Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

I got home a little early today and the wife and kid was out so I logged on to run my random.  I ended up getting CoS and we went through it a bit slower than my more recent groups.  No one besides me was particularly geared well.  I don’t mind that though because the older instances are so boring.  There was one ret pally that must have been a recent 80 because I out damaged him by simply mind searing the groups some times

I still felt like healing and figured I didn’t have any time for a raid so I thought I’d do some of the ICC 5 mans and see if I could get a hilt to drop.  I mean I haven’t done them tons of time, but I have never seen that damn thing drop!  So I ended up in Forge of Souls.  It was fun and a little challenging.  I really need to do these more I think

After that I went again and ended up in Pit of Saron.  That went pretty well, but I managed to loose someone on the first boss thanks to stupid line of sight on those boulders.  I always forget that and people are so careless I lost the boomkin. The rest of the instance went well.  Except the leader had us do this sort of what I would call a cheat, where if you mount up and run fast enough you can by pass like 2 of the first waves of mobs going up the hill.  You know how I feel about bypassing content, it usually causes more trouble than its worth!

So by this time the family gets home so I never did get in an HoR.  Oh and still no Hilt dropped!

Something interesting did happen later.  Apparently Blizzard is getting the PTR all setup for a run.  People got extra excited because one of the servers was called Blizzcon server.  They believe that it might be Cataclysm beta, but the previous betas were always done on separate PTRs than the normal ones so I don’t think its that.  It is probably just the next content patch, which is cool too!

I just jumped on tonight to do a quick random when I got Heroic CoS.  The changes they made to speed it up really seemed to help because that didn’t take nearly as long as it used to.  You didn’t have to wait through all the stuff in the beginning and you never had to way for Arthas to get his butt in gear!

Since that went so fast I went and completed a few quests for my lore master before bed.  Man I’m started to get low on quests now I’m going to have to go hunting.  I have just about 50 quests yet to complete too!

My day had been long but I wanted to get on and do a Random dungeon for my badges real fast.  I ended up in a CoS which is fine I like this run.  The tank was a bear and a little crazy there towards then end trying to get the last boss because we were a bit slow.  Mostly because two of the party members kept going afk and we were doing it with 3 people.  I laughed at the end because the rouge that was barely there at all wanted to see the damage meters.  The tank did nearly all the damage

Anyways when we were doing the last boss I noticed this attack in the above screenshot.  I don’t recall ever seeing that.  So either the animation never worked on the Mac and they fixed it or they gave him some new ability.  Kind of reminded me of the ice thing some of those new enemies in ICC have the way it shoots out.

Even though I should have gone to bed I still stopped to do my fishing in outlands as well.  Still no croc pet! ARG!  I wonder if I will ever get them all?  Will I still be complaining about this 2 expansions from now? hehe

Need to try to get the Weekly raid in, I hope someone is doing it tomorrow.  I need those badges!  I will be keeping an eye out for some faction grinding sessions in ICC too.

My upgrade to Snow Leopard went well today.  I’m in the process of cleaning up.  I installed a new Western Digital 1TB drive.  I went with the Red Enterprise for reliability and speed.  Man oh man it was speedy.   It was about 3 times the speed of my existing system drive.  WoW runs fine despite some stuff I’ve read about people having problems with Snow Leopard.  In fact WoW runs faster than it ever has.  I didn’t realize how much a difference that increased drive speed would make.

I got on and did a Heroic ToC then did some of my dailies and realized that I had enough badges for my upgraded squire.  I was very excited and surprised when I got the pony up achievement. I thought that had something to do with YOU getting a horse

I was also surprised that he had a vendor in him too!  You get to access your bank, the mailbox or the vendor.  The vendor doesn’t repair but he does have reagents,food/water, and poison.  The cooldown is a long 4 hours but it will still come in handy I’m sure!

