Show 4, Season 1, 25 February 2015.
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The past week I have been mostly....
1. Removing the egg from my face, last week I predicted that 6.1 would hit last week. I was wrong but only by a week! So The US already has 6.1 and here in the EU we get it today so I hope you're all enjoying Tweeting from in game and posting your SELFIES!
2. Mount farming, yes still But not while I have been queuing for Ashran, I've given up trying that until next week! My route takes in Dragon Soul for the Blazing Drake and Experiment 12-B, Onyxia, ICC25 for Invincible, Zul'Gurub for the Panther and Raptor mounts, Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle for the drakes, Sethekk Halls for Anzu (yes I know you got it in TBC), Firelands for Smoldering Egg of Millagazor and Pureblood Firehawk and Throne of the Four Winds for the Drake of the South Wind. But next week I won't need to go to the Throne of the Four Winds as my hunter, Vonuberwald managed to get the Drake of the South Wind, on his first visit but I had been many times before!
3. Evlyxx has been raiding of course and this week we got Flamebender Ka'graz down on HC and on our weekend normal BRF run we did the achievement on Ka'graz of not killing Aknor Steelbringer which means he is now one of my Garrison followers.
4. I actually did some PVP this week too with loads of 3s with a hunter, Alkathraze and Funjitsu a brewmaster monk we had a lot of laughs and a reasonably fast Conquest cap. I also had a run out with the RBG team last night and while we won most of our battles we still have a lot of improvements to make but considering we started late this year due to a visit by the drama lama our RBG team is looking very promising and the leadership trio of Dumix, Appljack and Dyloxe are doing a fine job.
5. IRL stuff has been really boring and the reason the show is late out this week is because my shifts this week suck as it is Monday/Tuesday days and Wednesday/Thursday nights so I miss out on raiding and deliver the show late to you guys and gals. Sadly this will happen 2 or 3 weeks in a row every 2 months but hopefully I'll find a job with a better work schedule soon and then I can have a defined 7 day week and have a regular day of getting the show out to you all. Anyway that's a different story for a different day.
In the news this week:
Blackhand has been defeated by Method and at the time of recording only Method. So congratulations to them on a true World 1st as the US guilds have now entered their 3rd week mythic raiding. There has been some drama around this as there have been accusations of cheating by account sharing and I'll cover that in a bit more depth in this week's Talk Talk which is all about Exploiting WoW inspired by this very topic.
6.1 has hit the servers, Twitter has remained stable which means most of the naysayers and doom prophets got it wrong, or I follow the right people!
Talk Talk...WoW Exploits.
So last week Method killed mythic Blackhand and the accusations of cheating started almost before Blackhand hit the ground and took his last breath. The crime that Method stand accused of is account sharing. Now cast your mind back to Christmas time, not to the turkey and your presents but to a pair of guys named Reckful and Sodah who were banned for account sharing while streaming and openly admitting they were playing each other's accounts, stupid boys that they were.
The method of Method's alleged account sharing is slightly different though, the accusers claim that certain players created a 2nd account and then transferred their geared alt to it to allow a 2nd person to play the geared alt instead of playing their own lesser geared character. Now this is harder to prove as the alleged incident wasn't streamed and unless the 2 players were playing at different locations and not masking their IP addresses to be the same, it is perfectly acceptable to have 2 Warcraft licences online from the same Battlenet account at the same time. So really unless the Method guys are dumbasses their guilt cannot be proven.
But this type of cheating, and let's be honest if the accusations are true it is cheating, is far from new.
Back in Vanilla anyone who wanted to become Grand Marshall or High Warlord account shared. Each servers PVP community at the time decided on the weekly winner of the title and that guy (or gal) was guaranteed the title because they would be played 24 hours a day for the 7 days and the only way that is possible is to account share.
Also in Vanilla there were raid exploits, Razorgore the first boss in Blackwing Lair could exploited by Alliance guilds by casting Divine Intervention on him in the first phase which reset the fight and when Divine Intervention wore off the fight restarted in phase 2! In Ahn'Qiraj 40, one guild discovered that you could amend the game files and fall through the floor after the first boss and end up at the last boss!
