Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

Well it looks like the Texas Mercenaries finally got another healer in their guild so they don’t need me anymore.  So I didn’t get a chance to do ToC10 today.  I only needed one more seal for my Ammen Vale Lashling so I went and did a Heroic ToC.  After getting that I did a few dailies and ended up in an Onyxia 25 run.

It took a few tries but we finally got her down.  It was a bit rough at first though   She didn’t drop anything for me or Inien.  Inien ended up joining me on this run.  We tried for her head but failed miserably.

I haven’t got to play all week, I had been looking forward to that ToC10, too bad I didn’t get a group for that.  Maybe later this weekend.  Inien and I are planning on another ZG run to finish out his rep too.  I made a nice chunk of gold today to the tune of 1200 something because of some old mats I cleaned out of my bank last week and this week.  My enchanting bags were over flowing so I finally got rid of some planar essence and arcane dust.  Need to start hording gold for the expansion I think.  Who knows what might come up for that.

Inien and I ended up spending the evening slaying trolls in ZG for rep.  I figured I had only one more  run in me to exalted and I was right!  Here you can see us messing around with being really tiny after slaying the spider boss

We did the entire instance, killed everything but Hakkar pretty quickly.  We only had trouble with the stupid tiger guy again.  It is killing those three at the same time was such an issue.  We skipped them but then came back to him because Inien had a quest for his head.  Half way through our attempt, I realized wait a minute, they are using mana, and I can remove mana, why didn’t I think of this before.  So I mana burned the two casters mana completely then Inien had no issues bring them down close to death, then finishing them.  After he becomes the tiger it is easy   I will remember that for next time

After that we went over to MC.  I hadn’t gone back to see if I got rep from the mobs now that they fixed the rep stuff.  I was shocked to find out that still only the bosses give rep!  That would make getting my Hydraxian waterlords rep up very very painful   Why does Blizzard hate me personally.

We ended up finishing the night farming for the mojo pet in ZA.  Inien hadn’t done much in there either so he got to see more of it.  This was a hard level 70 dungeon, and they definitely beat up on us.  We were still able to get in three mojo attempts each before we called it a night.

I’ve been working 12 hour days lately on a big project at work, and time and energy for WoW just hasn’t been there   So sad too with so many interesting things going on in the community right now.  I did do a 10 hour day today, downed a Monster and went home with the hopes I could play tonight.

I got on and noticed that the Heroic Daily was ToC.  So I decided to grab that and go out there and do the dailies and try for a group.  I got a group in a short time and got started.  We lost one of our DPS then gained a tank, so our DK that was going to tank went DPS and he was happy   The new tank was saying he just ran from a group that had a healer in all blues, must have died a lot.  Of course he really shouldn’t have talked he was quite terrible.  I had both DK’s standing in the damn poison, and the Tank had 5 stacks of the crap on him the whole time, and the DPS one had it on him the whole time too.  To top it off it took them forever to kill the 3 and they left the rogue up the whole time   I barely made it through that one.  During the run I got a tell from thewaterboy from Texas Mercenaries to see if I wanted to raid with them.  I thought i got on too late so I figured I missed out.  They still hadn’t got another healer so they waited for me to finish and off we went.

We were too healing it this time, just me and Redfive.  Redfive is an exceptional pally healer.  He is a bit better geared than I am but if you county my mitigation with my healing I keep up I think.  Of course I hadn’t two healed this instance before, and I hadn’t played in like 2 weeks so I was a little rusty.  We got through the bosses no problem though.  On the twins I got a little flustered and lost my tank, but it was the very end, so we powered through and got them both down before anything bad happened.

The last fight was by far the hardest one to two heal.  Especially phase 3 was totally brutal!  What I found when two healing this dungeon was I actually ran out of mana.  So I think I still need to get a little more geared before I can do this truly well.  We lost two people at the end but that wasn’t too bad.   The amazing part was more that we cleared the whole thing in 1 hour

We tried hard mode after, at first just to mess around.  We actually were making progress through so we stuck to it for a little bit.  We were able to get the first beast down in time before the worms came out once, but sorta lost it after that.  We still don’t have enough DPS, and one of the tanks wasn’t geared enough yet.  It is a fun challenge though, I like trying to do the hardmodes

I gave up though shortly before midnight they were going to go do Ulduar but I had already been up since 3:30 and was exhausted so I had to go to bed.  I had a fun time though finally getting to play!

