Monday, February 8, 2010

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 153 - Love Is In the Air & The Whine Is Over

Aprillian, Ashayo and Jeppy 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

Crazy stuff. Leveling new alts on JB, thinking maybe it would be better to level two alts independent of Vrishna and then give levels. Ran around Durator leveling alts 2 sets of alts. Still having a problem with one always being behind. Gave some levels from another pair to one toon. Now I think I will run the other toon with a higher one and see if that helps.

Wed morning got on Aprillian feeling like I neglected her when she is so close to being Crusader. Then I remembered an email we received this week. (Read email # ) Feel stupid, didn't realize dual spec meant dual glyphs.

Wed morning, I took Epril with Aprillian to do some Tournament Dailies. Epril got over 1k exp per kill, should have had her on follow a while back. She's 78.5

Wed afternoon I decided one of my main goals, before RAF runs out, is to get Vrishna's pally and warlock on JB to 60. Took a brand new level 20 hunter (granted levels from 12 to 20) into RFC with a level 13. Had to finish the Hunter quest. But first I got her her mount. Got excited when I saw the pet still out while mounted.
Even twittered that it was part of the patch, yes I'm evil. So after a visit to the AH and some more training, we went in and wiped on the first group of 3 Trogg's, so I brought in my pocket healer, Gingah the pally with the shoulders of gold. I put her on follow on another computer with the cursor over the heal button. Worked like a charm. Each toon getting 200xp per kill. Not too shabby. And even though they were 7 levels apart, the two RAF toons were getting the bonus.

Aprillian & Vrishna

ALTS alts and more alts. Refer a friend is still great Jeppy ! We started off in Durotar,went into Ragefire chasm, then on to Shadowfang Keep, and then POOF, we were off to ICC with all level 80 toons ! LOL
Aprillian wanted another Pally but we got to level 6 or 7 before we realized that I had started another warlock (Freysa) by mistake. So we started over with the Pally (Breesa) and got up to 27 within a few hours of play. Of course, I couln't let the warlock go, so she's up to 27 as well. (although Breesa is about to ding 29 after Blackfathom Deep) All that was not enough because we wanted rogues as well. Mine (Blackcat) is up to 24. LOVE Refer a friend. BTW, Rogue quest in the Barrens no longer bugged.


Eye of Kilrogg vs. Hand of Reckoning. Love to find new ways to pull mobs. Shadowfang was a great proving ground for this technique. Hope it will stand the test of time.

Vrishna



Ashayo


25 man Raiding
---------------

Crazy Train in Naxx
- Plague Qtr ; many many dead for most of safety dance, but got there.

DwP in Ulduar for weekly ; Got the [Stokin' the furnace] achievement - under 4 mins

VoA - Toravon - Tougher in 25-man, big dps race, but doable.
Tanked as is, but move away for frost orb. switch when dot drops off - about every 10 secs
- freeeze effect on tanks, so can't dodge
- summon frozen orbs that aoe ; ranged take down
- aoe called white-out - raid wide damage and increases frost damage

ICC - Easily getting down Marrowgar, Deathwhisper and the Gunship battle, but stuck at about 10% on Saurfang.


10 man Raiding
--------------

Crazy Train in Ulduar ; FL, XT, Razorscale, Kologarn, Auriaya (1 shot - was just going to 'take a look')
Crazy Train in Ulduar (night 2)
- Ignis - spank and tank method ; just offtanked the adds, didn't shatter them. Didnt kite the boss
- 2-shot Iron Council - Completed The Antechamber
- Had a couple of goes at Hodir, but it's a fight that needs practice

DwP in Ulduar for weekly ; FL in 42 seconds, Razorscale [A Quick Shave]

DwP in ICC - Ashayo. [Boned] - no player impaled for more than 8 seconds. One shot deathwhisper and gunship.
Saurfang seemed buggy, but got him down. Now weekly quest inside ICC as well. This week was to get down Festergut and Rotface - but you have to survive both fights to hand in.

