Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

Got on a little early today and managed to get the weekly done.  It was razorscale this week so it was back to Ulduar.  When I walked it I was a little shocked, I don’t know if it is because of the higher quality or the PC just renders different but Ulduar is very pretty   Something seemed more pretty to me anyways hehe

Of course I had to highlight this little shot as well.  After all I don’t think I’ve ever had a computer that could actually render shadows of any kind without dying   So it was kind of neat to see Razorscale’s shadow  over us as we battled.

Ok here is where my “Why Me” comes into play.  I got back on after I got my son to bed, which took too long of course.  I wanted to do my random and what do I get?  HoL… I get this damn instance way too much.  Of course I come into it just as they are about to do the 2nd boss.  Of course after a few minutes I realized the previous healer must have killed himself or went for a walk or had “connection problems” because well the tank had no idea what he was doing.  He was barley geared in blues which I don’t mind but he was terrible to boot!  Then we had a ret pally in greens that some how managed to always get agro from the terrible tank.  We had a hunter which was the only one who knew what he was doing and a terrible cat druid.

So I spent the whole instance frantically trying to keep them all alive.  Failing once loosing the druid and ret pally.  I’ve never used pain suppression so much in my life hehe  So not only did I get silly HoL yet again but I got the group from hell yay.  The terrible tank was a DK which seems to be pretty easy to be terrible at.  I did end up making it through the instance though

After that finished I was just about to log but before I did I saw a tell for VoA10.  Since I’m trying to get as many badges this week as I can I stopped to get that done and out of the way.  Now I just need to get VOA25 and try to squeeze a few ICC runs in and I should get my pants The VoA run was almost fail too but thankfully we had a few really awesome people to make up for the lack luster ones

Jumped on this afternoon for a quick dungeon run for badges because I was going to the zoo with the family and I didn’t figure I’d be getting on the computer when we finally got home.  I was right of course   Of course I ended up with HoL which isn’t the fastest dungeon but turned out ok.  We had a really good tank,t he dps was subpar but the tank made up for it

The best part was my son came over and watch while sitting on my lap.  He is 3 now and when ever he sees me playing the game and fighting something he yells “Bad Guy!” and well you know how many bad guys are in HOL.  I also taught him what an elemental was so when we would run into them he would yell “Elemental!” in his cute not exact way   The biggest problem with him sitting on my lap of course is he can make it difficult to heal with all the jumping  and screaming and occasional “helping” hehe

Finished up the run and off to the zoo we went.  No argent tournament for me today!

I got on today and messed a little bit with my UI, my unit frames I had been messing with seemed like I got them too small.  I grew them a bit and fiddled and decided to do my Random heroic dungeon for the frost badges.  I ended up getting a HOL.  Of course we started the instance and the tank went offline.  Then we had to wait to kick him and get another one.  Some people decided to start pulling things (without a tank) while I wasn’t around and that didn’t go well.  Then one of the DPS left just about when we got the tank.  Then we had to grab another DPS it was quite annoying but managed to blast through the instance at a reasonable rate.

After completing that instance I wanted to do the last of the new 5 mans.  Though I was still having issues adjusting to my Pitbull 4 frames, so I decided to turn back on Pitbull3 to see if I could figure out what was so different.  I did that and jumped in the queue and got a group really fast.

The start was even more painful than the HoL though.  First we had a DPS get in and go, “wait this isn’t heroic?”  then he goes offline.  I’m guessing people go offline wait for someone to kick them and then maybe they don’t get the debuff to try again?  Because it continued to happen!  Next some guy comes in and goes “oh no not <insert name>” of our tank who was not even from the same server as the tank and goes offline.  Then two more people just leave the group, then it is just me and the tank again.  Then we get more DPS.  Finally we start the whole thing (which is very awesome btw) and get ready for this huge battle.  Then one of the DPS goes offline AGAIN!  Then we wait, kick him and get one more in  just as the mobs start coming.

