Aprillian, Ashayo, Virshna 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.
Met Herps from http://spawnkill.com/ at PaxEast2010. Great website and cool guy.
On a Horse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE
Met Herps from http://spawnkill.com/ at PaxEast2010. Great website and cool guy.
On a Horse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE
What We've Been Doing:
Aprillian
Aprillian & Vrishna
Vraysalla, Lokita and LatinumBlond. Winterhoof. Bloodmyst Isle ALL DONE !!! Our friends Anyon & Bellarose ran Deadmines as my first random dungeon and got to kick a gnome rogue who wanted to be a tank.. Having a ball leveling the Dranei starting area. And finished up dinging 20, getting my mount and my first real foray into professions. (Mining & Engineering. 105 & 134 respectively.) AND I think I finally got MY healer. And it is GREAT !Vrishna
Virinya dings 73 while grinding in Dragonblight. Running so fast between quests it's hard to keep up with the content but it HAS been fun watching those rested xp points adding up. Boy, it does STINK when they turn purple !Ashayo
Noblegarden - Pretty much the same, but with chocolate bug. Drop rate on clothes seems higher.10-man Raiding
Crazy Train
- VoA with Birthday boy tanking. Lag monster beat us in ICC. Did hit honored though and got ring upgrade
- Marrowgar, died twice, plug lag, still one shot him
- Deathwhisper - 2shot - awesome job for our first real night on her
- Gunship battle done after some fooling around.
PoH - VoA on Ashariss - Fire boss
DWP - Ashayo - Blood princes down (still with 5% buff). Headed on to Valithria Dreamwalker with Asheal.
- After reset, ICC buff is now 10%. Zoomed through 1st Wing and Festergut. Intentional wipe on Rotface to do weekly quest. Then killed Rotface - VERY messy, but oneshot. Two dps disconnected, lots of oozes.
25-man Raiding
DwP 25 - ICC
- Neck upgrade for Asheal.
- Weekly quest on Deathwhisper to save npc - just tanked with a turtle without much hassle.
- Saurfang - Conquerer's Marks dropped - won ; so 10.5 tier upgrade
- Festergut - beserk at 14%
Sadly, looking like DwP-25 won't have the numbers to continue much longer.
Nowhere near enough. Did ToC 10 with some alts. Took Jekle and got new dagger, trinket, staff
Sarth 3D 10 man.
Weekly Raid
- Earthen Ring was Razorscale. New record - down in 2min 41 sec.
- Jubei'thos was Flame Leviathan. Dual-boxed on Pud/Shadowthrone in the same vehicle for a bit of fun
Misc
- Ashariss - H Nexus. Got the [Intense Cold] achievement - easy on Druid, since shape shift breaks you out of the ice. HoS [Bran Spankin' New], [Good Grief], and [50 Raid Emblems]
- Ashield healed some more dungeons - mostly AN and OK. Getting better, slowly. Dinged 74
- Pud Heroic Forge of Souls - priest tried mind controlling mob off the edge, but it hung there and attacked us.
- ICC on Jekle with bunch of AIE Officers including Ralff, Gypsy, Xanar, Melyannna, Fusk, Secondaid. Got my first ring, and nice belt upgrade off Gunship battle
- PoH - Naxx alt run on Ashariss. 16 min Safety Dance - Zoo tank, Wemb off tank, Temp healing, me dps. [The Plague Quarter], [The Construct Quarter]
- Ashariss got the Onyxia ach
- Noob moment of the week - Mobs that can see stealth have a blue spinning circle over their head. (Don't really play a rogue or feral druid, so never knew what it was)
Jeppy
The son also rises.Emails
Email #1 from HannahBonana
I've been a listener for a while now and figured it was about time to drop you guys an email. Being a fellow female wow player, I love that we have someone representing us! I have a 80 priest horde side. (HannahBonana on the Area 52 server) I also have a level 48 shaman.I love healing too much to give it up! (even on an alt!) I spend most my time raiding icc 10 and 25 mans. You mentioned healbot and how much fun it is. I must agree! It's a big part of my raiding on my priest. On a side note, I giggled to myself when I heard your dogs barking in the background. It reminds me of when I'm raiding and my little pups decides to bark and all of the raid hears it...Well, I love your show keep it up!
For the Horde!