CoS was the daily and I had the regular daily as well so I decided to go do Heroic CoS before bed.  It took a bit to find  a tank.  Once we did it went super fast, even got the extra boss in.  Here is me and my new mounted squire riding.  He will mount when ever you mount

I’m happy with my 150 Champion Seal purchase, the cooldown could be a little shorter, it will essentially be maybe a once a day use for me but it is still cool just because he mounts

I worked super late again today but really wanted to play so I got on anyways and did my Tournament Dailies.  I still haven’t done all the new ones I got access to yet when I got exalted, just the easy rescue one.  I should be able to finish out the Exodar tomorrow, yay!  Then I can concentrate on just getting Champion badges for my squire and pets   Oh speaking of pets I was so silly, I bought that Shimmering Wyrmling thinking it was one of the horde pets when it turns out it isn’t!  I never noticed that other vendor, I guess I didn’t have access to it till I got exalted.  It was my intention to not spend gold on those because I could get them myself.  Oh well you live and learn   I just don’t have enough time to stay up on the game in the detail I used to!

After finishing my dailies I had about 30 minutes before bed and decided to join a guildie in Heroic Culling of Stratholme.  I had both the regular and heroic dalies for it, plus I really enjoy it, especially speed runs

It wasn’t much of a challenge though because everyone was so well geared.  This can be fun to do when coming in a PUG with some new 80s or bad people It took longer than it should have to get started though and by the time we got going I knew we were going to go over and I was already tired.  So halfway through the instance I was starting to nod off LOL

We made it to the drake boss, killed him and got my extra badge.  We had about 4 minutes when we got to him.  Someone actually needed the Drake too! Seems just about everyone has one now.

I hope this weekend to try and get in a Trial of the Crusader raid.  The guild setup one this week but unfortunately I’ve been working so late I didn’t get to go.  I finally got around to listening to Blizzcast 10 and I really would like to try it now.  I would also like to get in there and work on my Stormpeak questing too.  The sooner I finish that the sooner I can start working the older quests to finish my seeker

I ended up working late today but still managed to get on earlier than I normally do.  I mostly just quested and the like.  I put a new dent in my money again today.  I happened to see a Crimson Whelpling for 800G and decided it was low enough to buy.  I don’t have time to sit around and farm these so I prefer to buy them when they are cheap enough

Once Inien got on I did some questing with him as well.  I didn’t have enough energy to try any raiding.  I decided I would hopefully do that tomorrow when I’m off.  Eventually when we finished what we were doing Inien managed his OS25 group he was trying for and I went and did a heal for Heroic CoS.

We had a good group and actually made it to the mount boss, not that I need it of course.  The other guys were a little pissed because the terrabad Warlock that was with us won it.  For some reason we didn’t bring arthas with us as we were going and all the mobs respawn if you do that.  They all ran off without me and wiped.  After that some name calling happened and the crappy warlock left mocking them because he got the mount.  We finished the instance with just the 4 of us fine

After Inien finished up he surprised everyone with his purchase of the Traveling Mammoth!  He had been pinching his coppers and got the 16k gold you need for the mount.  You can see me here riding it with us.  The Vendor thing is pretty cool, and for someone who always has a full inventory it will surely come in hand.  Grats Inien!

I got on today and started doing my tournament quests.  The server was still having issues after today’s patch and was pretty laggy.  I was having an issue getting them done, this was early too.  My son was in a late nap, I managed a few quests then they were rebooting and I logged.

I later got on and the server lag was even worse.  Trying to put in talents was painful.  It was so painful I accidentally put an incorrect point in my shadow build and had to fix it.  When I went to the city I noticed they still had not fixed the minimap graphic glitch like they said they were going to.  After I reset my stuff again someone turned me on to that new feature where you set everything THEN you learn it.  OMG this is a life saver when the server is lagged to hell because you don’t have to wait for the database every time you click a talent.

After that flub up I went with a group on the daily Heroic CoS.  I really enjoy CoS, and originally I was going to heal it but they invited another healer and I ended up as dps.  This is where the trouble began.  I really only dps’d an instance one other time, it was are super amazing heroic obsidian sanctum.  I didn’t do nearly as well in this run, doing about 2300dps over all, and a rogue completely owned me on damage.    I’m still learning the rotations and such so that didn’t bother me as much as the fact I just didn’t find it fun.  I suddenly came to the realization I don’t like Shadow dps it isn’t fun to me at all and that I’d much much rather be healing.

