Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

I haven’t been playing much or at all for the past few days.  I think I’ve been getting burned out, and part of was from too much routine stuff I think.  More recently I’ve been playing more like a job than to enjoy myself getting on doing the exact same things in the exact same order every day.  What I really needed was to take a break, rest, come back and find the fun again.  But I couldn’t do that because of this Holiday, children’s week.

I think this holiday made things worse, mainly because it had as part of the holiday meta achievement a very annoying  PvP one.  To PvP now I really have to be in the mood.  Some times I enjoy it, some times I don’t.  Being forced to have to complete some arbitrary PvP tasks in all the BGs was very annoying to say the least.

I nearly gave up on the idea to complete them.  If it wasn’t for strong encouragement by Inien I probably wouldn’t have even logged on again.  In the end I did manage to finish them last night, even had a little fun at times.

The main problem, and most annoying part I thought was the AV request.  You were to assault a tower with your orphan out.   I’m not sure what Blizzard was thinking with this one, here is your problem.  AV is an original raid instance, that is 40 people in which there are a grand total of 4 towers in which you can assault.  Even when I was doing it, at the end of the event there were always more than 4 people who had orphans out.  In the case where I was successful I ended up racing at the front of the pack, skipping the first tower and going for the second, and making it to the top this time without my orphan poofing.  Yes you know how some times if you cut corners or go up or down the pets get lost?  That happened to me on one attempt of this yesterday.

When I got on late this evening the first one I attempted was Eye of the Storm.  This is my least favorite BG.  The objective on this one is to capture the flag while your orphan is out.  So I ran straight for the flag, someone got to it before me, but the horde were distracted so I waited.  As a miracle of old, I was in a BG with people who knew what they were doing.  They kept the horde so busy the alliance had middle the whole time capping.  So I went ahead and got my cap in second.  Got that one done, although I wanted to stay and win this BG for once I didn’t have a lot of time and AV popped up, I went off to that one and failed

Next I tried a WSG, this one required you to return the flag which I was never good at because someone always clicked it before me.  This game started off horrible, the horde capped on us so fast there was no time to even contest it.  Second cap came nearly as fast.  At that point the group got serious, I helped on defense and chased down them on the 3rd run.  Despite many horde trying to stop me I succeeded at slowing down the flag carrier till some dps got to me and helped me kill him, I returned the flag yay!  I was having so much fun though that I stayed, and returned the flag many more times.  I also assisted a Pally flag run to our victory!  It is kind of funny with my PvP/Holy DPS build I can withstand a lot of crap,  depending on the situation it can take 5 people to actually stop me

The AB one I was able to complete yesterday when I had most of my frustration.  The AB one requires you to assault an enemy flag, not hard to do since there are so many opportunities to do that.  I would get to a flag and just be relentless, ignoring all they tried to do to me because of my sturdiness

In the end I think it was my frustration with the game over all that made me dislike this achievement the most.  I do think the AV one is stupid though, I’m sorry 4 towers for 40 people isn’t right   This holiday is complete and can go on with my life now

I got on before I went into work this morning and got that last point in the tournament and because a representative of Iron Forge!  Got a few achievements just from doing that and got the nifty title “of Ironforge”.  You also get this nifty squire pet who will carry around your city flag

When I got back on later that evening I was doing my usual dalies.  I took a different route over to the basin than I normally do because I stopped in Dragon Blight to make my cloth.  On the way over I touched WintersGrasp and fell off my mount, which I really hate.  Anyways I got back on and made it over there.  I landed and began fishing, not realizing that I was PvP flagged.  The DK in front of me attacked and killed me, a Warlock helped.  I rezed in the bushes switched over to my PvP/Holy DPS build, switched gear and buffed/drank.  Ran back over to him and killed him.  I thought it was hilarious, he must have been confused or something but he ran away, never came back for revenge

After that little distraction I eventually went and continued onto my new tournament quests.  I had a good time as usual with them and now I’m finally working towards my new little non-combat pet.  I defeated the black knight who was a total wuss, and then Inian and I did this daily where you fight a dragon.  I didn’t take any screenshots likea  silly person but it was neat

Ended up with lots of good achievements today though.  After I finish with IF I get to do all the other ally cities for their pets, and achievements

I got on today and started doing my tournament quests.  The server was still having issues after today’s patch and was pretty laggy.  I was having an issue getting them done, this was early too.  My son was in a late nap, I managed a few quests then they were rebooting and I logged.

