Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

Yes finally Blizzard finishes thes silly splash thing.  Yes, people can finally shut up about it yay!  (The forums have been driving me crazy lately)  Yes they announced Diablo III like most of us intelligent people figured it was.  I watched the trailers, and even though I never played either of the other two I think I will definetly pick this one up   I’d try out the old diablo but I don’t think it would even run on my mac if I could even find it anywhere.  I guess it should still run on the PC.  I should try to find it just to get a feel for it

I think I really dodged a bullet.  I don’t think I ever talked about it here but I had been pretty interested in Age of Conan (AoC).  I wasn’t intending on quitting WoW or anything but the game had a lot of interesting sounding elements.  Some pretty impressive looking graphics assuming your computer could render them.  I had pre-ordered the game, even got involved with the guild that the Witch Hunters were merging with in AoC.

Then I started reading the feedback from the people who got to play the stress tests.  Then they let people talk about the open beta up to level 13 or something silly like that.  Then I started reading NDA breaker stories.  I started to realize this game was going to be another disaster.  Not wanting to waste money and be disappointed I just canceled my preorder and went on my merry way.

I see so many posts like this one in the WoW forums.  People who played AoC for day, a week, or a month then totally ran away.  The sentiment is usually one of, “I never realized how good WoW was till I left”.  This is what always happened to me with EQ.  I would leave, try something else realize it is nowhere near the game EQ was and then go back.  So yes I have wasted some money on MMOs always looking for the next big thing.

With Blizzard I think they have made a game that is very appealing across a large audience.  I also think it is because of the quality of development, you know that thing they always make us wait for till its “ready”.  The thing that is always available “soon”.  I think because they take such good care, though they are not perfect by any means the quality is substantially better than these other shops.

I think AoC will stick around, these games always manage too.  I mean after all its very bloody, and has boobs.  That alone will probably keep it life.  I don’t think it will remotely effect WoW’s player base, and I think the same will be true for Warhammer Online.

The WOTLK Alpha Wiki had to find a new home.  The got their own site now and can be found here. The Priest stuff still isn’t very exciting.  I hope they are still heavily working on them.  I laughed when I noticed they were buffing Light Well.  They lowered the cooldown to 5 minutes, increased the charges to 10, and reduced the cast time to .5 seconds.  I don’t think anyone will ever use it unless they make the healing not break on damage.

I also never noticed that they nerfed Improved Divine Spirit to 3% and 6% from down from 5% and 10%.  I had already read they had put a cool down on Circle of Healing, apparently it was 8 seconds then they made it 6.  However it finally works on raid targets something they promised in the BC Beta

The Warlock talents are really shapping up nicely though.  The destruction talents are what I’m talking about of course   Everyone knows that the Imp is my favorite pet, maybe it is because he goes so good with me and my obsession with fire.  They added a nifty talent called Empowered Imp “Increases the damage done by your Imp by 5/10/15%, and all critical hits done by your Imp have a $h% chance to increase your spell critical hit chance for your next spell by 100%. This effect lasts 8 sec.”  This goes great with my Destruction/Imp build    Get this, Improved Imp, Demonic Power (the new combined lower Imp Firebolt and Succubus Lash of Pain) and you got your self some mean pet damage   They combined the Pet Stamina and Int talents into one as well but I don’t have enough points to get what I want and that still

Was taking advantage of all the fire festival buffs and doing some questing on Fesster.  I think now that Laneer has his pants, and practically nothing left to upgrade I’m going to mess around on Fesster more.  So while I was working on some other quests someone in the guild wanted to do the Ring of Fire.  I remember the Damage Staff being pretty good and wanted in on that.  So we went and did that, we did it so rediculously fast it wasn’t even funny.  Inian came along which made things go much faster   I did pretty good damage wise I thought for my level.  The festival buff I had gave me an extra 3% crit which was very nice

More on the Epic Aran fight, I happened to be looking at the data from last night and thought I’d share   I noticed the fight was 8 minutes, I thought it felt long but didn’t realize it was that long lol

Geazus totally owns everyone on damage, of course Inian and him were alive the longest of the DPS   Geazus shows off his warlock overpoweredness!

Rathgor was fairly under geared (wearing cloth lol) and was not fully Holy speced to his credit.  For the whole instance Azsharia and I were pretty neck and neck on healing of course in this fight I lived longer and regenerated more mana.  Though to my credit I was not buffed for healing and was dpsing part of the time   The fact was that Rathgor and Azsharia were not enough though.

