Looking up

For most of my TBC career, I have for the most part, opted to play a healer class. I did a short stint as a shadowpriest but ultimately found the most joy in my paladin..and now currently, my druid.

The problem with the healer class is that you miss a lot of content details.

We four-manned Black Morass tonight because we couldn't find a fifth. We brought my druid, Felix's warlock, Sad's warrior, and Flipmax's hunter. I wanted the [Scarab of Infinite Cycle] and Flipmax wanted the [Hourglass of the Unraveller]. Also, it was the daily non-heroic quest.

It was a joke. I almost fell asleep healing. The only thing that kept me on my toes was getting people to loot bodies so I could skin the Rift Lords. LOL.

Anyhow, we get to Aeonus, the final boss of Black Morass. First, he was actually being tanked where I could see him from the front and secondly, I was actually looking up at the boss.

I was like woah! Did Aeonus always look this way. The glacial specs of white against the charcoal black looks awesome!!! I never noticed it before. He definitely wins Top Bad-@ss Looking Dragon in my book!

FYI, I got the [Scarab of Infinite Cycle]. The haste proc doesn't really apply to resto druids who rely mostly on HOTs but the +healing bonus will help tie me over until Patch 2.4 new badge rewards.

PS. Thank you WoWhead for allowing mouse over pop-ups!!

Who needs an off tank??

Feral tanks are awesome. Because of switching out for alts here and there, one of our kara runs was short an off tank. I could have respecced my druid for feral but thought my non tank times would be wasted on my pitiful feral dps. My gear just isn't there yet for feral. Not to mention I prefer being resto.

We always assumed we needed an off tank. The last time I went feral for Kara, I died tanking Huntsman almost immediately but Felix was able to pick up the horse and huntsman for the rest of the fight.

So we opted to push Felix's feral druid to the max this week.
"I think you can just tank it all, don't you?" I said to him.
"We'll see" he said

And sure enough, he pretty much did. The only time I had to put on tank gear was for Moroes to gain second agro. All the other trash and bosses we usually used an off tank.... no problem. He just tanked it all! It was pretty cool.

Apparently with the Moroes's Lucky Pocketwatch his dodge rate can spike up to 60% or more. His base dodge is about 40%.

BEAR TANKS RULE! I'm also certain prot warriors and prot paladins can do the same.

Video of prot pally aoe-ing Moroes and add:

Risque Aldor Art

I hearthed my druid to the Aldor inn tonight and noticed for the first time the art hanging inside. LOL!!!

Is she wearing a white bandit mask??? hahahah. Now I have to remind myself to check the Scryer Inn's art as well.

At least there's one good thing about going Aldor!

WoW podcaster does actually play wow

...but doesn't talk much about it. hmmmm.

I should probably start recording my next episode. I let a few weeks slip past like I said I wouldn't. :(

Anyhow, I was wondering if I should tackle a wow specific topic or a wow-related topic?
I spent two shows this year already talking about wow-related things but nothing wow specific. Is it time to delve back into the wow box?

I sometimes wonder if people know how into wow I really am. From my podcast it might be hard to tell just how much of a wow maniac I am. How much time I spend in the game and playing.... I don't think I give that vibe.

A couple of wow specific episodes I'm looking into are Arenas vs Raiding, Karazhan, WoW 9-5.

Alachia, lvl 70 pally, lvl 70 mage, lvl 70 rogue, lvl 70 priest, lvl 70 druid, lvl 63 shammy.

yes, I still play wow. I promise. hahahah. A LOT!

Five hours to 1850

So I got a phone call from Taint this evening.
"yo. what are you doing?" -taint
"nothing. about to get groceries" -me
"let's 3v3." -taint
"k" -me

And so we took one of the 3v3 teams we had.."Save Me Stubs" which was sitting idle at 1630 and got on alts to drop it to 1500. We did this so we wouldn't have to pay for a new 3v3 team.

Apparently when you're going for an 1850 rating, you want your personal rating and the team rating to be close. You do not want to have to make up the wins from starting so low. So say you join a 1700 rated team. You're personal rating starts at 1500. You have to win enough games to make up the deficit between your personal rating and the teams.

So that's why we had to lose enough games on 'Save me Stubs' to drop it to 1500. In any case, we dropped it to 1492 and then joined up on our mains. Pally (me), Ice Mage (taint), Warrior (friend).

