Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

Still off on vacation in the frozen north!  Looking forward to going back to San Diego though Plenty of things left to do in 3.3, and still have my Lore Master to finish   I hope everyone had a good holiday and cotinues too.  You might also notice that I switch Laneer back into Shadows.  It was a bit too quiet in Texas Mercenaries for me.  I enjoy raiding with them, and all of them are awesome but most of the time I was on either by myself or maybe 1 person and for an MMO I was a bit lonely LOL.  So I told Barb I was going to go back to Shadows and if they still wanted me to raid with them that would be great.  I joined up because it was the only way to get a more firmed up spot raiding but that isn’t the only reason I play.  All’s well that ends well, no hard feelings between anyone involved anyways.

I’ve been super busy and playing when I can but that’s why posts have been sparse lately.  I was cleaning up getting ready for my trip when I decided I better get in and at least do my random dungeon.

I got a instance almost immediately, and almost as soon as I loaded the group leader, a warrior named Jerrard says something like “Do you have a website?”.  I thought wow, Yes I do.  He was certainly the first random person to recognize my name from my site.  Even more interesting I noticed they were from Deathwing, my old server.  We started up the fight and then I realized they were all Costa!  I remember that guild from the OOOOLLLLDDDD days.  In fact I was a member of them very briefly.  I don’t remember why I left but I ended up in Witch Hunters right after that.  I looked them up and Fate is still the leader and everything.  That has got to be some kind of record for a Deathwing guild I think every guild I was ever in on Deathwing ended up dissolving at some point.

I mean talk about all the luck though, I know deathwing is in our battle group but I have only grouped with 1 Deathwing person since the system.  To run into someone that knew the site, a guild I recognized, that was just a trip

I’ve got a lot of interesting things done yesterday.  If you check you my achievements you’ll see I finished off my eastern kingdoms lore master, AND finally got that 49 faction with Brood of Nozdormu I have needed for like a year.  Inien, Kymer and I did ALL the bosses in AQ20, it was actually pretty fun   Especially the last guy which we really had to work for hehe

Just been doing instances picking up stuff for my Worgen warrior, questing for Loremaster and working on some factions.  Right now I’m getting the laptop ready with classic WoW so I’ll be able to pick up presents since I won’t be back in time to do it.

What a week!

It has been a while since I posted for some reason.  This time not that I haven’t been playing just so much other stuff going on I never made it back to posting.

In the past week I’ve made use of the new Dungeon system quite a bit, and done plenty of the new 5 man.  I think I’ve not missed a single Frost Emblem yet!  Last week we tried out hand at ICC after we did ToC.  We had a few crazy issues with setting off some traps that made getting through the trash difficult for a while.

We had some good attempts on the 1st boss.  We got him down to just past 50% but we were all so tired at that point we didn’t finish it.  I’m guessing that we’ll get it tonight because we were planning on doing the raid weekly and going straight for it.

I managed to get my Perky PUG after a lot of Pugging this week.  He is so cute   One of my favorite parts was the mail message he came with.  I thought I’d share this in case you haven’t seen it yet

Looking forward to the raid tonight, will be my last one for  week because I’m going on vacation with the wife to the in-laws for Christmas.

Managed to get on tonight and do my random heroic again.  I’m trying to keep up with at least getting that for the Frost badges.  I was looking at the frost badge gear, all very delicious looking but also very expensive.  Everything is 50 plus I believe, I guess Blizzard wants to keep our attention for a while before Cataclysm   This time I finally got a fast heroic ending up in Violet Hold.  It wasn’t too bad except that apparently someone started it before I got in the instance and we had to wait for it to reset, and I had a frustrating conversation with a Shaman trying to tell him how to port into the instance

I picked up the Triumph badge wand for my DPS set tonight after my run.  My Disc gear for the most part works good with Shadow especially if I can keep Spirit gear over MP5.  However I am not hit capped yet so I need to work on that part if I’m ever to be useful raid dps.  For the most part I still prefer healing but I also want to be flexible if the Guild needs me to DPS or just for a change of pace some times   Shadow Priests got some buffs this patch and I need to test them out still.  My intention is to pick up a few more pieces of the Triumph gear, probably the DPS hat, and DPS Shoulders and should bring my hit to where I want it to be, and I increase my DPS capability.  I did play with the new version of VE today and it is nice to only have to cast a buff on yourself

Excited about doing the week raid questions, and trying out Icecrown tomorrow with the guild!  I will remember screenshots!

