Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

OK even though I shouldn’t have I bought both the new pets Blizzard put out.  I admit I have a pet problem   But hey at least I haven’t gone out and paid hundreds for the TCG pets

I continued some of my Cosain questing out at the Quarry today.  The way they changed them around out there was neat.  Loved going in rescuing the miners, well the ones that I could save

After that you get directed to the lake which is overrun with water elementals that froze all the Dwarves.  So you get to save them and slay elementals.  Then they have you check what the Dark Irons are up to, which is never any good.  You find out they are going to attack IF and you have to put a stop to it!  They have attack plans for the airport and they send you to a gnome ship to take you there.

This quest chain plays out pretty awesome.  You progressively help  more and more.  Of course I got stuck on the end, the General wasn’t spawned and didn’t seem to want to.  I guess he is a bit buggy on all the servers from what I read on Wowhead.  I just left Cosain there in the hopes of getting him so i could move on with the quests.  At this point my gear has got me to level 13 on quests for level 10s so I’m doing it for fun anyways

I read they are using tomorrow for the anniversary achievement, how nice for Cosain to be around for it!

Did some AH stuff and then got on Cosain for a bit more questing.  It isn’t hard to level when you are low especially in my gear   I am now level 12 now through no fault of my own really!  I’ve been enjoying the revamped quests in Dun Morogh.  So far I think everyone has been changed, a few vaguely the same modified to fit the story of the zone.  The music is all changed it seems, more somber with a hint of the original scores   All awesome of course!  I hate when people say, “wait you listen to WoW when you play”, because WoW is both playing the most appropriate music and sounds for what you are doing

Those pesky trolls are up to no good that is for sure and I do so enjoy cracking some good ol’ troll skulls   Every the protector I was saving everyone I could.  I’ve rescued quite a few newbie as I’ve been running around as well.  I am now spec’d into Protection to boot!  I should be able to modify the site soon as Cosain should be in the armor now.

Of course the Gnomes invented yet another way to throw us large distances that doesn’t hurt…Much

And finally I ran into my first rare!  Bjarn was quite mean actually, but gave up a REALLY nice pare of pants for me!  After that I decided it was almost time for bed so I just did a bit of exploring to open up the map in a couple of places, mainly around Gnomeregan and to mine a bit too   I also put up a few JC items on the AH to make me some dough!

I spent a little time again yesterday playing with my alt.  Trying not to do a lot of serious questing so I don’t get too ahead of Inien when he makes his worgen, but I figure I have to get to where he will be when he pops out of the starting area   So far the questing has been great.  Awesome stories going on with the whole cataclysm so far.  Almost every quest in the starting area was different.  Well they were all different but only one was really close, picking up the gnomes tools   Of course this time he dropped them because of the earthquake while he was on his way to the newly liberated gnomeregan.    There was a cave in and the only way out of the area was by plane, how cool is that

After I got to Kharanos I got reminded about Pilgrim’s bounty.  So I decided to see how many of these I could get done this year.  Without portals or Inien around it was a little harder but I made good use of the time moving between cities by site seeing, fishing and training trade skills   It is silly how much cooking skill the holiday gives you, I feel really guilty! I got really close to the Turkyinator achievement but being level 7 the mobs slowed me down too much too often

Enjoying Cosain so far, of course he is outfit with the finest heirlooms, pets and gold   I keep leveling even though I’m not trying though just because of running into things and the PB quests hehe  Going to have to make talent decisions soon, I’m level 8 now, and man did that come easy.  Of course my heirlooms helped   I intend to duel spec him when I can and learn to tank.  After all Cosain means “To Protect” in Gaelic!