I got on this evening with no particular plans.  I had a bad headache but had recovered enough to play as long as I didn’t jump around   When I got on Inien just joined a Ony 25 run.  He invited me to go with him and I joined.  Well it took FOREVER to get started.  The first start was a wipe instantly and we lost a bunch of people.  Then we had to refill the raid, this happened twice and then finally we after got everyone together we tried again and they wiped terribly again and we broke up.  After that Inien and I decided to do something different, and went to go do a rep run on ZG.

This turned out to be a lot easier than last time we did it.  We are so much more geared now it made things go way faster.  We did all the bosses but Hakaar, and the only one that gave us trouble was the tiger boss.  He was hard because we had to kill the 3 guys at once and with the one that kept healing that was sorta hard.  I just helped DPS and keep us alive eventually we got it after a few miss kills.

After we finished I turned in one of the pieces for rep, and broke some coins.  I ended up only need 5600 rep to get exalted.  Another full run with Inien should get me exalted.  It will take a few more for Inien though because he never did ZG originally   Of course once I get exalted it will go faster for him then we aren’t sharing the coins.

It was a fun night though, I wish we would have done this instead of that terrible Onyxia originally

No energy tonight, tried to play but gave up after one quest.  Was about to log when I chatted a bit with Inien and he mentioned PTR changes.  I loaded up MMO-Champion and noticed Priest changes, oh Shadow I thought.  Then Just below those I saw this!

Power Word: Shield; This spell can now be cast on non-raid/party friendly targets.

I was shocked by this.  They changed this a Loooooong time ago.  In fact I went to my patch.txt and looked.

• Patch 1.2: – Power Word: Shield: Now usable on party members only.

• Patch 1.3: – Power Word: Shield – Now castable on all raid targets.

It originally could be used as freely as any heal spell.  When they changed it I think the reasoning I always heard was someone could cast a rank 1 shield on you, untalented (back when the PW:Shield talent took the cooldown from 30 to 15 seconds) and you would be locked out of using a shield for 30 seconds and the shield was crappy.  It was essentially a griefing  change supposedly.

Well now the cooldown is always 15 seconds so that really doesn’t do it, and they are taking out spell ranks in 4.0 so I guess there is no reason for it anymore?  Plus I’m hoping they find a way for two Disc Priests to be more useful together, i.e. the Weakened Soul is tied to the Priest some how.

This was exciting enough news that I stopped heading off to bed to make this post   I hope this change sticks, not that I am constantly around people I’m not grouped or in a raid with anymore like the olden days.  But it is nice to be able to help out someone with one of my best and favorite spells.

Well I worked another 12 hour day today.  I have had like no play time as you probably noticed, but I got on to relax for a few this evening.  I decided rather than doing the usual I’d get to working on my Loremaster achievement, continuing Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms.  I’m not too far off this one, needing just over 80 more quests.  Right now I’m concentrating on STV because I know I never did anything here.  This was probably my least favorite place in the game.  Not that it wasn’t neat with lots of quests and stuff to do.  I grew up on a PvP server remember, and this place was HELL for a squishy   I came here only when necessary and did not stay long.

I ran around and completed about 15 quests this evening before being too tired to stay awake anymore.  I enjoyed myself though and am a little closer to my goal.  I think I will probably concentrate on getting Eastern Kingdoms done because I’m so close then work on Kalimdor.  I need like another 180 for that one.  I want to finish this because it has been a long time goal, and I’m not sure what is going to happen to the achievements after the Cataclysm.

I read today that they are going to be requiring Battlenet accounts for WoW finally.  I expect there is some overall plan to this.  I also imagine that means the Starcraft 2 beta is going to be starting soon   I wonder if we are going to see any of the WoW related Battlenet features now they touched on at Blizzcon.  We are also finally going to get that cute penguin we got in beta.  I converted my account day one so nothing for me to do.  That wasn’t always a good thing too because it had a rocky start in the beginning

I got home at almost a reasonable hour, a little over an hour later than my old usual   The house was empty so I got on to try and have some fun and get my new hat!  The daily today was Utgarde Pinnacle which isn’t a bad run, doesn’t take too long.  I got  a group pretty quick, a Tank saw me in LFG and started up one.  The longest part was waiting for everyone to get over there, my hearth is set over on that side so I can pop over there

The run was pretty smooth other than no one wanting to throw the spears, or knowing how to do it   Overall though it was  a fairly pro group.  After we finished I was able to buy my new hat, the Helm of Clouded Sight.  This was a very nice upgrade for me in every way.  I had my gems and enchant waiting and tossed that on.  I went with the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond for my meta, and Brilliant King’s Amber for my sockets.  My head enchant is the Arcanum of Burning Mysteries, got to love spell power and crit!   I debated on my meta again for a while before deciding to stick with the Insightful Earthsiege.  Int is an easy choice for Disc, though I try to keep a nice balance.

