Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

I heard the invasion started from wowhead on twitter so I got on as soon as I got my son to bed.  There was an insane number of people in the cities, I must have just missed the invasion.  The bosses were down, I didn’t even know about the bosses until just tonight.

Since I missed the invasion I went ahead and did my Argent Tournament dailies and even a ToC for my complete seal run.  I even ran into a few of the elemental invasions while I was out doing the quests.  I dispatched the elementals to do my part!

Today was the big day for my mount.  I finally got another 150 seals and purchased the Silver Covenant Hippogyph!  It is a nice pretty white one

Just after I finished all that the invasion started in IF.  I managed to get over there and help some people and kick a little elemental butt before it was all over with.  It sure didn’t take long for everyone to end this puppy!  It is quite an event and man are there a lot of elemental boddies after it is all over with

I then ran around and did the quests for the 4 bosses.  The bosses were pretty intense to heal actually.  I guess because they actually put out pretty decent loot.  Not that I think I can use anything from them.  I still haven’t looked at the loot tables.  The only thing I could use at this point still is a new neck   The fire boss was the worse because people kept standing in the fire   Will they ever learn?   Where is my life grip when you need it!

Anyways it was a pretty intense night all sorts of cool stuff going on.  The suspense is really building up to Cataclysm.  I heard patch tomorrow so we’ll see how that goes!

The wife and kid went out of town for the weekend so I got to play as much WoW as I liked.  That I did!    I continued some of the Phase 3 quests I hadn’t finished yet.

All the people standing in front of Stormwind was kind of funny.  I only searched the ladies! >:)

I then joined up with a group doing PvP kill the faction leaders quest.  You don’t seem to be able to do it for the Aliance though because Thrall is gone right now.  When we got to thunderbluff the guy was already dead too   I got two of them out of the way though and it was pretty fun.

I ended up doing some PvP after that in random battle grounds.  I actually had a good time most of the time.  Without PvP gear all it took was a stun and I was dead pretty damn fast but hey I’m wearing a bath robe   I played enough till I had enough honor to pickup another one of the faction mounts.  I didn’t remember about this and Inien reminded me.  I had enough to buy two almost 3.

Inien got on and then we ended up doing ZG for mounts.  Then his buddy from work got on and we just did all of ZG for his benefit

It isn’t too hard and didn’t take that long.  We broke for lunch and when we came back we got in an ICC run.  It took a while to get started because it was suppose to be fresh but some how they got it stuck with 7 bosses down.  After finally reforming we were good to go.  The leader knew absolutely nothing, so another guy took over.  Of course everyone left after doing the first 4 easy bosses and I was left 168 freaking rep from exalted.  Sigh….  After the ICC we took care of all our Argent dailies and doing a ToC run real fast for seals.  Still mounts to get after all   We broke for dinner after that.

After coming back we decided to do ZA again, Inien still had the quest he wanted to finish.  On our way over we did a quick UGP for the mount Inien never gets, then off to ZA. We had a lot harder time completing it this time.  I think by this time we were completely worn out.  WoW is like anything else, you are nearly as good when you are rested   After struggling with the Lynx boss we decided to head to bed.  Always another day after all!

Was a very enjoyable day in WoW though I must say   That is why I’m posing this at noon the next day lol

Maybe it is because I haven’t done one in a while or because I have so little time anymore but my goblin rep grind seems slower than normal.  Even though I know it couldn’t possibly be as bad as when I did the Timbermaw 1 rep at a time before they changed the system all the way to exalted.  That rep had the occasional turn in item do as do the water waste guys I’m doing now.