VoA - Toravon the Ice watcher. Pretty easy in 10 man. Just need to dodge the frozen orbs.


Gearing Up!
-----------

Re-looking at Triumph gear.
You can buy heads, legs, hands chest and shoulder with triumph emblems.
Chest, Legs, Hands : i232 tier gear (ie with set bonus) or i245 tier gear, but also requires [Trophy of the Crusade] (ToC bosses)
Head, Shoulders : i232 tier gear or i245 tier gear (but also requires [Trophy of the Crusade]). Or you can buy a non-tier i245 with just with triumph emblems.

So bought [Shoulderguards of Enduring Order]

Ashayo - Enough frost emblems for the cloak.

Patch
------

- [Test at Sea] is fixed
- Party Leader is now a separate chat option to Party.

Heroics
-------

- Drak'tharon keep [better off dred] with Tempeste healing on her priest.
- Nexus - [chaos theory] - don't kill rifts (easier now that only 1 rift spawns)
- Got the Bronze drake after tanking CoS with 7 mins to spare. (But don't have epic flying)
- Shocking run of bad mages in pugs. First one we had a mage demanding more groups be pulled, heedless of tank/healer. Second one had a warlock that wouldn't eat, and dps that couldn't follow simple directions - actually dropped group on that one. Another that openly abused Tempeste as the healing in PoS boss fight; again dropped group.

Levelling
--------
- Ashariss dinged 73 on last boss in Nexus. Ran a bunch with the BoE guys.
- Running randoms on Ashariss - Got Keristrasza in Nexus down to 3 hp left before wiping.

Jeppy

Hit Hit more Hit and a lot of fishing and cooking.

A new 90 days of fun fun fun has begun as RAF enters my life for the 11th time,

Emails


Email #1 from Random


Dear Ctrl alt wow,
I remember you talking about getting a new trinket with emblems of triumph. I don't mean to be rude or anything but you bought the trinket with 1000 or so attack power. I think you need to stop looking at g score and start looking at stats. Thanks,
Random person

Email #B from Makiling

hello fellas, makiling here

i had just listened to your last episode, and it was fun to listen to as always.

my week in wow can only be described as filled with epic fishing. because last saturday i had finally won the Dalaran fishing tournament and got the Master Angler of Azeroth Achievement! i had not obtained the title at this point because i still needed to do the coin fishing achievement, so the rest of the weekend was spent in dalaran fishing up coins form the fountain. if anything, it was a very eye drying experience, as i had spent hours staring at the fishing bobber. i met a couple of people who hanged around the fountain fishing up coins, comparing achievements with them on how many we needed. it was at this point when i received an email from aprillian with the lil kt code, so i had a cute companion with me while i fished, thanks to you guys! i was down to my last gold coin on my second day of fishing, and it was late at night and i was falling asleep, when the last gold coin came up and i got the achievement Accomplished angler! from then on i had become Salty Makiling and i will be seen riding around the cities on my sea turtle around the cities with my fishing pole =)

the path i took to get the achievement was long and filled with trials. but allow me to share with you some tips on how to do it.

first, practice makes perfect. i didnt one shot this, and if my memory serves me correctly i started trying to win the tournament more than half a year ago. it was the booty bay tournament then, but i had since been only close to winning, but did not come soon enough.

the second tip is to do your research. whether you do the dalaran or the booty bay contest, be sure you know when and where to fish for what you need.

if you've done your research, have practiced doing the tournament, but still find yourself only close to winning, you might want to lower your video card settings. i know it helped me, because you wouldn't want to port to dalaran and find yourself running along a wall because of the lag.

hope those tips help!

before i end, i have a question about character transfers you talked about transferring a toon with boa items to the realm of your dk, i was wondering if this was in the same wow account or the same batle net account? what i mean to ask is if it is possible to transfer to a different wow account on the same battle.net account, or only on the same wow account. and, is it possible to transfer to a different battle.net account?

thats it from me for now, for the horde and for jeppy!

