Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

Did a fast run this evening of H-VH just for the badges of course.  I notice this week we have the easy razorscale I’ll have to try and get that done this weekend.  I just did another quick shot so I could go try and play some SC2 again   The single player campaign really drives you to move forward, the story is really good and the missions are quite unique and fun

The other thing I really need to get done is get the site on Wordpress 3.  I have a customized template and such so I haven’t been looking forward to trying to do this upgrade but 3.0.1 just came out so I guess I better get with it.   So expect that to happen this weekend too.

I also received word my new computer is being built, hopefully I will have it some time next week!  This would be good because SC2 doesn’t run so hot on my Mac   Based on the screenshots of Cataclysm I have a sneaky suspicion that neither would it.

I jumped on when I got the chance just for a quick badge run.  Inien was in SC2 playing the single player campaign and thanks to the new realid system I was able to chat with him while I did my instance run

Of course one of the real reasons I got on was to see my new pet mini thor   You all know how much of a pet nut I am and this pet is exceptionally cool I must say!  The model is very well done and he is highly animated!

He constantly kept jumping up and flying around me and shooting stuff!  I kept him out during my Azjol-Nerub run   Definitely made the CE worth it for just him alone!

Of course the other big news of the day was my decision to finally re-get my gaming computer.  I kept going back and forth on if I should upgrade my Mac or just buy a gaming PC.  My Mac still does everything just fine and you are really limited on video card choices with the Mac as well.  As you recall late last year I tried to buy one but then it got back ordered and then delayed and eventually I just canceled it with the intention of ordering it again after the first of the year but it got delayed a bit

I decided to skip SSD right now and just stripe some really fast HDs, went with the Geforce 470 as it seems to edge out ATI, and grabbed the i7 930 as it is the sweet spot on price and seems to be very easily over clocked to 4Ghz

• ASUS P6X58D-E Mother Board
• Intel® Core™ i7 930 Processor (4x 2.80GHz/8MB L3 Cache)
• 6 GB [2 GB X3] DDR3-1600 – A-DATA Gaming Series
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 – 1.5GB – EVGA Superclocked
• 600 GB WD Velociraptor HARD DRIVE — 32M Cache, 10000 RPM, 6.0Gb/s – Dual 600GB Drives (1.2TB Capacity) – RAID 0 High Performance
• 875 Watt — Thermaltake Toughpower XT TPX-875M Power Supply
• Thermaltake Element G Gaming Case – Black

This should last me for a while and I’ll be able to hopefully try out some other PC games I haven’t been able to play without a lot of pain in dual booting.  I ordered this from ibuypower again mainly because I don’t think I have the patience to build it myself anymore hehe  Their custom built machines are pretty reasonable, and they have good build quality.  I’ve known quite a few people who have got some good quality machines from them.  I don’t know when it is coming in yet, but I will probably take that week off work to play with it!

Super worn out tonight but decided to login for a (hopefully) quick random.  Thankfully I got ToC which is nice and speedy and got it done quick!  Lots of stuff about the debut of SC2 going around, I have the Collectors Edition on the way so I’ll be having fun in that tomorrow hopefully!

Must people try to skip content.  This is kind of a pet peeve of mine because skipping content only causes me heart ache in the end usually   I felt like healing but with all my raids done and my random done I just decided to do the Icecrown instances.  So I queued up for them and ended up get forge of souls, and then pit of saron, more on FoS in a second   So the people I was with weren’t too bad, but they wanted to do that silly thing where you try to run up past through the mobs as they are spawning.  I’ve only seen this executed once successfully every other time it is a disaster.  This of course was a disaster   In the confusion I slipped down the side of the mountain but thankfully this mountain isn’t solid, it didn’t effect LOS.  So I was able to continue to heal from there.  Two people died almost immediately but I kept everyone else a live and they walked back while we were still fighting.  The group was very pleased with my healing they mentioned several times

Before this I was in a FoS group that for the most part had no business being in the zone they were so poorly geared, my favorite kind of group!   I find these groups the most fun because it is really hard to keep them all alive, and often don’t know what they are doing so it is a challenge.  The tank for instance didn’t know how to tank anything, and he was a deathknight. For the most part they didn’t say much but got a chuckle out of them when they asked if I needed to stop for mana, and I told them “Not until Cataclysm” The point of this story and I kid you not , 12 minute Bronjahm fight.  I’m sitting there going any time folks, but because it took all I had just to keep them alive I couldn’t stop to tell them what they were doing wrong.  Finally someone who knew the fight told the tank what to do and we were able to kill him.  Basically he stayed full most of the fight because they didn’t try to prevent the souls being split off from getting to him   However I can’t knock the group entirely because they managed to amazingly go through the tunnel and not get hit and I finally got that achievement

Looking forward to Tuesday, Starcraft 2 comes out, hope everyone has got their copy ordered!