So far I’ve done just fine in the normal 5 mans, they have been almost too easy really, I know they are not heroic, but most people I was with out geared them.  Well now I had the benefit of being with people who not only didn’t out gear it but also weren’t very good   We wiped in the first part of Halls of Reflection 3 or 4 times before finally getting past it.  It was always because mobs kept getting on me and killing me.  I can only fade every 30 seconds, and no one was controlling anything.  The fact that I was getting agro was proof that the tank wasn’t picking things up, and the DPS weren’t even hitting it!  The stupid thing is if I wasn’t being hit I could probably have kept anyone else alive.  Even as it was when we finally did get past that part it was because at the very end of it I ended up both poping pain suppression during the fight on myself, and spamming holy nova!

This part of the dungeon is so cool.  You have the Lich King coming after you trying to stop you and Jaina Proudmoore slowing him down and trying to get everyone away. So ya, we wiped here too, twice in fact, and ALMOST a 3rd time   Though it is awfully cool when he kills you   Again they didn’t control the mobs at all, and they didn’t kill them fast enough.  By this time I was super tired too, I didn’t expect to be in this instance for more than an hour.  We got to a point where I had one a Lumbering Abomination on me, I had to resort to Pain Supression and Holy Nova spam to save myself again.  I don’t think I’ve ever faded more than I did in this run before ever.  Looks like I might need to start carrying around some Holy Nova Glyphs LOL

Terrible group aside, the dungeon was awesome.  It really completed a very epic experience of the 3 dungeons.  They were very well thought out and put together.  The quest chain you go through with Jaina was awesome.  I’m loving the new dungeon system on whole though, if going offline is a loop hole I hope they close it!  I can’t wait to get a few more of these new dungeons under my belt.  I’ll need to start doing heroic mode to get a chance at the Hilt and some good upgrades!

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.

Tonight I was excited because I knew all I needed to do was the Heroic Daily and I could buy my trinket.  I go and look and low and behold the heroic and regular daily was Halls of Lightning!  So I grab Inien and we try to put together a group.  I went and did some Pilgrim dailies while waiting for a tank to show then we grabbed some DPS and off we went.  I told them they needed to beat the 32 minutes run i did yesterday   We almost did, we did it in 33 minutes, technically we would have won though thinking about it later.  We did both dailies so we stopped for extra mobs.  We would have easily beat my 32 minutes otherwise.

I hope everyone is getting their suicidal Turkey ready for the big day tomorrow.  I wish everyone the bestest Thanksgiving!

I got on this evening and Randorf was talking about Friday’s Raid.  They were talking about how they use forums posts to line everyone up.  I asked how come they didn’t use the in game event system for that.  They actually had never used it before so I was very pleased I got to introduce them to it and what you can do with it.  Randorf was like, see we needed you!   So I got them trying it out for this upcoming raid.  It is definetely useful for raids, I wonder if they are going to expand on it any in all the new guild tools they are giving in Cataclysm.

I ran around and did some Pilgrim dailies to get some more turkey shooters.  Then I camped out Dalaran to get the last 3 rogues I needed.  It was a pain in the butt too.  I even flew out to the Tournament grounds to look for the last one I needed, an undead rogue.  I remember when undead Rogues were super common, but now I hardly ever see them.  I couldn’t believe I found an orc and troll rogue, multiples before I found an undead one.  Anyways I got it eventually and now I have my suicidal Turkey, yay!

After that I went to see what the heroic daily was.  I winced a little when I saw it was HoL.  I don’t mind it so much anymore, but it is one of the longer instances and I was a bit tired already.  I really felt like I wanted to do an instance though so I put myself in LFG and got a group rather quickly I was surprised.  It ended up being a good group too.  We blew through the instance in a half an hour, well 32 minutes to be exact.  I am not 1 triumph badge away from my trinket   I will have use of it for Friday yay!

I stated work on my Sons of Hodir again today.  Just when I was really getting into it some guildies wanted to do HoL.  So I took that little diversion as I needed rep and still wanted my pants.  Of course my pants dropped for the first time ever and Mhage one them   Oh well at least it was a guildie I lost them too.