I later got on and the server lag was even worse.  Trying to put in talents was painful.  It was so painful I accidentally put an incorrect point in my shadow build and had to fix it.  When I went to the city I noticed they still had not fixed the minimap graphic glitch like they said they were going to.  After I reset my stuff again someone turned me on to that new feature where you set everything THEN you learn it.  OMG this is a life saver when the server is lagged to hell because you don’t have to wait for the database every time you click a talent.

After that flub up I went with a group on the daily Heroic CoS.  I really enjoy CoS, and originally I was going to heal it but they invited another healer and I ended up as dps.  This is where the trouble began.  I really only dps’d an instance one other time, it was are super amazing heroic obsidian sanctum.  I didn’t do nearly as well in this run, doing about 2300dps over all, and a rogue completely owned me on damage.    I’m still learning the rotations and such so that didn’t bother me as much as the fact I just didn’t find it fun.  I suddenly came to the realization I don’t like Shadow dps it isn’t fun to me at all and that I’d much much rather be healing.

So I made the decision to give that up, I thought well maybe I’ll waste some more gold and spec into a Holy DPS/PVP build as my secondary.  Well just after that I switched to Disc mode and it forgot all my Shadow Talents (which it isn’t suppose to do anymore).  Of course I was like awesome!  You might laugh but I created a really fun build to quest in, and maybe do BG when I want to   So with this build I ran around and did what quests I could in the horrible lag, then gave up eventually.  I don’t know if mana will be an issue, I might have to some how work spirit tap into it.

Before I went to bed I just had to try it out PvP.  I of course have no PvP gear anymore really but if anything I’d just do BG anyways.  I was amazed at how well I did, I had a blast too, with a slighty more beefy shield, like every damage reducing PvP talent in Disc/Holy I actually had a tiny bit of survivability   You can see me here as I ran the flag back.  I knew they were about to cap so I hid in there room for a minute or two and as soon as it was back ran all the way back.  A frost mage tried to stop me on the way who failed, as did a DK

I don’t know if it was a fluke, but I did pretty good and managed to really have fun   I got 4th on the healing meter without even really trying.  That was all almost entirely through Prayer of Healing   Then when I got out and was heading off to bed I realized I wasn’t technically even using any glyphs.  Going to have to check out what options I have.  I also remembered that I had forgot that you can flash heal instead of smite with surges now   I really missed SoL

Anyways I’ll see where is takes me.  Looks like Laneir my Mage will still get to be my DPS, because I DO enjoy arcane DPS

Before I did anything I was playing with Addons.  Chronometer stopped working so I have been trying to find something that can replace it.  Monitoring multiple renews, and SW:Pain can be difficult with unit bars alone.  So far all the ace mods are coming up empty for me.  One called Classtimers was pretty good but separated out player,target,focus and something else into different bars.  It had an option to have one bar but it didn’t work.  Not only that but however my click casting targets people it didn’t see.  So if I used the target it worked if I clicked on a party member or raid member it didn’t.

I also went back to using Pitbulls Raid frames.  There was just some information in Praid I couldn’t get, even though the interface was cleaner.  The other issue is for some reason I kept getting tooltips over the top of them when i was hovering which is very anoying when your trying to see the frames.

