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.

Well after this mornings Turkey slaughter I made myself a free agent.  Like I said before a bit easier to leave when no one is around.  Only the original Shadows will probably even miss me   Besides I haven’t really gone anywhere, just changed the title under my name.  A bit later in the evening Redfive got on and invited me into the Texas Mercenaries.  They are not a large guild, about as big as the Shadows was when I moved over to Doomhammer in fact.  I’ve grouped with them enough to know they are a great bunch so I’m fine with my decision.  I look forward to continuing Friday raid night!

A bit later I ended up in a group with Inien and the Old n Grumpy guild. The tank, though terribly slow at pulling was good, while the DPS a Mage and a Warlock were recent 80s and quite terrible.  Well let me change that, they were terrible DPS, they didn’t do anything particularly bad   I was just glad I brought Inien who was doing about 40% of the damage or we would have never finished.  I kept joking that the tank thought we were in Dragonball Z because he would stand and stare at the mobs a long time before engaging them.  When we did the last  boss I predicted both the other DPS would die, Inien, I and the tank would live and I called it perfectly.

Really looking forward to IceCrown and 3.3 has to offer after reading that recent dev chat they posted about it.  It all looks very fun and will be great to get some new gear. I also noticed there were some neat changes to Shadow in 3.3.  So I picked a great time to start training on DPS again   3.3 will let me get some updated DPS gear too.

The one thing I forgot to mention yesterday I was thinking about this morning was my heroic Old kingdom run.  We had a fairly well geared group except for the newbie Hunter.  We got almost to the first boss, and the Paladin says to me, “are you disc?”.  Answering, “uh yes, can’t you see all the bubbles?”.  He told me he didn’t notice and then proceeds to complain about the fact since I’m not healing him (because he is almost never taking damage) he keeps running out of mana.  So I didn’t really say anything but he continued to complain a little after we killed the first boss.  He told me that Disc excels in Raids, not 5 mans…  I asked him if he wanted me to try and stop protecting him and let him take damage and he said no it was fine   I laughed because it actually would be really hard, part of the reason I couldn’t play Holy is I do so much instinctively. I told him that I was great in all situations, noted by the simple fact no one is taking damage

Thinking about it later I couldn’t remember any Paladin ever complaining about it before.  I’m guess that maybe I always end up with someone that does replenishment in my Paladin tanked groups?  We only had that Hunter, Elemental Shaman, and a Rogue.  I’m guessing the hunter wasn’t speced for it.  Seems odd though, or maybe he was just a particularly whinny Paladin

The other funny thing was on the last boss, the one that makes the copies of you.  We lost the Hunter and Elemental Shaman during the phasing.  The hunter releases for some reason and comes back in the instance that causes the boss to bug out.  He died on the way back too.  When we finally start again we have to instruct him not to release.  They both die again on our second attempt but we finish the boss anyways.  Then we go kill the rest of the bosses because the Hunter had never been here before and wanted the achievement

Despite all that I still had a good time.  It is kind of neat to still see new people joining World of Warcraft.  I don’t mind helping out people who want to learn.  Really looking forward to those new 5 mans still.  Come on and hurry up 3.3!  I haven’t had a chance to make it on the PTR still.  It is so late in the game now I might just wait for the surprise on live

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.

I got on tonight for hopefully some random fun and Inien had just got a group for the daily which was OK and they needed a healer.  So I joined up and off we went.  This was a momentous occasion for Inien because he didn’t have the daily achievement because when the rare times this is the daily this group failed the final boss.  We did not fail him however!  The tank was good, the other two DPS were fail though.

After that I convinced Inien to go to Outlands to do some heroic dungeons for achievements.  We like to do old content together so off we went.  Inien thought he needed the Ramparts achievement so we did that one first.

We didn’t do too bad, though I ended up tanking the dragon mostly at the end.  The bosses were way way easier than the trash leading to them   I got a bunch of old outlands enchanting mats to add to my collection   In the end we realized Inien did not actually need to do Heroic Ramparts

Since we were successful in Ramparts though we believed we could be successful in Burning Furnace.  We didn’t do too bad but I died quite a bit in some attempts.  Mostly getting agro, it is much easier for Inien to have agro and me heal him than the other way around.  We also ran into a lot of trash that did A LOT of damage.  Like mobs that were hitting us for 6k.  As usual the bosses were no trouble at all.  We were a little worried about the above boss, because the gauntlet you run might be over wealming for two people but we actually had very little problem with it.

