Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

Got on to do a bit of testing, wanted to do the Violet Hold.  i hadn’t done it yet.  I was in the first aid office in Dalaran playing with Penance and proced Divine Aegis.  I was admiring the bubble effect   It really is quite sweet

Got a group, convienently with the paladin I grouped with the other day.  While we were waiting for everyone to gather I saw a Tauren Deathknight.  Very distrubing, it just doesn’t look right

So without knowing anything got into Violet hold and found it was just one big room.  I don’t know the whole story but it is some sort of Prison.  You end up fighting a random set of 2 of 8 bosses, then the last one is a dragon.  This instance works exactly like BM.  Only it seems a little faster, is super easy and is litterally in the middle of Dalaran.

I saw some good tanking items drops while we were in there and of course the only cloth I saw was for DPS it had +hit on it   Some DPS plate dropped as well.  Most of the fights on our first run were uneventful.  We didn’t even realize we were fighting a boss the first time!

This is the end boss, and it died so fast the first time around it never had a chance to do anything.  Thankfully I got to see what she could do when we went around the second time with only 4 of us.  This is suppose to be a level 74-77 ish dungeon I guess.  You need to be 76 to get the quests involved with it.  So far I’ve not found any of the reulgar instances challeneging.  I’m assuming that the heroics are though.  Thus so far I have not see much worth getting at least for me out of these dungeons either   The second roud was fun though with only 4 of us it was a minor challege

The instance is super short, litterally you run this one in 20 minutes.  I like some of these fast instances.  Will let me be able to get on and have some fun for a short while, I don’t have to dedicate a lot of hours to run something.

Ok I definitely have been MIA I admitt it!  I certainly have NOT kept up with the site like I should have.  Lets just say that between work, my son, my other hobbies and actually playing WoW I haven’t taken the time to update the site.

I spent some time early early this morning updating wordpress, and all the plugins so the site is back up to date again.  I posted a new poll for your polling amusement.  I also promise to go back through my live and beta screenshot folder and do some back posting.

In the middle of all this, Inian and I both transfered over to Doomhammer where we have our mages.  Usually when I get crazy ideas Inian talks me down but he went along with me this time.  I think almost as soon as I did it I wished I hadn’t.  Of course at the time that was it, it was a forever decision so I tried not to dwell on it.  Now Blizzard changed the rules, you can go from PvE to PvP and I no longer have to live with my decision.  So sometime soon I’ll be pushing Laneer back to Deathwing.  I’ll still have my frost mage on Doomhammer of course.

Just a bit of an update on WOTLK impressions before I end this post.  I will tell you first of all NO one will regret purchasing this expansion.  There is so much content in it everyone will find something to enjoy.  There are tons of new quest and game mechanics that change the game forever.  There are new and beautiful game environments which graphics are breathtaking.  The gear upgrade is more gradual than BC, meaning I didn’t start to see things I wanted to replace until level 73-74 in my Badge and 10 man gear.  The leveling curve feels about perfect, not too fast not too slow.  The new vehicle system is awesome and they make use of it in a lot of quests.  My only disappointment in WOTLK is the lack of NEW spells.  We get new ranks of everything but we only got two new spells.

As far as Priests go, well that isn’t as exciting as the rest of the expansion.  I’m sure every class can feel this way but Priests seem to have go the least exciting changes.  Shadow Priests are sad because they took away utility for the sake of DPS, but then nerfed the DPS because it was too good. Holy Priests are sad because it is pretty much the same as Live.  The only good thing Holy had going for it was improved Holy Concentration which was nerfed into the ground and made to be based on crit.  Then of course you had the exciting talents such as 10% more healing to AOE heal spells.  Then you have Discipline, which I have been concentrating on.  The tree which never had a direction, now had a direction “Best single target healing”, though Holy is still winning in this aspect according to the masses.  There is a lot of fun in Disc, I plan to go with it for a change from what I’ve been doing for the last 4 years.  There are still a lot of bugs in our talents, and I don’t think the tree is as strong as it needs to be.  As far as disc goes feel free to read the post I’ve been trying to keep going in the beta forum.

