Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

Got on to do some more badge farming this afternoon just to get my daily and weekly done.  I doubt I’ll have enough energy to do anymore raiding than that.

Got the weekly done but SC2 is always pulling me back right now I have a hard time wanting to go into WoW. 

Really looking forward to my new computer.  I hope to see it shipping this week!

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 had such a crazy day at work I had completely forgotten that today was patch day!  Good ol’ patch 3.2.2 went live today!  A small patch but with a few great changes put in place, mainly Onyxia’s Return!  Wowhead has a great run down of the patch on their website. Of course like many patch days this one wasn’t super silky smooth.  The database seemed to be having issues, loot lag was pretty bad, at least on Doomhammer.

When I got on I did my Brewfest stuff ( I should finish my achievements on Sunday! ) then I got a tell from Inien he got in an Onyxia Raid.  I thought Oh ya so I joined LFG and got in a PUG.  Shortly after that Inien asked if I wanted to join them, he was with one of the guilds we occasionally raid with.  So I left the PUG and joined them (guessing more success).  I was flying over to get on the boat and I noticed it was really raining.  For some reason this looked visually better than I remember.  There is so little weather in WoW though I could be wrong.  I hope they put more weather in Cataclysm.

Just as I was landing I got a summon to the instance.  Apparently they had already been attempting her and had some openings that Inien and I filled.  I remember standing here with 40 people so many times back in the day

The fight seemed pretty much the same except for more adds.  Wowhead has a strategy guide up for her for your viewing pleasure. Obviously Onyxia was a bit more beefy as welll as her whelps!  I can’t wait for my anniversary pet

We defeated her first try, well our first try anyways   All they needed was the dynamic duo!  Inien was quite happy with the Arcane changes, he saw an increase in DPS.  Onyxia was not friendly to the casters providing tons of Plate   I was so excited when I was researching to write this post I noticed they recreated the shards!  The Purified Shard of the Scale and Purified Shard of the Flame MUST be mine!  I used the original Shard of the Scale for a while into BC even.  If I recall I got it on my first Onyxia run, and it was my first Epic ever, which was a REALLY big deal at that time. They made the set really sweet too, I must have them!  I did win the Enlarged Onyxia Hide Backpack which I felt happy to get.  Back in the day I always wanted the original bag but never got it   It was a lot harder to get things when you had to share like 5 things with 40 people

After all that fun Inien and I ended up in a guild run for the Heroic Daily which was Utgarde Keep.  I was rushing them a long because I had to do something before bed so I was “helping” to pull and DPS   Then after we finished I realized that two of the DPS were brand new 80s that had never done even the regular UK.  They were people I didn’t know, we had an influx of new people in the guild recently.

The other notable patch changes was a few talent changes in Shadow that should increase Shadow Priest DPS which I’m sure will make them happy.  There was also a bug fix on my Glyph of Power Word: Shield so that the heal uses my crit instead of the targets.  This is nice and I noticed it right away because they fixed Divine Aegis for it last patch and now when the heal crits you get dual bubbles

Oh and to quote a Mage whine they added a new inscription item “Added a recipe for Runescroll of Fortitude. This item grants a stamina buff equal to the highest rank of Power Word: Fortitude (untalented) to all players in the raid.” which of course means no one will ever bring a Priest to a raid ever again…Ever!

Anyways was a great night, had lots of fun, good job Blizzard!

I got on and played a little bit with Laneir doing his inscription research and finishing a few quests.  I was really close to 74 and pushed myself over the edge.  So after training and all that I decided I’d get back to Laneer and go look for some dungeon elders.

I got a tell for UK while I was afk but they had already snagged a healer before I got back.  I was thinking about giving up when I got another tell right after for again UK.  I had put myself in LFG for several elder dungeons I needed.  When the guy joined the group with me it was a DK with 30k unbuffed HP.  Of course that meant he was a tank, a VERY geared tank so I was excited.  You can see in this screenshot he actually has like 35k buffed.

Everything was like super easy with him.  It was funny half the time the pulls didn’t even make it through my shield.  I guess that shows how high his mitigation/avoidance was   Everyone in the group was awesome actually.  We tried to do the Achievement on the first boss but didn’t get it.  No one broke any of the icetombs but I did die in one maybe that counts breaking it So with that I only need 4 more dungeon elders before I’m done with this achievement!

After that I made a few enchanting scrolls that no one will probably want but got me some skill ups.  Did some of the exciting mini game of inventory management and then decided to go make some moonshroud.  I need to find a place to farm Eternal Fire so I can make Spellweave every cool down.  I have 3 enchanting bags I’d like to replace with 32 slotters!  I need to get into the giant dailies so I can make the 22 slot bags too

When I got on today I did my Inscription research on Laneir, then filled quite a few guild orders for glyphs.  I debated playing Laneir, he has been back at full rest exp for a bit but I really felt like healing.  I got back on Laneer and did some usual of the exciting mini game while I put myself in LFG.

It wasn’t long before I got a tell from a Druid saing want to start a group.  I assumed the Druid was a tank and said sure, though it turned out he was “Feral DPS”.    I use the term DPS lightly because it turned out he wasn’t even close to being able to out DPS the tank.  The run went really smooth for the most part.  We tried for the achievement on the first boss but for some reason we didn’t get it even though we never broke any of the frozen tombs, BOOO!