I got DK as my heroic daily today which I hadn’t done in a while.  The group had lost their healer but I joined them still at the first boss.  The tank was well geared but all the DPS were recent 80s I can tell.  I never mind not overgearing and instance, in fact they are way more fun that way

I finished up the DK run which didn’t take much longer than usual and then started my quests in icecrown for the argent tournament.  I put myself in the looking for raid system for a 25 mana voa, Inien was finishing something else and mentioned he did the same.  I continued my quests in icecrown and then got a VOA25 invite, they were full though, and had apparently been wiping

I thought oh boy but stayed with them, a bunch of people left and I got them to invite Inien.  I told Inien what he was in for and finally after a long wait we went again.  I could tell the issue was their healers were severely under geared, but they had insane dps but then they wouldn’t switch to the frost thingys when they went up.  Anyways we didn’t wipe but a considerable number of people died and in the end the of this story Inien got the mage pants that dropped from this boss with a roll of 25 against 2 other mages, and it completed his 4 piece set!  Grats to him   One guy even offered him 6k gold for them hehe

After all that Inien and I finished up some tournament quests and I think we might have done a ToC in there some where too.  We went over and hit up ZG to try again for my silly baby raptor pet and for some more mounts for him.  Of course none of it ended up dropping.  We did about 3 tries for the pet.  It is a good distraction anyways

Well it looks like the Texas Mercenaries finally got another healer in their guild so they don’t need me anymore.  So I didn’t get a chance to do ToC10 today.  I only needed one more seal for my Ammen Vale Lashling so I went and did a Heroic ToC.  After getting that I did a few dailies and ended up in an Onyxia 25 run.

It took a few tries but we finally got her down.  It was a bit rough at first though   She didn’t drop anything for me or Inien.  Inien ended up joining me on this run.  We tried for her head but failed miserably.

I haven’t got to play all week, I had been looking forward to that ToC10, too bad I didn’t get a group for that.  Maybe later this weekend.  Inien and I are planning on another ZG run to finish out his rep too.  I made a nice chunk of gold today to the tune of 1200 something because of some old mats I cleaned out of my bank last week and this week.  My enchanting bags were over flowing so I finally got rid of some planar essence and arcane dust.  Need to start hording gold for the expansion I think.  Who knows what might come up for that.

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 managed to sneak on a bit tonight wanting to get in a whatever the heroic daily was so I could get closer to my new hat.  I was in great luck and the heroic daily was ToC.  I really enjoy ToC and we had some great DPS, and a good tank so it went quickly.  I even managed to get an achievement.  Though we all tried our best not to be blown up for that achievement too someone must have got nicked.

After we finished I thought I’d go for the outlands fishing daily to try for my last croc.  Of course it never fails that when I go there and my ring is all cooldown it is time to go to Stormwind to fish for a baby croc.  This of course used to be more annoying when I had to fly back to the blasted lands and run to the portal.  However it isn’t so bad now because they have  a Dark Portal Portal   Of course I still have to fly back to shat to turn in.  This is also not so bad anymore with my Violet Prot-Drake, one of my latest conveniences.

Work has been crazy this week, hoping to get on tomorrow to get my hat.  I’m also hoping I can make my raid on Friday as well.  I haven’t even had time to install the PTR to go take a peak at the new 5 man.  I was really excited about it, just no time!  I haven’t even checked the queue, it is probably still full anyways.  Oh well was a good night, a little closer to my goal, and got some achievements

I hadn’t been feeling well today but managed to get some rest and recover a bit in time for some raiding fun.  Before the raid started I noticed the Heroic Daily was Trial of Champions.  So I got in a group and did that quickly.  I noticed they added an option to skip the long intro finally.  Finished that, brought me up to 49 triumph badges.  I’m saving up 75 for my new hat

We blew through 10 man Trial of the Crusader quite quickly tonight.  Even though we had a few different people and some people alts.  I managed to get an upgrade for my neck on the second boss.  I upgraded to the Amulet of Binding Elements which wasn’t a huge upgrade, but had more regen, crit, spell power and int than my old one

After we finished that we were trying to decide what to do.  Some people were locked to various things so I managed to get them to try Eye of Eternity.  Some people sorta didn’t want to try but eventually we decided to give it a shot.

The first two phases we blew through really fast and were super easy.  We basically out gear it for the most part   It was fun and I enjoyed it actually.

The last part was not easy.  I tried doing what they said and was trying to keep up but it just doesn’t feel natural.  While I admire Blizzard for trying to add variety to the game I really don’t care for the vehicle fights.  They just aren’t fun for me.  I really want to beat this guy though so I’m going to have to practice and try to convince the guys to go again some time.

