving a huge discount.

Enjoy!

--Kyle

Email #5 from

Shout Outs & Thank You

Momomments

Hello,

I know this blog has been pretty much all on wow but I am one that likes to explore as many things, including games, as I can.

In addition to wow I do play Wii games, Xbox, other pc games like Aion, the new mmo that came out from Ncsoft.

So far, well I am just getting to know the game, read up on it and figure out what class I will start leveling.

When I remember back to my first time playing wow, WOW! that is over 4 years ago!?!?! crazy! I went Horde right away because my friend that recommended wow was a Horde Orc Hunter and also I just like the look of the Horde Characters. Than when I was going through the different races and what classes they each had, I was drawn right to the Tauren and warrior!!! So from here it seems it was very easy (I don't think it was that easy and it did take me some time).
And of course naming your character, in wow that has always been a challenge (believe it or not even after you find out all of my character names :))

As I have said before, the naming is very important I think; it is part of your in the virtual world of warcraft!

To some it may not be that important but to me it was and is. So of course after many minutes of thinking I went with Motauren!

Yes I know very creative but well, I am Mo and he is a Tauren!

In Aion, so you are aware, there are 2 races: Elyos and Asmodians (I will not go into detail right now, you may check out aiononline.com to read up if you would like to) and you may look at Elyos as Alliance and Asmodians as Horde, but it is not that simple.

Than, oh before I go on, I do have to say that Aion at first look is very PRETTY! This is one reason many people will try it and this is one reason I am trying it, in addition to checking out another game that may get our gaming curiosity juices flowing. If you are a gamer (which I will talk about this on a different post coming up) I believe you will dive into different games and this does not mean I am quiting wow or a wow hater, NO WAY! Wow is #1 and will be for a long time.

Ok, so after you pick a race (of course after you pick a server of course) you will not be able to create any characters from the other race on that server. Yes same as wow where you could not make Horde on a server where you had made Alliance already.

The classes are: Warrior, Scout, Mage, Priest

Warrior is very similar to Warriors in wow but one big difference in Aion is whatever class you are, everyone starts out the same, no specialization.

When you have gained enough experience (not sure how much or what level yet) you will be able to Ascend to one of 2 specializations for the class you are. I look at these like talent points (as I dont see there are talent points in Aion, not that I have found yet) Warrior can become Templar or Gladiator; Scouts: Assasins and Ranger; Mage: Sorcerer and Spiritmaster; Priest: Chanter and Cleric.

And with experience and leveling come flight; you get wings but just as many other topics I do not have all the details on that.

So with the actual hour or so of play time I have had with Aion, I have to say it is promising and the only issue is dividing time with wow and Aion and everything else.

I will do my best to report more on Aion and I hope other people can do that same.

Thank you very much,

--
Mo