It was a fun night and I got at least one achievement out of it.  We’ll try more again another time.

I got on this evening with the intent of getting in some of the quick raids like OS and Vault.  I managed to quickly get into a 25 man Vault just after I got my cooking quest finished.  It didn’t take them long to fill up, the healers were the only thing in short supply tonight it seemed.

We all got there and started up.  Things looked ok DPS  wise but as we started and the fight was dragging on I thought it seemed like people got lazy or something.  Sure enough we wiped to him…  This has only happened to me once before, that is how much of a  wuss he is you know   We came back though with a vengeance and defeated him.  I was the only Priest in the raid and guess what dropped, yes Valorous Raiments of Faith.  So of course I had no problem winning it   Perfect for my Shadow set!  Though currently my i214 robe is still more than good enough for my shadow set, I am trying to get my hit up and this will definitely help that out.

After that run I couldn’t find another raid that was starting except for a bunch of Naxx10 which I didn’t feel like doing.  So I got put myself up for Azjol-Nerub to make another run at that wand just for the hell of it.  I ended up going with a pretty good group and we tore through everything pretty fast.  We did wipe on the last boss because he glitched and appeared way far away from where he was and pounded, killing me  and 2 others.  The hunter that was with us says he sees it all the time, but that was my first.

While we were finishing the last boss off I get a tell from a guildie if I wanted to do Old Kingdoms.  It is about 40 minutes to bedtime, and apparently I didn’t at all recall how long the instance ran and said if everyone was pro I’d go.  So I joined right after I finished azjol then someone was already there and we summoned.  We were quickly in the instance but I forgot how big of one it was.  I didn’t get to go to bed till about an hour later.  On the bright side guildie needed the epic bracers that dropped off the last boss.

The last boss went very interestingly though, all the dps died to shadow players and it left me and the tank to finish the boss which we did.  The boss is a wuss the only hard parts is fighting your group.  Usually I don’t even fight them I just fear them and wait for everyone else to come help me.  I actually ended up having to kill mine so I could go help them

My wife and son went out of town today so I came home from the airport with a good half a day on my hands.  I took some time off work to go with my free time so I will be getting a lot done around the house, and some fun in WoW   Also part of my goal this week through the weekend is to avoid all news, so much bad news I need a break!

When I got home I got on and was doing some questing while LFG for HoL.  I had both dailies and it turned out to be the heroic daily again anyways.  I got a good group and we did it really fast, probably as fast as I’ve ever done it.  No wipes, the hunter did die from the exploding rocks, not much I could do he didn’t get out of the way fast enough lol

After that we all hearthed but no one dropped group.  I was like man that went so well and so fast we should have done HoS.  So everyone agreed and we went back and did that one as well.  No one died, no wipe!  During that fight I asked if anyone wanted to do anything else after as again it went fast.  The tank wanted to do Old Kingdoms so we went off and did that one.   The warlock with us had to go though so we needed a new DPS.  The warlock was a great guy, but not that great of DPS, though I haven’t seen one in WOTLK yet, I think they broke warlocks.  So the tank grabs a ret pally.  Sure enough he probably found the most annoying, bad ret pally ever   The silly ret pally spoiled my good no deaths records by constantly getting himself killed.

After that we decided since we were there we might as well do AN as well.   I encouraged the tank to accidentally replace the ret pally but he didn’t want to be mean.We had our first wipe on the the first boss (no one unwebed me).  We had our second wipe on the last boss, the pally and DPS Warrior (who was very good) both died to Pound.  Since the DPS warrior was most of our DPS we lost in the end.  We got him the next time around though.  It was a good 4 instance run though.  What was worse in the end was the ret pally said he was adding all of us to his friends list!  I totally teased the tank for exposing us to him

After I finished that I went to eat dinner and came back to finish the last of my quests in Grizzly hills.  I really enjoyed all the quests relating to the Dwarves.  It prepares you to hate loken and such as well seen here talking crap.

I tried to get a few more instances to finish off argent crusade rep.  I managed to get a Violet Hold group and that was well and fast.  We were going to do something else after but the tank backed out at the last second and we broke up for the evening.

