Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

Had just enough energy for a quick 5 man tonight.  Though 5 mans these days are so boring if it isn’t any of the 3 new ones.  On occasion I’ll get in a group with a poorly geared tank that makes it more interesting but usually I stand around lol  So today I thought I’m going to see if I can beat any of the DPS.  So in between healing I used every trick in the book to do some DPS as Disc of course.  I managed to beat the hunter, and came close during the instance at beating the Warlock, but in the end I couldn’t do it.  I was proud of myself at managing to do 15% of the damage WHILE I was also healing

Also wanted to make a quick longer comment on the new badge changes that Blizzard has posted for Cataclysm.  My first thought was about time!  It seemed the current system was getting ridiculous and if they kept this up we were going to have all sorts of crazy named badges hehe  Its also a pain if you want to get a different item and have to down convert your badges like 3 times for heroic stuff.  It seems like a well thought out plan.  Especially how each time they release a new tier of gear they convert your uper tier badges to lower tier.  This will keep people from hording and get you spending!

It is quite amazing at how many systems they are changing.  I’m really excited and just a tad worried.  My worry lies only in the fact that so much is being changed that testing of it all has got to be a nightmare.  I imagine that there will be a lot of tweaking, more so than normal even when Cataclysm goes live with this many changes.  It’s all good though!

Jumped on Laneer to grab my frost badges and see what the weekly raid was.  I was a bit distressed to see it be Eye of Eternity.  I’ve only been in that instance once with Texas Mercenaries ( I miss raiding with them) and it didn’t go spectacularly   My Nexus run was some what cursed as we actually wiped to the mage lady because they got her with a bunch of mobs that kept silencing me   Then we lost our tank after we killed her.  I convinced the DK we had to tank for a while clearing and he actually did fine till a tank popped in finally.  Got it all done and decided to go Mage

Got on Laneir and started some randoms to see if  I couldn’t get me another piece of T9 tonight.  I got in some pretty fun runs with no one over geared.  I don’t have as much fun when I’m with a super geared person I have no hope of beating   I didn’t end up with getting any gear replacements but I did manage to store my Robe which seemed like the best upgrade to take.  I picked up my Khadgar’s Robe of Conquest and got it gemed tonight.  I’m not buying epic gems for him though because he doesn’t deserve the extra costs   So 50 more badges and I can get the pants and I’m good to go there.  Probably will go for the badge hat after that

Fighting a cold today, have been napping on and off since I got off work.  Woke up and thought I’d grab my frost badges in a random before going to bed permanently.  I thought this screenshot was appropriate

Just got my notice from the Warcraft Magazine it should be out soon, with the link to the epic cover art they sent out.  Here is to hoping for more Cataclysm info in it

Ok, time to go pass out!

You know, the time, the energy?   I was totally wiped out today again, by the time I can login the energy level isn’t there.  Maybe I need to be a two Monster a day kind of guy instead of just one

I found out something interesting today reading the WoW magazine, that the Alligator pets only come from the quest that sends you to stormwind to fish one!  That means I don’t have to do it every day just when that quest is up.  I also found out I’m TERRIBLY unlucky, as it says you’ll get one of the pets 70% of the time!  I have got 2!  No more no less, and it isn’t that I haven’t been trying   More on the WoW Magazine later.

So I checked my fishing quest, went and made some cloth then headed into the random queue to at least get my frost badges for the day.  With no raiding I got to do something for progression…  So I got my random nearly instantly and ended up in the Nexus.  Not a bad one, pretty quick anyways.  Ended up in someones guild run from another server.  It went smoothly everyone was pro thank goodness because I didn’t have the energy for anything else.

I got to find some time to do some raiding though.  I noticed the weekly raid was the first boss in ICC again.  I haven’t stepped back into ICC raid since the very first time I went with the Texas Mercenaries way back last year before I went on vacation!  If I can’t actually get in an attempt I’d at least like to get in one of those faction farming runs…  I guess such is life for a Network Systems Admin of a metropolitan newspaper company with a wife and a son.

