Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

This week has been crazy for me!  I’ve been going into work early(even for me!) doing some upgrades to prepare for a big upgrade next week.  So even though I was stressed and could really use some WoW time I was too tired usually to play   I got on tonight though and played a little, talked to Inien on skype.

I did my random first thing, Inien had just finished so I went alone and ended up in someones already started UP.  It is interesting how you get dropped right on the group now, I don’t know when they changed that but it is convenient.  I’m going to guess the other healer left because they couldn’t deal with healing the tank.  At first glance I couldn’t tell who was the tank by HP because we all had about the same amount.    It turned out a really poorly geared Feral DPS Druid was tanking in a Cat spec, and Cat gear

This of course made things interesting to heal but I didn’t have a problem keeping him alive, I am after all awesome   The Shaman in the group was asking me if it was hard to heal him, and I just said it was “interesting”.   The Shaman seemed impressed with my healing ability and kept asking questions about my spec and gear.  We made it through the instance though, no one died and I got that out of the way.

I then went to my Argent Tournament dailies which I’ve started doing again.  Inien was doing them too and we did some of them together.  I was able to get enough seals tonight to get my 25 Talbard and get that achievement!  I found out after I did that one of the guildies has been trying to catch up to my achievement score, I have the second best in my guild and the only reason I’m behind is because I don’t raid as much   So now I’ve got to step it up to hold my 2nd place   Going to have to try and knock out some of the easy ones I still have in general and maybe PvP and Fishing.

Ok,  now onto my big worries.  Inien kept reminding me nothing is close to being done, and I realize that but I see too much thought behind the new Disc tree to not be worried.  It looks to me at first glance they have refocused the tree back towards PvP again!  You can see the talent preview over at MMO-Champion.

I’m talking of course of Atonement, Penitence, Evangelism, and Arcangel.  They are great names, and even cool talents they allow you to do some damage and be healing as well. It is unclear to me if this is thought it will work in PvE or not?  It could be interesting but I don’t think they have ever mixed those two things for PvE before.  Atonement could be interesting letting you heal the tank and melee dps with some of your damage.  The more I thought about it after talking to Inien the more I began to see it as modeled after the damaging healers in some of the MMOs that have come out recently.

So basically now I’m more fascinated than stressed out about it and wish I had a beta invite to try it   With the changes to Disc and Holy, it is possible to get all the new Damage talents in Holy and Disc, all the way to the increased range.  So now I’m thinking you could go with a Disc build that looks like this and it might be an interesting PvE build where you would be tossing out damage and heal/shields.

BETA, where art thou!

I’ve been working 12 hour days lately on a big project at work, and time and energy for WoW just hasn’t been there   So sad too with so many interesting things going on in the community right now.  I did do a 10 hour day today, downed a Monster and went home with the hopes I could play tonight.

I got on and noticed that the Heroic Daily was ToC.  So I decided to grab that and go out there and do the dailies and try for a group.  I got a group in a short time and got started.  We lost one of our DPS then gained a tank, so our DK that was going to tank went DPS and he was happy   The new tank was saying he just ran from a group that had a healer in all blues, must have died a lot.  Of course he really shouldn’t have talked he was quite terrible.  I had both DK’s standing in the damn poison, and the Tank had 5 stacks of the crap on him the whole time, and the DPS one had it on him the whole time too.  To top it off it took them forever to kill the 3 and they left the rogue up the whole time   I barely made it through that one.  During the run I got a tell from thewaterboy from Texas Mercenaries to see if I wanted to raid with them.  I thought i got on too late so I figured I missed out.  They still hadn’t got another healer so they waited for me to finish and off we went.

We were too healing it this time, just me and Redfive.  Redfive is an exceptional pally healer.  He is a bit better geared than I am but if you county my mitigation with my healing I keep up I think.  Of course I hadn’t two healed this instance before, and I hadn’t played in like 2 weeks so I was a little rusty.  We got through the bosses no problem though.  On the twins I got a little flustered and lost my tank, but it was the very end, so we powered through and got them both down before anything bad happened.

The last fight was by far the hardest one to two heal.  Especially phase 3 was totally brutal!  What I found when two healing this dungeon was I actually ran out of mana.  So I think I still need to get a little more geared before I can do this truly well.  We lost two people at the end but that wasn’t too bad.   The amazing part was more that we cleared the whole thing in 1 hour

We tried hard mode after, at first just to mess around.  We actually were making progress through so we stuck to it for a little bit.  We were able to get the first beast down in time before the worms came out once, but sorta lost it after that.  We still don’t have enough DPS, and one of the tanks wasn’t geared enough yet.  It is a fun challenge though, I like trying to do the hardmodes

I gave up though shortly before midnight they were going to go do Ulduar but I had already been up since 3:30 and was exhausted so I had to go to bed.  I had a fun time though finally getting to play!