We wiped  i think 3 times then decided to go back and try and do some hard mode ToC10.

There was much pain and suffering in these attempts too.  We just didn’t have the DPS yet to do this.  We need a few more weeks of gearing up I think then we will be able to successfully do some of the hard mode bosses.  If we would not have people swap out geared people for ungeared people that would help too

Hardmode has such a happy portal entrance   Anyways I had a good time tonight with all the different things we did.  I’m only 11 badges away from a new hat too.  If I can get in a Onyxia or two this weekend, and some dailies this week I could have my hat for the next raid.  Then it will be time to work on my rings.

I’m hoping that the 3.3 5 man dungeons have some upgrades for some of my oldest gear.  Especially my wand which is still 200 ilevel!  Either that or I need some more good stuff to drop in ToC10 for me

Before I got on tonight I started looking at all the tweets I missed today working too hard and found out a bunch of stuff came out on 3.3.  I read up on the new 5 man dungeon coming in 3.3 and it sounds awesome.  I’m so excited about this because 5 man content is by far my favorite and most enjoyable thing in WoW.  The new dungeon has 5 wings, and sounds like it is very story driven which goes well with the rest of WOTLK.  They put 3.3 on the PTR today as well.  As usual you can find the best notes on the PTR goings on over at mmo-champion.

Looks like they have made quite a few changes to make leveling easier for casters after the nerf to regen.  They increased low level regen and have it gradually nerf itself.  Then they lowered the cost of the lower rank spells. Other than these changes there were not many class changes.  For Priests they mention pets (Shadow Fiend) now have 90% avoidance on AOE damage, except in the case of PvP.  MMO also notes that Prayer of Mending is procing Inspiration now and initially I was super excited by that.  Then when I ended up playing later I found out it is already doing it in the 3.2.2 patch

After going through all that I got on  and noticed the Heroic Daily was Utgarde Keep.  I joined up a group for that and did that one super fast.  It was funny I was with two Shadow Priests, and a ret Paly with a Death Knight for the tank.  The Death Knight was very good, and very well geared.  He also sprinted through the instance which was fun   That is the only way the older instances can really be fun now because you out gear them so bad is to do HUGE pulls and go FAST.  I tried to get the group to not break the ice on the first boss so I could get that achievement but some how I still didn’t get it.  I did get the 1000 stone keeper shards at the end, not that I ever use those for anything

After that I had a tiny bit of energy left so I decided to do a Trial of Champions.  I still have one more pet to get and probably want to get that finished soon   My ToC group went pretty well though I managed to kill myself at the end, I wasn’t paying attention to my own health enough in phase 3, I died at the same time as the stupid black knight   All these are just serving me well to gear up my future Worgen Warrior   I’m saving my Triumph badges right now for the helm. I hadn’t done ToC since the patch and it looks like they make the first boss guys reset after the jousting battle automagically instead of everyone running out of the instance now   That was awfully nice of them.

All the 3.3 news goes in line with what has been going around on the Cataclysm forums I think.  With it going on the PTR this month, it probably means that it will go live in December.  Which would probably put the expansion at April or May baring any surprise 3.4 patch hehe  I think this is the impression Blizzard was giving at Blizzcon.  That the expansion would actually be out before the next Blizzcon.  Initially I kept thinking people were insane for talking about it that soon, but I’m not sure 3.3 would hold much longer than May.  It sounds like they have seriously been working on it for quite a while.  I have been wondering about beta too since they didn’t give out beta keys at Blizzcon this year my prediction is they will invite the random way like they have in the past.  I also am going to predict that the subscribers of the new magazine will get a beta invite

Oh and also if you missed it Blizzard updated their website.  It looks very nice with lots of pretty graphics now   I also noticed they improved their employment system as well.  My dream job, the Cinematics Systems Administrator is STILL open, despite me being perfect for it, and applying for it twice for the past 6 months.  I’ll have to get my resume up their again in their new system.  Oh Blizzard why won’t you hire me!

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 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