Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

Must people try to skip content.  This is kind of a pet peeve of mine because skipping content only causes me heart ache in the end usually   I felt like healing but with all my raids done and my random done I just decided to do the Icecrown instances.  So I queued up for them and ended up get forge of souls, and then pit of saron, more on FoS in a second   So the people I was with weren’t too bad, but they wanted to do that silly thing where you try to run up past through the mobs as they are spawning.  I’ve only seen this executed once successfully every other time it is a disaster.  This of course was a disaster   In the confusion I slipped down the side of the mountain but thankfully this mountain isn’t solid, it didn’t effect LOS.  So I was able to continue to heal from there.  Two people died almost immediately but I kept everyone else a live and they walked back while we were still fighting.  The group was very pleased with my healing they mentioned several times

Before this I was in a FoS group that for the most part had no business being in the zone they were so poorly geared, my favorite kind of group!   I find these groups the most fun because it is really hard to keep them all alive, and often don’t know what they are doing so it is a challenge.  The tank for instance didn’t know how to tank anything, and he was a deathknight. For the most part they didn’t say much but got a chuckle out of them when they asked if I needed to stop for mana, and I told them “Not until Cataclysm” The point of this story and I kid you not , 12 minute Bronjahm fight.  I’m sitting there going any time folks, but because it took all I had just to keep them alive I couldn’t stop to tell them what they were doing wrong.  Finally someone who knew the fight told the tank what to do and we were able to kill him.  Basically he stayed full most of the fight because they didn’t try to prevent the souls being split off from getting to him   However I can’t knock the group entirely because they managed to amazingly go through the tunnel and not get hit and I finally got that achievement

Looking forward to Tuesday, Starcraft 2 comes out, hope everyone has got their copy ordered!

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 got on this evening just before 8 hoping to hook up with the guys from Texas Mercenaries for some raiding.  I hadn’t heard anything so went and did my outlands fishing daily, along with the Nothrend and made my cloth runs.  Haven’t done that in a while.  I am my wife and my son have been sick this week so I haven’t played really since I got back from up north.

While I was finishing up and starting some dailies Inien got on and I still hadn’t heard anything so we decided to go off and run the new instances.  I still had quite a few things I wanted to get from them so we decided to do that and then do a random for a hopeful 4th chance at a hilt dropping.  About half way through unfortunately Barb asks if I want to join them.  I kind of have this rule though about bailing on people though.  I think I’ve only bailed on a few REALLY terrible groups in my whole life, I usually try to stick it out.  So I ended up not raiding tonight as I usually would.  It was a bit of a disappointment for me but I’ll have to figure out a new raiding situation anyways since texas mercenaries will eventually find a guild member to heal for them.

I did have a good time with Inien on the runs though.  Half of Reflection was a bit painful as we had an undergeared, unexperience tank, a druid apparently who normally heals.  I think after 4 wipes we finally got through the waves.  What was nice though is I got the Ephemeral Snowflake which I was eager to try out.  They did eventually nerf it putting an internal cooldown on it but it is suppose to provide about 138MP5 which is pretty sweet.  The haste proc on it is scary, my flash heals go off in .8 seconds, Penance in 1.2 seconds.

Oh the best part of the runs was during Forge of Souls, and Pit of Saron I accidentally had my Shadow Gear on.  I wondered why it seemed harder than before and why I had mana problems LOL.  I noticed just before we did the last boss on Pit of Saron.  At least I realized before Halls of Reflection

We finished off the evening running a UP random run and the tanks kept dropping out for some reason. Eventually one stayed.  That went well enough and ended off the evening.  Going to have to try and find a run for the weekly raid this weekend now to get that done.  Need to get back on track of picking up my frost badges.

I hope to find some ICC Rep Runs too, that ring looks pretty damn sweet at exalted

Hope everyone had a good patch day.  It was certainly a rough one starting out.  It took quite a long time before things were up and running all the way.  Even then when I logged in the server was a bit slow as is usual on patch day.  I couldn’t believe how many people were on though in Dalaran no less!  I was very happy to see my baby corehound in my mailbox when I logged in though I did have to wait for a bit before I could loot it   I went and snatched up the two new pets being sold in Dalaran as well.

Then I decided to try the new dungeon system and did my first random heroic with people from another server.  We ended up getting UP, and they were all very well geared, and all from other servers.  The guy who was tanking said he had just decided to be a tank but he seemed be doing a good job of it anyways. The dungeon system was very impressive I liked how it worked, it is going to be really neat!  I also didn’t realize that the regular dungeons were going to be giving Triumph badges now.

After that I decided I wanted to follow the quest line I just got into the new 5 mans.  So I used the new dungeon feature again to select a specific dungeon.  This time things didn’t quite go so well.  I got grouped with some people but none of us could get into the instance it just kept saying no instance found.  So we gave up and I tried again.  This time I got placed in a group and got in the instance.  I’m sure the instance servers were over whelmed.  Got a good group again, one of the DPS wasn’t great but everyone else made up for it.  We did the instance pretty quick, probably too quick for me because I wanted to see it more:)  I’m sure I’ll be seeing a lot of it however.

After we completed the quest and the instance they send you on to the next one, which you can reach from in this instance.  Of course our tank had left but everyone else wanted to go so we jumped back in the dungeon queue and got another tank.  Again this was pretty awesome, having the ability to select from many servers might help with tank shortages   So we went on to do Pit of Saron.  Was a pretty neat instance as well.  This time our quest had us saving some slaves and killing a big guy.  The trash mobs in both instances seemed to have some unique abilities, and the bosses certainly did.  In regular mode though you didn’t seem to have to care, but I imagine in heroic you do.  This shot is actually on the way up to the last boss.  It was pretty awesome  gauntlet run where stuff falls on your head and the like.

By the time we finished this run though it was almost 10:30pm and I had to get up early in the morning so I didn’t go for the last dungeon.  Tomorrow is another day after all   This patch is quite awesome though, one of the best in a long time, and certainly deserving as the final patch in this expansion!  If you haven’t watched the trailer yet do so, it is quite epic.  I found out while doing those instances too you get Explorer’s League and Frost and Frostborn faction!  I’ve been doing the single daily on Explorer’s league for a while, both had a single daily to raise them, and as a avid collector of exalted factions this was quite tedious for me

I’m excited to continue the quest line tomorrow, and hopefully can attempt some in heroic mode as well.  I’m very interested in picking up the hilt to start the quest chain for the nifty weapon too! ( as everyone else is I’m sure)  Despite the delays of getting the servers up totally, I’d say it wasn’t a bad patch day, and as far as everything else it is pretty awesome!