Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

I haven’t been posting much, but I have been playing here and there.  I went and got a new job so that has added yet another new change, and a slight change to my schedule.  I’ve also continued to have my extra house duties while the wife is still disabled from the baby.  I can definitely tell this expansion is going to be another one where I’m not raiding.  I didn’t raid in BC either because of  my son being born

I’ve slipped in some Cosain play especially after a long day some times just being the shit out of stuff with a big axe is very satisfying   Due to my lack of playtime though he has been a little shelved.  I do find him really fun and look forward to getting him higher level though!

I’ve also been playing occasionally with Seun my Dwarf Mage who is almost 84 now.  Slowly but surely getting his inscription maxed out.  I get him out a lot to farm life for cloth.  Inien has been using all his trying to get his vial of sands   It’s not too hard and I really enjoy Arcane DPS.  Again pelting people with arcane missiles is more satisfying than the slow purple death Shadow delivers.

I’ve made some good advances on my Cataclysm reps on Laneer.  I’ve got 41 now, and have some old reps I’d really like to finish especially the goblin ones.  I’ve also got some great pets recently, my collection continues to grow!  I’m finally starting to squeeze Heroics in here and there with Inien.  They are definitely a challenge sometimes.  Especially with some of the random people we end up with   I’ll try to squeeze out some more posts later!

I have managed to put in some fun time today between chores.  I managed to do some new dailies and some old ones.  Tol’Brad is very neat   I managed to go pick up a few pets and do a little farming for grubby

Did my regular instance run with Inien even.  Of course yet again no cloth ever drops for me.  I wasn’t have too much mana issues anymore and was surviving rapid pull so I thought maybe I could do a heroic.  Inien thought we could give it a shot so off we went!

We ended up in heroic ShadowFang!  Now this run wasn’t completely smooth, it was painful, but I came out of it with new shoulders, and new boots!  I am now more confident I can do heroics so I will try more often now   I also got enough JP to get a new belt, once of my greens that needed replacing   Now I just need to replace my wrists and I won’t have any green anymore.

Despite some of the pain I had a good time tonight.  I know I will pay for this in the morning though

I’ve had the flu for the past few days and pretty much slept the whole time.  As a result I really didn’t feel like sleeping anymore and ended up at 3am this morning.  So I got to enjoy some early morning dungeon sessions!  I had a really good time actually.  Every once in a while I get reminded how fun it is to play WoW when I’m not exhausted

I got a lot of my dailies done this morning already too.  I haven’t had a chance to do the dailies, well daily so I haven’t got sick of any of them yet.  I’ve still got a lot of factions to work on and a questing still in Uldum!

I spent some time questing for the new pets.  It seems all of them required a rather significant questing investment   I spent some time trying to thwart the attack redridge to get to the new fire fly.  Lots of the new pretty lava

Then I took a boat ride over to do the quests up in Darkshore for the new tree pet.  You practically need to do all the quests there so I just did all of them, what the hey I need Worgen rep anyways   The quests were all very interesting, a few reworked, mostly new I think only one was the same.  I was very impressed by the visuals.  I also kinda liked riding the boats again   Yes the portals were nice and speedy but some of the character of the game was lost on all the portaling

I especially liked this quest.  Recognizing they sent you out to this ship to salvage filled with Murlocs that aggroed all over the place and almost certainly killed you at proper level.  They made a new version of it where you use a little robot, go out there aggro a bunch of the Murlocs and blow them up.  Finally getting revenge for the frustration

Finally I got to the Plants vs Zombies mini game over by southshore.  This is for the happy little sunflower pet.  I haven’t been able to get it yet though.  One of the quests bugs out for me every time I defeat the second wave it doesn’t acknowledge it and nothing happens.

Later in the evening before I passed out I eventually did a little group work with Seun.  It is fun being a Dwarf Mage

Well tomorrow brings the Shattering upon us!  I totally thought they would do it on the anniversary but I guess they went with the normal patch day   This is such a huge change that will change the game forever.  We are not strangers to change of course with the 4.x updates dramatically changing our classes, items and game play aspects of the game.  Now come the major physical changes to the world as Deathwing reeks his havoc upon the world.

I think about the only thing I’m really going to miss and maybe a bit peeved about is the portals are going away   It is a small thing but I’ve got used to a world in which I was bound by no mage to have  speedy travel.  As a man with limited play time these days I am totally going to miss these portals.  They have served me well for sure.  I removed my bind from Shattrath before logging and stuck myself in IF for now.  I still have my ring that will return me to Dalaran, not that it will be terribly useful now

I took a visit to Loch Modan for some reflection on my life in WoW.  I’ve been playing this game for 6 years now, the longest I’ve played anything now surpassing EQ.  Especially since I never really stopped playing WoW like I would do with EQ.   Some of my earliest memories of WoW center around Loch Modan.  I remember the first time I walked through the mountains as I transitioned from Dun Morogh’s snowy mountains to the lush green areas in Loch Modan.  I remember the first time I walked into Thelsamar.  I love the Dwarves, and I love this zone.  I would have to say it is my favorite zone in all of WoW.

