Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

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 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!

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

This week has been crazy for me!  I’ve been going into work early(even for me!) doing some upgrades to prepare for a big upgrade next week.  So even though I was stressed and could really use some WoW time I was too tired usually to play   I got on tonight though and played a little, talked to Inien on skype.

I did my random first thing, Inien had just finished so I went alone and ended up in someones already started UP.  It is interesting how you get dropped right on the group now, I don’t know when they changed that but it is convenient.  I’m going to guess the other healer left because they couldn’t deal with healing the tank.  At first glance I couldn’t tell who was the tank by HP because we all had about the same amount.    It turned out a really poorly geared Feral DPS Druid was tanking in a Cat spec, and Cat gear

This of course made things interesting to heal but I didn’t have a problem keeping him alive, I am after all awesome   The Shaman in the group was asking me if it was hard to heal him, and I just said it was “interesting”.   The Shaman seemed impressed with my healing ability and kept asking questions about my spec and gear.  We made it through the instance though, no one died and I got that out of the way.

I then went to my Argent Tournament dailies which I’ve started doing again.  Inien was doing them too and we did some of them together.  I was able to get enough seals tonight to get my 25 Talbard and get that achievement!  I found out after I did that one of the guildies has been trying to catch up to my achievement score, I have the second best in my guild and the only reason I’m behind is because I don’t raid as much   So now I’ve got to step it up to hold my 2nd place   Going to have to try and knock out some of the easy ones I still have in general and maybe PvP and Fishing.

Ok,  now onto my big worries.  Inien kept reminding me nothing is close to being done, and I realize that but I see too much thought behind the new Disc tree to not be worried.  It looks to me at first glance they have refocused the tree back towards PvP again!  You can see the talent preview over at MMO-Champion.

I’m talking of course of Atonement, Penitence, Evangelism, and Arcangel.  They are great names, and even cool talents they allow you to do some damage and be healing as well. It is unclear to me if this is thought it will work in PvE or not?  It could be interesting but I don’t think they have ever mixed those two things for PvE before.  Atonement could be interesting letting you heal the tank and melee dps with some of your damage.  The more I thought about it after talking to Inien the more I began to see it as modeled after the damaging healers in some of the MMOs that have come out recently.

So basically now I’m more fascinated than stressed out about it and wish I had a beta invite to try it   With the changes to Disc and Holy, it is possible to get all the new Damage talents in Holy and Disc, all the way to the increased range.  So now I’m thinking you could go with a Disc build that looks like this and it might be an interesting PvE build where you would be tossing out damage and heal/shields.

BETA, where art thou!

So I started off this day but helping some guildies get tickets to Blizzcon!  My family and I were about to head out to the park and noticed it was about 20 till 10.  I got on and asked if he wanted help getting tickets.  So my wife, my friend who was over and myself tried to get tickets too.  I ended up with a 1063 queue position, a guaranteed ticket buyer!  So when I got through the queue, I logged in with their account and switched it to the 4 they wanted and bingo!  They eventually go through on one of their attempts and got some other guildies tickets so it will be a major reunion of Shadows at Blizzcon this year!

I got on later in the evening to maybe run something with Inien.  He got a tell for Sykotic, the leader of Wrath of Vengeance that we will some times raid with asking if we wanted to do 25 man ICC.  So we joined up with them, I still never get a chance to do it, and needed the rep, and badges

We did all the way up to the two ugly guys, Rotface and Festergut.  This was their first Rotface kill on 25 man, so that was neat to be a part of that   Not much caster get dropped at all, just two DPS pieces I believe.  I was just happy to come a long and get rep and badges.   25 mans though are not my favorite as I’ve said before.  I really feel like I’m playing whack a mole, like the old 40 man days but not as bad   I also never feel like I’m making a very big impact on what is happening like I do in 10 mans.  Fezzik and I talked about that a bit, he is one of wrath’s healers and he feels the same way.

Still by the time we finished for the evening I came away with a good chunk of badges, and now well on my way through honored.  I got my honored ring now, yay!  Helped some guildies get tickets, that was exciting too.  Will be fun at Blizzcon with 8 of us!

Got on a little earlier today and ran my daily random and managed to stomp out the weekly raid.  I even managed to get an achievement in my random I didn’t have.

I got back on later that night and Inien helped me visit Zul’Gurub to do some farming for the baby raptor I don’t have.  We reset a few times but it was kind of late when we started so we gave up for the night and killed the raptor boss just to try for his mount.

A nice end to a good Birthday

I got on this morning for a short time, was just doing a little goblin rep farming and low and behold, the Hyacinth Macaw drops!  I was floored! I didn’t think I would get it while I was doing this the drop rate on it is so stupid.  After I did that some one came and screwed up my spawns so I ended up doing my random which was HoS.  Went ok, though I thought it was funny the tank with almost a 5400 GS had never been there before and didn’t know where to go lol.  Inien got on and got that random too and he actually wiped on protecting Bran.  Don’t you love PUGS?

Anyways so happy with my parrot, that made my 120th pet too! What an honor!

Got on earlier this morning to do a little farming but ended up doing a guild run of the weekly.  We ran it with just the 7 of us, it was of course no problemo   I got to let my baby XT run around during the big XT fight hehe

Got back on later for a bit of goblin farming.  I’m back onto another one of my pointless goals now, 40 exalted reps   I’m working on the goblin ones because you can work on so many at one.  Plus there is an added bonus I’m also farming for the Hyacinth Macaw which I do not own yet.  The drop rate is stupidly low so having to kill a billion of them for faction also helps make it worth it

I hope I get one by the time I’ve got everything to exalted.  Wish me luck!

BTW Happy Mother’s Day to all those WoW loving moms out there

A little goblin in everlook was the final quest giver to get my Loremaster.  I tell you towards then end there it was pretty difficult to find all the quests I needed.  I was really scraping the bucket!  In the end the last quest I did was ‘Are We There, Yeti?’ quest series that got me, though I had a few other possibilities in my quest log.  My quest log is mighty empty now!  Come to me expansion!

Of course now for my next pointless goal, I intend to probably work on my 40 exalted achievement.  I’m only 3 away, and the goblins seem like good targets for that

So I was doing some questing (almost done with LoreMaster) when I heard some guildies talking about EoE which is the weekly raid.  I have only tried this fight once with the Texas Mercenaries.  I’ve never go the achievement which I wanted.  Plus I wanted more frost badges   So I joined in the conversation about starting up the raid and off we went.

It is a bit frustrating because of  the drakes you have to use in phase 3.  In fact he would go down like nothing if it wasn’t for that lol.  Thankfully I think the vehicle scaling is working in them now too.  I remember at least if he targeted you before and you didn’t put up the shield you died, but now it really didn’t matter.  It was mainly the way you had to move around in a circle I found confusing and avoiding the lightning which was the really damaging part.

In the end on the 3rd and final try 4 of us managed to survive the 3rd cycle and take him down.  I  mostly concentrated on healing and the other 3 dps’d.  In the end when we got close I DPSd a little too, and we won by a hair with the last person up when it ticked over and killed him.  I’m glad I can cross him off my list and I’m not sure I want to do him again though LOL