Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

Super worn out tonight but decided to login for a (hopefully) quick random.  Thankfully I got ToC which is nice and speedy and got it done quick!  Lots of stuff about the debut of SC2 going around, I have the Collectors Edition on the way so I’ll be having fun in that tomorrow hopefully!

So my wife got back and I finally got a chance to relax for a few and do a little WoW’ing.  I did my daily random and was about to go log onto Laneir when I see someone asking for healers for ToC10 for the Weekly Raid.  I figured I’d give it a shot though this is not something I was imagining to be much fun in a PUG   I have run this with Texas Mercenaries quite a bit so I knew the fights well.  Man I miss raiding with those guys.

Anyways the guy asks me if I think we can two heal it, and I mention we did that all the time before so as long as he gets another equivalent healer we are good. So we finally get the second tank and we are ready to go.  The second healer he got was a paladin who had a higher GS than me by quite a bit.  I think oh good, it will be just like when Redfive and I used to do this.  I go and make an assumption that the stupid high GS number means he knows what he is doing…WRONG! We start off and the guy dies in the first 45 seconds of the fight, he stood in the fire … So I solo heal it till I start loosing people once we get to the worms and we wipe it.  I don’t think anyone realizes he died first, I didn’t say anything.

We try again, he dies AGAIN early on, I solo heal the thing to the worms again, and tried to keep as many people alive as I could but eventually it is just me and the tank left and by this time we have lost everyone but the one tank, and the Rogue RL who started the whole thing.  They both told me nice heals and the rogue went back to grab another group    This time we got a Holy Priest, higher GS than me, and another DK tank.  We lost some people in the worms, the other healer wasn’t helping enough, but got to the last guy with 5 people and we defeated him.  I looked at the healing out of curiosity, not only did I out heal a Holy Priest who was better geared than me, I did so not even including my absorbs

We defeated Lord Jaraxxus just fine, and I even picked up the Felspark Bindings off him for my DPS set   I have terrible wrists actualy tempted to wear them for my healing set if it wasn’t for the loss of regen   I will say one thing, every time I PUG there is outstanding evidence that having a high GS doesn’t mean you know what your doing, doesn’t mean you will do lots of damage/heal/tank well.  I can’t be the only one to notice this so I wonder why so many people put so much stock in that stupid number?  My little Mage I’m still gearing up will often out damage people with a higher GS then him because they are lazy I can only assume.

Speaking of Laneir I did do a few heroic runs on him today.  We got stuck in Oculus which I admit is not my favorite.  No one ran away this time, and I did get the extra 2 badges for doing it they added recently   Best of all I got the epic staff that drops off Eregos, the Staff of Draconic Combat which was a nice upgrade for Laneir   Sorry I don’t have any pictures from his adventures, I forgot to take some!  I’m almost ready to get my 3rd piece of T9 on him though, yay!  After I get all 4 pieces, I’ll start grabbing some of the other triumph gear.  It is kind of fun gearing up an alt, I’ve never done it before and well now it is more fun and easier than ever!

I started off tonight by being late.  Had a family evening out and I was hoping to get back by 8 but it just didn’t happen.  The guys waited for me though which was awesome.  They just did Onyxia10 while I was late.  Of course I missed out on that, but no biggy

We started off ToC10 as the Pros we are completely owning the first boss.  To my surprise he finally dropped that wand I had been eying in his loot lists, the Rod of Imprisoned Souls.  This was particularly exciting for me because it was all I needed to get to be “epic”!  I thought I was going to have to wait till that wand in the new 5 man dropped.  Of course the guys had been telling me that it used to drop all the time and every caster in the guild had it.  It was a definite nice upgrade from my i200 wand from Naxx trash.

On the 3rd boss, the horde group we wiped once on them.  Then changed our strategy a little and got them the next time around.  It is a fight that is different almost every time you do it because of your combination of classes and theirs.  They dropped the Blade of the Silver Disciple which I thought I’d take for my shadow set.  I don’t have the best offhand for it yet, but there are a few good ones in the new 5 mans coming out.  They were going to shard it if no one wanted it.

Then on Anub’arak who we also completely pwned, he dropped the Cold Convergence which no one wanted and they were going to shard.  I didn’t say anything Red and Barbarus both asked me about it.  I got to thinking about it and it was a very nice upgrade except it lacked any regen on it.  In the end instead of them sharding it I decided I would take it and use it as main spec healing staff.  The loss of the effective 28MP5 from the other staff is made up by the added Int, Crit, Haste and Spell power I get off this one.  I just felt bad getting so many things though Red and Bar kept telling me not to, shards are worthless to the guild.  I have gone entire runs not winning anything too I am just silly