HannahBonana
Email #2 from Riku
Dear Aprillian Ashayo Jeppy and Vrishna from Riku
Honestly i havent been listening for too long but i like the way you 4 work together. Well i wanna say i'm a Alt-Ahaulic and i dont even have a 80...or evan a 30...i have a 29 as my highist Mage who i'm working on now and i have several alts on multiple servers but i wanted to ask becouse i love plushys so much i wanna know how to actualy enter your contest for a plushy cuz i want one with the fury of a 5 year old. I know i'm rambeling but thanks for reading
Characters
Rikuwolfie Lv 29 BE mage
RikuDevil LV 12 BE Warlock
Sitting and watching from the Emerald Dream
Yer friend and new fan Riku
Email #A from Kurly
Pallies.....Pallies.....Pallies!!
Annamia is mine. I created her nearly two years ago and at level 30 something pretty much gave up on her and sent her on sabbatical. After much time doing nothing in Stormwind (There really is just only so much you can see there and Varian Wynn is kind of a jerk) I have picked her up, dusted her off and sent her back into the world! She recently ding'd 60 and I have got to tell you....they kind of kick tail! Since playing a pallie is, er, slightly different I figured I would level her in Dungeons as Holy (whack-a-heal anyone?) and it was pretty good but for the fact that I was put into BRD every time with groups full of what could only be described as wet baco-bits....not fun.
I dual spec'd her into Ret and.....shall we say holy boom!! She can pull many mobs, and come out with barely scratch....and plunge head first in the next with holy vigor and mean swing from her two handed axe!
GREAT FUN!!!
Anyway...as always keep up the fantastic show.....luv you all lots.....and happy spring/fall
XOXO
Kurly
Email #B from Lamongelo
Hi everyone,
I am unable to express the honor I felt when my e-mail was read on your podcast, and it was doubled when my priest mentor himself read my letter. I have been inspired, enlightened and uplifted countless times while listening to your weekly adventures. The four of you complement each other so well. The only thing that could make it better would be the return of Glanthur. Please keep the episodes coming.
I'm up to lvl 20. Working in The Barrens since it was right next to Razor Hill. It was slow going until now, I finally have a mount so travel is much faster. Probably should be in Ghostlands or Silverpine or...aaahhh...too many decisions, lol.
I never dreamed I would be lucky enough for Ashayo to roll another 100 (or 3 in my case). It is so difficult to choose a prize. I think an Authenticator would certainly come in handy.
Thanks Aprillian, Vrishna, Ashayo, and Jeppy for the gift and the great podcast,
Lamongelo
Email #3 from Anonymous?
Hi crew
It's me again. Although I quit WoW recently and have stopped listening to quite a few wow podcasts, I still find myself listening to your podcast for some reason so you guys must be doing something right :)
Anyway, I read on twitter on how Aprillian wanted to raid but is too scared to try it. Well, afraid no more, here is my raiding 101 just for you Aprillian!!
If you're not a PvP'er, raiding is the most fun you can have in the game, whether you want to be a hardcore raider or just raid casually. The main thing to raiding is what you want to get out of it. If it's just the experience of doing something with a bunch of friends together and not get too hung up on loots, that's usually a good place to start. Believe me when I tell you that if you want all the cutting edge stuff but you are not prepared to put in the hours on reading up stuff and spend time on perfecting your skill, not only will you find it frustrating yourself, but it'll also frustrate the people that raid with you. From what I can sense, you probably just want to raid casually and say you've experienced the end game, well, kind of the end game anyway. So with that in mind, here's the basics.
Forget about raiding Naxxramas or Ulduar, the reason why I say that is because it'll be extremely hard to persuade 9 or 24 other people to run those raids with you at this stage of the game. the second reason being, even if you can somehow get people to do that with you, you're not really being asked to do anything taxing in there. Most people are wayyyy over geared for those places, they can plow through those raids pretty comfortably even without a full raid group, so you are not going to learn anything. Remember, having pressure on you makes you more alert and give you more responsibility which can invariably raise your game. Unless you are the kind that likes to have everything handed over to you without putting in the work yourself.
So, ToC is going to be your perfect start. DO NOT PUG FOR RAIDS!!!! Get some friends to do it with you, Pugs can be brutal and often ends up in tears because they're so unforgiving. Despite the criticism people have for that place, it's actually a pretty good place to start learning how to raid, you have encounters that requires lots of movements, some involve putting on PvP mindset, some are straight dps race and some are a good mixture of raid awareness and quick targetting.
First thing you need to do is of course schedule the raid. Download the neccessary addons that will help you in raid encounter, Deadly Boss Mods, Omen Threat Meter are the 2 most important things you need. If you have an Alchemist, make your own flasks or buy them from the AH, you should have plenty in your bag, since you're a Warlock, stock up well on your Soul Shards, there's not always going to be trash mobs for you to drain souls from in raid, especially in ToC where there are NO trash.