I had an evening of Dragon Slaying today.  The Heroic Daily today was the Nexus so I started off with that.  Nice easy one to do, and we did a speed run which is fun.  Had a good DK tank and told him to sprint   This I did earlier in the day when when my son was napping.

When I got back on in the evening I was bound and determined to do Onyxia.  So I started doing some Argent tournament dailies while I waited.  I eventually got into a 25 man Onyxia group and was summoned over.  They had already been wiping so I was scared.  It turned out they were all quite terrible and we eventually gave up.  While I was standing there still I saw another person was starting a Onyxia 25 and joined up.  I mentioned it to Randorf and he joined and I saw Kymer did too.

Eventually we started, it took a bit to fill the group and we were successful.  I apparently didn’t take any screenshots last night.   We wiped once I think on the 25 man.  I decided to try for a 10 man so I went back to questing.  This time I went for some old world quests and while I was doing that I eventually got into a Onyxia 10 man group.  That was a little rough to start then it went well too.  In that fight the DPS Priest had dropped, the Coronet of Transcendence. If only it had been the healing one!  They gave it to me anyways since I was the only Priest.  I’m not sure if I’ll gem it for my DPS set or not.

It comes to the real problem with the hat I’m trying to buy.  I think I like the Helm of Clouded Sight best it is a lot of badges.  Though the Circlet of Transcendence and Halo of Transcendence are both good hats. Though I was lucky on teh Coronet, I highly doubt I will be as lucky for something I actually want.  So I think I’m going to spend the 75 badges for the Helm of Clouded Sight and just not worry about it.  The stat distribution on it is more to my liking anyways.

All in all though it was a good day.  If I get the chance tomorrow to do the heroic daily, then maybe get in some VoA action I could have my new hat

I got on a bit later after getting all those nifty Achievements, and did some Argent Tournament Dailies.  My gold supplies haven’t been increasing lately, and there is still a pet to be had   While I was out on the island doing some quests I notice they added a new quest with some new object in the cave where the oracle guy is summoned.  It looks like it is informing us about some sort of attack by these guys so this may have something to do with 3.3.  Interesting anyways, I still haven’t done the other quest they added to Dalaran to begin the lore for Night Elf Mages in Cataclysm.

Shortly after finishing my dailies I joined up with the Texas Mercenaries for my Friday raiding fun.  We did really good this week in ToC10 completing the entire instance again.  I picked up the Binding Light trinket while I was in there.  I didn’t remember seeing that one when I was looking at the drops.  I rolled on it because it didn’t seem like anyone wanted it, the other Priest that came with us did roll too.  I wish I had let him have it because I miss read the tool tip, it wasn’t much different than the energy siphon I was using, some argue it is worse even   A nifty belt dropped off the last guy too, and I felt compelled not to roll to because I had one won the trinket, though the belt wasn’t a huge upgrade either.  I’m still debating on getting the Triumph ring or waiting to get the helmet, decisions!

I got on and did my Brewfest dailies, completely exhausted again (yay for 12h days + family outing + trash day). After completed the defend Brewfest, Brew barking, and Beer runs I was a mere 4 short of doing the rest of the achievements.  Inien however managed to have enough (grats!) and got his done.  Unfortunately though he missed a few achievements during the year that prevented him from getting his Violet Proto-Drake at this point

Tomorrow will be the day though, I should be flying on a 315% mount! Woot!  I had looked him up on wowhead yesterday, he is actualy pretty cool looking.  I won’t mind I guess him being probably the only flying mount I’ll ever use again LOL  It is kind of nifty too because proto-drakes are not terribly common because the only way you can get one is by luck or hardcore raider   Also to have a 315% mount is pretty uncommon too, so this will be neat.  Anyone who says that this was catering to casuals needs to be smacked too because being dedicated enough to get in and do all these achievements in some times a very short period of time was not easy, and it takes a year   I’m not sure people feel that way anymore though because I don’t see it so much now, but you used to see that a lot when they first did that achievement.

Before bed I went and did some argent dailies so I could get a new pet.  I happened to get that one daily that was always broken for me before.  Well they fixed it finally in the last patch I guess   Well sort of I should say.  I managed to actually summon the guy, but in the middle of fighting him and phased out and was still hitting me but I couldn’t see him.  I kept running around in the area and then some how got phased back in and was able to fight and kill him for the first time, yay!

