Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

Finally got to a make another attempt at ICC but not how I wanted.  I ended up joining some guys 25 man PUG.  I really despise 25 man raids because I just don’t feel like I contribute enough.  Plus getting 25 people to do the right thing is a lot harder than getting 10 people to do so

We did fine on the trash leading up to the boss.  The traps were well dealt with and we didn’t have any deaths.  The DPS was good overall but we had a few people that were pretty under geared.  Like the Hunter wearing greens and a few blues and then the tier 9 pieces

Eventually we started on the boss.  Lost a few times then people start leaving, we wait around and replace them.  Loose a few more times, then more people leave and we replace them.  I think we did 3 or 4 rounds on this.  They kept blaming the healers in the end.  We had 3 tanks, but only two tank healers, a Pally and Me.  Then we had 3 druids and a Shaman.  People kept throwing up healing meters, I was like 4th of course, but I’m a Disc priest   Only the raid leader seemed to understand that everyone kept talking crap about me too.  I never bothered to point out that the tank I was assigned to heal was the last one alive EVERY time.  Actually the tank I was assigned too stuck up for me as well as he kept saying he was fine.  It was a DK I was healing too.

Eventually we gave up and split up the group.  After that I went and did my random for the day and went to bed.

I got on hoping to get the Weekly Raid done before it resets tomorrow but it didn’t look good.  There seemed to be very few people trying to do any raids at the moment.  Inien was on attempting to do the same thing.  I put myself in LFR then went and did the fishing daily and then afs (away from screen) looking at some forums checking back fro tells.  Sure enough I got a tell from someone and joined up and got the last position.  It was a 10 man group and we end in and did it in about 15-17 minutes or so.

That went so well I decided I might as well stay on long enough for a random dungeon daily as well.  Of course Inien was still looking for his weekly raid group and was cursing me that I beat him!  He was wishing a long painful instance with crappy dps!  I laughed because I got Azjol-Nerub!  Certainly one of the fastest to run.  We had a Elemental Shaman pulling about 4500 DPS that made up for the other two sub 2k DPS we had.  The run went smoothly and I managed to log out with time left on my food, no deaths, under and hour

This was great because I was so worn out but still enjoyed my time.  I have been swapping back and forth trying to decide if I liked my Ephemeral Snowflake more than my other regen trinket.  I think I sit around in regular instances so much I get a lot more mana back from the 54mp5 than I do from the 11mana per heal.  While I was in Naxx I think it was useful.  In a raid situation where you are constantly casting the whole time I think it makes more sense.

I need to take some time to finish up my loremaster here soon too.  I’ve got quite a few quests completed in my log to go turn in right now actually.  I’m not that far away from completing my goal anyways.  Then I intend to farm goblin rep to complete my 40 exalteds

It has been a while since I posted for some reason.  This time not that I haven’t been playing just so much other stuff going on I never made it back to posting.

In the past week I’ve made use of the new Dungeon system quite a bit, and done plenty of the new 5 man.  I think I’ve not missed a single Frost Emblem yet!  Last week we tried out hand at ICC after we did ToC.  We had a few crazy issues with setting off some traps that made getting through the trash difficult for a while.

We had some good attempts on the 1st boss.  We got him down to just past 50% but we were all so tired at that point we didn’t finish it.  I’m guessing that we’ll get it tonight because we were planning on doing the raid weekly and going straight for it.

I managed to get my Perky PUG after a lot of Pugging this week.  He is so cute   One of my favorite parts was the mail message he came with.  I thought I’d share this in case you haven’t seen it yet

Looking forward to the raid tonight, will be my last one for  week because I’m going on vacation with the wife to the in-laws for Christmas.

I got on looking to for a raid or something and noticed that HOL was both the regular and Heroic Daily.  no  one was doing it though so I was about to give up and go do old world questing when I got a tell from a tank and we formed a group.  I told them that my record for both Dailies in this instance was 33 minutes.  Despite the tank needlessly clear the wrong direction a few times, we still managed to do it in 31 minutes!

The next time I got on a bit later I tried again and ended up in a 10 man VOA.  I was laughing at them because they took 3 healers.  The other healers were saving the same thing.  I managed to out heal the Paladin and Druid.  In some fights I managed to prevent most of the damage LOL.

Next up was an Onyxia 10 since I missed it with the guild.  I didn’t see many 25man pugs going tonight.

Lastly I had a very entertaining trip to Hyjal Summit.  Kymer even ended up coming too.  It was the first time either of us had been in there.  Man it must have been one hell of a fight back in the day.  I went shadow shortly after the first boss.  It was clear to me the Paladin, and Raid Leader didn’t need my help.  I ended up topping most of the fights with my AOE when they were all clumped   You get tons of rep in there too, that wouldn’t be a bad rep to farm if you could find 10 rep collectors.