Before you go in, you should do some homework on all the raid encounters first, there are lots of good websites out there that have video and text guide on all encounters in game, dont worry if you dont really understand it just by watching the video, the video is just to give you a general idea on how the fight will pan out and different raid groups will have different strategy anyway.
So, you have your mods to help you, you are well stocked up on your buff food and shards, you read/watched the guide on encounters, now the hard part. Make time for raid, if you schedule a raid, you have to make sure you can stay the duration, unless of course some unforeseen emergency comes up. There's nothing I hate more than people going AFK in the middle of a raid without a warning, don't assume your time is more precious than others, it's a selfish thing to do to keep 9/24 other people waiting just for you.
Listen, learn, execute.
Listen well to your raid leader, take in what he/she wants you to do, dont be afraid to ask questions if you don't understand what they're asking you to do. Afterall, they're your friends and knows you are new to the raiding scene, so they should cut you some slack.There are going to be a lot of deaths for someone new in raid, don't get disheartened, Learn from your mistakes, be aware of what goes on around you, dont keep staring at your keyboard, you should have a pretty good idea on where the buttons are by now, concentrate on your surroundings, pan your camera around to see whats going on if you're not required to run around, anticipate the Boss's next move and be ready to run from void zones or AoE attacks when you get a warning from Deadly Boss Mod. Execute, know when to run and when to blow your cooldowns, this won't come naturally, it's all down to experience of knowing when is the best time to use your cooldowns, so the more time you raid and learn the mechanics of the fight, the better you will become. And lastly, enjoy what you do!!!! There's absolutely no point in playing this game if you don't enjoy it, you might feel intimidated by the task ahead, but you will get a buzz from the adrenaline rush for downing new Bosses, ask any raider why they raid and I can guarantee you the answer will always be the buzz you get for learning and conquering the Bosses thrown at you. The loot is secondary, even for the hardcore raiders, their main aim isn't the loot, it's nice to have new shinies, but that's not what a proper raider feed off of. Its all about the experience. So pluck up your courage and dabble in some raid. You don't know what you're missing unless you get a taste of it.
My WoW account doesn't expire till the 9th of April, so if you want me to pop in game and give you some help, I'll be happy to oblige.
Have fun and enjoy what you do :)
GettingWorse on twitter
Email #C Makiling
hello guys, makiling here
thanks for playing my audio entry on your show..! my week in wow has been filled with a lot of alliance love. mainly for my night elf druid who is now at level 28. i have been leveling her through the random dungeon system since she got to 15, and i can just say that having the 6 piece heirloom set from my horde toons has been really helpful. i get a bit more attention when people inspect me and see that i have the heirloom ring. when they ask me where i got it, i tell them its from my lvl 80 undead mage =) the reactions i get range from disgust to awe, and some people even tell me straight out that they eventually plan on transferring to horde!
dont get me wrong, i love my horde toons, but with my busy schedule, im finding that my game time is more gratifyingly spent leveling then doing the same dailies and slowly grinding frost emblems. i guess you can say that its the leveling grind that im having fun with, even if it means playing alliance.
so slowly but surely im opening up the higher level dungeons. so far ive been repeatedly running gnomeregan, but im hopeful that scarlet monastery will be available at the next level up.
with all this alliance playing, my horde toons have not been neglected. i do heroic forge of souls on my tank for a quick run with the hopes of the battered hilt to drop, and i do the weekly oracle egg purchase. my mage has yet to get the mount, but this week my priest was lucky enough to finally get it! she looks really pretty flying around on the green proto drake with a tiny proto drake hatchling pet following her.
im looking forward to noble garden and the dailies i will be able to do on my different low level toons for easy xp. i might even get the title on my other level 80 if i have the time.
that's it form me for now. happy easter and for the horde!
Email #4 from Curme
Vrishna,
I wanted to throw in my two cents on pally gear.
Int + spell power = healer plate
Strength + crit = Ret plate
Strength + stam + def = Tank plate
When you hit lvl 74-76 there's a really nice set of crafted blue tank gear, the "Tempered Saronite" set with a couple "daunting" pieces at 78, and there's blue shields at lvl 73 for tank and healer. With this basic set you're pretty much geared for any regular northrend dungeon you want to tank until you hit heroics, just add the pieces as they become available. Queueing for the random dungeon will get you 2 triumph badges each day and allow you to have enough by the time you hit 80 to grab an epic piece immediately, maybe the shoulders (tank) or a libram (healer), in addition to getting a chance to learn the dungeons.