After I completed enough dailies I grabbed my NE pet   He is such a cute little tree.  His idle animation is sleeping but for some reason in this screenshot I caught him with out the Z’s over his head.  So instead of sleeping he just looks sad.  Don’t worry he is just super tired like me!  So now the only Argent Tournament pets I need to get is the Dreanei and Tauren.  I saw someone put like 7 of the Tauren pets on the AH for 1800, was going to wait and see if he lowers the price at all.  The one guy who keeps trying to sell the one for 2k is either successful every 2 days or is not selling it.  I know I am not paying that much for one so I have been waiting for a slightly lower price.  I have been paying 1500 gold for the horde ones.

Well tomorrow is another day, hoping for some raiding with the Texas Mercenaries again.  This time I plan to not pass out hopefully!

I got on too late for much again but did get a chance to do much, I quickly did the fishing daily.  No pet though just the antique silver bracer, a little money anyways

After that I went looking for ToC because I grabbed the daily yesterday before I left.  A tank teamed up with me and that went well we finished with no deaths.  Before the summoned me over though I stopped to look at the pets in the AH.  I was very tempted to drop 2k on the tauren tournament pet but decided to wait for it to be lower.  I got my sheep today but I forgot to take a screenshot of it too.

After that I did a big round of dailies before decided I should go to bed.  Looking forward to hopefully raiding Tournament of the Crusader tomorrow with the Texas Mercenaries.  We managed to beat it last time so it will be cool if we can get through all 5 bosses again.  I would also request the first boss drop me a new wand, thank you very much!

BTW my screenshot should have been cooler, she didn’t agro and I was pelting her with my Elune candle (yes I still have one) and I thought I got a screenshot of that and not her just standing their

I started off the day by going back to outlands to do the fishing daily.  This story ends great with me getting one of the pets Toothy, finally after so many attempts over the years   What ended up happening was the daily was the croc in stormwind, so I go there.

While I’m fishing I notice a quest in my on my low level radar.  I talk to the guy he says he dropped his work he was suppose to turn into nethergarde in the swamp when a plant attacked him.  So I go to the swamp and start killing some of the moss guys.  It seems like it is taking too long so I consult lightheaded(wowhead in game) to make sure I’m not going after the wrong thing.  I was right but they say the droprate is horrible.  I stick with it though and eventually get it.

While I was heading over to the portal to back to outlands I run into a guy who wants me to kill stuff.  I go ahead and start doing that.  Then I run into that new Dreanei camp they put in and it has a bunch of quests so I finish the killing one that sends me on another one that was conveniently near the others I just got.  To make a long story a little shorter I ended up doing every quest I hadn’t done in the swamp.

Inien and I tried very hard and failed to get a Heroic ToC going so we decided to mess around.  I wanted to see if I could get the 48 Brood rep I need to get exalted.  So we tried out AQ20 which went fight until the first boss.  Between the weird pulling thing he does, and the silences from the sand we just couldn’t kill him.  Mostly because of his healing debuff.  We wondered if AQ40 mobs would give me rep, nope so we were going to try the first boss.  Then we got reminded these guys come in 4s and while we did the first pack, the one before the boss was too hard to even get to try him   So that was out, have to come back with just one other person and we’d be fine.

Before a very early log thanks to an event at work I did manage to do both dailies in guild.  Some guild tanks finally got on yay!  I swear I have no idea where all the tanks were yesterday but they were certainly hiding.

I had a fun day anyways and got a lot of oldworld quests done and a new pet!!!

Finished my remaining quest lines in Storm Peaks today.  This one here where you get to kill the big giant they were making using a giant worm was interesting   After I finished all that I went and did my argent dailies.  I got enough to seals to buy my Mechanopeep   The next pet I’ll probably go for will be the sheep.

I was also planning to raid with Texas Mercenaries again tonight but I ran to Outlands to do the fishing daily before raid time.  It drives me crazy they apparently upped the drop rate of the rare rewards from the fishing quest but I never get the pets.  Everyone in my guild does, I get fishing line, and hats and water motes

We got to the Twins again tonight in Trial of the Crusader.  It took us a few more tries on a the second and Third bosses than it did last week. We came this time though with strategy and if you actually know what you are suppose to do this fight is actually super easy   No caster gear was dropping, well on the twins Enlightenment did drop, grats Randorf!  I was looking through the loot tables, there are tons of caster staffs, NONE of them seem to be healer staffs, all lack regen   I did however I did have enough badges by my second bos downage to get my Pauldrons of Revered Mortality!  I haven’t been getting much luck in the drops department, but at least this raid gives Triumph badges and I can actually still use lots of that gear

Anyways after you defeat the twins the Lich King comes in and has his words with you then he smashes the floor!  You fall downward into some water (Thankfully) and you get to fight a Ajzol-Nerub end boss like guy.  Only this one is meaner of course   The fight had some interesting elements to it but we had someone with us that knew what to do.