I started off tonight by being late.  Had a family evening out and I was hoping to get back by 8 but it just didn’t happen.  The guys waited for me though which was awesome.  They just did Onyxia10 while I was late.  Of course I missed out on that, but no biggy

We started off ToC10 as the Pros we are completely owning the first boss.  To my surprise he finally dropped that wand I had been eying in his loot lists, the Rod of Imprisoned Souls.  This was particularly exciting for me because it was all I needed to get to be “epic”!  I thought I was going to have to wait till that wand in the new 5 man dropped.  Of course the guys had been telling me that it used to drop all the time and every caster in the guild had it.  It was a definite nice upgrade from my i200 wand from Naxx trash.

On the 3rd boss, the horde group we wiped once on them.  Then changed our strategy a little and got them the next time around.  It is a fight that is different almost every time you do it because of your combination of classes and theirs.  They dropped the Blade of the Silver Disciple which I thought I’d take for my shadow set.  I don’t have the best offhand for it yet, but there are a few good ones in the new 5 mans coming out.  They were going to shard it if no one wanted it.

Then on Anub’arak who we also completely pwned, he dropped the Cold Convergence which no one wanted and they were going to shard.  I didn’t say anything Red and Barbarus both asked me about it.  I got to thinking about it and it was a very nice upgrade except it lacked any regen on it.  In the end instead of them sharding it I decided I would take it and use it as main spec healing staff.  The loss of the effective 28MP5 from the other staff is made up by the added Int, Crit, Haste and Spell power I get off this one.  I just felt bad getting so many things though Red and Bar kept telling me not to, shards are worthless to the guild.  I have gone entire runs not winning anything too I am just silly

So I left there with a nice Wand Upgrade, Great new Healing staff, and a DPS dagger.  Then I realized after we were done I had enough badges to pickup Heartmender Circle!  This turned out to be great, it totally balanced out the stuff I swapped out with the staff.  I was going to stop wearing my Inscribed Signet of the Kirin Tor for something better.  I’ll just have to swap in in now and wait 30sec to teleport.  The heartmender brings regen to that slot I didn’t have, and more crit and spell power, int and stam, while I loose some haste.  But the Cold Convergence brought me back the haste from the ring and more, and the ring almost made up for the loss of regen.  I love it when this happens

So all in all I got 4 upgrades tonight so I am that much more powerful!  I am also done with all the healing things I needed from Triumph so I’m going to pickup DPS gear if I get anymore Triumph badges

After we did that we decided though late to just go clear some trash in Freya’s area.  You can get some badges from some of them, and there were lots of herbs in that area.  Someone had been keeping the instance alive cleared to this point to farm herbs in fact We did that for a while.  The area was very pretty, I haven’t ever been that far before.  I was nodding off though, and managed to last long enough to finish all the trash then we called it a night.  I had a really good time though!

I got back to working on my loremaster goal today when my son went down for his nap.  I went back to STV, my least favorite questing spot in all of WoW. I had nearly every quest available here until recently.  I have so many quests in my log now that are sending me off to places around the world.  I can see why they thought they should rebuild the old world even more now

Ever since I started using shadow again I have found it is a little more fun to play around doing these quests.  I have finally finished all the bootybay quests that actually take in place in STV and I need to run around the world now.

I had missed an earlier IM from Inien letting me know he was in a raid that could use me.  When I got on after I got my son to bed they had started but only barely.  I continued to questing and eventually they needed a DPS.  I volunteered to come for some practice.  It was a Uluar 25 and there was the usual standing around associated with them   It is why I hate 25 mans so much.  We have a hard enough time keeping 10 people paying attention some time, but 25 is really hard.

We did two bosses the XT-002 and Kologarn before we called it a night. I got to DPS up to Kologarn but then a healer left and they asked me to heal for that fight.  I didn’t do to bad, obviously the other people were better geared than me, I in the top 10 then.  Usually around 7th or 8th in DPS and Damage, pulling around 3200.

I think I learned a few things from that run.  I know I need more actual DPS gear, and I’m not hitcapped yet which hurts me a lot too I think.  I should be able to aquire some Decent DPS gear in 3.3 that will help.  Before I logged out for the night I was trying to make some new Satrinabuff frames to help me.  I’ve been trying various addons to try to keep track of what I have on the target which is really all I need.  I think if I can get something that lets me more easily see and react I can improve my dps.

Was my first raid as a member of the Texas Mercenaries tonight.  We tore through ToC10 pretty quick. While most people already had this achievement I got the salt and pepper achievement.  On the final boss I got me some new robe for my Shadow spec.  The Vestments of the Sleepless dropped and no one needed so I got it for offset.  I never seem to get any healing gear though

After we finished we worked on doing heroic mode for a bit.  We wiped a lot but I think we are very close in being able to beat them.  We have the DPS now I think we just need the practice.  It would help if I could get my UI to show Levitate on the raid frames.

