Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

Like the XT-002 Deconstructor I am soooo tired   I really have wanted to play but not the energy.  I might have mentioned or not that I had a big work thing on Sunday.  I was up at 12am, and went to work for a power outage, then back home at about 7pm.  Everything that could have gone wrong did I think   Anyways still haven’t recovered from that event.

I got on to mainly do the Outlands fishing daily (want more pets!) and then I was going to bed.

Then for some reason I got into my head, hey I’d think I’ll try to respec my Holy spec and try it out.  Forum posters are constantly trying to convince me I’m a waist of a slot as Disc (though I don’t believe that) and well I hadn’t actually tried Holy healing since beta and a lot has changed.  So I tried out a spec that wasn’t ideal, but didn’t get rid of my questing talents just to see.

After that I messed around testing some stuff, I wasn’t blown away huge numbers or anything, but figured I wouldn’t know how it felt till I tried.  Then my crazy self said, well how about a Heroic ToC, then at least I’d get some champion seals   So I got in LFG and a group almost instantly.  We got there started and when we engaged the first boss, everything went to Hell and we wiped. I thought him man I didn’t handle that well, mean while everyone else is blaming the tank.  We had the rogue for one and that poison sucks.  I kept blaming myself and we tried again, wipe again! I thought ok I’m really sucking here.  Again everyone blamed the tank, the rogue DPS leaves.

I told them I’d would switch back to Disc which is my usual spec, you get another DPS.  Then I looked at the tank and realized why they were blaming him.  He was a recent 80 as I found out from him afterward.  He was in nearly all blues, not all level 80 blues, no greens, but he did say he was defense capped.  So we grab another DPS and take on the boss again, this time I had no problem keeping him alive, and everyone else for that matter.  Even though not only he was not very well geared he couldn’t hold the aggro either.  The DPS were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.  We then went on to defeat all the rest of the bosses, and I never lost a single person after that.

You could chalk that up to my inexperience with holy, or maybe the imperfect build I have.  Or maybe you can say Holy is better for raiding.  What I’m going to say is Disc has all the tools I need to be an excellent healer and I am going to stick with it   I prefer the style, and most people tell me I am damn good at it   I’ll be specing back into my Survival Holy DPS build next time I log in.  It is a fun build anyways

I started off the day by going back to outlands to do the fishing daily.  This story ends great with me getting one of the pets Toothy, finally after so many attempts over the years   What ended up happening was the daily was the croc in stormwind, so I go there.

While I’m fishing I notice a quest in my on my low level radar.  I talk to the guy he says he dropped his work he was suppose to turn into nethergarde in the swamp when a plant attacked him.  So I go to the swamp and start killing some of the moss guys.  It seems like it is taking too long so I consult lightheaded(wowhead in game) to make sure I’m not going after the wrong thing.  I was right but they say the droprate is horrible.  I stick with it though and eventually get it.

While I was heading over to the portal to back to outlands I run into a guy who wants me to kill stuff.  I go ahead and start doing that.  Then I run into that new Dreanei camp they put in and it has a bunch of quests so I finish the killing one that sends me on another one that was conveniently near the others I just got.  To make a long story a little shorter I ended up doing every quest I hadn’t done in the swamp.

Inien and I tried very hard and failed to get a Heroic ToC going so we decided to mess around.  I wanted to see if I could get the 48 Brood rep I need to get exalted.  So we tried out AQ20 which went fight until the first boss.  Between the weird pulling thing he does, and the silences from the sand we just couldn’t kill him.  Mostly because of his healing debuff.  We wondered if AQ40 mobs would give me rep, nope so we were going to try the first boss.  Then we got reminded these guys come in 4s and while we did the first pack, the one before the boss was too hard to even get to try him   So that was out, have to come back with just one other person and we’d be fine.

Before a very early log thanks to an event at work I did manage to do both dailies in guild.  Some guild tanks finally got on yay!  I swear I have no idea where all the tanks were yesterday but they were certainly hiding.

I had a fun day anyways and got a lot of oldworld quests done and a new pet!!!