I got on today and messed a little bit with my UI, my unit frames I had been messing with seemed like I got them too small.  I grew them a bit and fiddled and decided to do my Random heroic dungeon for the frost badges.  I ended up getting a HOL.  Of course we started the instance and the tank went offline.  Then we had to wait to kick him and get another one.  Some people decided to start pulling things (without a tank) while I wasn’t around and that didn’t go well.  Then one of the DPS left just about when we got the tank.  Then we had to grab another DPS it was quite annoying but managed to blast through the instance at a reasonable rate.

After completing that instance I wanted to do the last of the new 5 mans.  Though I was still having issues adjusting to my Pitbull 4 frames, so I decided to turn back on Pitbull3 to see if I could figure out what was so different.  I did that and jumped in the queue and got a group really fast.

The start was even more painful than the HoL though.  First we had a DPS get in and go, “wait this isn’t heroic?”  then he goes offline.  I’m guessing people go offline wait for someone to kick them and then maybe they don’t get the debuff to try again?  Because it continued to happen!  Next some guy comes in and goes “oh no not <insert name>” of our tank who was not even from the same server as the tank and goes offline.  Then two more people just leave the group, then it is just me and the tank again.  Then we get more DPS.  Finally we start the whole thing (which is very awesome btw) and get ready for this huge battle.  Then one of the DPS goes offline AGAIN!  Then we wait, kick him and get one more in  just as the mobs start coming.

So far I’ve done just fine in the normal 5 mans, they have been almost too easy really, I know they are not heroic, but most people I was with out geared them.  Well now I had the benefit of being with people who not only didn’t out gear it but also weren’t very good   We wiped in the first part of Halls of Reflection 3 or 4 times before finally getting past it.  It was always because mobs kept getting on me and killing me.  I can only fade every 30 seconds, and no one was controlling anything.  The fact that I was getting agro was proof that the tank wasn’t picking things up, and the DPS weren’t even hitting it!  The stupid thing is if I wasn’t being hit I could probably have kept anyone else alive.  Even as it was when we finally did get past that part it was because at the very end of it I ended up both poping pain suppression during the fight on myself, and spamming holy nova!

This part of the dungeon is so cool.  You have the Lich King coming after you trying to stop you and Jaina Proudmoore slowing him down and trying to get everyone away. So ya, we wiped here too, twice in fact, and ALMOST a 3rd time   Though it is awfully cool when he kills you   Again they didn’t control the mobs at all, and they didn’t kill them fast enough.  By this time I was super tired too, I didn’t expect to be in this instance for more than an hour.  We got to a point where I had one a Lumbering Abomination on me, I had to resort to Pain Supression and Holy Nova spam to save myself again.  I don’t think I’ve ever faded more than I did in this run before ever.  Looks like I might need to start carrying around some Holy Nova Glyphs LOL

Terrible group aside, the dungeon was awesome.  It really completed a very epic experience of the 3 dungeons.  They were very well thought out and put together.  The quest chain you go through with Jaina was awesome.  I’m loving the new dungeon system on whole though, if going offline is a loop hole I hope they close it!  I can’t wait to get a few more of these new dungeons under my belt.  I’ll need to start doing heroic mode to get a chance at the Hilt and some good upgrades!

Hope everyone had a good patch day.  It was certainly a rough one starting out.  It took quite a long time before things were up and running all the way.  Even then when I logged in the server was a bit slow as is usual on patch day.  I couldn’t believe how many people were on though in Dalaran no less!  I was very happy to see my baby corehound in my mailbox when I logged in though I did have to wait for a bit before I could loot it   I went and snatched up the two new pets being sold in Dalaran as well.