This hat was all part of my over all plan as I was maneuvering some of my crit to it, and the haste I had there other places.  I got my crit back to 30% with food, self buffed.  When I’m raid buffed I should be sitting pretty sweet.  I still have a few upgrades to get from Triumph badges too, mainly I want both caster rings   I’m also still thinking about that int trinket

I almost have enough badges to buy an heirloom weapon for my upcoming Worgen Warrior too.  I’m still debating on whether to go with the sword or the two handed axe, not sure which would be more useful at first   Haven’t had a chance to log onto the PTR yet but it is installed, and I’m copied   Didn’t get much play time today though no sooner did I finish this quick run did my wife and son come home and I had to watch him so I never got back on.  Tomorrow is going to be a hectic day, I’m worried I won’t be able to get on for the raid, though I’m trying dearly.

Cataclysm, the 3rd Word of Warcraft expansion is on its way.  When it will be here exactly no one can say, but most accounts put it early second quarter of next year.  There is a lot of exciting things in this expansion.  Most information we know came out of Blizzcon, and very little of it was class specific.  We know there will be great changes to the old world as the cataclysm causes widespread destruction in Azeroth.  We know that they are getting rid of some stats, like Spellpower (now based off int), Defense, Armor Penetration and MP5 (regen from spirit only).  We know they are redoing the talent system, removing percent based talents, and adding in talent mastery which has a new stat attributed to it.  Finally we know they are adding a new character customization system called Path of the Titans, which will be sort of like AA’s in EQ but not grindy, more on a time based progression.

Above here you will see my current spec.  I’d like to go over a few of my hopes for Discipline in Cataclysm and what changes we might expect.  First, I love Discipline as you all know.  After floundering for years on Disc, they finally settled on it being a Healing tree, with a focus on damage prevention/mitigation instead of more healing.  Holy does fine on the healing end, and to have two trees for healing, they really need to be different ways of doing the same job.  I think they hit the nail on the head with 3.0.  We have had what you might say a few setbacks in some of the changes, but none of them have been devastating to me, I still enjoy the spec.  So for Cataclysm I hope we can progress even more forward with the prevention/mitigation with the spec.

There are two new mechanics to the redesign of the talent system.  One is the removal of percentage based talents, which will be something you get automatically as you add points in a tree.  The other is the idea of Mastery, which is something your spec is meant to be good at.  They are adding a stat that allows your Mastery ability to increase.  This stat will be cool because you could have a piece of gear that might be good for a healer or DPS, that has this stat and it will do something different for whomever is wearing it.  They also said they were going to split up talents that too many things stacked together, an example of this right now is probably Renewed Hope, it is both a talent that gives extra crit to spells on people with weakened soul, and makes it so your raid gets 3% less damage for 20 seconds when you cast PW:Shield.  I imagine those will be split.

Of the talents that will be removed or altered in Disc I imagine it will be Twin Discipline, Meditation, Improved PW:Shield, Mental Agility, Mental Strength, Enlightenment, and Focused Power.  I’m curious about Twin Discipline and Mental Agility, because while they are straight percentage talents, they are very specific to Instant spells.  I’m hoping that Disc maintains its larger mana pool over Holy with Mental Strength which would be built into the tree.  The changes to spell power and Mental Strength would finally make Disc scale a bit better which is the main complaint of the Disc haters.