For dailies you may want to target:
Kalu'ak: nice Ret polearm at exalted, and fishing pole
Wyrmrest Accord: great tanking cloak and sword, dailies in Coldarra and Dragonblight
Argent Crusade: great healing helm, and tanking enchant; quests and dailies in Zul'drak; (lvl 74)
There's also some nice PVP dailies in Grizzley hills that will give you venture coins that you can use to buy a blue libram, which will take you to 80.
My first 80, a warrior tank, I hardly did dungeons on the way up and had to learn them in heroic mode, rather than in the flow of the game, which made it really difficult. On my pally, I did lots of randoms with the dungeon finder while leveling. By the time I leveled up my Prot Pally, I not only knew the dungeons, but was also able to learn Pally tanking in the safer environment of normal dungeons with the added bonus of usually being 2nd or 3rd on the DPS chart as the tank.
Expertise is a pretty useless stat until you hit 80, and then its only relevant to tanks (its related to whether an attack can be parried or not). And while its a nice stat, you don't generally gear for it.
AJAV (yup, the initials...),
On my dual boxing toons I hit 35 on my hunter and 34 on my priest. I've now switched to my 33 druid to pair up with the priest. I'm currently feral cat and shadow priest. I'm not sure if I want to switch to a Holy Fire/smite holy spec at 40 and stick with the feral druid, or stay shadow and swap the druid to Boomkin. we'll see.
Thanks for the great show!
Curme
Uldor (34 priest)
Tuwanek (33 druid)
Email #5 from Juuno
I am so tickled pink that my email was able to entertain you, that I’ve been inspired to write you this poem. Though no haiku, this poem’s for you! (Yes, I know that was terrible and my total geek fan-girl underpants are showing...I can’t help it though!):
The Ctrl-Alt-Wow CrewAprillian needn’t ‘hang her head’
Because Ctrl-Alt-Wow is da schnizzle
It’s been hooked like an IV to my ear
for six months up in my hizzle!
She creates and plays alts
like other people drink wine,
She makes me laugh my arse off,
And that’s tres, tres divine.
Whether his nuts are natural or salty,
Ashayo will give you an excellent tip,
regarding Northrend, quests or gold,
and he knows what gear to equip!
Varishna makes cookies for Aprillian,
Tells of their adventures and fun,
His hearty laugh sounds like Amadeus,
and he causes me to giggle a ton.
He said my name in 160 -Ooo, Ahhh-
El Jeppy’s voice is like a dream,
and She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed is secure,
But if he says it again, I’ll scream!
I’ve never been a hard-core raider,
Can’t pass the Lich King’s test,
So their tales and advice really help,
Yeah, Ctrl-Alt-Wow crew is the BEST!
Big hugs to you all!
For the Alliance and the Horde!
Juuno from Korialstrasz
Email #D from Bidkar
Greeting CtrlAltWow crew,
Bidkar,undead 80 mage here. The last couple of weeks I ground out gold doing dailies. I want to build up my gold a bit. I'll never come close to having as much as Ashayo, but I would like to have enough to buy a Traveler's Mammoth and not worry about spending the gold. I have enough to buy the mammoth now, but I would only have about 8k gold left. I want to be well off when Cataclysm comes out and I don't think that will be enough.
Bidkar made a trip out to the Maelstrom during one of the server crashes. I was in Dalaran when the server crashed and left me in one of those frozen moments. All the npc's were gone and only a few frozen players were left. During those times I always run for the nearest Ally place and hang out for a bit. I hung out in the Ally place in Dalaran for awhile, jumped on their beds, loosened the tops of salt shakers etc. This crash went on and on so I thought it would be a good time to go see the Maelstrom. I jumped out the sewer exit underneath Dalaran. I'm sure all of you know during the server crashes you become invulnerable and can run really fast. I ran until I hit the ocean and then started swimming. After swimming for a long time I finally got to the Maelstrom. I could see my arrow on the map. But, alas, I saw nothing that looked like a Maelstrom. Just water everywhere. I thought about trying to swim to the Eastern Kingdoms, but I didn't think that would work. I assume each continent is a different server or something like that. I swam back to Northrend and that ended my adventure. I was surprised that the water went out as far as I swam. I always assumed the fatigue was there to keep us from seeing the man behind the curtain but the water went out as far as I went. All the while, I could see Northrend getting smaller and smaller behind me. I thought it was interesting and thought others might get a kick out of it.