I’m not sure what the odds of this happening are but I was doing my random for the day and got VH.  The first portal opened at the spot on the left side looking out from the entrance then proceeded to do each portal moving left to right.  I wish I would have taken a video because you probably wouldn’t believe it hehe

Later that evening I got in a PUG 25 man ICC.  They asked for healer with a DPS off spec but I mostly ended up being DPS the whole time.  We did the usual easy bosses, and tried the Dreamwalker but were never successful.  The people were well geared in the group but didn’t listen very well.  There were also a few people who were not very well geared and were even lamer at listening.

It was nice though because we got the quest again which meant another batch of frost badges for me.  By the time we were done I had more than enough to get my hat.  Now I only need one more piece of my 4 piece, yay!  First time completing a set bonus for me since vanilla.  I usually don’t try, but thought I’d try it out this time

I got on this evening and eventually ended up in a ICC group.  It was a PUG and turned out to be great.  It was my first run with the 30% buff.  The weekly was Lord Marrowgar so that was  a bonus.  Even got an achievement off Marrowgar   Everyone was well geared and the things went very well right up to Professor Putricide where we lost a tank.  We almost split right there but someone found a tank eventually.  We almost got him first try, but the second try we completely owned him.  I was so excited to finally get him down and complete that wing.

From that point on it was all new territory to me.  I hadn’t seen anything beyond him and was looking forward to it!  The next fight we did was Valithria Dreamwalker.  This was a really neat fight where I had to heal the dragon.  Since we only needed one tank one of the paladins joined me in healing while the rest dealt with all these adds.  when we got the dragon to full we won.  It was a really neat fight and I had no idea something like that existed in ICC.

We did good up to the blood queen where we had some issues with all the coordination but eventually got it down and defeated her!  That is an interesting fight too, not terribly difficult once you get down all the things you have to do.

We lost one of the tanks and everyone was ready to call it but some of us, me included wanted to just see Sindragosa.  So we went ahead and got her and gave her one shot.  Someone got their wife to get on who was a tank to help just once.  We did one run on it and got the gist of it.  I look forward to finishing that one some day I hope!  It was exciting I got frozen first off

Gear wise it wasn’t too exciting.  I was glad to get the badges though.  Only DPS cloth dropped and a lot of plate and a bit of mail.  In the end I did roll on a wand that did have hit on it but was still good.  Also one of the guys gave me some dps pants I might use in my healing set too till I can complete my 4 piece.  Getting new things was fun too, though now I have to gem and enchant some pants   Really enjoyed the group though and got a good run on rep!

Jumped on this afternoon for a quick dungeon run for badges because I was going to the zoo with the family and I didn’t figure I’d be getting on the computer when we finally got home.  I was right of course   Of course I ended up with HoL which isn’t the fastest dungeon but turned out ok.  We had a really good tank,t he dps was subpar but the tank made up for it

The best part was my son came over and watch while sitting on my lap.  He is 3 now and when ever he sees me playing the game and fighting something he yells “Bad Guy!” and well you know how many bad guys are in HOL.  I also taught him what an elemental was so when we would run into them he would yell “Elemental!” in his cute not exact way   The biggest problem with him sitting on my lap of course is he can make it difficult to heal with all the jumping  and screaming and occasional “helping” hehe

Finished up the run and off to the zoo we went.  No argent tournament for me today!

Maybe it is because I haven’t done one in a while or because I have so little time anymore but my goblin rep grind seems slower than normal.  Even though I know it couldn’t possibly be as bad as when I did the Timbermaw 1 rep at a time before they changed the system all the way to exalted.  That rep had the occasional turn in item do as do the water waste guys I’m doing now.