I teamed up with the Texas Mercenaries again tonight for another round with the Lich King.  We were so close last week when they invited me I was excited when I was asked to come again.  As usual I love raiding with them and we managed to pull it off tonight.  Our defeat of the Lich King followed a FLAWLESS attempt.  No one died, everyone did exactly what they were suppose to and brought him some major pain. I was even the first person to be pulled into the sword, I wish I had a screenshot of that!  I was too busy trying to make sure I did everything right

I of course put aside my pride again for this run and spammed the HELL out of Power Word: Shield.  I had read that Disc Priests are very effective against the Lich King.  I typically won’t just spam one spell even if the masses tell me that is the most effective because it isn’t the most fun   But for the sake of getting the Lich King down I made an exception   I don’t think I would have been able to keep up with the shield spamming though after the 4.x changes without my Archangel.  I was able to use that to recover mana each time the Valkyrie would come I’d assist, then pop archangel, BAM I got 5K mana and 15% more healing.  Plus atonement is healing the whole time anyways.  Atonement was severing me well with the ICC buff smite hits pretty hard

I found the cut scene which I had watched before from the fountain, so much more satisfying coming after the fight.  I also found it very satisfying to kill the end boss of the expansion, DURING the expansion.  Though this of course is at the very end of things but still an accomplishment none the less.  I believe most people are trolling when they say he is easy.  It takes 10 people in perfect unison to get him down.  Perhaps in 25 man it is easier?  It has always seemed to me in 25 man you can stand to loose a few people but in 10 man unless you outclass the content you need all 10 people.

Other than that most exciting moment, today I spent most of the time playing my Mage Seun.  The one that was named Laneir I renamed recently.  I plan to race change him to a Dwarf when the expansion hits   I was just running around doing the cataclysm quests for gold and fun plus queuing for dungeon runs.  I also managed to do all the event bosses but I haven’t got any gear from it yet.  Maybe tomorrow?

I also hope to make some attempts at some Ulduar or BT this weekend, Still have achievements to get there!  This was a completely awesome ending to the day though.  I thank the Texas Mercenaries for inviting me.  I really enjoy raiding with them!

I did some more runs of the bosses to help out Inien tonight.  Before we did it though I decided I had to help out with Stormwind because I hadn’t saved it yet.  Since IF is bugged it is over pretty fast, but Stormwind actually takes work to save

One thing I noticed while I was defending was Atonement which specifically says group or raid member was jumping to anyone regardless.  Only Inien and I were grouped but it was healing the stormwind guards and anyone else.

I had a pretty good time defending stormwind.  I just kept alternating between smiting and holy nova depending on my mood   All in all not a bad night!  Got Inien the gear he was after anyways!

I heard the invasion started from wowhead on twitter so I got on as soon as I got my son to bed.  There was an insane number of people in the cities, I must have just missed the invasion.  The bosses were down, I didn’t even know about the bosses until just tonight.

Since I missed the invasion I went ahead and did my Argent Tournament dailies and even a ToC for my complete seal run.  I even ran into a few of the elemental invasions while I was out doing the quests.  I dispatched the elementals to do my part!

Today was the big day for my mount.  I finally got another 150 seals and purchased the Silver Covenant Hippogyph!  It is a nice pretty white one

Just after I finished all that the invasion started in IF.  I managed to get over there and help some people and kick a little elemental butt before it was all over with.  It sure didn’t take long for everyone to end this puppy!  It is quite an event and man are there a lot of elemental boddies after it is all over with

I then ran around and did the quests for the 4 bosses.  The bosses were pretty intense to heal actually.  I guess because they actually put out pretty decent loot.  Not that I think I can use anything from them.  I still haven’t looked at the loot tables.  The only thing I could use at this point still is a new neck   The fire boss was the worse because people kept standing in the fire   Will they ever learn?   Where is my life grip when you need it!

Anyways it was a pretty intense night all sorts of cool stuff going on.  The suspense is really building up to Cataclysm.  I heard patch tomorrow so we’ll see how that goes!

Didn’t play as much today as I did on Saturday but I did manage to get on and make a run through my Argent dailies.  I really slept in today and everyone was coming back some time was limited   I came out 4 short of buy the other Argent Hippogryph.  I logged and went to eat some lunch after that.

When I got back on I saw someone shouting for 25man ICC and it was far enough a long that I could join it.  So I got in the group and then went to WPL to farm my Ooze pet some more   They eventually got together and we started. So I FINALLY got exalted with the Ashen Verdict.  As a bonus I picked up a few more achievements while I was there with them.  I finally got to seed Professor Putricide go down which was nice.  As a bonus he dropped a Priest token that I rolled on and won!