After that we ran over and did Onyxia 10 really fast.  She is super easy when you are with Pro people.  Man what a difference.  I hadn’t done it non-pug yet.  It made me realize how painful the pugs really are

After that we went over to try OS 3 drakes up.  Apparently they have been trying it for a few weeks.  They were using the strategy of killing Sarth as fast as possible while someone kites the drakes away.  They had been very close and when we went their they asked me to be DPS.  I didn’t realize it before I went that I was going to be DPS.  This was the first time since I started playing Shadow again I had to matter.  In our final and successful attempt I actually pulled 3200 DPS.  Sure I was the lowest in the raid but I was proud of my contribution   I didn’t even have my new gear gemed so I wasn’t wearing it.

I had a great time this evening though and look forward to many more.

Was looking for an interesting raid to do but not much was happening this morning when I got on.  So I did some dailies experimenting with Shadow again.  I had been thinking about giving it another shot and decided to go for it.  Eventually I got a tell asking if I would heal a OS10 1 drake up.  I hadn’t been in OS for a while so I figured what the heck.

That turned out to be a rather large waste of time though.  When we finally got 10 people together, they were mostly terrible.  3 of the DPS did 80% of the damage, and we had a DK that was doing 600dps.  I would think using auto attack would get more than 600dps!  It was clear we could not do 1 drake up.  Makes matter worse the raid leader was trying to leave the hardest one up!  Finally we convinced them to leave the easiest one up, but what we really wanted was to not even try.  We tried, and failed rather quickly.  It turned out half the raid had never even done OS10 before on those characters at least

Later in the evening I teamed up with my buddies from the Texas Mercenaries to run some old BC heroics for achievements.  It was a very enjoyable time, and quite nostalgic.  Perfect to be doing on the 5th anniversary of WoW.  During the conversations they mentioned they were having issues with their new priest being flaky and that if I was available they wanted me to raid with them again.  I got to thinking at that point that I should probably just move Laneer into Texas Mercenaries.  I never raid with the Shadows, they do so when I can’t play unfortunately.  I haven’t done it yet but I wanted to make sure the shadows GL knew why I moved Laneer and didn’t abruptly do it without explanation.

Looking forward to doing the Pilgrim event and getting my Turkey pet hopefully!

Got to get on tonight, and for cone have a nice conversation with Inien!  We both have been working too much   We ended up getting to go do Onyxia 25 run together.  For once it wasn’t a total fail which was nice.  We wiped once but then got it the next round.  I was laughing because we had like 6 priests and I said watch the head drops and what drops but Aurora of Transcendence!  I didn’t roll on it though I am more than happy with my Helm of Clouded Sight and wasn’t interested.  I was even glad I didn’t have to compete.  Though since the trinkets didn’t drop and I already got the bag and head the only thing that I could roll on was the gem bag.  Got a few more badges though.  I am saving up for the triumph int trinket I decided.  Going to get the ring after I think.  Was a nice evening though really enjoyed myself.  Time for bed though, got lots of work tomorrow!

Continued to work too much this week.  I haven’t laid eyes on WoW since Saturday I think.  I had to go in super early for a server upgrade today so I came home about 1.

I noticed the heroic daily was old kingdoms.  I don’t think i’ve ever seen it as the heroic daily in a long time.  I ended up getting a group to my surprise and got through it.  It was a little painful because there was a WoW newbie in the group.  We tried to give him good guidance.  Can you guess what class he was?  Correct! Night Elf Hunter 

Later this evening I was checking mmo-champion and was pretty excited the posted the loot for the 5man dungeons.  Lots of good upgrades in there for me!  Should be really fun, I’m looking forward to the new 5 mans a lot.  I liked ToC and all but it isn’t all that interesting, you stand around i the same room the whole time   They posted the rewards for the Quel’delar Quest chain and there is a Mace for me from there.  It looks quite nice, and turns out a good offhand to go with it from the heroic 5mans.

After oogling over the 3.3 gear I went to see if I could get a Onyxia 10 run.  I got in one that just needed a healer and got summoned right away.  We failed the first two tries but we were really close.  We always wiped right when she landed.   We pulled it together on the 3rd try though and got her down.  We were missing a few, but once she is down she is easy.

They left it on group loot so I watched to see what everyone did.  I ended up rolling need on the head like they said and won!  With a 75 no less too   As soon as I got it the ret pally was trying to buy it from me for 500g.  I was like no thank you!  He said ‘Hrrmm’   I haven’t got anything new in a while, and I don’t need gold, that is easy to get.  A i245 ring that is totally retro, yes I need that

So I only need one more Triumph badge and I can get that ring too.  Then I can stop wearing my Dalaran ring.  My 8,000 gold teleport spell   Unfortunately once I stop wearing it I’m going to have to wait 30 seconds before I can use it.  Though I suppose that isn’t so bad.  The other ring is so much better.  After that I’ll probably be looking at the int/spell power trinket I think.