After that I didn’t feel like instances, so I had the gnome throw on the ol’ PvP gear and went to AV to complete the BG Daily.  I had particular fun right here with a few alliance snagging horde as they tried to run by repeatedly.  The first AV I did we won in the usual rush fashion, and I completed my daily.  This one I did again and we were with a large premade on the horde side so they prevented the rush.   We won in the end though due to reinforcements.   Those kind of wins are always funny to me, they take longer but they are more fun to me anyways.  Still less time than a WSG usually for a lot more honor.

After that I did a WSG which we actually won.  It was a really fun game too.  We had a warrior who was doing the flag carrying.  I would meet him mid field and follow him to the roof.  Then I’d protect him till our guys got the flag back and we could cap.  We were pretty effective and actually won in a reasonable amount of time.  The first cap took a bit but the other two came easier.  The horde fought it all the way though.

I have a bad cold so I was heading off to bed and decided I better do the fishing daily before I leave.  I went over to fish and landed the quest fish on the first cast again.  I felt like showing that off again even though I did that the other day

I got on with no particular plan, but I had loaded grid to see how it was.  I was looking for more compact raid frames.  I have been using Pitbull but found it difficult to see everything I wanted to without them being so large that they were taking up too much of my screen, especially if I were to play AV.

So I did EOTS since it was EOTS weekend and found grid to be not for me.  It was not very intuitive to me at all.  I also disliked how many pieces it was in (modules).  I kept logging out getting more of them and seeing if that made it useable.

Eventually I settled on trying Perfect Raid again.  Perfect raid is made by the same author as my Clickcasting mod Clique.  It was originally awesome, but the he made it supper configurable and I could never get it to work back like it did originally.  Well this time I loaded it up and it was as perfect as it used to be.  For some reason I didn’t take any screenshots, I’ll take one later and insert it.

So for the rest of the evening I just PvP’d.  I had a good time actually, I even won WSG!    I really need to get some better PvP gear though, I have punny ammounts of healing in mine, but over 10k health and 330 resilience

Yes I am finally exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive.  I decided after doing that that I would like to finally have another title other than Sargeant.  So I took the plunge, after all its only money!  Sadly it will cause me to drop below 4k again but I’ll get it back.

I started out the day doing some fishing before I started on Dailies to replinish my stamina food which was almost gone.  In the process I also replinished my healing food too woot!

There was absolutely no competition out at Bash’irs landing and I was able to get all my energon cubes for the quest quickly.  I find this quest odd because I don’t get why we need to power this portal while there are almost a dozen other protals that aren’t powered at all.

On my way back I stopped to do a couple of my favorite Ogrl’a quests.  Doing the Wrangling one is a particular favorite.  I noticed the guy who gives the quest is mounted now.  Atleast I could swear before he was on the ground and there was a ray next to him.  I did this one and the bombing one, I always enjoy bombing

After all that I went to the island and was doing all those quests trying to get exalted.  I had one quest left to turn in and you could see here I was 20 rep from exalted   I turned that last quest in and got exalted.  A little later I did the fun root quest with Inian while he was out there trying to get the gland.  He had been killing the guys forever and not getting a gland and I decided to run over and join him when he had just killed one and I got there and picked up the gland.  It turned out he didn’t have the quest the whole time!  So I was able to share the quest with him and we finished that one.  Deathwing is being pretty slow about finishing the Alchemy Lab it seems.

After that we went back to the island and I turned in the quest and also turned in my 1000 gold, where I started this post and got my new title.  I ran around with Inian doing his dailies and practicing my dagger skills along with harrasing all the horde we could

We were coming back from this one quest out where the robots and ugly guys are and we see a rogue beating up on a restro shammy.  So we stop to help and the rogue uses all his tricks to some how slip through our fingers and makes it to the guards (we were pretty close).  Well I’m in hot persuit and get agro from the guards as soon as he gets there.  I’m being punted constantly by them, but you’ll never guess this…I lived!  I wish I had recorded this it was the most amazing thing, but Inian can account for it.  They kept hitting me and I was doing everything I could, renew, Desperate Prayer, Prayer of Mending, Shields, Pots.  Finally they deagroed after punting me like half way down the coast, but all the while they kept agroing those stupid ugly guys on me.  They were draining my mana, silencing me, hitting me and I had 4 or 5 of them so I’m trying to still live.  I managed to get away from them and live with maybe 100 HP left.  It was pretty insane but the only way I think I did that is I was wearing my PvP gear and had my 335 resilience to help.