Then I decided to try the new dungeon system and did my first random heroic with people from another server.  We ended up getting UP, and they were all very well geared, and all from other servers.  The guy who was tanking said he had just decided to be a tank but he seemed be doing a good job of it anyways. The dungeon system was very impressive I liked how it worked, it is going to be really neat!  I also didn’t realize that the regular dungeons were going to be giving Triumph badges now.

After that I decided I wanted to follow the quest line I just got into the new 5 mans.  So I used the new dungeon feature again to select a specific dungeon.  This time things didn’t quite go so well.  I got grouped with some people but none of us could get into the instance it just kept saying no instance found.  So we gave up and I tried again.  This time I got placed in a group and got in the instance.  I’m sure the instance servers were over whelmed.  Got a good group again, one of the DPS wasn’t great but everyone else made up for it.  We did the instance pretty quick, probably too quick for me because I wanted to see it more:)  I’m sure I’ll be seeing a lot of it however.

After we completed the quest and the instance they send you on to the next one, which you can reach from in this instance.  Of course our tank had left but everyone else wanted to go so we jumped back in the dungeon queue and got another tank.  Again this was pretty awesome, having the ability to select from many servers might help with tank shortages   So we went on to do Pit of Saron.  Was a pretty neat instance as well.  This time our quest had us saving some slaves and killing a big guy.  The trash mobs in both instances seemed to have some unique abilities, and the bosses certainly did.  In regular mode though you didn’t seem to have to care, but I imagine in heroic you do.  This shot is actually on the way up to the last boss.  It was pretty awesome  gauntlet run where stuff falls on your head and the like.

By the time we finished this run though it was almost 10:30pm and I had to get up early in the morning so I didn’t go for the last dungeon.  Tomorrow is another day after all   This patch is quite awesome though, one of the best in a long time, and certainly deserving as the final patch in this expansion!  If you haven’t watched the trailer yet do so, it is quite epic.  I found out while doing those instances too you get Explorer’s League and Frost and Frostborn faction!  I’ve been doing the single daily on Explorer’s league for a while, both had a single daily to raise them, and as a avid collector of exalted factions this was quite tedious for me

I’m excited to continue the quest line tomorrow, and hopefully can attempt some in heroic mode as well.  I’m very interested in picking up the hilt to start the quest chain for the nifty weapon too! ( as everyone else is I’m sure)  Despite the delays of getting the servers up totally, I’d say it wasn’t a bad patch day, and as far as everything else it is pretty awesome!

Man looking over all the 3.3 stuff this morning did I make a mistake!  I should have peeked a head a bit earlier as to what was coming before I made my last Triumph purchase.  I bought the heartmender ring which apparently was unnecessary.  There are so many new ring options coming here in 3.3.  First of all they apparently put in new upgrades for my Dalaran ring!  Here I was just replacing it because it was finally getting so dated and they add new ones.  Not counting all the new rings that are dropping in the new 5 mans, and in the Raid instance the new faction rewards one sort of like the Karazhan thing.  Where you upgrade the ring as you increase you faction.  Oh well I didn’t have any more healing things to get anyways, though I could have used those Triumph badges for some DPS gear.  I’ll live I guess

Super excited about 3.3 though!  So many fun things added I can’t wait to see it all.  One little note that had me going “uh oh” at the bottom of the patch notes was that they rewrote the OpenGL implementation for Macs 10.5.7 and higher.  Last time I remember them doing this I actually got worse frame rates so hopefully that doesn’t happen this time.  I did patch the client before I went to work this morning.  If only my new Gaming computer would arrive I wouldn’t have to worry about speed

I spent my entire play time today messing with Pitbull 4.  I installed it and wanted to get switched over to using it.  I figure since cknight is in far development with 4 he will eventually stop supporting 3. Plus Inien has been telling me how great it is and there were a few things I wanted to be able to do in my raid frames that I couldn’t figure out how to do in Pitbull 3.  There is a large learning curve on Pitbull 4 but Inien got me going in the right direction.  I’m attempting to compress my raid frames and convince myself I don’t need so much information.  I’ve also made some changes to make it so when I DPS I’m better at it.