twitter.com/makiling_mage

Email #2 from Anonymous

Hi guys and girls
It's me again. the aloof one who rather strangely enjoy your show way too much :)
I'm not going to waste time with the pleasantries so let me get straight to the point.
Having just listened to your latest podcast where Aprillian was talking about her dps and how other pugs says she sucks. Well, I looked through her gear and her talent build, and here's the problem I see. Please don't take offence, I'm just trying to help you out a little. Seeing how Ashayo, who plays a Warlock isn't giving you much tip on how to gem your gear :P
First and foremost, there are certain things you need to take into consideration when gemming up your gear. Obviously, getting the hit cap is the most important part, you spent 3 points into Suppression, which gives you 3% hit, so now you'll only need 14% hit to be capped without any raid buffs from a Spriest or a Boomkin. so the extra you should aim for is 368, thats your optimal hit rating from gear or enchants. So get rid of some hit rating gems and start putting other things in there. Your meta gem, the 42 attack power gem is for melee dps, what you want is the Chaotic Skyflare diamond, which gives 21 crit rating and 3% crit damage. You'll need to have 2 blue gems to activate that meta, so your nightmare tear can stay and just get a Glowing Dreadstone for the other blue gem needed.
Now the important stats. As a Destro lock, the stat priority is as follow:
Spell Power > Haste > Crit > Spirit > Int So you can put the gems in accordingly
Also, I see you are missing your Glyphs. Don't ever underestimate how important Glyphs are to your dps. As Destro Lock, you would want Glyph of Life Tap, Glyph of Conflagrate and Glyph of Immolate as your major glyphs, don't matter what you do with minor glyphs, they're just there to make life easier on a non combat basis most of the time.
Now for your spell rotation, it depends on if you're fighting trash or a Boss, for trash, you can do pretty much anything you want because no one really should look at their dps for trash. I often just tab each target and cast a Seed of Corruption on them all and watch them blow up. On a Boss fight, you would want to get the rotation down so it becomes second nature and you won't have to keep looking at your hotkeys to see which button to press next.
Make a hotkey for your Life Tap rank 1. this is important as you will be doing a lot of life tap to generate the extra spell power given to you with the Glyph of Life Tap, and you wont freak out the healer seeing your life constantly going down if you use the highest rank of Life Tap.
Start off with your Life Tap rank 1 -> Curse of Doom, (or if its just heroics and you know the boss isnt going to last more than 60 seconds, use Curse of Element instead) > Immolate -> Conflagrate, (this is where your Backdraft will start) > Chaos Bolt -> Incinerate -> Incinerate (your backdraft will end here after 3 casts) than you rinse and repeat, if you have Curse of Doom still ticking, just skip the Curse and go straight to Immolate and carry on the rotation.
I know you enjoy your alts and probably don't really have time to refine the finer details on just 1 particular class, but I find that if you can get 1 class down, the basics will help you with other classes you play down the line. I don't play with my Warlock that often and his gearscore is lower than yours, but I can still manage to pull 3-4k dps on boss fights if it doesnt involve much running around. Getting your dps up is all about how tight you can squeeze your spells in your rotation, and practice makes perfect, spend a little time on the target dummies in the major towns to get the rotation down and I can guarantee your dps will jump up a lot.
And for Ashayo, here's a good macro for your Pally tank, you mentioned about the mod or whatever it was. When I tank with my pally, I just set up a macro to grab the stayers that goes for the healer in heroics, and its as follow:
#showtooltips Righteous Defense
/cast [target=focus] Righteous Defense

It's ok having the nameplates of the mob grow bigger so you can click on them while they beating down your healer, but what if there's more than 1 mob on the healer? What this macro does is before you start pulling your first mob, you set focus on your healer, whenever your healer gets a stray mob on them, you just hit that macro and it'll get up to 3 mobs to attack you instead of the healer, lay a consecration down, change your target and smack it a few times with your Hammer of Righteousness and they won't be going anywhere for a long time. :)
Hope these info helps and you guys won't take it as some insult, just trying to be helpful here :)

Sincerely
Still going to remain anonymous

Just a note about the last email sent to aprillian on her warlock rotation. Since blizzard made the changes to shadowbolt in patch 3.2.2 the rotation may have to change with shadowbolt instead of incinerate. But I haven't had time to change spec to test out the shadowbolt boost to give a definitive answer yet. So feel free to test out both to see which works better for u.

