Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

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

I got on tonight to see what was up with Phase 3.  I heard it went live on twitter and wanted to catch some things.  Inien invited me to do the weekly and I thought sure why not.  Not more than a few minutes later I got a tell from the Texas Mercenaries saying they were on the LK and did I want to join.  I debated for a minute and told them I hadn’t done him yet but they didn’t care so off I went to ICC.  I’ve always wanted to see this fight.

They explained things and I picked it up pretty easy after seeing it once.  We did pretty good getting closer and closer.  We would be so close when something silly would ruin it!  I wiped a lot with them, it was just like old times   I felt pretty good though no one died from lack of being healed, they pretty much died at the very end to spirits, silly deaths or falling/thrown off     My shields were coming very much in handy, and I was able to use Archangel to keep my mana up.  I think I actually helped pretty good on the Valkyries too with my smite power!

In the end we started to wear down and they called it.  Too bad too because they’ll probably down him next time without me, and I likely won’t get another chance at him before cataclysm comes out.  I still have a pesky 2k rep I need from ICC too

Few people were heading out to do the weekly so I joined them for that.  It had been a while since I stuck it to old sarthy.  It was so easy I largely healed the hole time with atonement hehe  I realized half way in that I maxed my JP again at some point.  I’ll have to buy a few gems before I turn in the quest.

I had a fantastic evening even though we didn’t get the LK down it was really fun.  I also really enjoyed raiding with my old Text Mercenary buddies again.  I hope they have me back again in the future!

I spent much of my day today pursuing various achievements.  Mainly the critter loving ones This took me to some pretty parts of the world I hadn’t been in a while which is nice considering what is about to happen!

It is also easy to forget how big WoW really is when you stay stuck in the end game content because you just simply don’t go that many places.

I also managed to catch a raid group for the weekly to kill Ignis.  That was fun though we had a hard time holding onto members.  Also it appears ever since 4.01 went live no one wants to tank.  I wonder if it is really THAT bad? We did eventually get this done even though we had some fairly under geared people.

I finished out the day decided to work on some pets I don’t have.  So I figured out the whole book thing for the arcane elemental guy.  Got that down so I at least know where they should be.  I’ll try to make some after server restart arrivals.  I didn’t actually see any books though.  After that I decided to spend some time farming for the oozling pet.  I was doing it in WPL and had a pretty good time even doing it.  The spawn rate was decent and Holy Nova makes it easy enough.  I had about 10 or 12 bags drop but nothing yet.  Heck I managed to get the parrot so sure enough I should be able to get this guy

Relaxing day over all I think

Admittedly I did do a quick group run for fun to start, of course Blizzard saw fit to stick me in a Halls of Lightning

Eventually though I ended up in a Black Temple group.  I kinda had a feeling it was doomed from the start but I went anyways.  Over half the people were level 70 and we didn’t have a full raid, just 15 people.  We had only 2 healers, and I was the only 80, and we only had one real tank   I think we did two bosses before all hell broke loose because someone didn’t listen.  When the one real tank left I decided to leave too.

While I was in outlands I stopped by and bought the rest of the nether rays just for the hell of it.  I also picked up all the gryphons I didn’t have for more variety.  Now that my riding skill makes every mount 310% I can fly and ride with plenty of variety!

After that I ended up joining a Sunwell group.  This group at least had no 70s in it.  We still had a serious issue of having people listen, or the raid leader knowing what he was doing   He just thought being 80 made it so we would just win lol  So he kept looking up the strats and did keep winning even if it would take us a few tries.

Despite a lot of set backs and wipes everyone stuck with it quite surprisingly.  Well not quite everyone but a lot of us, we were down to 15 people in the end after starting full.  Also the last boss turned out to be easier than any of the other ones we did

Everyone watched as the little story played out afterwords.  It was pretty cool, bet this was one amazing raid to have done in its hay day

After that I bathed in some pure goodness and went to bed!  A fun night of WoW indeed!

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

Though exhausted I continue to get on at night to see what is going on   I managed to find a guild jewelcrafter on thanks to the new nifty guild screen and get some gems cut.  I had to replace 8 gems!  All thanks to Blizzard making all my yellow gems red   Well technically 2 of the new yellow gems were for my new boots I just made   I went with a combination of Int/crit orange gems and yellow haste gems.  Mainly because thanks to the talent changes I lost tons of both

So I got my gear fixed so I got all my bonuses and my meta working again   Had to fix Clique again because the update wiped out all the settings I did yesterday!  Also got some more addon updates that made things better.  My UI is still a mess but finally playable!  So I wanted to go try to heal an instance with my new spec.  You’ll notice I am trying to go with the mix it up Disc Smite build   I’ve been dieing to really try it out, I never did in a real setting on the PTR because of the addon issue   So I was about to join the dungeon queue when Inien gets on.