So I left there with a nice Wand Upgrade, Great new Healing staff, and a DPS dagger.  Then I realized after we were done I had enough badges to pickup Heartmender Circle!  This turned out to be great, it totally balanced out the stuff I swapped out with the staff.  I was going to stop wearing my Inscribed Signet of the Kirin Tor for something better.  I’ll just have to swap in in now and wait 30sec to teleport.  The heartmender brings regen to that slot I didn’t have, and more crit and spell power, int and stam, while I loose some haste.  But the Cold Convergence brought me back the haste from the ring and more, and the ring almost made up for the loss of regen.  I love it when this happens

So all in all I got 4 upgrades tonight so I am that much more powerful!  I am also done with all the healing things I needed from Triumph so I’m going to pickup DPS gear if I get anymore Triumph badges

After we did that we decided though late to just go clear some trash in Freya’s area.  You can get some badges from some of them, and there were lots of herbs in that area.  Someone had been keeping the instance alive cleared to this point to farm herbs in fact We did that for a while.  The area was very pretty, I haven’t ever been that far before.  I was nodding off though, and managed to last long enough to finish all the trash then we called it a night.  I had a really good time though!

Was my first raid as a member of the Texas Mercenaries tonight.  We tore through ToC10 pretty quick. While most people already had this achievement I got the salt and pepper achievement.  On the final boss I got me some new robe for my Shadow spec.  The Vestments of the Sleepless dropped and no one needed so I got it for offset.  I never seem to get any healing gear though

After we finished we worked on doing heroic mode for a bit.  We wiped a lot but I think we are very close in being able to beat them.  We have the DPS now I think we just need the practice.  It would help if I could get my UI to show Levitate on the raid frames.

After that we ran over and did Onyxia 10 really fast.  She is super easy when you are with Pro people.  Man what a difference.  I hadn’t done it non-pug yet.  It made me realize how painful the pugs really are

After that we went over to try OS 3 drakes up.  Apparently they have been trying it for a few weeks.  They were using the strategy of killing Sarth as fast as possible while someone kites the drakes away.  They had been very close and when we went their they asked me to be DPS.  I didn’t realize it before I went that I was going to be DPS.  This was the first time since I started playing Shadow again I had to matter.  In our final and successful attempt I actually pulled 3200 DPS.  Sure I was the lowest in the raid but I was proud of my contribution   I didn’t even have my new gear gemed so I wasn’t wearing it.

I had a great time this evening though and look forward to many more.

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 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

I got on a bit later after getting all those nifty Achievements, and did some Argent Tournament Dailies.  My gold supplies haven’t been increasing lately, and there is still a pet to be had   While I was out on the island doing some quests I notice they added a new quest with some new object in the cave where the oracle guy is summoned.  It looks like it is informing us about some sort of attack by these guys so this may have something to do with 3.3.  Interesting anyways, I still haven’t done the other quest they added to Dalaran to begin the lore for Night Elf Mages in Cataclysm.

Shortly after finishing my dailies I joined up with the Texas Mercenaries for my Friday raiding fun.  We did really good this week in ToC10 completing the entire instance again.  I picked up the Binding Light trinket while I was in there.  I didn’t remember seeing that one when I was looking at the drops.  I rolled on it because it didn’t seem like anyone wanted it, the other Priest that came with us did roll too.  I wish I had let him have it because I miss read the tool tip, it wasn’t much different than the energy siphon I was using, some argue it is worse even   A nifty belt dropped off the last guy too, and I felt compelled not to roll to because I had one won the trinket, though the belt wasn’t a huge upgrade either.  I’m still debating on getting the Triumph ring or waiting to get the helmet, decisions!

Is what happened to me last night!  I’m not sure what time it happened, I’m guessing around 10pm as far as I can tell.  I was in Trial of the Crusader with the Texas Mercenaries and we had been having  a bit of a rough night.  I was down with a bad cold and I took some medicine thinking I’d still be ok.  I had my headset on in vent, and my sound was on.  We were waiting on someone and I thought I’d close my eyes for just a second thinking I’d hear the ready check or someone say something in vent.  Well I was gone after that   I woke up after midnight with a stiff neck and my computer was asleep, and I still even had my headset on.  I went and took out my contacts and crawled into bed.

Before the raid started I had just barely been on and was doing the fishing daily and getting me some more crit food I was practically out.  While I was fishing I noticed this rainbow that for some reason I don’t ever remember seeing.  It was very cool and like a real rainbow seemed to change depending on the angle you looked at it.

Like I mentioned it had been a pretty rough night.  We didn’t have exactly the same group we usually do.  Didn’t have any druids for battle rez like we usually do too for those accidental mistakes.  We wiped on the first boss quite a bit but eventually got him.

On one of the attempts I was the last one alive standing near the door when the boss threw a snowbold on me then smacked me and killed me.  After he killed me the snowbold popped off me and just kind of stayed there.  You couldn’t hit him or anything, we blamed him for the wipes after and tried reseting the instance which seemed to fix him.

We got the second boss down and were working on the 3rd when I passed out.  I talked to waterboy this morning and they apparently didn’t get the champions down.  I figured with my luck they would have finished and all the cloth drops would have happened then   We had another night of Mail…

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

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.