Anonymous

Sent from my iPhone

Email #B from Donna


Hi Everyone,

Sad news from Donna this week. I woke up this morning to find an e-mail from Blizzard telling me my account had been suspended for 3 hours due to spamming and then they sent an e-mail telling me they are resetting my password. Funny thing is the e-mail was sent at 1 o'clock in the morning last night and I was fast asleep, warm in my bed. Hence, this little piggie had been hacked. Since we could not get online today due to maintenance, I decided to check my characters through the armory. Poor Botswala has been molested beyond belief. She is standing in nothing but her tabard with all of her gear gone. I suppose all of my gold and items, etc. are gone as well. The really bad thing is not only did they sell everything and steal the gold, they also deleted just about all of my other characters. The only one I could find on the armory was Botswala. Also, I had TWO accounts so both accounts were under the same battle net account so both of the accounts were hacked and all characters raped and pillaged. My husband was using my second account, so all of his characters on that account are gone as well. Are two AIE characters are gone, Zingaya and Verdonna.

I have to say I am in a state of shock but I suppose I deserve it as I was not smart to use an authenticator. Ironically, I just downloaded the Iphone authenticator app this week to set it up but had not gotten around to it yet. So now my account is locked and I cannot play. I was really excited too, because Botswala was so close to her Loremaster achievement. Only a handful of quests left in Icecrown to complete and she would have been done. Now who knows when or if I will be able to get back to that project. She had just recently gotten her raptor from Un'Goro as well and was so thrilled to finally be done with that. My priest Sistajosepha as also working on that one, but now she is gone. Boo hoo hoo!

Let me be a lesson for everyone out there in the World of Warcraft community how important it is purchasing that authenticator. I never thought I would be a target because I did not have tons of great gear and I kind of laid low, but guess that plan did not work out. Get your authenticators!!! We are ordering ours today by the way. When my account problems finally get settled, I am hoping to get back in game.

I just want to say thank you to Ctrl Alt Wow for the free month of WOW (which I just added to my account, doh!). Hopefully I will get to use that free month soon! Also I want to say thank you to everyone out there who gave tips on completing my loremaster achievement, especially Blade. It was good to hear from him. They were all very helpful and have made the job much easier.

So stay safe out there and enjoy playing the game. I will miss you guys for a while but hope to be back soon.

Donna

Email #3 from Deathskeeper

Hey guys
Deathskeeper here sorry to say Death is not in AIE anymore... What!!! Good news he's in Pants on Head now he's almost one of the cool kids almost.But the reason I'm sending this because of what Blade asked in episode 152. My friend who got me started in WOW and quit a week after but I'm going down a QQ story no one wants to here. But when he came back when BC came out he wanted to play Alliance on Windrunner he found a guild that was for adults with families the "Cult of the Plush Gnome"so I ran a human Lock from 1 to 70 and then Wrath came out and I ran a DK to 80. So I've played both side and its really a personal thing as to what side is best. Cause when Harus was trying to get me to play he gave me the WOW strategy guide and after reading it I knew I was a undead warlock, it was my first toon and he is level 61 on Blakwater Raiders. But the thing that made me come back to the Horde even with i level 73 human lock and level 80 DK and a tons of other Alliance alts was Finger prints there no way I was spending money to get one of a human anything. I'm still a Horde at heart and I always will be. I liked play Alliance and there are adults who don't live with there moms who play it. The Plushie Gnomes was a great guide I'm just a Horde but if you have not played both side yet I say make a DK and do all the starter zones to get a feel for the lore you may like it.