I went over the Grim Batol in the wetlands to grab a shot before the changes.  I know this becomes one of the first raid areas so I just figured I’d take one last peep.  I remember Inien and I fought our way over here just to see it one time knowing that there was nothing actually here

Inien popped on and we ended up taking one last visit to ZG to see if we couldn’t snag the Tiger/Raptor mounts.  We were not successful as always of course but we gave it a shot   We also ran Sethekk Halls for the birdie mount for me, and ran over to MGT to see if we couldn’t get the chicken mount

Inien and I decided to drop by Auberdine to say good bye as this zone gets totally trashed I know.  I’ve done all the quests here a few times, I found it a very painful area and it probably needed to be smashed   We’ll see how it turns out now after things tomorrow

I settled in over at the inn in IF with Inien for our last supper   I log now and await for what tomorrow will bring.  WoW will be for ever changed, which means a lot to someone who has played WoW as long as I have.  I will miss my game but look forward to a bright future. While the Shattering, and Cataclysm in general will be quite the negative impact on the world perhaps it is just the shake up we all need?  I hope you all survive the coming of Deathwing, may we all survive the shattering and come out stronger in the end!

Let me close out with a few more photos I took of Loch Modan after dark

I started the day off right with a PUG run on Ruby Sanctum!  It was a pretty interesting fight and took us only 1 try to complete.  They had already done the mini bosses but those are a non-event I guess anyways.  Was glad to see that once though at least.

I followed that up with my first complete run of Black Temple.  It was pretty fun actually and that place is massive.  That must have been quite the raid in its day.  I managed to get some good rep in too!  The Illidan fight was neat, especially nice to hear him tell us we were not prepared.

The rest of the day I mess around doing various things and getting on my mage a few times.  To finish off the evening Inien and I ran some pvp randoms for some honor.  We have mounts to get still after all!  I had a good time but couldn’t settle on a pvp spec, I was just messing around and ended up trying shadow in the end.  I haven’t messed with Shadow much in 4.x.

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!

So today I got on with a mission, get my new neck!  Of course I had to wait for the invasion to come so I went around and did some dailies and such.  I made a stop over at the to grab an egg for that green protodrake I never got.  I got dismounted flying over dalaran a little too low and snapped a nice picture of the crystal forest and I floated to safety

About the time I finished all my tasks, including running a quick ToC the invasion happened!  Inien was on and tried to find his rifts, and after it was over I went ahead and invited him and we went to run Grand Ambassador Flamelash.  I kept doing him the whole time it was open and the Pendant of Burning Spirits dropped 3 times.  The first time I thought, wow finally I got it.  Then the boomkin DPS rolled need on it and ninja’d it from me!  I wasn’t expecting him to roll on it so I was quite annoyed.  After all it is a healer item and if the guy doing that role rolls need on it, you are suppose to yield to him/her.

So the next time the pendant dropped was when I was with another Mage and Warlock besides Inien.  Both of them stood in the fire and died at the beginning.  I cannot save someone who stands in the fire… So basically it was the tank, Inien and I doing the whole run.  Then after the pendant popped up I was like “yes!” then the stupid Mage and Warlock both rolled need on it!  Inien rolled need on it too this time to try and win it for me.  But the stupid Mage won it instead.

The last time it dropped, again we had a boomkin in our group and Inien and I were joking about him rolling on it.   Sure enough it dropped and he rolled need on it, after I clearly tried to claim it! No one has any respect anymore I guess   Inien rolled need as well again this time and he managed to get it and gave it to me yay!  So tomorrow we are going to farm the wind guy and try for the DPS neck for Inien.  Guess we’ll use the double role method there too, turn about is fair play!

I heard speculation the world is going to be shattered on WoW’s anniversary, I do hope they do that!  It seems like a very fitting day to bring about a change of this magnitude.  It is all very exciting.  I heard they shattered the PTR but I didn’t have the client installed anymore.  Plus I think at this point since I was never in beta even, waiting till live is prudent

So this is what happens when you have a lot of people in WoW waiting on something   I got on close to the time of the next IF invasion.  I wanted to try and farm the fire boss Grand Ambassador Flamelash because I found out he had a neck upgrade Pendant of Burning Spirits for me

I took part in the invasion which doesn’t last very long with that many people in IF   The elementals are out maned and out gunned.

Did the fire boss a bunch with Inien.  Did the earth boss a few times with a group to be fair as well.  Continued to do it till we ran out of time.  My neck dropped once and it got swiped from me by a DPS! I was so annoyed!  Oh well hopefully I can get it tomorrow or something   The fire boss happens to be the more annoying boss to do of course.  That had to be the boss more likely to drop my neck lol

Had a almost as fun time waiting with people in IF and I did doing anything else tonight.  We even did a mammoth parade around the bank area