I lost the tank once due to an extreme amount of burst damage that occurred at the end of the fight but all the mobs died right after.  I lost the druid a couple of times due to him having less HP than me in Cat, and him not paying attention   He died in the last fight before the guy respawns because he got in the smash.  Our Hunter was doing the most damage so I protected him like he was a tank hehe  I’m not like a lot of healers, I recognize the importance of DPS.  Yes I would like for them to watch themselves but to be honest in WOTLK nearly all my group failure is because of the lack of DPS.  I pay attention to who is really doing the damage, and those people are treated accordingly   The last boss ended up dropping that same epic ring I got last time and no one wanted, which no one wanted it again either   He also dropped the Breeches of the Caller which actually were better than the pants I was currently wearing even without being gemed which I won.

After that I flew over to Zul’Drak to finish getting friendly with the Argent Crusade.  I tried to finish before we started but the group came together too quickly (how often does that happen).  I took this screenshot because I really love the look of Crystal Song Forest.

Inien came over to join me as he got on to help me kill that elite group quest worth 350 rep!  He hadn’t done that one yet either so all is good.  We then ended up following a huge quest chain for the rest of the evening for Knights of the Ebon Blade which Inien was working on next.  He needed to get friendly with them so it worked out great.  The quest chain was awesome, you end up getting a disguise to be a ghoul and you do quests for the scourge to figure out what they are up to.

You get a tour of what is going on ala Zangamarsh, or the DK newbie zone.  The base you work out of actually reminds me of the DK newbie area

Here is the guy in charge that you end up doing a bunch of quests for and making him feel good.  He trusts you more and more what a sucker!

The blighted area under the base you are working at.  this is Inien and I forcing the peons to get us blight crystals.

This quest was fun you get to control those big guys who’s name escapes me and they have two abilities.  One is something like fart that is an AOE damage/knockdown and the other is explode.  You have to kill 60 of the troll guys with them.  Getting a whole bunch of them and exploding was fun.  It was a lot easier after I realized I can heal of all things and stay in ghoul form

The chain finished up on top of the base fighting the head troll guy.  Then the Lich King comes out kills him for being a disappointment and threatens you.  It’s pretty damn cool   I really enjoyed the quest chain, and it was fun doing it with Inien.  We haven’t quested together in a while I don’t think.

I ended up with my friendly with the Argent Crusade so I’m all set to start on that one.  I’m almost friendly with the Knights of the Ebon Blade so I’ll be ready for that one when I’m done.  I’ll try to get in the regular daily and pick up some faction on that one in case I don’t get more quests before I’m ready.

Ok I decided to split this into a separate post because this story might be long?

I got on and wanted to do the Heroic daily, there was only like a rogue in the LFG for it (was Heroic CoS) so I was sad and thought well I’ll try something else.   Just then someone shouted they were looking for a healer for Heroic HoL.  I thought man I really would like the pants off the last boss (Inien already got them) but I really hate that instance (because I hate the last boss).  Finally I decided to go for it and sent a tell.

Well a few minutes past and the guy goes “just a sec” or something like that.  The rest of the conversation I should have kept a copy of for it was amusing, but went something like this.  Eventually he gets back to me and asks if I can heal it without fail.  I said oh ya can you dps it? Following with my problems with the instance has always been DPS that can’t even out DPS the tank.  He said yes then said he was looking me up, which I can assume he meant he was looking at my armory.  Then comes back with sorry bro we got a healer with better gear.  While I didn’t really care because I hate people that act like him, and the instance I followed up with a few more comments   I told him gear isn’t everything without skill, that I am a damn good healer.  He did respond with that’s true.  I went ahead and mentioned that I have been a Priest for 4 years and a healer the entire time, his only response to this was wow man aren’t you bored.  Eventually he came back and started telling me he was sorry and hope there was no hard feelings.  Then he told me he thought the tank was bad and that he probably saved me time and a repair bill.

It was a funny conversation I haven’t had one quite like it in game for a while.  I do usually get questioned by people, some times way too much but not like that.  Since I’m the healer and my other toons don’t really instance I don’t know what it is like to have a bad one.    I myself am building a nice list of Tanks I want to avoid in the future however lol

I keep looking for something to do and see someone shouting for a Heroic UK.  I haven’t had a chance to do it on Heroic yet (not many people do it for some reason).  So I joined up the group which had a Pally tank, DPS DeathKnight, Rogue and Hunter.  Well my ability to really “pick them” showed up yet again.  I’ve never had such a hard time healing a tank since I kept the 71 DK in all greens alive in the Nexus when I was leveling up.

The tank who I later looked at turned out to be wearing mostly level 75ish blues, and some quest gear and had some completely wrong non taking trinkets.  The way he took damage felt like he was wearing cloth or something.  Each trash pull took like half my mana and it was really hard to keep the other mele who did not look out for themselves alive too.  To make matters worse the DPS could not out DPS the tank who was in tanking gear all be it crappy gear.  All the DPS including the tank felt the need to stand on all these bombs that the guys would drop and were taking massive damage.

I say this with no modesty what so ever that it was only through my sheer awesomeness than we managed to complete that instance.  It was pretty hilarious because the original group leader, which was the rogue was pestering people about their DPS before we started and he was dead last, and really far behind.  The hunter was the only one that came close to the tank and by the end of the instance managed to do about as much damage as the tank.

I don’t ever really remember this being a problem, you know bad DPS.  I always end up in these groups where the DPS can’t out DPS the tanks.  Now I realize they did increase the damage the tanks do in WOTLK but a DPS character should be able to do more than the tank, and it shouldn’t be too much to ask for.  It makes it harder on both the tank and the healer when they can’t.  The mobs die slower, the tanks take more damage, and it requires more work on my part.  It most certainly makes the boss encounters a LOT harder.

Sorry I don’t have any screenshots from the ecounter but I never really had time to think about it.  I also need to fix my image uploader since I upgraded wordpress it doesn’t seem to be working properly.