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 after spending most of the day trying to recover from my cold.  I noticed that Brewfest was in the middle of setup.  I don’t think I ever saw that before

So after getting around I went and did  a Heroic ToC.  We did so good and were so fast we went over to do the Heroic Daily too.  We went over to the Nexus and did that in 25 minutes flat.  I do believe that was the fastest I’ve ever done that one   The tank, a gnome warrior was nuts, he would run in and pull tons of mobs and we pretty much chain pulled the whole time.  I managed to keep up though.  After that we kind of broke up as Inien as trying to get together an Oculus group.

It had been forever since I had done Oculus and I remember why now   It is one of the more annoying designs.  It took us a few tries to get the last boss down but finally got it.

After that I went and checked and Brewfest was up so Inien and I just basically messed with that for the rest of the evening into the wee morning hours.  I have only a few of the harder achievements to do for my grand long strange road achievement   I’ll continue to do the dailies every day, I hope I can work the new pet into my purchases too.

I had a nice relaxing day in WoW today, aside from the nagging headache I had all day.  I started of the day with making my cloth.  I hadn’t been keeping up with this and I do still need to make one more bank bag   I had to buy some more supplies on the AH and I was surprised to find NO eternal life on the AH.  Thankfully I still had 2 left but that is all.  Going to have to go get my own with Lanier I guess.

I ended up doing some Argent Tournament stuff while waiting in the queue for the heroic daily.  I ended up getting a group pretty quick for the Nexus.  It was a pro group and we tore through the instance in 30 minutes flat.  The tank was relieved apparently had a 800dps Ret pally in his last group.

After that I went back to finishing my argent tournament quests.  I was doing all the new ones but ran into one that didn’t work.  You were suppose to summon this guy at a spot on the island and that spot didn’t work for me.  Then I abandoned it to get it again and it wasn’t there anymore so I dunno if they took it out or what.

Little bit later in the day I ended up doing an OS10.  I was trying to get some quick badges with the fast raids.  The OS runs are fast and easy.  This one was even nicer because I got a raid achievement out of it   After I finished this I put myself back into some raid runs and ended up in a 25 man Vault.  That went super fast and I went on back to my questing.

I got back to doing my questing in storm peaks and there was some really good ones.  I didn’t know I was missing out on a bunch of Bran related stuff.  I love Dwarf quests and lore   I still think Dwarves are the best race!

The quests I did yesterday were very exciting and I still have some to do.  I even found out in the process there was a faction I hadn’t seen yet, the Frostborn.  This is another crazy faction you can only raise with a single daily.  This daily is even more time consuming than the explorers league one.  Why is Blizzard so evil for us faction collectors?

Anyways I got a fair amount of questing done.  Still have plenty to do in Storm Peaks though.

Got on this after a nice RL Easter to relax a bit.  Got a tell from a guildie after finishing my cooking quest wondering if I was interested in doing some instance runs.  They wanted to do Nexus, after my mace of not screw mace and the daily.  Inien got home just in time for me to get him in on the action.  It was so relaxing not to have to worry about what kind of people I was ending up with.  Guild runs are truly the best!

We tore through Nexus pretty qiuck and went on to UP.  One of the guildies had to go so we grabbed a Feral Cat druid from LFG.  He was actually pretty amazing DPS for the spec so that turned out well.  We did probably the fastest UP group I’ve ever seen completing it in just over 30 minutes.  I managed to even pick up an achievement I hadn’t got yet, though we didn’t get the incredible hulk one done though we tried.   Even better as we finished the end boss he dropped the Girdle of Bane for my shadow set.  A very nice hit belt I put a buckle in and a 19sp gem I’m going to have to grab the stuff I was going to with badges and see how well I do, 3.1 should be interesting.  I wonder if it is coming Tuesday?