We finished up Inians quests and called it a night after going and doing a few battle grounds.  We did one AV and won.  Then we did a WSG and lost of course.  I had the AV daily from before, Inian had today’s daily which was WSG.

Before bed I did some cleanup in the bank and sold off a bit of enchanting supplies I was over flowing with.  If it all sells it SHOULD put me over 4k again if my math is right   No instances today, no badges   Never got around to it!  Plenty of other stuff done though.  Now my only reps to work on are oldworld reps!

I noticed I was pretty close in honor to my Gladiator Gloves and even though I was exahusted I managed to pound out the last 3k of honor I needed pretty quick.  This was thanks to it being AV weekend, and today’s PvP daily was AV conviently.  I was looking at stuff and I think I’ll replace my pvp neck next.  It has no stats on it besides some resilience and spell damage.  There is a real nice one that will give me tons of stam, some int and lots of healing.

Today was the AV daily for once so I did that.  Inian came on and we both did a few more AV runs.  The last run I did took forever Inian did like 2 while I was in it.  It was funny though because we made a comback.  Amazingly it looked like the horde would win by reinforcements but we managed to get some offense going got their base and was on Drek.  I was watching as people died the number ticking down and down but drek went down when we had 4 left!  Talk about a clutch victory!

After that Inian and I went to work on our Kurenai and Constorium faction through much Ogre genocide.

I got on today and did my usual round of dailies.  Picked up my usual 10+ super mana/health pots as I was running around from boxes   Inian joined me online slightly later than usual.  I remembered the PvP daily was AV, and there is always a good chance we’d win that one so we queued up for that.  We were using Stinkyqueue so we could go in together, it works good for the most part.  We completed the daily and was doing some checking on stuff when just before he leaves, Inian does it.  He finally leaves his guild!

I had been harassing him during AV that he should join my guild but he thinks he is a guild curse because they fall apart when he joins.  But his current guild stayed together he just didn’t have much to actually do with them   I said something like I’m an officer there is nothing to worry about the guild isn’t going anywhere hehe  So anyway I invited him and he quickly ran away before anyone could say anything about it hehe  We actually have very few active mages so it is a good thing.  Thailos the guild leader knows Inian from all the times i’ve brought him along on stuff and knows he is a good player so I know thats good.

So ya, Welcome to Casuals Inian!

I started off by pursuing some more honor for now my S1 gloves during baby naps.  I’ve got 305 resilience now and am totally loving it. Now Blizzard just needs to make it easier for me to carry all this gear around with me like I do

Got on later by and Inian was trying a Kara PUG.  This was a TRUE Kara PUG as it wasn’t run by a major guild, nor did it have any major guilds involved it let alone well geared people   We didn’t do quite as bad as I expected though.  It was slow, very slow but I was getting rep anyways   We managed to kill 2 bosses, however Moroes was quite an issue for everyone.  When we got to the Maiden lady it was too much for our tank.  No mater how full the tank was when we got repentance, even if I had renew on him and POM bouncing around he was not alive long enough for even a flash heal when we got out of it.  He just wasn’t geared quite well enough.  Then the offtank which was even worse was toasted quickly enough not that he even had agro right off the bat anyways.

Was an interesting experience.  It is obvious that Kara is easy enough to be PUG’d but if you are not geared well enough then it doesn’t matter.  The paladin and group leader eyeluvu (yes that was his name) was a member of the Knights of Nee you know that guild that exists on every server I had around 800 or so more healing than him but he stayed just ahead of me on effective heal meters.  Just goes to show you Pallies are OP!    Of course I’m not speced to heal and could out damage him 100 times over even in my healing gear lol.