Then I went back to my questing for Thorim.  Once I finally found where I got stopped at.  I had a thing in my inventory the whole time.  This quest was funny cause the crazy guy jumps down on the poor giant protodrake from the temple.

Did a lot of quests for him with my little buddies.  They are full pets so I could bubble them with holy nova    I think this was a funny reference to multiboxing Shaman because you control all 5 of them at the same time with one button.  Its pretty fun

I was so mad at the end of this chain to find out I was being controlled by Loken the whole time, damn him!  I have no idea how that wuss was able to take down Thorim too.  I bet Throim is going to be in Uldar some how.

I then went off to make my cloth and Blizzard fooled me again.  I flew all the way out to the nexus to make some spell cloth when I got there and it didn’t work.  They changed it to use the Azure Dragon Shrine!  That is the second time they fooled me by moving them   At Least they are all close now.

I decided that I’d get the Oracle dailies started as well.  Inien had done them all so I was able to bug him on where I needed to go to start and the other details of choosing.  I definitely preferred the Oracles over the puppy people   They were really mean those puppy people wanting you to poke babies with sticks!

I finished out the evening with both Daily systems ready to run with them finished for today as well.  Not a bad night if I do say so myself.

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.

I started off this tonight with a bit of questing in the grizzly hills.  I need to finish up there so I can move on to another!  I was in LFG looking for one of the dungeons my remaining elders are in.

So I get a tell invited to a Nexus run, we ended up with a Pally Tank, Boomkin, Hunter, and a fairly new but decent DK.  Based on his guild rank “alt” I’d say he was an alt, and a recent 80   He kept just about the tank in DPS, and the tank was well geared so I was pleased   I managed not to take a screenshot during the Nexus run but it went smoothly.  They even managed to get achievement though I could have swore the hunter never moved.  The hunter was our best DPS most of the time when the Boomkin right behind him her.

After that everyone was so pleased with how smooth it went, and how fast we did it we decided to do something else.  Having got my elder from the Nexus now I suggested Azjol-Nerub next.  So we all agreed and headed there.  There was much talk about how hard the first boss is, and the second boss, and the last boss, but everything went easy.  Apparently none of them have done it with a good group.  Up to this point we have had no wipes, or even deaths.

After that everyone wanted to do another instance.  I was shooting for Drak or HoS for another elder, but the Boomkin really wanted to do HoL.  It was the Heroic Daily, and I happen to have the regular daily for it as well.  Eventually I agreed and we went there.  When we got to the first boss I asked if anyone needed the achievement, the tank was really scared about trying it I told him he would be fine, and the Boomkin really wanted a go at it.  Of course I had no problem with it, I knew he was a good enough tank and we downed him and everyone got the achievement.

We had our first wipe through the elementals that explode.  I was sitting there saying don’t kill them all at once, I went up the stairs and some how managed to agro the elementals at the top.  We wiped of course, was all my fault and I don’t count that wipe technically They were all dreading Loken, of course I don’t anymore now that I can heal through the damage.  He is easy if you can just stand and DPS him.  It was even easier to do with the hunters nature resists.  I told them they would get the achievement and they all did of course.  It was so cake with the nature resist not even close

After that we decided to do HoS.  The boomkin was off geming some of the stuff he she got in the other runs and I was running around gathering the mats to build my Flying Carpet!  I made it just before the summoned me and learned it when I was by the stone.  I flew around on it a bit before going in and it is nifty.  I didn’t realize that they made it a real mount in 3.08 I thought that had to wait for 3.1!  I some how didn’t get a shot of me on it though, soon!

I haven’t done HoS much, I think only once on regular and once on Heroic.  I was on Skype with Inien and he has done it lots so I was getting info from him.  We went up the mining side first and managed to meet the elder quickly.  When we got to the boss over here it went sort of ok but at the very end I got shattered and died, the Hunter died as well.  The boomkin picked up healing and they managed to finish him off though!