I took Allerea, my blood elf warlock, to do the Argent Tournament. I guess I can take a third toon through. I assume Ashayo has taken a lot more that three through and he survived the experience, so I guess I can too. I make a mini game for myself for the jousting so I can tolerate it. I loathe most vehicle quests and hope to Elune and the Light that Cataclysm isn't full of vehicles. Sometimes I will try to finish each individual jouster before the renew health timer is up. I can usually do it in about 3/4 of the timer, I try for 1/2 but that usually doesn't happen. The other mini game I do is to never renew my health and do all four on the same health bar. That one gets a little trickier sometimes, but I can usually do it. I usually start out by backing up as the jouster goes out so I can get distance to do a charge, then I swing wide so I can throw a shield breaker then just rinse and repeat. I can usually keep all of their shields down so I can get the full 8500 damage with each charge. The jousters go down very fast then.
I started a recruit a friend also. I'm dual boxing an orc warrior and an orc shaman. I haven't leveled a warrior before and I've only leveled a shaman to level 14 so I thought it would be a nice change of pace. So far so good, but I have spent quite a bit of time doing macros and figuring out my plan of attack. I guess the first recruit a friend is always the hardest. Thank you El Jeppy and Aprillian for your help with some of my questions. I appreciate it. I really do try not to bother people on Twitter. Twitter seems to be more rhetorical so I try to keep to myself. Once in awhile I can't help myself, but I have to be buttoned up and proper all day at work, so Twitter is my outlet on occasion to "cut loose".
I didn't get a chance to play my other alts. The server was kinda funky after patch 3.3.3.3 so I didn't get to play as much as I usually do.
I played We Rule for a bit this week also. It's fun and doesn't require much time. Matt from Outlandish is way more serious about it than I am. He made a spreadsheet for it. I don't think I will ever be a hardcore gamer enough to make a spreadsheet for anything. I'll leave the spreadsheets to Matt and El Jeppy. My name is Ron773 on We Rule if anybody is interested.
That's it for my week!
For the Horde and for El Jeppy and Glanthur!
Bidkar and his many alts
P.S. In my last letter, I said that I read Sherlock Holmes 30 years ago. I'm only 44. I love being 44 and wouldn't go back a year if I could and I'm looking forward to 45. Every year is an adventure in which I learn more and gain more wisdom. I get a good laugh from the Outcasted podcast when they talk about age. They always poke fun at Chris for being so old and I don't think he's even 30. I once thought the same when I was their age, but I know better now.
See you in Northrend!
Shout Outs & Thank You
MOMOMomentsHello,
all and post-Birthday Aprillian.
Hope you have a great birthday and many many more.
Once again enjoyed the last podcast and you all put a smile on my face and I do appreciate that!
In wow, my priest Moheal has 3 tier 10 pieces and several off-tier and some from ICC bosses. It is really nice to get geared as it does make healing a lot easier even on tough, challenging bosses. Of course many ICC encounters involve not just great healing on my part, but also being able to move around at the exact time to be able to stay alive or keep the raid alive. We are progressing, having our challenges here and there. It is a good fun challenge, I only get mad or frustrated when other do not allow the learning curve of the entire raid. On my priest I have slowly started rep grinding for the rep's I have not maxed out yet. Currently I have been running Underbog for sporegar (is that the correct spelling) and dual boxing with my mage.
My 66 druid and mage (66) are also running together, usually I have been doing random dungeons but a few times I have just given up. I am not sure what the problem was, maybe the people had spouse aggro or mommy aggro, but we were in shadow vault I believe it was, the tank of course did not wait for my mana even though I asked for a few seconds. After we all died, my druid and mage of course ran back to res, and so did the hunter. The tank DK and warrior, not so much. I asked if they were going to run back and no reply. I could not rez them as they were still close to the mob which killed us but I dont know if I would have rez'ed them anyway, just run back people! So I told the hunter it is best to go back to questing. I have the pair in Nagrand doing the animal killing quests; I do no encourage people doing that in real life we are just taking about in game killing that is all.
My hunter missed the ICC run Friday night, she is vary sad. She is coming along slowly in gearing up but I am able to do about 4k dps in 5 mans and in ICC about 3-4k; all the moving around cramps my dps style which I need to work on. Oh she is survival, and 2nd spec is beast mastery which I never use. I have thought about going survival and marksmanship but it was a short thought.
That is all I have this week.
Hope you had a wonderful birthday week Aprillian; enjoy your ipad.
oh on other news, I did have to cancel my STO account for now as some work changes really do not give me enough time to play that along with wow.
Have a great time in and out of game everyone.
Take care.
--
Mo
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