See you in game Deathskeeper.

Email # D from Nevik

Greetings Ctrl Alt Wow crew,

My it's been awhile hasn't it? Many apologizes for the hiatus in email writing. I had been sick for over a month and only recently have I found my energy levels approaching normality. So while I could blame my lack of correspondence on my lack of fortitude to sit down at the computer and write, that would only tell part of the story.

My motivation to log into WoW has waned over this past month and writing into a WoW podcast didn't seem to make much sense. Not to worry though, I'm still lurking in the shadows and there will be a triumphant return to Azeroth ... at some point ;)

I felt compelled to write in after listening to episode 152; Aprillian & Vrishna appearing a little more frequently on Jubbly bubbly? There hasn't been a day over the past couple of weeks where I haven't thought about transferring my priest, death knight, or even my rogue over to Jubei'thos.

Okay, that's not entirely true, but I have been giving it serious consideration. I just haven't pulled the trigger on doing it yet but I'm getting awfully close. If it weren't for another mistress pulling me away from WoW the news of Aprillian & Vrishna's presence in Pants on Head would be the reason to push me over the edge.

I'm of course alluding to Star Trek Online. I wouldn't feel comfortable elaborating on my reasons in an email, but suffice to say STO is offering a suitable alternative as I recharge my "WoW batteries." Who knows, I might even end up on a podcast or two talking STO ... ^^;

A little birdie told me that the guys over at the Addicted had a special guest to talk about the game. So if you are indeed Trek-curious you might want to give the Addicted episode 28 a listen. That same bird also told me that there's a strikingly similar podcast to this one that has started up named Ctrl Alt Trek or something.

Anyhoo, I think that's enough with the shameless cross-promotion, keep up the great work! For the Federrr .... er I mean Live long o'gar?! Rub your tummy commander? No, that didn't work either. I guess it really was funnier in my head.

Nevik


Email # 4 from Catharina

my Dear podcast-makers

(alphabetically Bind-on-Equip, Casually Hardcore, Ctrl-alt-wow, Epic dolls, Guild-chat, How-i-wow, Rawrcast, and Twisted Nether Blogcast)


For quite some time I have been listening to your podcasts. Regretfully I must admit that I have only very rarely written to any of you. Mostly because I do not have anything specific I want to say or ask. And some other factors contribution to my not-writing , are a little hesitance since English isn't my main language and maybe a little laziness.


As a casual-player and altoholic I love listening to the podcasts. I usually will have them playing during my time playing WoW. They are especially good during fishing or farming sessions for leather, herbs or mining.

And I also regularly play them when I am traveling or sometimes at work.


To Aprillian, Ashayo , Jeppy , Vrishna and Glanthor specifically I want to ask and say:

  • I love to hear a show where the focus is on having fun, and enjoying all the different aspects of WoW. To me it seems there are very little shows that mention and enjoy the leveling process.

  • I hope Jeppy is doing fine again and will so for a very long time :-)
    (and of course I wish the same to Aprillian, Ashayo , Vrishna and Glanthor )

  • it's funny to hear how Vrishna grows in what he how he perceives the game. And to sometimes unexpectedly hear him say things like 'More DoT's more DoT's'.



Again my thanks for all your efforts and my sincere best wishes to all of you.


Kind regards,


Catharina - 80 mage (and quite a number of other toons) - Darkspear-EU


P.S. Should you feel that my mail is too long, or my grammar is confusing, please feel free to shorten or change it.


s
Email # 5 from Robin

Hello ctrl alt wow!