I think we played for 5 hours straight. We climbed to 1700 without blinking. Once we hit 1750, we kept slamming into a wall of Season 3 shoulder teams..aka (farm my team for 1000g teams) heh.

Our biggest obstacle was ensuring our ice mage survived long enough to DPS a target down. If he could just survive long enough, we always would win. It took quite a bit of finesse but we finally found our rhythm.

And suddenly a few hours later we were 4 points away from 1850. We pulled a Rogue, Warrior, Paladin team. Taint kited the warrior and rogue long enough for our warrior to dps the rogue down to 60% and then they did a quick turn on him and boom..he went down.

13 point for winning the game. 1850 achieved. I was so happy. I was so afraid I was going to be trapped behind the 1850 wall this season because of the sheer lack of practice I've had. It felt good. It felt damn good. I was screaming "YES YES YES!!!!"

I went straight to area 52 and picked up the mace and I'm short 25 arena points from getting the season 3 shield..which I'll pick up next week.

I AM SO HAPPY!

World of Sexcraft

It's easy to get discouraged as podcaster. It's even more discouraging when you create a podcast that people either LIKE or they HATE HATE HATE!

It bothers me that I offend people to the degree that they actually hate my guts. But that's part of putting yourself out there...I know I know I know. I just notice that in comparison to other casts, I get hit pretty hard for my content...not quality of audio, not even my inconsistencies of production, but just for being me. OUCH.

Tough Sh8t though. Part of the territory. (I learned that a long time ago)

One of my latest i-tunes reviews was

Drifting off... (one star)
by Parade Chili

Alachia has since forgot about WoW and is indulged in the meta and sex. Alachya, here's a suggestion for a new title: Metacast Slogan: Sex4lifeBaby! Seriously.

LOL. I wish dude. I wish. I have NO problems with the slogan Sex4Life Baby!

In fact, if I were to do another podcast..it would be called 'How to Get Laid as Often as Possible' just to annoy all the sexaphobes out there. hahahaha.

Jeeeebus people. All I talk about is sex? hahahah. Is this person listening in on my Vent conversations or something? I refer to sexuality from time to time on the cast...but as far as my standards go, it doesn't warrant such a prude comment. Trust me, when I talk about sex, it's not subtle.

In any case, I was in Stormwind doing bank organizing on my bank toon when something on the tables caught my eye!

I was like WTF!?? hahahaha. But sex and wow aren't related at all so this must be a figment of my imagination. A game where people interact on a real level inside a virtual environment would NEVER EVER warrant any sexual type of behavior, right???? :) (I guess you either get me or you don't. fair enough)

WTF? hahahaha

The Power of the Shroom

Sometimes to deal with my emotional undercoming, I like to dive myself purely in the meta. PROBABLY not a great solution but what they hey..it's my life to try to screw up right? hehe.

Anyways, a lot definitely happened last week in WoW. My druid hit 70, got her leatherworking to 373, ran shattered halls a million times to get honor hold rep, and began my training as a tank from Felix.

May I suggest you don't try to make your first go as a tank in Karazhan? hahaha. Luckily Felix's druid was able to pick up for a lot of my slack. I'm still learning. I have zero intention of her becoming a main tank. I LOVE being a resto druid. I just needed to tank so other people could bring their alts to our Kara raid this week.

Plus, I figure I should learn how for the sake of learning. I will say that a lot of bear tanking is gear dependent. Gearing up yourself so that you dodge 70% of the bosses attacks is HUGE.

Anyways. We actually cleared all of Kara this week...even though almost everyone brought their alts. I was pleased. I also won the tier 4 helm! woot! And because I had grinded Honor Hold Rep earlier, I was able to enchant it immediately.

I really enjoy healing as a resto druid. I love adding support healing. People often want to be the main healer because there is more responsibility in it.. I love the dynamic of having support healing. I see Holy Paladins and Resto druids as amazing pairs for healing. They compliment each other nicely.

In other news, I finally got my Pally Exalted with Sporregar. If I were to tell most people why I wanted this, they'd definitely laugh at me. And it wasn't to get the neato spore bat pet. I LOVE the purple tabard with the psychadellic mushroom! It rocks!

One thing I will ALWAYS regret is rolling a dwarf paladin. F_____ stone form! Yah, it's vital and amazing for PvP...and even great for Moroes fight in Karazhan. BUT NOT WORTH hating the way your character looks FOREVER! hahaha. I would pay 1000g to be able to change her race. It's the number one thing I regret from playing this game. I think a lot of people don't form emotional attachments with their characters but I do.. I like to identify with my characters and for some reason, my paladin and I don't take to each other....which sucks because playing the paladin is most enjoyable for me.