There have also been other "exploits" that have been widely used as a valid tactic because guilds cheesed mechanics by clever positioning of bosses and/or players fights like Bloodlord Mandokir in the original Zul'Gurub could be cheesed by the whole raid, except the tanks, hiding behind spears or standing on a ledge that the raptor pet he had couldn't charge a random victim. Prince Malchezzar in Karazhan could be made considerably easier by the ranged and healers standing in the doorway when fighting the boss as the infernals couldn't land there, while never confirmed a fix was implemented in 2.4.
Also in TBC was the rumoured cheating on the world first Lady Vashj kill. The exploit was to purposely wipe at 20 percent and have a paladin use Divine Intervention, Vashj will reset to Phase 2 and as her HP is connected to the pillars, the HP will disappear when they despawn leaving her at 1 HP, a priest uses a soulstone and then uses Shadow Word: Death to kill her.
In Wrath, the world first kills of Yogg Saron and the Lich King were overturned because of guilds cheating. The first by making killer adds evade and the latter by making the platform rebuild itself by throwing engineering bombs.
Back in Dragon Soul the world first guilds, including Paragon and Method, found a way to exploit the loot by trading loot to characters that had already had their once a week chance of loot.
All this shows is that the world first guilds will stop at nothing to get their world first kills and really if that means so much to these folk let them cheat their way to the top. It matters not to me nor to most WoW players who killed a boss first and the only way these guys get remembered is to have some controversy linked to the kill. Personally I kill raid bosses for the achievement not the public worshipping me, as if that is liable to happen!
Anyway grats to Method on their kill, cheats or not they earned the respect of us all however brief that glory moment will be.
Mail Time
I'd like to thank Rho of Realm Maintenance and Extended Maintenance for plugging this show on his show and also to Alt of Alternative Chat and Extended Maintenance for the retweets /bow to you both.
This week I have received some feedback about the show from 2 guildies in Exhumed of Shadowsong EU, Appléjack and Dyloxe who both love the show and also gave me some feedback on the audio quality of the show. So thanks to them and the other guildies that listen so hi to Alkathraze, Irnotholy and Yamï.
As good as it is to get feedback from guildies I'd still love to hear from my less biased listeners so if please email me at podcast@evlyxx.co.uk or via either of my Twitter accounts.
The show account is: @EvangelysmCast
My personal twitter account is: @evlyxx
And I'll wrap up today's show with my tip section...
This is How We Do It
This week what we're going to look at is the tier 3 or level 45 talents. For the first time the talents now vary between specs here, but only between healer and DPS specs.
As I'll spend more time on the healer stuff I'll look briefly at the 2 that are different for our shadowy friends.
The first is Surge of Darkness and in short this turns Mind Spike into an instant cast spell that deals 50% more damage and does not remove DoTs as it normally would. This is great for fights with high movement and as you can save your procs for when you're on the move.
The third choice is Insanity, which transforms Mind Flay into a more powerful spell, 100% more powerful, for 6 seconds after consuming a Shadow Orb. This one is great for fights were you can turret for long periods.
For us healers, this tier of talents is all about mana savings. The first option is Surge of Light, each heal and smite you cast has a chance to cause the next Flash Heal to be instance and consume no mana. Personally I think this one is great for holy priests and also for discipline priests in RBGs where healers are the primary target. But in PVE this talent is very lack lustre.
The second choice is Mindbender, now the observant ones of tyou may have noticed I went from first to third in my Shadow section, the reason for that is that the Mindbender is the same for all three specs. This simply reduces the cooldown of your Shadowfiend, note he is not a Shadowfriend, and over 15 seconds will deal a crap ton of damage. Since 5.0, I've been saying that the damage output of Shadowfiend's needs nerfing not by a lot but the mana return needs to stay the same. However, 6.1 sees our little shadowy friend gets a 33% BUFF as it will last 5 seconds more.
And last, and by no means least, is Power Word: Solace which converts your Holy Fire into Power Word: Solace which increases its damage and returns 2% mana when cast which we can do every 10 seconds. This became my default choice last week because I worked out why top end priests were using Solace over Mindbender, but the 33% buff to Mindbender in 6.1 makes that my default choice once more, because mana > DPS output right now.