Finished my remaining quest lines in Storm Peaks today.  This one here where you get to kill the big giant they were making using a giant worm was interesting   After I finished all that I went and did my argent dailies.  I got enough to seals to buy my Mechanopeep   The next pet I’ll probably go for will be the sheep.

I was also planning to raid with Texas Mercenaries again tonight but I ran to Outlands to do the fishing daily before raid time.  It drives me crazy they apparently upped the drop rate of the rare rewards from the fishing quest but I never get the pets.  Everyone in my guild does, I get fishing line, and hats and water motes

We got to the Twins again tonight in Trial of the Crusader.  It took us a few more tries on a the second and Third bosses than it did last week. We came this time though with strategy and if you actually know what you are suppose to do this fight is actually super easy   No caster gear was dropping, well on the twins Enlightenment did drop, grats Randorf!  I was looking through the loot tables, there are tons of caster staffs, NONE of them seem to be healer staffs, all lack regen   I did however I did have enough badges by my second bos downage to get my Pauldrons of Revered Mortality!  I haven’t been getting much luck in the drops department, but at least this raid gives Triumph badges and I can actually still use lots of that gear

Anyways after you defeat the twins the Lich King comes in and has his words with you then he smashes the floor!  You fall downward into some water (Thankfully) and you get to fight a Ajzol-Nerub end boss like guy.  Only this one is meaner of course   The fight had some interesting elements to it but we had someone with us that knew what to do.

It took us 3 or 4 tries but we did pretty good with it actually and he went down.  Yay the Trial of the Crusader has been completed.  After we finished that we went over to Ulduar but we only did 3 bosses, it was just too late.  They wanted to try XT-002 in hard mode again.  We got him to hard mode no problem, but they were not prepared for some other elements to the fight and we just did him normal instead this time.  Finished off Razorscale then went to bed

It was a fun night though and I love my new shoulders

Today is Inien birthday, Happy Birthday!  I rushed on last night hoping to join his H ToC group he we getting together but apparently the tank insisted on some other healer so we ended up in separate groups that started and finished at nearly the same time.  I think he got the better tank, we had the rouge and my tank decided it was important to stand in the poison the entire time.  He also was apparently not very geared (it was a paladin) because it took everything I could do to keep him alive with the 5 stacks of poison on him plus the bosses. This caused me to loose our rogue.  Then the next boss comes up he again almost got owned by the ladys pet while I was feared (despite shields, PoM and Renew) and had to save him and the rogue died   I had been DEing but the rogue was rolling on the stuff too, he said he could as well.  He one one of the items, it was plate off the second boss then left the group!  We were totally confused, and he did it AFTER they started the BK.  So we just 4 maned it and that was it, no one died on the last boss either

After that I met up with Inien and we did a few dailies together for Argent Tournament and then went over to Storm Peaks to do a group quest he still had and I just got the other day.  I had been working on my first aid achievements (for some reason) and I managed to make the 500 bandages.  After that I had been saving my Ultimate Triage achievement for Inien.  I had not used a bandage since the achievement system was put in, I wanted the only bandage I ever do to be on him, so we did that after the quest

After that I realized that I only had a few more quests to my 1000 dailies achievement so I went and finished up my Argent Dailies to complete this achievement. Looking at that I wondered how close I was to 3000 quests done, oh I was only 5 away, and I only had 8 quests left in Storm Peaks to do as well.

So I went over and finished some Storm Peaks quests.  They were all in a very confined area so it wasn’t hard to complete!  Viola! Yay 3000 quests done!  Yes I am a bit obsessive over quests, I enjoy them and before the achievement system was put into place I just did them anyways.  I’ve even done most of the newbie quests for every Alliance race.

After finishing that I was so close to just finishing off all the quests for Northrend that I decided I should do that.  I mean what an amazing night for achievements, so what the hey!  This is me working on the last quest for that achievement, though not the last quest I have to do in Storm Peaks.  They always give you a few more than necessary.

So before turning in for the evening I completed all my Northrend zone quest achievements!  I do have a few quests left in Storm Peaks to do however and I will finish all of those before I stop there.