My wife and son got home though so I had to cut the raid short.  We were doing ok still but eventually ran into some trouble with the Bloodqueen.  My son wanted to play anyways so I bowed out at that point.  I used my token to buy my Robe upgrade as I left.  I figured it was as good as anything.  Now I need to gem my Robe and my upgraded Ring now too.  Oh well at least I have something to spend the JP on again because I maxed them out again already.

All in all a good evening.

The wife and kid went out of town for the weekend so I got to play as much WoW as I liked.  That I did!    I continued some of the Phase 3 quests I hadn’t finished yet.

All the people standing in front of Stormwind was kind of funny.  I only searched the ladies! >:)

I then joined up with a group doing PvP kill the faction leaders quest.  You don’t seem to be able to do it for the Aliance though because Thrall is gone right now.  When we got to thunderbluff the guy was already dead too   I got two of them out of the way though and it was pretty fun.

I ended up doing some PvP after that in random battle grounds.  I actually had a good time most of the time.  Without PvP gear all it took was a stun and I was dead pretty damn fast but hey I’m wearing a bath robe   I played enough till I had enough honor to pickup another one of the faction mounts.  I didn’t remember about this and Inien reminded me.  I had enough to buy two almost 3.

Inien got on and then we ended up doing ZG for mounts.  Then his buddy from work got on and we just did all of ZG for his benefit

It isn’t too hard and didn’t take that long.  We broke for lunch and when we came back we got in an ICC run.  It took a while to get started because it was suppose to be fresh but some how they got it stuck with 7 bosses down.  After finally reforming we were good to go.  The leader knew absolutely nothing, so another guy took over.  Of course everyone left after doing the first 4 easy bosses and I was left 168 freaking rep from exalted.  Sigh….  After the ICC we took care of all our Argent dailies and doing a ToC run real fast for seals.  Still mounts to get after all   We broke for dinner after that.

After coming back we decided to do ZA again, Inien still had the quest he wanted to finish.  On our way over we did a quick UGP for the mount Inien never gets, then off to ZA. We had a lot harder time completing it this time.  I think by this time we were completely worn out.  WoW is like anything else, you are nearly as good when you are rested   After struggling with the Lynx boss we decided to head to bed.  Always another day after all!

Was a very enjoyable day in WoW though I must say   That is why I’m posing this at noon the next day lol

Well got on again for some more fun tonight even though I continue to be exhausted.  Got some more addon updates, yay!  I still fear many of my addons will never be updated so I’ll have to find replacements soon.  Eventually Inien, I and a few guildies ended up doing a Heroic CoS.  I’ve always enjoyed this instance so it was kind of fun.  The interesting thing is they added something to the script.  Just before you go inside after the second boss a crowd appears outside with Arthas and there is a bunch of chatter going on from that.

I had a pretty good time in the instance, especially since Atonement worked this time.  They must have fixed it with the hotfixes they did today.  I was able to lean heavily on it because the content was so easy, I don’t expect to do this though in cataclysm till we outgear the content again.  I did a total of 12.5% of the damage, exactly inline with the tank.  My top healing spells that run was Atonement, PW:Shield, followed by Penance.  Archangel is extremely awesome, and will likely be very useful when we finally have to start worrying about mana again in the expansion

Before I logged off I did a few quests in my healing form just to see how easy it was, and it was pretty easy I must say    I also must say that WoW is a lot more pretty

I kept trying to get a shot of the lightning reflecting in the water and failing.  But the water reflections are pretty awesome

So far I’m pretty pleased with my new spec except I totally messed up and didn’t get Soul Warding so I had a cooldown on PW:S.  It is funny I didn’t notice it last night but I noticed it tonight.  I think because HoR was more chaotic than CoS.  I’m very pleased with how Holy Nova, is working now, I’m also excited that rewnew crits.  Everything seems to be properly giving Divine Aegis bubbles.  The Mastery Stat is awesome, I went and removed the rest of the spirit where I could for now off my gear and put mastery for fun.  I don’t seem to be having mana problems so I can handle it I think.  I’m hoping to try a raid this weekend to see how that is

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!