She was no problem at all of course but the fight is funny because she is rather insulting through out the whole fight

We wiped on the first attempt of the archive, but the second attempt not only did we succeed, but we go the achievement!  With both the DK and Pally grabbing the mobs none got through.  I really like the lore that comes out in this fight.  I managed to get some new shoulders finally here too!  I can’t recall but I think the CoS ones were better but these were still nice.  I need to get in with the giants though so I can have shoulder enchants.

So up to this point we had only 3 wipes, 1 my fault entirely, and 2 deaths (1 mine) which is amazing   These people were not over geared, we were not doing amazing DPS but they knew their classes.  We started the end boss though of this instance and we did have some issues with him.  I dislike this fight so much now!  We got him down on the third try though, basically I realized looking at the combat log it was all nature damage, and had the hunter use his nature resists.  Then the  fight went easy to the end when I lost everyone but the hunter and I but my dots finished him off.  He didn’t drop exactly the trinket I wanted but he did drop the Spark of Life which both me and the Boomkin rolled on.  I figured it might come in handy.

So I managed to do 4 instances, both instance dailies, get a new trinket and shoulders, and make my Flying Carpet.  Yes I would call this a good night!

So I sort of put my foot in my mouth this evening, well only sorta.  I guess you can blame so many bad PUG experiences, but I also blame the tank for not informing me   Basically this is what happened.  I was in the LFG for Heroic HoL.  I started putting my SP in addition to “Healer” in my comment, seems to get me better groups some how

Anyways a warrior sends me a tell and I join him. He invites a mage which his HP and Mana looked low to me so while he was inviting more people I looked at his armory.  I noticed he had only as much SP as my 73 Mage, only he was level 80.  I sent the tank a message and said to get rid of him and pick up someone else that he is going to be horrible DPS.  He tells me he is a guildie, to me that doesn’t matter much if you can’t get through the instance because you don’t have enough DPS guildie or not your in trouble.

So he tells me we will be fine.  I never paid attention though that the rest of the people he invited were all in his guild, and he didn’t tell me   I was like ok then I hope we don’t go wiping everywhere because of low DPS.  So why we were flying over I checked the other two guys and saw they both appeared to be very well geared, a Ret Pally, and a DK   I still never noticed they were in his guild.  We started and everything went awesomely, the tank was great, and the DPS from the Ret pally and DK were awesome.  I noticed just past the first boss they were all in the same guild and appologized for being  a jerk but he should of told me he knew what we were ending up with

The run went fantastic, we wiped once on the last boss because of me, I told them I could heal through Lokens AOE which is trouble but I wasn’t fast as I was the last time I did it apparently.  Basically I can spam Holy Nova and toss out PoM in between and that takes care of it   Everyone has to stay close to me of course, which the Mage of course didn’t.  He died but he was rather worthless.  We could have four manned the thing the mage only did 10% of the damage.

It was certainly the fastest (really fast) HoL I’ve ever done, and by far the most successful. No pants though of course the stupid chainmail belt again.  Of course I some how ended up with no screenshots, I haven’t fully got used taking them all the time like I used to.

After I did that run and turned in I went out to Icecrown to make some ebonweave.  I happen to look up in wowhead comments where to go to make it.  Well once I got there and I couldn’t make it I read they changed where you do it at lol.  The new place is of course MUCH easier to get to but not nearly as interesting   I haven’t got much in to the other zones yet so it was a neat exploration of Icecrown.

After I did that I was going to head off to bed being that I have not slept well ALL week.  I don’t remember what did it but when i was about to put the machine to sleep I thought about TheGuild. The first time I ever heard of TheGuild was when Blizzard announced they were going to be at Blizzcon.  I went to their website and found it was a collection of a sort of mini-series based on playing an MMO.  It isn’t really specific to what game they are playing and could apply to almost any MMO, but sounds mostly like WoW terminology.

The first visit I watched every episode in the first season.  It was hilarious I was LOL the whole time.  I remembered Blizzcon and that they were talking about season 2.  So last night I ended up finding out they have episodes 1-8 done of season 2 and ended up watching all of them.  I highly suggest you give them a go they are sooooo funny.  Then I went to bed of course late instead of early but amused