Here you can see how much mana we all generated during the fight   You’ll notice the mages up there, able to pot, and use mana gems.  Inian said he used all 3 charges during the fight   Of course Geazus had the very nice ability of life tapping.  He made very good use of it.  When I brought it up this morning he was very defensive about it.  I was like I encourage warlocks to lifetap, I don’t care I was just amazed at home much mana he got back during the fight.  I was surprised Azsharia was so low, I figured surely he innervated himself because I don’t recall I was ever innervated.  In fact I think an Innervate on me at this point will take me from 0 to full lol

When I got on the guild had just got done putting together 2 Kara groups.  There was only 17 people on so they pulled in some PUG to do it.  I was very annoyed I missed it because I only needed 12 more badges to get my pants!  Who likes a pantless Dwarf   So I kept looking, and there was nothing.  So I joined a AV, I had the daily and just as we were about to win I got tells from tons of people.  Both the guild Kara’s lost one of the PUG members and needed someone, someone wanted to do the event boss, and someone wanted me for ZA.

I ended up choosing to go with the guild Kara figuring I’d get the most badges that way.  I was trying to wait to see if we would win that AV.  The stupid horde were in Dreks room causing trouble and I laughed becaues a rogue sapped me in the middle of the room and then I took the summon and popped in Kara sapped hehe

They had only done the first boss so I didn’t miss much badges.  I was kind of sad because the Healing Ribbon trinket from Opera dropped and 2 other people rolled against me and I lost it to Azsharia the restro druid.  At least it was a guildie.

We were carving our way over to the curator and I stopped for a rest.  I felt very regal here in this chair.

I also got a chance to complete the big Kara chain and kill Nightbane.  Even if it was the longest Nightbane fight ever.  It was quite rediculous how long it took I didn’t think I was going to make it through it.   We had quite a few badly geared people it was hard to keep them alive through the skeleton guys, and we were of course short on DPS.  Me being there didn’t help on DPS, technically there were 3 healers, though the Paladin didn’t matter much.  I was going to use this gem in my robe but I think I’ll just stick it in my pants.

The high point of the night was Aran.  We wiped on him the first try then went in for the second time.  By the time the elementals were summoned we had lost everyone except Me, Azsharia, Inian and Geazus.  It was taking so long Azsharia and I were both out of mana, I was doing everything in my power to keep mana.  Potting as soon as I could, popping the Bangle, using Spooky, thankfully I have uber regen.  I didn’t even have all my healing buffs because I was kind of buffed for dpsing.

Eventually I loose Azsharia and it is me, Inian and Geazus.  Azsharia doesn’t have the regen I do so he couldn’t heal much anyways.  So Aran does his sheeping thing (can’t remember if Azsharia is alive at this point) and then basically it is a constant battle with mana to keep Inian and Geazus alive.  They were our top DPS and I knew if i could keep us alive we would win.  Well it took us a while to take down that last 30% or so but we did it.  So everyone pretty much watch in amazement as we managed to finish the boss off.  It was a pretty epic battle and I felt pretty good after such an amazing victory

Of course I would have preferred an easy victory but this was still fun   That boss also made exactly 100 badges for me which meant new pants!  More Regen, More Stamina, more healing all coming my way   So before bed I ran and grabbed them and also made some golden spell thread for them.  Woot!  There are only a few more badge things I think are upgrades.  I think with the amount of int and spirit I have now the Slippers of Dutiful Mending are an upgrade, oh and the old offhand the Voodoo Shaker.

On Friday’s Thalios was starting up this tradition of going up and beating on old instances.  I like to call it rep farming myself!    A lot of these people have never been to any of the old world raid instances.  Tonight he choose AQ20 and I IM’d Inian and got him to come   It was absolute pure chaos with not much structured playing going on.  People accidentally pulled the first boss.  In the second boss someone managed to pull several waves of mobs.  It was crazyness, but the best part was I got loads and loads of Cenarion Circle Rep.

It was crazy how big the agro range is on all these guys before the big boss.  We ended up practically fighting them all at the same time.  It was even more insane chaos.  I think I died here and that was the only time I remember dying.  I was healing so much I just finally got agro lol

After that which we did in like an hour Thalios suggested ZG.  Though so many people left they backed out of the idea.  Inian and I really wanted to do it though cause he wants his turtle poly.  So we went and grabbed the stuff and Result volunteered to tank for us.  So off we went and easily went over and summoned and killed him.  Of course he didn’t drop the stupid book the bastard.  I think we should find a willing tank and try it every week, or whatever the timer is till we get it.

Old raids can really be fun, and I do have the goal of finishing out the reps on them, which were all so close yet so far lol.