So I made the decision to give that up, I thought well maybe I’ll waste some more gold and spec into a Holy DPS/PVP build as my secondary.  Well just after that I switched to Disc mode and it forgot all my Shadow Talents (which it isn’t suppose to do anymore).  Of course I was like awesome!  You might laugh but I created a really fun build to quest in, and maybe do BG when I want to   So with this build I ran around and did what quests I could in the horrible lag, then gave up eventually.  I don’t know if mana will be an issue, I might have to some how work spirit tap into it.

Before I went to bed I just had to try it out PvP.  I of course have no PvP gear anymore really but if anything I’d just do BG anyways.  I was amazed at how well I did, I had a blast too, with a slighty more beefy shield, like every damage reducing PvP talent in Disc/Holy I actually had a tiny bit of survivability   You can see me here as I ran the flag back.  I knew they were about to cap so I hid in there room for a minute or two and as soon as it was back ran all the way back.  A frost mage tried to stop me on the way who failed, as did a DK

I don’t know if it was a fluke, but I did pretty good and managed to really have fun   I got 4th on the healing meter without even really trying.  That was all almost entirely through Prayer of Healing   Then when I got out and was heading off to bed I realized I wasn’t technically even using any glyphs.  Going to have to check out what options I have.  I also remembered that I had forgot that you can flash heal instead of smite with surges now   I really missed SoL

Anyways I’ll see where is takes me.  Looks like Laneir my Mage will still get to be my DPS, because I DO enjoy arcane DPS

I noticed that the Heroic daily today was CoS, and I really enjoy that dungeon and still have some rep to do for the Ebon Knights so off  I went into LFG.  I got almost an immediate tell trying to get me to do the last 2 bosses with them.  I was like Uh no…  I did some quests in Icecrown while I waited for a real group.  A rouge ended up putting one together.  We tried to be speedy and did pretty good.  We got to the guy but the DPS DK who had never been before and was confused ran and died to Malganis, and unfortunately we did not have enough DPS to kill the Drake guy before he got away

I got on Laneir to do my inscription research and was going to log but ended up finishing a few quests first.  I saw a fern I was suppose to get by the river.  Then ended up running like 50 miles before finding another one   I found that quite hilarious consider the kind of plant life in the basin

Another quest I finally managed to finish is the one where you are after all these fruits.  Of course 2 of them don’t belong in a rain forest like place of the basin (orange and papia) but the banana did.  Of course I pulled 50 million vines and never got any.  For some reason I all of a sudden managed to pull 2 vines while I was questing other stuff and got them.  Again it is funny that I found 5 tons of Oranges in the jungle but no bananas

I managed to finish like 6 quests though in 20 minutes or so.  I enjoyed the followup to the fruit quest where you actually distill, was kind of a neat quest

After that I got back on Laneer and messed around more with the stupid Love Holiday.  I never messed with it I think till last year where I did a few quests that was it.  Now I feel compelled to do the stuff for the achievements.  Though I really don’t care about the violet protodrake, I hate the look of protodrakes   I just feel compelled to achieve hehe  Anyways I did a few of them before being annoyed to death and logging.  The holiday is so short too I hope I can find the time to annoy myself to finish them.

I got back from a trip this weekend and hoped to get in a few instances to unwind.  I found out the daily was Heroic CoS so I decided to go for that, easy, fast what more could you ask for.  Plus I learned one of the available non Naxx upgrades for my shoulders comes from the last guy.

Of course as  you can tell it didn’t go so well.  I took this screenshot as it was one the only time I had enough time to hit my screenshot button because I was healing the tank so much and two because it was significant because this is the first time I have ever wiped in CoS that I can remember.  My tank was an unholy Deathknight, I did notice he was wearing tanking gear but he needed every ounce of possible healing I could give him.  He needed so much healing I’m not sure just anyone would have been able to keep him alive.