Now as they remove talents and they said they wanted to add more fun, interesting talents to replace them.  Also the splitting of the talents up will help as well.  This should let you create more interesting custom builds.  One of the ideas that came from Blizzard that got a lot of people excited was Power Word: Barrier.   I know a lot of people want this idea to just go away, but given the upcoming changes I think this is the perfect time to add a new iconic, deep Disc spell.  I think the original idea for PW:Barrier was was a spell that through a PW:Shield on everyone.  I wanted something different, then eventually we got Soul Warding which made that moot anyways.  Now what I wanted from PW:Barrier was some giant bubble shield.  What I later settled on the best idea was to have a huge bubble you placed on the ground that would dampen AOE effects.  After finally experiencing EoE pictured in the above screenshot is similar to something I’d like for Disc.  So the spell would have a radical similar to Mass dispel that let you place the shield, it would remain in that location for a fixed time and say reduce all AOE effects to everyone in the bubble by 75%.  You could even have the bubble shrink out of existence like it does in EoE.  Put an appropriate cooldown, and mana cost on it and we would have a fun interesting spell that would give a new mechanic for raid leaders to play with

If I could have them rethink any existing talent in Disc I would go with Grace.  My main problem with Grace is that it is not controllable at all by me.  If I am tank healing but need to save someone quick with Penance, which is awesome for that I have to remove grace from my tank and then get it back on when I can again. I would prefer Grace to be just a single target buff that we can place on one person of our choosing.  Plus I always had a problem with the duration, so having a longer duration on that buff would be great as well.  The reason being is it only gets applied with a few spells, I like to use all my spells not just the they put on Grace. That simple change would please me greatly.

I have a lot more to add about Disc in Cataclysm, but I believe I will save it for another post.  I think for me it is just key that they continue to stick with the current themes of Disc.  I want to keep my larger mana pool, extra speed (haste,pi,fast heals), and damage absorption/mitigation.

I managed to sneak on a bit tonight wanting to get in a whatever the heroic daily was so I could get closer to my new hat.  I was in great luck and the heroic daily was ToC.  I really enjoy ToC and we had some great DPS, and a good tank so it went quickly.  I even managed to get an achievement.  Though we all tried our best not to be blown up for that achievement too someone must have got nicked.

After we finished I thought I’d go for the outlands fishing daily to try for my last croc.  Of course it never fails that when I go there and my ring is all cooldown it is time to go to Stormwind to fish for a baby croc.  This of course used to be more annoying when I had to fly back to the blasted lands and run to the portal.  However it isn’t so bad now because they have  a Dark Portal Portal   Of course I still have to fly back to shat to turn in.  This is also not so bad anymore with my Violet Prot-Drake, one of my latest conveniences.

Work has been crazy this week, hoping to get on tomorrow to get my hat.  I’m also hoping I can make my raid on Friday as well.  I haven’t even had time to install the PTR to go take a peak at the new 5 man.  I was really excited about it, just no time!  I haven’t even checked the queue, it is probably still full anyways.  Oh well was a good night, a little closer to my goal, and got some achievements

I had an evening of Dragon Slaying today.  The Heroic Daily today was the Nexus so I started off with that.  Nice easy one to do, and we did a speed run which is fun.  Had a good DK tank and told him to sprint   This I did earlier in the day when when my son was napping.

When I got back on in the evening I was bound and determined to do Onyxia.  So I started doing some Argent tournament dailies while I waited.  I eventually got into a 25 man Onyxia group and was summoned over.  They had already been wiping so I was scared.  It turned out they were all quite terrible and we eventually gave up.  While I was standing there still I saw another person was starting a Onyxia 25 and joined up.  I mentioned it to Randorf and he joined and I saw Kymer did too.

Eventually we started, it took a bit to fill the group and we were successful.  I apparently didn’t take any screenshots last night.   We wiped once I think on the 25 man.  I decided to try for a 10 man so I went back to questing.  This time I went for some old world quests and while I was doing that I eventually got into a Onyxia 10 man group.  That was a little rough to start then it went well too.  In that fight the DPS Priest had dropped, the Coronet of Transcendence. If only it had been the healing one!  They gave it to me anyways since I was the only Priest.  I’m not sure if I’ll gem it for my DPS set or not.

It comes to the real problem with the hat I’m trying to buy.  I think I like the Helm of Clouded Sight best it is a lot of badges.  Though the Circlet of Transcendence and Halo of Transcendence are both good hats. Though I was lucky on teh Coronet, I highly doubt I will be as lucky for something I actually want.  So I think I’m going to spend the 75 badges for the Helm of Clouded Sight and just not worry about it.  The stat distribution on it is more to my liking anyways.

All in all though it was a good day.  If I get the chance tomorrow to do the heroic daily, then maybe get in some VoA action I could have my new hat