1. Removing the egg from my face, last week I predicted that 6.1 would hit last week. I was wrong but only by a week! So The US already has 6.1 and here in the EU we get it today so I hope you're all enjoying Tweeting from in game and posting your SELFIES!
2. Mount farming, yes still But not while I have been queuing for Ashran, I've given up trying that until next week! My route takes in Dragon Soul for the Blazing Drake and Experiment 12-B, Onyxia, ICC25 for Invincible, Zul'Gurub for the Panther and Raptor mounts, Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle for the drakes, Sethekk Halls for Anzu (yes I know you got it in TBC), Firelands for Smoldering Egg of Millagazor and Pureblood Firehawk and Throne of the Four Winds for the Drake of the South Wind. But next week I won't need to go to the Throne of the Four Winds as my hunter, Vonuberwald managed to get the Drake of the South Wind, on his first visit but I had been many times before!
3. Evlyxx has been raiding of course and this week we got Flamebender Ka'graz down on HC and on our weekend normal BRF run we did the achievement on Ka'graz of not killing Aknor Steelbringer which means he is now one of my Garrison followers.
4. I actually did some PVP this week too with loads of 3s with a hunter, Alkathraze and Funjitsu a brewmaster monk we had a lot of laughs and a reasonably fast Conquest cap. I also had a run out with the RBG team last night and while we won most of our battles we still have a lot of improvements to make but considering we started late this year due to a visit by the drama lama our RBG team is looking very promising and the leadership trio of Dumix, Appljack and Dyloxe are doing a fine job.
5. IRL stuff has been really boring and the reason the show is late out this week is because my shifts this week suck as it is Monday/Tuesday days and Wednesday/Thursday nights so I miss out on raiding and deliver the show late to you guys and gals. Sadly this will happen 2 or 3 weeks in a row every 2 months but hopefully I'll find a job with a better work schedule soon and then I can have a defined 7 day week and have a regular day of getting the show out to you all. Anyway that's a different story for a different day.
In the news this week:
Blackhand has been defeated by Method and at the time of recording only Method. So congratulations to them on a true World 1st as the US guilds have now entered their 3rd week mythic raiding. There has been some drama around this as there have been accusations of cheating by account sharing and I'll cover that in a bit more depth in this week's Talk Talk which is all about Exploiting WoW inspired by this very topic.
6.1 has hit the servers, Twitter has remained stable which means most of the naysayers and doom prophets got it wrong, or I follow the right people!
Talk Talk...WoW Exploits.
So last week Method killed mythic Blackhand and the accusations of cheating started almost before Blackhand hit the ground and took his last breath. The crime that Method stand accused of is account sharing. Now cast your mind back to Christmas time, not to the turkey and your presents but to a pair of guys named Reckful and Sodah who were banned for account sharing while streaming and openly admitting they were playing each other's accounts, stupid boys that they were.
The method of Method's alleged account sharing is slightly different though, the accusers claim that certain players created a 2nd account and then transferred their geared alt to it to allow a 2nd person to play the geared alt instead of playing their own lesser geared character. Now this is harder to prove as the alleged incident wasn't streamed and unless the 2 players were playing at different locations and not masking their IP addresses to be the same, it is perfectly acceptable to have 2 Warcraft licences online from the same Battlenet account at the same time. So really unless the Method guys are dumbasses their guilt cannot be proven.
But this type of cheating, and let's be honest if the accusations are true it is cheating, is far from new.
Back in Vanilla anyone who wanted to become Grand Marshall or High Warlord account shared. Each servers PVP community at the time decided on the weekly winner of the title and that guy (or gal) was guaranteed the title because they would be played 24 hours a day for the 7 days and the only way that is possible is to account share.
Also in Vanilla there were raid exploits, Razorgore the first boss in Blackwing Lair could exploited by Alliance guilds by casting Divine Intervention on him in the first phase which reset the fight and when Divine Intervention wore off the fight restarted in phase 2! In Ahn'Qiraj 40, one guild discovered that you could amend the game files and fall through the floor after the first boss and end up at the last boss!