I get on thinking I was in the mood for healing so I look for what people are trying to do.  Inien jumps on shortly after I do so I think hey lets run something together.  I saw a Prot Pally shouting he was bored and wanted to do something.  I message him to see if we could talk him into Heroic HoS but he never replies.

I then get a message from someone about the heroic daily (Nexus) and I check and they also need a DPS.  So I say I’ll go and to invite Inien.  I of course then tell Inien I volunteered him to come.   Of course we get there and the tank seemed pretty good, he was well enough geared I didn’t have to heal him much.  We had a second mage Inien said had a weird spec, and a DPS warrior.

Well as sure as I could sense the impending disaster I notice after the first few pulls Inien is doing 49% of the damage.  I’m like oh no, but at least the tank is good.   As we progress the second mage isn’t even out dpsing the tank, while the DPS warrior was able to stay just barely above the tank.  We start fighting through the frozen guys and the tank doesn’t pull the guy back and gets feared into another group of mobs.    This happens some times and under normal circumstances I can usually pull us through it.  However with Inien having to do all the damage, and our tank running around like a mad man we wipe.

We go back and try again and almost the same thing happens.  I’m not really sure what the tank was doing but he kept running around like a crazy man, going out of my LOS or even RANGE!  Anyways we come back from the second wipe and I was trying to give some hits and the tank goes “I have to go my wife is angry at me”.  Then follows up with “I’d really like to finish but I have to go she is really angry”.  I was like wow that is one of the “best” excuses I’ve heard in while.  We of course abandoned grouping with the guys and that was the end of my instance attemps for the evening   Thankfully I have karma now and can label those people appropriately

So after I went up to the top of the Nexus.  Inien told me there is a quest up here that lets me practice for Malygos. So I try it and I’m absolutely horrible at it.  I killed my drake so many times while trying to figure it out.  The first issue was that I wasn’t using the small heal it has,I didn’t have auto self target on so when I clicked it gave me a hand, and you have to click on the drake (not yourself which I kept doing and it not working).  This was time consuming once I figured out what to do so I just turned on auto self cast.   I never really go the hang of it.  I also need to show the buffs on my pet bar which I don’t now because I couldn’t see the HOT on myself.  I’ll have to go back and practice more.

After that I continued my questing in the Basin, starting off with the end of my waygate chain.  It was pretty fun, they really like those vehicles   I got my quest achievement for the zone too but I still have some nessingwary quests to finish there I shall of course.

Well on a very fitting day (Valintines day) I finally finished off all of the Love is in the Air achievements.  It was not without some hardship that is for sure.  For some reason the super rare achievements came easy, the candy names did not   Here is me crying because yet another sack of candy didn’t complete me.

All in all it took me 4 sacks of Candy, in which two of those sacks I got over the course of 8 hours this morning as I kept trying every hour in between house work.  At least I finished it all out and don’t have to worry about it now

Inien was over to help me with a project.  After he left I got on and decided I wasn’t sleepy so I did the heroic daily which was Nexus.  If you look closely in this picture you’ll notice the skunk with the heart over his head.  That was my skunk and he was doing something I’ve never seen before.  One of the other group members had a cat out and he was chasing it around everywhere, then he gets a broken heart, stops for a sec and does it all over again.  I’ve never seen that before so either no one has ever got out a cat at the same time as my skunk or it something for this holiday?

After that I was going to go over and fish in the basin as I’m getting low but stopped to finish a quest in Icecrown.  Funny thing about quests, some times you just can’t stop   I ended up following this chain to completion instead of fishing.  While I was working in the flesh works area I found this escort.  I thought it was funny because he appears to be wearing Tier4 with Benediction.

The whole chain ends up with you killing this big ugly guy and the Lich King comes out to mock you first. They were really serious when they meant they wanted him in your face.  I certainly have met him enough.  He is bound to know my name by now!