I know this is a work in progress, but I have it good enough that my party and 10 mana frames are usable.  I will need to do some tweaking though for sure!

Patch Tomorrow Yay!

I got on looking to for a raid or something and noticed that HOL was both the regular and Heroic Daily.  no  one was doing it though so I was about to give up and go do old world questing when I got a tell from a tank and we formed a group.  I told them that my record for both Dailies in this instance was 33 minutes.  Despite the tank needlessly clear the wrong direction a few times, we still managed to do it in 31 minutes!

The next time I got on a bit later I tried again and ended up in a 10 man VOA.  I was laughing at them because they took 3 healers.  The other healers were saving the same thing.  I managed to out heal the Paladin and Druid.  In some fights I managed to prevent most of the damage LOL.

Next up was an Onyxia 10 since I missed it with the guild.  I didn’t see many 25man pugs going tonight.

Lastly I had a very entertaining trip to Hyjal Summit.  Kymer even ended up coming too.  It was the first time either of us had been in there.  Man it must have been one hell of a fight back in the day.  I went shadow shortly after the first boss.  It was clear to me the Paladin, and Raid Leader didn’t need my help.  I ended up topping most of the fights with my AOE when they were all clumped   You get tons of rep in there too, that wouldn’t be a bad rep to farm if you could find 10 rep collectors.

I started off tonight by being late.  Had a family evening out and I was hoping to get back by 8 but it just didn’t happen.  The guys waited for me though which was awesome.  They just did Onyxia10 while I was late.  Of course I missed out on that, but no biggy

We started off ToC10 as the Pros we are completely owning the first boss.  To my surprise he finally dropped that wand I had been eying in his loot lists, the Rod of Imprisoned Souls.  This was particularly exciting for me because it was all I needed to get to be “epic”!  I thought I was going to have to wait till that wand in the new 5 man dropped.  Of course the guys had been telling me that it used to drop all the time and every caster in the guild had it.  It was a definite nice upgrade from my i200 wand from Naxx trash.

On the 3rd boss, the horde group we wiped once on them.  Then changed our strategy a little and got them the next time around.  It is a fight that is different almost every time you do it because of your combination of classes and theirs.  They dropped the Blade of the Silver Disciple which I thought I’d take for my shadow set.  I don’t have the best offhand for it yet, but there are a few good ones in the new 5 mans coming out.  They were going to shard it if no one wanted it.

Then on Anub’arak who we also completely pwned, he dropped the Cold Convergence which no one wanted and they were going to shard.  I didn’t say anything Red and Barbarus both asked me about it.  I got to thinking about it and it was a very nice upgrade except it lacked any regen on it.  In the end instead of them sharding it I decided I would take it and use it as main spec healing staff.  The loss of the effective 28MP5 from the other staff is made up by the added Int, Crit, Haste and Spell power I get off this one.  I just felt bad getting so many things though Red and Bar kept telling me not to, shards are worthless to the guild.  I have gone entire runs not winning anything too I am just silly

So I left there with a nice Wand Upgrade, Great new Healing staff, and a DPS dagger.  Then I realized after we were done I had enough badges to pickup Heartmender Circle!  This turned out to be great, it totally balanced out the stuff I swapped out with the staff.  I was going to stop wearing my Inscribed Signet of the Kirin Tor for something better.  I’ll just have to swap in in now and wait 30sec to teleport.  The heartmender brings regen to that slot I didn’t have, and more crit and spell power, int and stam, while I loose some haste.  But the Cold Convergence brought me back the haste from the ring and more, and the ring almost made up for the loss of regen.  I love it when this happens

So all in all I got 4 upgrades tonight so I am that much more powerful!  I am also done with all the healing things I needed from Triumph so I’m going to pickup DPS gear if I get anymore Triumph badges

After we did that we decided though late to just go clear some trash in Freya’s area.  You can get some badges from some of them, and there were lots of herbs in that area.  Someone had been keeping the instance alive cleared to this point to farm herbs in fact We did that for a while.  The area was very pretty, I haven’t ever been that far before.  I was nodding off though, and managed to last long enough to finish all the trash then we called it a night.  I had a really good time though!