I got DK as my heroic daily today which I hadn’t done in a while.  The group had lost their healer but I joined them still at the first boss.  The tank was well geared but all the DPS were recent 80s I can tell.  I never mind not overgearing and instance, in fact they are way more fun that way

I finished up the DK run which didn’t take much longer than usual and then started my quests in icecrown for the argent tournament.  I put myself in the looking for raid system for a 25 mana voa, Inien was finishing something else and mentioned he did the same.  I continued my quests in icecrown and then got a VOA25 invite, they were full though, and had apparently been wiping

I thought oh boy but stayed with them, a bunch of people left and I got them to invite Inien.  I told Inien what he was in for and finally after a long wait we went again.  I could tell the issue was their healers were severely under geared, but they had insane dps but then they wouldn’t switch to the frost thingys when they went up.  Anyways we didn’t wipe but a considerable number of people died and in the end the of this story Inien got the mage pants that dropped from this boss with a roll of 25 against 2 other mages, and it completed his 4 piece set!  Grats to him   One guy even offered him 6k gold for them hehe

After all that Inien and I finished up some tournament quests and I think we might have done a ToC in there some where too.  We went over and hit up ZG to try again for my silly baby raptor pet and for some more mounts for him.  Of course none of it ended up dropping.  We did about 3 tries for the pet.  It is a good distraction anyways

Still waiting on my cataclysm invite, none yet though at least we have had lots of great info coming out lately. The new 31pt talents have been interesting but still need a lot of work. Very interested in seeing how the smite mechanics they added in disc work out. I even got one of my questions answered about it in yesterdays dev chat!

Q. I’m excited about the Smite mechanic in Disc. Are you going to do anything about hit so that mechanic can be effective?
A. We had a talent to give you a bunch of spell hit in a beta build, but spell hit on your offensive spells is a hard sell in the new talent model. But yes, we want to do something about spell hit for the Discipline Archangel specialization, possibly move up Twisting Faith to a tier that Discipline can obtain it in Shadow (so your spirit would convert to hit as Discipline/Shadow sub-specialization).

I’ve still mostly been working only goblin factions lately and farming gold. Also picking up stuff here and there for my future worgen warrior. Decided on a new name for him, Cosain which in Irish means to protect. Also trying to pickup frost badges when I can each day to grab my 4piece bonus and get to the stupid 5500gs so I can try the new ruby sanctum.

I’ve been super busy but still finding time for WoW, but have been neglecting my site recently   If you follow my twitter feed though I have been posting there!  I’ll try to do better!  I’m trying to do too many things right now I think

Anyways some pretty exciting news yesterday about the redesign of the talent system.  They have this whole new system worked out and ready to appear in the next beta push! (Which I’m still not in btw )  I think they hit the nail on the head with this new specialization concept.  Especially the part about making the class FEEL like the spec they choose very early on by presenting them a tree defining ability at level 10.

I was telling Inien again last night that I am glad I have continued to wait to start learning anything about Warriors (my new worgen) with this much stuff in flux.  There is so much changing, from the gear, to the stats, to the talents that its going to be a new game.  Not to mention the world!  Speaking of which I’ve watched a lot of videos of the new world and Blizzard has done an amazing job on the new and old zones.  This expansion has got to be the most epic expansion ever created.

I’m very excited to see what they do with Disc after cleaning it up.  I hope Power Word: Barrier is still there because I still believed that would be a fun spell!  I was also saw mention of Penance being the Disc defining ability given to level 10s, which means we may get something new at the top of our tree which should be interesting.  I just hope they stick with the overall theme of Disc, speed and absorption.

Just a quick update on what I’ve been up to lately.  I’ve mostly been working on my gold supplies and farming rep for my non-exalted factions.  I’ve also tried to keep a slow and steady income of frost badges coming.  I’ve managed to get my two piece bonus on T10 and pickup a few other odds and ends.  I am working towards getting the 4 piece bonus then I’ll likely go for one of the trinkets or the tailoring patterns depending on how things are at that point.

I managed to get the new pet they put on Ahune before he went away, and also bought the two plush pets baby Gryphon and Wyvern.  I know it is a sickness   Every once in a while Inien goes with me to beat up the folks in ZG to try and get the last Raptor I don’t have.  I also do a lot of fishing in the sewers still for my rat.  I still have a few pets I need to get other places, like the phoenix in MGT.  I’m currently running with 124 pets now, woot!