Inien told me he had a similar bad experience with the instance today wiping 2 or 3 times including to the last boss.  Malganis is such a wimp, but I guess the tank kept the AOE pointed at the group   They even managed to wipe on the gauntlet run.  I almost lost our tank there too so I could understand why.  Since I could see that the tank was wearing tanking gear in my cast I can only assume he didn’t have tanking talents but could never check because I had to use every GC to heal him.  He was unholy but I’ve had some really good unholy tanks before.

After that I was going to try for a Heroic Azjol or Old Kingdom but my son didn’t want to go to bed so I hid out down stairs till he went to sleep.  I came back up and decided to finish some questing in Grizzly Hills.  I really love the music in that zone, though Inien likes to call it hick music   Lots of neat quests but you always come across the typical animal slaughter quests.

I did this one fairly long chain that dealt with some corrupted guy in one of the troll temples you help uncorrupt.  It had a cool ending and I really thank Blizzard for these things.  I hope to finish up Grizzly Hills so I can move onto Zul’drak so I can get friendly with the Argent Crusade.  I am about finished with Dragons rep and will need their tabard next.

Before I go I’d like to show you how spiffy I look with my mace of not screw mace!!  God I hated the look of my old mace, which has been the look of every damn mace I’ve got so far

I got on this evening after having a VERY rough day at work.  Things are not going so well economically and a lot of cuts and bad stuff happening so everyone is pretty down.  Needless to say I needed a good WoW session badly (my stress reliever).  Amazingly the WoW gods saw fit to smile on me this evening blessing me with many great heroic PUG runs.

I started off doing my Wyrm Rest daily while looking for a Heroic CoS.  I had both the regular and heroic dailies so I thought it would be a good one to do.  I got invited by a tank who then found all the DPS.  It was an entirely melee group with a DPS Warrior, DeathKnight, Feral Druid, and the Protection Warrior.  It was even more amazing that the DPS warrior was good! I don’t think I have ever seen this before, he was actually beating the Deathknight or staying about even!

We were trying to do a speed run for the drake.  If you get to the guy fast enough, I think it’s 20 minutes you can get the Bronze Drake you see me flying on earlier in the post.  I got the drake on my second attempt, you really have to be fast.  We were good but not good enough.  We didn’t make it to the spawns fast enough I think.  It was a good group though and I always enjoy complete melee groups.

After that I thought I’d try to get over my fear of bad PUGs and do a Heroic HoL.  I really want the epic pants off the last guy and as I was telling Inien they aren’t going to just fall out of the sky.  Not only did I actually find a good PUG, but it was a great PUG.  We had a truly exceptional Pally tank, and Boomkin.  The Deathknight was sub-par but it didn’t matter.  The pally started off with the first boss “anyone need the achievement” and ran in when the guy was buffed.  We owned the guy easy and I got the achievement, the first of many for the night.  Then when we got to the last guy they asked if we wanted to run or stand, I didn’t think I could heal it so we ran, it didn’t go according to plan and we got hit a lot by his thing but Holy Nova saved the day.  I do believe I could just have everyone stand there and I could use it to keep everyone alive.

After that the awesome Boomkin asked if I wanted to do Heroic Nexus.  The same tank was coming so I figured why not.  We needed DPS so I got Inien to even come.  It was a really great group and a lot of fun.  Again we went for all the achievements, but we were not successful on the split personality one.  Guess we didn’t kill the mirror images fast enough, almost inconceivable.  We did manage Chaos Theory but that one was so crazy hard, and also got Intense Cold.

After we finished that Inien realized he only needed 5 more badges for the Mage set Robe.  So we started up a group for Heroic Violet Hold which was the daily for that day.  There was a tank waiting for us practically and we started pretty quick.  We got all the easy bosses (again thank you WoW gods) and finished what’s her face easy.  She even dropped her Epic mace which I gladly took.  I call it my Epic Mace of not Screw Mace.   So tired of every mace I find looking the same!

Inien looked pretty spiffy in his robe.  I do believe that is what I’m going for next, of course mine is the Priest Robe

Lastly I finished out the night with some of the exciting mini game of inventory management.  I thought I’d throw out a shot of what my bank/bags look like these days

All in all I got 16 badges for the evening, a bunch of shards, a new Mace, over 8k rep had fun with no frustration and in only a few hours. Great end to a really really crappy day.