RL Panda-sort of

Welcome the newest member of my desk!
I think he's perfect...just like the sleeping panda. I named him Kitch. :D

Virtual Blockbuster

So tonights meeting was good but kinda hectic. For some reason, I just thought picking a date and movie would be a snap..but it's just like in the RL. A bunch of people standing around naming possible movies but no clear answer. hahahah. It reminded me exactly of how my friends and I are at the movie rental store.

We finally ended up splitting the group in two. First showing is on Sunday, we'll be watching Office Space. Second showing is on Thursday for Ghost in the Shell. For the Thursday show, we're going to start off by watching the Southpark Make love, not Warcraft Episode. hehe. I thought that was a great suggestion.

Both are at 7pm central. The Ventrillo information and how you can access the Southpark video can be obtained through emailing me. wowcastpodcast@gmail.com

You'll either need to rent or buy the movies. I am adding Ghost in the Shell to my Blockbuster Online que tonight. :)

(funny note: when I discovered Thursday was Valentine's day and told everyone, I thought everyone was going to cancel. I was shocked when only 3 said they might have plans)

(thanks to Talkclub for letting us use his vent)

Sunday Feb 10th, 7pm central - Office Space
Thursday Feb 14, 7pm central - Southpark/Ghost in the Shell

Connectivity Experiment 101

I went ahead and created a metatalk guild on the server at the request of some people who continually suggested the format is better than raid.

I don't think it will be a long meeting. Just wanted to brainstorm with the volunteers to see what day and time would be best to try it out. I figure we'll need a good 2 hour chunk of time to watch the movie. Also the meta format we want to use and of course what movie. :)

3 bops, 1 arena

I think I just got out of a 30 minute 2v2 arena fight. It might have been more. I drank like 10 waters and BOP'd my lock at least 3 times. lol.

Those types of fights I like to call mana wars. It's crazy. We were up against a pally/warrior team. The warrior was brilliant and staying on the pet (voidwalker) long enough for the paladin to run across the map to drink. And then he'd keep me and the lock hamstrung so we couldn't run to knock the paladin out of drinking.

We had the warrior down so many times. The lock with me was soul-link/siphon life spec so the pet is a pretty important element. I kept sacrifice up on the lock to help split the damage because it wasn't always prudent to keep up soul-link in case the warrior decided to insta-gib the pet.

So the pally would kite the pet around a pillar, the warrior would hamstring us and then run behind the pillar and blow up the pet. Luckily, the lock I was with would always be already summoning another pet...trying to not to burn fel domination (insta summon).

We finally got into a rhythm where we were able to burn the pally super low on mana and then focus dps the warrior. I hammered the pally and although he got a flash of light off..he was so low on mana, he wasn't able to get the holy light off...which would have been enough to keep up his warrior. Also, nightfall proc'd for the warlock..so game over.

I bet they were pissed.

Second Skin @ SxSW

SxSW is a huge music/film festival in Austin
http://sxsw.com/schedules/


http://www.pwdocs.com/secondskin/

My hope is that they really portray gamers in a light that most media have failed to do as of yet. I really hope they get under the "skin" of a gamer and not focus on the superficial ideas of gaming.

I think they will and I can't wait to see this film. I have never had an excuse to go to SxSW in Austin ever, but now I do. It's the weekend of my dad's bday but the showing is on Friday so I could probably leave the next day.

However, I looked at pricing for a film badge..$350 dollars. It seems excessive just to see one film....hell, I probably wouldn't normally pay that much for a whole weekends worth of movies. Is going to see Starman on the big screen worth $350?? heheh. Hook me up with tickets yo!!

Is anyone else going?

Hydross solo'd

So I watched this old video of a warlock soloing the first boss in Serpentshrine Caverns. It's pretty impressive when you think about the sheer stamina this guy must have had.

I think I read it took him nearly 3 hours of kiting Hydross to finally down him. If you notice, by the end of the fight, his gear is completely red.

(Being in combat at all will cause all equipped items to gradually lose durability, regardless of whether any damage is taken or dealt.) I had to look that up myself because I was curious of this as well. Also, his guild had to clear trash and kill The Lurker Below so the water would not be infested with fish or be boiling.

In any case, kudos. Warlocks...just just love to hate them. :)