After that however I’m going to return to the old world to finish off those achievements.  I don’t know what will happen to those achievements after the Cataclysm but I feel like I need to do them anyways since I has always been a goal of mine.  I have just over 300 quests to do between eastern kingdoms and Kalimdor.  Most of them are over in Kalimdor that I need to do.  It was an exciting night though!  Happy Birthday to Inien again.

Got on and did most of my Champion seal dailies today.  Had a few I had never done before like the shark meat one.  Also had to go summon and kill a guy on the ship, hadn’t had to do that one either.

After that I decided to do ToC before logging.  I ended up joining a group whos healer DC’d.  After I saw the gear of two of the DPS I can see why he may have LOL.  Two of them were new 80s and had unbuffed health of about 12k.  I looked at their gear and they had no instance gear it was all quest gear.

We did ok though, even if we were a bit slow.  We got the Lady too, I have had the guy like the last 5 times.  She used the last memory I hadn’t seen yet too so I got the achievement   Didn’t even know there was one!

The only painful part was the last part, it took them so long to kill the BK that I died tried to save everyone.  This was mostly my fault because I didn’t pay attention to my own health for a second too long   Oh well! You live and learn.  On the bright side I regot my Gaze of the Unknown for my Surge set.  I had got it on the first day I went but I accidentally DE’d it on a following trip   It has taken me all this time to regain it.  The elemental shaman rolled against me for it 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

Came home relatively on time today and spent an hour or so doing all my usual dailies while my son was taking a nap.  I did this in hopes that in the evening I might be able to do some raiding.  I’m not far from my squire goal now, just another day or two and I’ll start working on pets!

So right about the time I was going to start a less is more 25 man OS run I get a tell from Texas Mercenaries asking if I wanted to do Trial of the Crusader with them.  So of course I said yes and headed out.  The group leader of the OS really annoyed me anyways.  He kept insisting on having 5 healers, I hate it when you do it normally with 5 healers, when you have 5 less people you need more DPS and less healers…  Anyways the ToC was awesome!  We went in and spanked the first 3 bosses no problem.  One shot!  Remembering everything we learned last week.  Of course the 4th boss was quite complicated.  We didn’t do quite so well on this one.  We gave it 4 or 5 wipes then decided we’d do more research and do better next week.  Instead we went to Ulduar.

We even did Razorscale so fast that we got the achievement.  It was getting late so we skipped Ignis and went for Auriaya after Razorscale.

She went splat pretty easy, though we did loose the offtank to a pounce in the begining, but thanks to our 3 boomkin, one of whom was very fast on the draw with the battle rez we didn’t even miss a beat

We finished off with some attempts at Hodir.  They didn’t quite have him down yet and I had never even been in the fight but it was interesting.  Part of the problem was it was nearly midnight and I had been up since 4am so I wasn’t exactly at my best at this point.  I kept messing up, and practically nodding off LOL

We made a few more attempts at it but they actually kept getting worse so we called it and I left for the sweet embrace of the bed   It was a fun night, though not much good loot.  Only two people ended up with things for main spec, and we DE’d quite a bit of stuff.  The gear was for classes we didn’t have!  Oh and when we went to Ulduar they had to grab another healer, interestingly enough it was another Disc Priest.  That is something I don’t see every day   Thanks to ToC I’m only 10 Triumph badges away from new shoulders which is what I decided to go for first.  Then maybe a new ring after that.  I did buy earlier in the day the Touch of the Occult gloves with some conquest badges.  There isn’t much left I can do with the conquest badges.

I got on today just to get some Champion Seals and go to bed.  It was another looooong day at work.  Still WoW is my stress reliever so it is good to get in some fun   So this Dwarf headed out to the Argent Tournament.  Today I managed to get all the quests done except Threat (no one was doing it ) and the broken one.  I haven’t looked this up but the quest where you go to the island and blow the horn and kill the guy has never worked for me.