So to finish off my Argent Crusade I went ahead and did some questing in Zul’Drak.  I finished off the quest helping this giant and it was soooo awesome.  You get to ride him and smash a lot of scourge and stuff.  It completely rocked!  I also helped Inien to that 3 person quest where you kill the stupid really mean walrus guy.

I was in a mischievous mood when we did it.  A hunter grabbed him just before me because Inien had to get an herb.  It was just the hunter so I knew he would die, it took him a while though I was impressed, his pet could heal himself and he was healing it too.  There was a group of horde watching him fail too and I knew we both were going to try and snag it.  So just when his pet died I threw pain on it.  After the hunter died it was mine! >:)  Of course that was kind of mean but he took it from me, and I didn’t want to wait for it to respawn and fight the horde over it

Was a good night though, lots of achievements and rep to be had.  I’m not working on Ebon Blade my last talbard rep.

When I got back on tonight Inien helped me get a group quest out of the way in Grizzly Hills.  You actually get to have NPC help if  had known that I could have done it myself possibly.

Then I managed to get a Drak’Tharon Keep group, a tank only invited me then we picked up some DPS.  Inien was still in the area so he joined us.  This let me get omy last dungeon elder!  I still had to get my pantsuit though, i did that purposefully Doing this on Heroic also finished off my Heroic Achievement, and got me Dungeon Master for Northrend.

Next we went to do Heroic Old Kingdoms because that was all Inien needed to get his Dungeon master.  His last group couldn’t kill the last boss.  We on the other hand did it with only 4 of us, and with him agroed on an accident.  We had the rouge telling us that he didn’t think we could kill the last boss, or the other lady.

This was us having fun while waiting for the rogue to repair before we did the other lady.  We used to do this in FEST all the time   It was funny too when we started the lady she immediatlly smacked and killed Inien.  I though oh well that’s a wipe, but we continued on.  Then she did the same thing half way through to our horrible ret pally.  I thought oh that’s a wipe, then we continued through and killed her.  Even though she enraged every time I was able to heal through the enrage.

So we finished all that out, and despite having a horrible ret pally even!  Inien and the rogue were pretty close though.  The tank seemed confused the whole time.  It was an odd group.  Oh I did managed to get the Wand of Ahn’kahet!  Finally an upgrade to my old wand!  It is quite nifty.

After all that before I went to head off to bed I stopped by to buy me a pant suit.  Yes I am now an Elder yay!  I was missing this title since I had it in Beta   After that I wen to IF to get that last Enchanting skillup to 425 and Tailoring to 430.  Yay it is getting so hard to get points

After trying many times and never succeeding to get a Heroic Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom finally it turns up as the daily.  I guess that will increase my chances and I was correct.  Though the group had a rocky start.

A rogue invites me wanting to start a group.  I reluctantly join, I usually don’t like to start groups with DPS (other than Inien) because it can take so long to get a tank.  We got a tank though quickly, and we ended up with 3 deathknights.  Were were about there when the tank left for his guild naxx run (at least he did so before we started) so we ended up getting a warrior that I had already talked to earlier.  Then the rougue leaves for “personal” reasons.  So we pickup an amazing sounding DK in his place.  There was some sort of party going on at the summoning stone

With all the DK’s our DPS was NOT a problem.  The last DK we invited was doing about 46% of the damage and was insainly geared.

This is the dracula fight which had a new trick!  At least I didn’t remember dracula having lasers before   Interestingly enough he wasn’t at all interested in my blood like he usually was, he kept eating the bad ass DK

The last boss I was dreading because Inien told me his group had issues with this boss.  When the group came for me it was pretty easy.  They were all melee so I let them all get to me and just feared them.   I didn’t attempt to kill them just keep them busy I let the DKs kill them   I love this fight though it is so unique and cool for a 5 man

After we finished the bad ass DK left and we were all about to when we realized we didn’t get the achievement for the instance.  We checked and there was one other boss.  I guess it is a bonus boss only in heroic.  So we decided to 4 man him.  The first try was total failure because we didn’t know what we were doing.  After that though we killed him no problem.

Oh and for future reference the trick apparently people used to do of pulling the 3rd boss over the water fall if he enrages doesn’t work anymore he resets instead.  Guess it was fixed in this patch.  The tank knew of this trick and we attempted it first.  The next time we beat him though we just had to try harder   Didn’t get the achievement though.