I got on to test Build 9014 which I usually like to do by running an instance.  Azjol-Nerub is an easy one to get a group for and extremely fast.  This instance litterally takes 20 minutes to do.  It has 3 bosses, with little to no trash.  In fact after you kill the second boss you basically walk down this web and jump down this hole and you have one pull to the last boss.

The whole jump is pretty damn awesome.  When you just fall you go really fast through several layers of the zone.   Lots of interesting things to see on the way and you land safely in some water at the bottom.  I put on levitate this run and saw it at a slower pace.

Our very silly DK tank ran into the boss room while me and the mage were still drinking.  He started the encounter and a web came up.  Basically I was still able to heal most of the time if they were in the right spots.  Some times they were not in LOS though.  It was just the DK and the ret pally, though the Mage was also able to occasionally get some damage off while our rogue sat and twiddled his thumbs except for the occasional add that swooped down on us outside.

We ran the instance a couple of times.  It is so fast that the DK was calling it Loot-Nerub becauses you could easily farm stuff in the instance if something dropped you wanted.  There is nothing in the instance I could wear or use on Laneer but it is a fun instance anyways.  Lots of big pulls with damage spread out so it is a good test for how well my Disc build can deal with that.  The two big Penance bugs still exist in this build and I didn’t see any other issues.  Right now Penace will not flip you around when your healing someone which means you need to face them.  It also does not gain the spell haste from Borrowed Time when using Penance to heal but it does if you use it for damage.

I had tried to do this instance many times before but the first boss was broken so you couldn’t get anywhere.  The first boss was not attackable for some reason and if you couldn’t kill him no door opened.  I finally go the opertunity to try this instance.

The first few bosses are pretty easy, tank and spank not much creative there.  The third boss has all these worshipers that have much cooler looking shields than mine that come out and he buffs them and then they one shot your tank.  So basically you fight him and then he tries buffing one of his guys and you need to prevent him from getting in this light or you loose.  We wiped the first time we tried because of the damage the worshipers do.  Got it on the second try it was a fun fight though.

Next you get into it with a few little versions of this boss then him.  I can’t remember what they were called.  I had a quest to kill them though.  They are freaking looking things though that is fore sure.

The boss fight was interesting.  Sort of like the the ogre in shadow labs makes you attack each other he has a mind attack as well.  Only this is where it gets good.  This is using some of the new questing technology blizzard has.  Each person experiences the same thing.  You end up fighting your group.  So I was in full control of my senses but had the other 4 members attacking me, but each person sees this.  As you kill these figments of your imagination you realize they weren’t real and you see the real one.  This is what has been described as phasing technology.  Because all the while you are fighting copies of them, so are they fighting copies of you.  As they come into phase with you, you see them fighting but not what they are fighting.   It is kind of weird     Anyways the fight was really fun and interesting.  I was told by most of the group members I was the hardest because I kept healing

This is a pretty fun instance with lots of interesting things.  It is a longer one though on par perhaps with some of BC’s longer 5 mans.

I finally made 74 after doing some group quests with some guys for Wintergarde Keep.  After we knocked out all these wanted quests I was convienently in the right place to get the Dalaran quest.  So off I went they teleported me up there and from there I got to attune myself to use the teleport crystal that is underneath it.

Blizzard really outdid themselves on this city.  It is truely a marvel!  It was just what I might have expected was inside that bubble all these years.

I’m sure you have already seen tons of screen shots of it so I won’t bore you but with one more.  I was pretty excited about being there and bound myself so I can more easily get back to the old world/ Outlands.