Anyways I still had some energy after I did all that so I grabbed a Heroic Trial of Champions run.  That one is pretty easy to get going so many people do it.  I got in  a group with mostly new 80s, which is neat you can get that level of gear just as you get 80 I guess, but they are not very useful in the instance LOL  So we had a good DPS, a mediocre DPS, and a bad DPS.  This made for very long fights.  I was a bit shocked that I just about used all my mana on the first fight it took so long.  I was a bit worried about the BK but someone must have stepped it up because we survived LOL  I had to throw a shield and pain suppression on myself and use Divine Hymn so save the group in phase 3, because they took too long and were on the low side of health   It works well if things get a little harry   On the bright side I didn’t even loose anyone

After that instance I went and did the one daily that is over in Storm Peaks.  On my way back I stopped by one of the questing areas that I opened up the other day and did a few of them.  I feel kind of bad doing all these quests so late.  They all had so much interesting lore that tied directly to the high end dungeons and such and I did all of that stuff before ever getting the story.  This expansion was very well put together though. That is what I love about Blizzard they actually do learn lessons.  Comparing WOTLK to BC you are so much more involved in everything that is going on, you really feel apart of the story.  I can’t wait to see how awesome Cataclysm is.

I actually came home today at my normal time and my son was napping so I got on to at least clean up my inventory.  I ended up seeing a LF Healer message for ToC and ended up joining that.  That went ok, no one made any horrible mistakes.  Well other than the DK that kept talking about the item he wanted to drop.  That is almost a sure fire way to make sure it doesn’t drop

I started cleaning up some crap in my inventory and doing some banking.  I thought I’d give you a glimpse of my current inventory   I have one more bag upgrade to finish then I’ll have the maximum storage again.  I think I need to sell off some old enchanting supplies, or maybe try and sell some enchants

I got back on in the evening after my son went to bed.  I at least wanted to get some cloth production in.  I ended up doing the cooking/fishing dailies as well.  I have sooo many of those cooking tokens, I wish they’d give me some more recipes to buy   As I was flying over to make my cloth in the Dragon wastes I flew by the usual screaming.  I stopped to see if I could hear the sound in that video yet, nope!  That little cut scene has never worked for me, I don’t know why.  PC people will just blame my Mac.  While I was there I took a shot of the “serene” place with all the fire and screaming LOL

Decided after that to go hang out with the wife.  Before I logged though I went and checked the AH and noticed a horde argent pet up for an acceptable price and bought the Durotar Scorpion.  Yet another pet crossed off my list!   The Undead bat and the Tauren bird is all I have left now I think.  I still have some Alliance ones to get but those I’ll just quest for and not spend gold   I only have about 19 more Champion Seals to go before my squire is upgraded, then I can start working on the Alliance pets, so close!

I got on late this evening.  I really wanted to continue my goal of my upgraded Squire.  Only problem was I am dead tired.  I have been working long days at work now for 3 weeks.  I pull out enough energy to run some of the Argent Tournament dailies.

While I was doing that I put myself in the Heroic Trial of Champions queue and ended up with a group.  Had a nice Dwarf warrior tank, not super geared but good.  As usual I had some pretty silly dps.  Especially on the last fight it seems like everyone has a death wish.  Melee DPS who have to be in the bosses faces should really be more situationally aware.  I lost the rouge on the last fight be he almost insisted on being blown up, then the ghost version of the BK concentrated on him right after.

I just realized that some how I have been calling the 5 man dungeon Tournament of Champions, and it is actually Trial of Champions.  I wonder how I managed to get that one wrong?  I must have been transposing tournament for trial in everything I heard and read because it has never clicked in LOL  Yes I indeed HAVE been working too much.

I also didn’t have enough energy for a computer upgrade I was doing.  I did through more RAM in my machine this week, have 16GB now.  I bought a new HD because my main is full.  The new one should speed up WoW it is quite a bit faster than my current one, it is the WD 1TB Red.  I had been holding out on my current drive till Snow Leopard got out.  I read a few glitches with WoW and Snow Leopard but I’m not going to worry about them, I should be ok with my Mac Pro.  The glitches center around Expose and leaving Safari open when you play WoW.  Probably won’t have the energy to do the upgrade till this weekend though.

I saw that new soundtrack is out now too, I’m going to have to download it.  I’ll probably just get it from iTunes, the legendary addition is just a bunch of stuff you may look at once   The site up for it is very pretty.  This must be the soundtrack I heard them mention at Blizzcon.