I check to see if he is up for a run and he had a few things to do.  He was talking about reforging and I forgot I wanted to try that.  I have bracers with Hit on them and was going to convert to crit.  When I got at the reforger I remembered mastery stat.  So I tried it out, it was only 10 gold and I think I got like 15 mastery rating and it increased PW:S by 65.  I thought that seemed pretty good and since I have so much regen still I converted some of my spirit to mastery as well.  Ended up extending the Shield by over 500

So anyways we join the queue and get in, of course of all dungeons it had to be Halls of Reflection.  This dungeon can still be a pain some times depending on how well geared or badly played the group is.  Well what fun it is, everyone is in new specs, and just about every class plays completely different as of yesterday   So anyways we go for it.  I did pretty good, that first set of bosses can be pretty frantic, I tried to use my new abilities but I did keep falling back into my old ways.  I kept think the whole time it doesn’t seem like atonement is working.  After we were done I checked, sure enough no healing from Atonement.  I could of sworn I saw it work yesterday, but now it doesn’t.  So it might have been easier to get into that flow if it had worked

I hope to get on again tomorrow and give it another go.  I’ll try to include screenshots next time, I didn’t think about it with everything that was going on hehe  It was definitely a trial by fire though!

So wanted to really play this evening but after working like an over 11 hour day, come home and run ragged by the kid, give him a bath and get him to bed there wasn’t much left in me to have fun   I got on anyways to make my daily deposit of frost badges but that is all I could muster even if I should be doing some rep and gold farming.  Not to mention I have a 25 man VoA left to do.

Hoping to pull some time on Friday for some ICC.  Going to take the day off, though that still leaves me with just the morning to get something done before everyone gets home.  Very pleased with the site update this morning.  Will have to see if I can do some sprucing up now.

Got on a little early today and managed to get the weekly done.  It was razorscale this week so it was back to Ulduar.  When I walked it I was a little shocked, I don’t know if it is because of the higher quality or the PC just renders different but Ulduar is very pretty   Something seemed more pretty to me anyways hehe

Of course I had to highlight this little shot as well.  After all I don’t think I’ve ever had a computer that could actually render shadows of any kind without dying   So it was kind of neat to see Razorscale’s shadow  over us as we battled.

Ok here is where my “Why Me” comes into play.  I got back on after I got my son to bed, which took too long of course.  I wanted to do my random and what do I get?  HoL… I get this damn instance way too much.  Of course I come into it just as they are about to do the 2nd boss.  Of course after a few minutes I realized the previous healer must have killed himself or went for a walk or had “connection problems” because well the tank had no idea what he was doing.  He was barley geared in blues which I don’t mind but he was terrible to boot!  Then we had a ret pally in greens that some how managed to always get agro from the terrible tank.  We had a hunter which was the only one who knew what he was doing and a terrible cat druid.

So I spent the whole instance frantically trying to keep them all alive.  Failing once loosing the druid and ret pally.  I’ve never used pain suppression so much in my life hehe  So not only did I get silly HoL yet again but I got the group from hell yay.  The terrible tank was a DK which seems to be pretty easy to be terrible at.  I did end up making it through the instance though

After that finished I was just about to log but before I did I saw a tell for VoA10.  Since I’m trying to get as many badges this week as I can I stopped to get that done and out of the way.  Now I just need to get VOA25 and try to squeeze a few ICC runs in and I should get my pants The VoA run was almost fail too but thankfully we had a few really awesome people to make up for the lack luster ones

Managed to get on and run my daily tonight.  My son came over and sat on my lap watching and got really excited.  He really liked all the cool looking “bad guys” in Azjol   After I finished that which went really quick thanks to the group I was with I was trying to find a weekly group.  Wasn’t having any luck so I went and bought the remaining mounts from the main alliance factions I didn’t have.  I had been buying them up just for the achievements.

Just about the time I finished up doing that I saw someone forming a weekly group and joined up.  My son was really excited about Naxxramas because of the large number of “bad guys” I think   He sat and watched until we finished then I had to take him off to bed.

After I got him to sleep I finally managed to get around to getting my Mac keyboard driver loaded on the new PC so I can take screenshots again yay!  So my blog will be pretty again come next post.  In fact it should be even more pretty given how nice the game renders on my new card   Got to love ultra settings + 8x anti-aliasing