I put up some Greater Eternal Essence last night along with some old Strange Dust, and Greater Magic Essence.  Plus I had a really really crapy socket pattern that dropped yesterday, it was the +10 spell penetration.  I figured though someone is probably a completest out there so I put it up for a 75g buyout.  Well I logged in this morning before I was going to head to work and I was completely surprised all of it sold.  I had 283 gold waiting for me in my mailbox.  I should have put a higher price on that socket probably!

I’m up to 6141 now, I think thats the most I’ve had in my hands, Woot!  I know this is nothing compared to Inian but I just don’t get to as many dailies as he does

I got on kind of late it would have been cutting it pretty close to bed time to do any heroics.  I was doing the fishing daily when Inian got on and he was finishing up his UBRS key.  I had wanted to do it too so we decided to go head and finish it out for me too   Why get the UBRS key you ask?  Inian and I are sort of completest, old characters from that period.  We never got it before and we feel we should have it

Usually when Inian and I are out in the old world we rarely run into anyone, let alone horde.  The last thing I was expect when I rounded the corner as I entered BRM was a 70 Rogue and 70 Druid in my face.  They of course decided to inconvience me and slaughted me.  So doing this run I’ve done so so so many times before was the last thing I expected

We could mostly walk through all the content to get to the bosses.  It was only area in which the mobs were really tight that we couldn’t.  For inconveniencing us the entire room/area would pay the price   I got a lot of rune cloth this way!

We rounded all the bosses while we were getting the gem pieces for me. So I quickly resupplied my Large Brilliant Shard supply on this run as well.  I think actually it was faster to get them from here than Scholo or Strath though I’ve still been after Argent Dawn faction.

After you give him all the gems he wants you to forge the seal by mind controlling this Drake in the marsh lands.  Thankfully Inian popped us over to Theramore, and we quickly ran over to him.  His cave is over by Onyxia and apparently I had never been in it before because I discovered it when we went in.    You have to weaken him down before you can use the MC orb and the way Inian was critting I kept thinking he was going to kill him.  But we got him down and I took control and forged the seal.  Then off we went back to IF to fly back over to BRM.

So I turn in the seal and I get this ring that has some resists.  I’m like this is a key?  Oh goodie another “key” that isn’t a key so it doesn’t go in my keyring   Good bye bank slot!  So we go test it out, it is kind of funny as you walk up to the door it automagically opens for you lol  But it was the last oldworld key I didn’t have so I feel complete now yay!  It can sit in the bank next to my Celebras staff for Maurodon and my Onyxia Pendant and Onyxia Scale Cloak lol

We got a good amount of Ironweb in there as well I plan to convert to Greater Eternal Esence which still sells extremely well

I know I’m slow in posting about this one but its been a busy week.  Anyways they put up 2.4.3 and there is quite a bit of comotion about a few of the changes.

The top 3 forum QQ points in order they appear in the patch notes.

• Mounts at 30?! Yes, it’s true: Apprentice Riding and mounts are now available at level 30. Training costs 35 gold.

Yes, people are actually complaining that you can get mounts at level 30 now instead of 40.  Warlock and Paladin castable mounts were almost moved to 30.  This proves once again that people will QQ about anything.

• Cheat Death: This talent has been rebalanced significantly. Killing blows are no longer 100% absorbed. If the Rogue is below 10% health, the killing blow is still completely absorbed; if the Rogue is over 10% health, enough damage will be absorbed to reduce the Rogue’s health down to 10%. For the following 3 seconds, damage is not always reduced by 90%; it is now reduced by a maximum of 90%, depending on how much resilience the Rogue has. The damage reduction will be four times the damage reduction resilience causes against critical strikes.

Now I don’t follow arena much but apparently this change was necessary because rogues in T6 with this talent could go in and completely own.  Basically rogues didn’t really need to wear PvP gear like everyone else, or not much.  So supposedly this balances that and the QQ is a flowing!  How can you make a PvP talent require a PvP stat! Ahhhh the humanity!

• Curse of Elements: This spell now applies to Arcane and Shadow damage, as well as Frost and Fire.

Subsequently Curse of Shadow has been removed of course, and combined into one spell.  Again you wouldn’t think people would complain about this one.  The QQ ranged from “Shadow isn’t an element” to “why didn’t you add holy and nature”.  Blizzard thought putting the two spells together was nice enough for now.

Lastly though not something to QQ about, they FINALLY added 28 slot Herb bags into the game much to the excitement of Inian.  So I copied over Laneer and flew over to take a look.  Must be revered with the Sporeggar (I’m exalted thank goodness) and you’ll need 25 mushrooms.  Mats are 6 Primal Mooncloth and 2 Fel Lotus.  Not too rediculous