Love the podcast! I am currently trying to level my level 70 warlock alt. I dont particularly care for borean tundra, and some of the howling fjord quests are bugged and so I decided to level my lock using the dungeon finder until I get to a level that I can go to a different area. I waited for nearly an hour to get into Utgarde keep only to find myself extremely frustrated with the group. The group I ended up getting into was Me, a mage, a paladin, a druid healer, and a warrior tank. The mage and I did not have the greatest gear (im still in mostly outland dungeon drops) and I am in the process of relearning what stats I need to do more damage, so we weren't doing as much dps as we should be. The entire time the healer was complaining that we sucked and throwing all sorts of insults at us. I find it interesting that the dps was being targeted when the tank was treating the instance like he was an 80 in all tier 10 gear. He would pull 8 or 9 mobs at a time and then wouldnt give us time between groups to get mana or loot any corpses. Then he would skip mobs! which is understandable in heroics, but other than that its skipping valuable xp! once we got to the first boss (prince keleseth, where there are 4 other vrykuls before the boss, and then the boss spawns adds as well) he pulled the entire room and we wiped (even though i had soulstoned the healer). Once we came back I didnt even have time to get my imp out! I went through nearly the entire instance relying solely on life tap for mana, and without my imp, which gives a good buff to the whole party. I finally got my imp out and we were on the last boss...at this point i had forgotten to soulstone the healer again (mostly because I wasnt given the time) and we wiped...again. At this point the paladin says he would have spit on me if he had died as a healer, and he begins to spam recount, because our dps was like 300dps lower than everyone elses. I normally love the lfg system, and don't normally have this problem. I have leveled a shaman from 20-30 solely on the lfg system (and intend to do so further because i'm sure questing resto would not be pleasant). I just wanted to share my horror story with you, and to tell you that I am also an altoholic. I have recently leveled my first alliance toon past level 4. It's funny because you hear everyone say that the alliance are all children, later that day i went to a gas station and got carded for my purchase because the clerk thought i was 11!! (I'm 22).

Hope you're having fun!
and farewell from my 80 blood elf DK, my 70 Blood elf warlock, my 30 troll shaman, my 26 tauren druid, my 25 blood elf paladin, my 15 troll hunter and his cute tiger snoofus all on the lightning's blade server among many other alts below level 10.

Shout Outs & Thank You

MoMoMoments

Hello all,
I am sorry for being late and missing emailing but with work and getting sick again time has been short the last 2 weeks.

Hope all of you are well and having fun.

In wow, the last few weeks, well the same as usual for my 3 80s on feathermoon, daily random Heroics for badges and a few raids here and there on my healer moheal. Holy priest is so much fun for me, and I pair nicely with my friend/guildy who is a discipline priest. This past Friday I was not able to make our ICC10 run but my guild downed Festerbut or is it festergut. Well either way that was nice to hear that. One thing that keeps coming up in guild dramas (in all wow guild I hear at least) is loot and how loot is distributed. How do you pass out loot, what system do you use? We have been mainly doing roll if you need and if you have won than let someone else roll for it.
It seems it is time for us to have a better system. We have had many people leave our guild (after they are geared mind you) because they did not like how the loot system worked.
I have passed loot over to a guildy many times if I see it is a better gear for them and their spec however we cannot expect everyone to do that.

To let Aprillian know, Moheals gear score is 2803, I know you are in the GS kick lately :)

On other wow news I have purchased heirloom items for a DK and a Shamman I have started. I have played many DK's but just the beginning zone because it is so much fun. I just cannot get into playing a DK, not sure why. I will be giving it another go. Another altaholic goal I have had is to have one of each healer at level 80, so I still need a druid, shammy, and pally...lots of work ahead of me :)

I have not purchased STO yet but will this coming week. I am a start trek fan and a Star wars fan, cannot wait till that comes out.

How have you all liked STO? Anyone playing Aion? I stopped Aion after just a few weeks, just could not get into it.

And for TV, any of you LOST fans? I love that show, best show out there right now in my opinion, and on the mo scale, definitely top 5 show of all time!!! I would say Star Trek TNG #1, than toss up between, Seinfeld, Cheers, Lost, and...
So many choices!!!

What are your top shows you all watch?

Well short email and I will do my best to heal myself and write more for next time. Take care all and for the Ctrl Alt Wow/STO :)

--
Mo


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