The city is pretty large, and thankfully the NPCs are really helpful.  They will point out more specifically where things are than I have ever seen.  The screenshots do not do this city justice though.  Unless your a mage or have access to a high level mage you won’t get to the city until your 74.  I never bothered trying to but perhaps on live ill try to get bound here earliler

I got on to do some testing and check out the Grizzly Hills a bit more today and stumpled apon a very amusing quest.  It was a Bucket with an “!” and I was like wonder what this is.  It apparently had some nuts in it that smelled delicious that I ate, and went was supose to tell some guy I ate them.  So then he gets mad and says they are really important and he needs them back and sends me on my way to find something to “flush” them out of my system.

And that is how I took my first Poop ever in an MMO.  It was hilarious because you get the nuts back and you take it to the guy and he hads them to another dwarf who puts them BACK in the bucket.  So presumably you ate nuts someone else pooped out.  Very very amusing quest!  I applauded Blizzard on it

Inian got on and was looking around Dalaran and noticed the new mounts that were added in.  So since we didn’t care about the money we had I gave him all of mine and he used it to buy one of the mammoths.

We thought it was a multiperson mount, and since I couldn’t get on in IF we assumed we needed to be in Northrend so we went there.

Someone else was waiting for the boat and we got to do a size comparison

Here is a close up shot of Inian in northrend.  Unfortunately it did not turn out to be multiperson.  There is a version now apparently that will be but not this one boo!

Last size comparison

Did my second second run of the Nexus today.  It is one of the longer instances but very pretty and one of my more favorites.  I actually got something from here I even wanted how about that!  I apparently did not take many screenshots, but it is pretty.  The end boss in this instance is a dragon and a really fun fight.  You basically have to keep moving, EVERYONE or we loose.

I don’t remember why I wasa home on 9/11, I think I was sick.  I remember I did get a bad cold at some point and was out of the count.  I must have just played WoW and rested.  I apparently did a lot of instance runs, I do remember running with this group of higher levels so everything was super super trivial.

This was just after a patch I believe and they changed the portal graphic to be a new spiffy one.  I have never bothered to look but I’m assuming this is only true in northrend.

This is on the way to the last boss in Azjol-Nerub on the way down.  You jump down this hole which is very scary the first time but fun all the other times

This is outside Wyrmrest temple.  This place is funny cause when you are near it dead Wyrms are falling out of the sky everywhere from a battle or something like that.

This is a shot from the front of Old Kingdom.  It is a huge zone but unfortunately it was bugged we couldn’t get past the second boss.  He bugged out every time and we tried it 3 times.

We did the nexus too but we did it so fast I barely remember it.  The DK that was tanking was level 76 I think and it was way to easy to lay waste to everything.  This is a very very pretty instance.

Drak’Tharon Keep was a little more difficult and we had a slightly slower pace.  I enjoyed the instance it was completely different feel from the others I had done so far.

One of the guy had the end of a quest chain for this area that called for defeating the last boss.  After you do this troll comes out and thanks you and then you learn you were actually aiding the Lich King!

He thanks the troll guy for tricking us into helping him and gives the troll super powers.  So now he is a huge troll.  I look forward do doing the quest chain myself eventually.  There are a lot of interesting ones in WOTLK and they tie back to the LK very well.

To do, and so little time!  Been busy busy sneaking in WoW time here and there but not much time to update the site.

Just got 72 and was back in town for training and stopped in the barber shop for a shave and a haircut   Achievement!   Anyways I kinda like this haircut, more like my RL hair, but the beard might be too small for a Dwarf, though you can see my talberd now!

I’ve been crazy busy lately.  I’ve managed a little time in the evenings on beta but haven’t had much time to update the site.  Checked out the latest build which was over 400MB last night.  They finally fixed Serendipity which is going to be a neat talent.  Plus they gave Guardian Spirit a real graphic!  Now they just need to take it off the global cooldown and it won’t be a half bad talent

It is super animated, and the screenshot doesn’t do it justice.  It looks very cool though.  Since the effect is only 10 seconds I wish the graphic would stay for the full 10 seconds as a beacon that the user has 40% healing