It took us 3 or 4 tries but we did pretty good with it actually and he went down.  Yay the Trial of the Crusader has been completed.  After we finished that we went over to Ulduar but we only did 3 bosses, it was just too late.  They wanted to try XT-002 in hard mode again.  We got him to hard mode no problem, but they were not prepared for some other elements to the fight and we just did him normal instead this time.  Finished off Razorscale then went to bed

It was a fun night though and I love my new shoulders

Today is Inien birthday, Happy Birthday!  I rushed on last night hoping to join his H ToC group he we getting together but apparently the tank insisted on some other healer so we ended up in separate groups that started and finished at nearly the same time.  I think he got the better tank, we had the rouge and my tank decided it was important to stand in the poison the entire time.  He also was apparently not very geared (it was a paladin) because it took everything I could do to keep him alive with the 5 stacks of poison on him plus the bosses. This caused me to loose our rogue.  Then the next boss comes up he again almost got owned by the ladys pet while I was feared (despite shields, PoM and Renew) and had to save him and the rogue died   I had been DEing but the rogue was rolling on the stuff too, he said he could as well.  He one one of the items, it was plate off the second boss then left the group!  We were totally confused, and he did it AFTER they started the BK.  So we just 4 maned it and that was it, no one died on the last boss either

After that I met up with Inien and we did a few dailies together for Argent Tournament and then went over to Storm Peaks to do a group quest he still had and I just got the other day.  I had been working on my first aid achievements (for some reason) and I managed to make the 500 bandages.  After that I had been saving my Ultimate Triage achievement for Inien.  I had not used a bandage since the achievement system was put in, I wanted the only bandage I ever do to be on him, so we did that after the quest

After that I realized that I only had a few more quests to my 1000 dailies achievement so I went and finished up my Argent Dailies to complete this achievement. Looking at that I wondered how close I was to 3000 quests done, oh I was only 5 away, and I only had 8 quests left in Storm Peaks to do as well.

So I went over and finished some Storm Peaks quests.  They were all in a very confined area so it wasn’t hard to complete!  Viola! Yay 3000 quests done!  Yes I am a bit obsessive over quests, I enjoy them and before the achievement system was put into place I just did them anyways.  I’ve even done most of the newbie quests for every Alliance race.

After finishing that I was so close to just finishing off all the quests for Northrend that I decided I should do that.  I mean what an amazing night for achievements, so what the hey!  This is me working on the last quest for that achievement, though not the last quest I have to do in Storm Peaks.  They always give you a few more than necessary.

So before turning in for the evening I completed all my Northrend zone quest achievements!  I do have a few quests left in Storm Peaks to do however and I will finish all of those before I stop there.

After that however I’m going to return to the old world to finish off those achievements.  I don’t know what will happen to those achievements after the Cataclysm but I feel like I need to do them anyways since I has always been a goal of mine.  I have just over 300 quests to do between eastern kingdoms and Kalimdor.  Most of them are over in Kalimdor that I need to do.  It was an exciting night though!  Happy Birthday to Inien again.

Got on and did most of my Champion seal dailies today.  Had a few I had never done before like the shark meat one.  Also had to go summon and kill a guy on the ship, hadn’t had to do that one either.

After that I decided to do ToC before logging.  I ended up joining a group whos healer DC’d.  After I saw the gear of two of the DPS I can see why he may have LOL.  Two of them were new 80s and had unbuffed health of about 12k.  I looked at their gear and they had no instance gear it was all quest gear.

We did ok though, even if we were a bit slow.  We got the Lady too, I have had the guy like the last 5 times.  She used the last memory I hadn’t seen yet too so I got the achievement   Didn’t even know there was one!

The only painful part was the last part, it took them so long to kill the BK that I died tried to save everyone.  This was mostly my fault because I didn’t pay attention to my own health for a second too long   Oh well! You live and learn.  On the bright side I regot my Gaze of the Unknown for my Surge set.  I had got it on the first day I went but I accidentally DE’d it on a following trip   It has taken me all this time to regain it.  The elemental shaman rolled against me for it too!