There have also been other "exploits" that have been widely used as a valid tactic because guilds cheesed mechanics by clever positioning of bosses and/or players fights like Bloodlord Mandokir in the original Zul'Gurub could be cheesed by the whole raid, except the tanks, hiding behind spears or standing on a ledge that the raptor pet he had couldn't charge a random victim. Prince Malchezzar in Karazhan could be made considerably easier by the ranged and healers standing in the doorway when fighting the boss as the infernals couldn't land there, while never confirmed a fix was implemented in 2.4.
Also in TBC was the rumoured cheating on the world first Lady Vashj kill. The exploit was to purposely wipe at 20 percent and have a paladin use Divine Intervention, Vashj will reset to Phase 2 and as her HP is connected to the pillars, the HP will disappear when they despawn leaving her at 1 HP, a priest uses a soulstone and then uses Shadow Word: Death to kill her.
In Wrath, the world first kills of Yogg Saron and the Lich King were overturned because of guilds cheating. The first by making killer adds evade and the latter by making the platform rebuild itself by throwing engineering bombs.
Back in Dragon Soul the world first guilds, including Paragon and Method, found a way to exploit the loot by trading loot to characters that had already had their once a week chance of loot.
All this shows is that the world first guilds will stop at nothing to get their world first kills and really if that means so much to these folk let them cheat their way to the top. It matters not to me nor to most WoW players who killed a boss first and the only way these guys get remembered is to have some controversy linked to the kill. Personally I kill raid bosses for the achievement not the public worshipping me, as if that is liable to happen!
Anyway grats to Method on their kill, cheats or not they earned the respect of us all however brief that glory moment will be.
Mail Time
I'd like to thank Rho of Realm Maintenance and Extended Maintenance for plugging this show on his show and also to Alt of Alternative Chat and Extended Maintenance for the retweets /bow to you both.
This week I have received some feedback about the show from 2 guildies in Exhumed of Shadowsong EU, Appléjack and Dyloxe who both love the show and also gave me some feedback on the audio quality of the show. So thanks to them and the other guildies that listen so hi to Alkathraze, Irnotholy and Yamï.
As good as it is to get feedback from guildies I'd still love to hear from my less biased listeners so if please email me at podcast@evlyxx.co.uk or via either of my Twitter accounts.
The show account is: @EvangelysmCast
My personal twitter account is: @evlyxx
And I'll wrap up today's show with my tip section...
This is How We Do It
This week what we're going to look at is the tier 3 or level 45 talents. For the first time the talents now vary between specs here, but only between healer and DPS specs.
As I'll spend more time on the healer stuff I'll look briefly at the 2 that are different for our shadowy friends.
The first is Surge of Darkness and in short this turns Mind Spike into an instant cast spell that deals 50% more damage and does not remove DoTs as it normally would. This is great for fights with high movement and as you can save your procs for when you're on the move.
The third choice is Insanity, which transforms Mind Flay into a more powerful spell, 100% more powerful, for 6 seconds after consuming a Shadow Orb. This one is great for fights were you can turret for long periods.
For us healers, this tier of talents is all about mana savings. The first option is Surge of Light, each heal and smite you cast has a chance to cause the next Flash Heal to be instance and consume no mana. Personally I think this one is great for holy priests and also for discipline priests in RBGs where healers are the primary target. But in PVE this talent is very lack lustre.
The second choice is Mindbender, now the observant ones of tyou may have noticed I went from first to third in my Shadow section, the reason for that is that the Mindbender is the same for all three specs. This simply reduces the cooldown of your Shadowfiend, note he is not a Shadowfriend, and over 15 seconds will deal a crap ton of damage. Since 5.0, I've been saying that the damage output of Shadowfiend's needs nerfing not by a lot but the mana return needs to stay the same. However, 6.1 sees our little shadowy friend gets a 33% BUFF as it will last 5 seconds more.
And last, and by no means least, is Power Word: Solace which converts your Holy Fire into Power Word: Solace which increases its damage and returns 2% mana when cast which we can do every 10 seconds. This became my default choice last week because I worked out why top end priests were using Solace over Mindbender, but the 33% buff to Mindbender in 6.1 makes that my default choice once more, because mana > DPS output right now.
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