Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

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

This week has been crazy for me!  I’ve been going into work early(even for me!) doing some upgrades to prepare for a big upgrade next week.  So even though I was stressed and could really use some WoW time I was too tired usually to play   I got on tonight though and played a little, talked to Inien on skype.

I did my random first thing, Inien had just finished so I went alone and ended up in someones already started UP.  It is interesting how you get dropped right on the group now, I don’t know when they changed that but it is convenient.  I’m going to guess the other healer left because they couldn’t deal with healing the tank.  At first glance I couldn’t tell who was the tank by HP because we all had about the same amount.    It turned out a really poorly geared Feral DPS Druid was tanking in a Cat spec, and Cat gear

This of course made things interesting to heal but I didn’t have a problem keeping him alive, I am after all awesome   The Shaman in the group was asking me if it was hard to heal him, and I just said it was “interesting”.   The Shaman seemed impressed with my healing ability and kept asking questions about my spec and gear.  We made it through the instance though, no one died and I got that out of the way.

I then went to my Argent Tournament dailies which I’ve started doing again.  Inien was doing them too and we did some of them together.  I was able to get enough seals tonight to get my 25 Talbard and get that achievement!  I found out after I did that one of the guildies has been trying to catch up to my achievement score, I have the second best in my guild and the only reason I’m behind is because I don’t raid as much   So now I’ve got to step it up to hold my 2nd place   Going to have to try and knock out some of the easy ones I still have in general and maybe PvP and Fishing.

Ok,  now onto my big worries.  Inien kept reminding me nothing is close to being done, and I realize that but I see too much thought behind the new Disc tree to not be worried.  It looks to me at first glance they have refocused the tree back towards PvP again!  You can see the talent preview over at MMO-Champion.

I’m talking of course of Atonement, Penitence, Evangelism, and Arcangel.  They are great names, and even cool talents they allow you to do some damage and be healing as well. It is unclear to me if this is thought it will work in PvE or not?  It could be interesting but I don’t think they have ever mixed those two things for PvE before.  Atonement could be interesting letting you heal the tank and melee dps with some of your damage.  The more I thought about it after talking to Inien the more I began to see it as modeled after the damaging healers in some of the MMOs that have come out recently.

So basically now I’m more fascinated than stressed out about it and wish I had a beta invite to try it   With the changes to Disc and Holy, it is possible to get all the new Damage talents in Holy and Disc, all the way to the increased range.  So now I’m thinking you could go with a Disc build that looks like this and it might be an interesting PvE build where you would be tossing out damage and heal/shields.

BETA, where art thou!

I managed to get on yesterday only long enough to run a quick random.  I was totally worn out from being up till midnight the previous day after being called by work.  It was an interesting run actually.  We had a bear tank that had the highest GS rating I’ve ever seen, and over 60K HP.  He made a mad dash through that instance and we completed it faster than I thought possible.  He skipped the first boss which never even occurred to me They brought down Mr Drake ride immediately too, I was impressed

Things have been very interesting since the announcements about the upcoming raid changes to Cataclysm.  So much whining it is unbelievable, actually I think it is believable because the vocal community is a bunch of whiners   I wonder if Blizzard predicted this or not?  I’m guessing they must have assumed a certain amount of vocal disagreement.  Some of my favorite arguments are:

• It will destroy my guild
• No one will ever do 25 mans anymore
• Why even include 25 mans
• Blizzard is just catering to casuals

The funny thing is the last time they change raids they said the same things.  Just like they said Cataclysm will be the death of WoW, and all previous expansion were going to do that as well   Anyways the most interesting part is everything Blizzard is changing is save guilds if anything.  Lets you do the content you want, with the people you want.  You don’t feel forced into trying to make 25 mans work, and if you have the people for 25 mans you can do it, and gear more people up faster.  I don’t see the issue, and find it funny people can’t see it benefits everyone casual or elitist

As I mentioned before my favorite part is first that you can do the raids you like, I prefer 10mans over 25 by a HUGE margin.  The 25s are just not fun for me, I don’t care how good the gear is.  Second I kind of like the shared lockouts myself.  You don’t feel compelled to have to do both to try and get extra badges.  People will have time for their alts now   It is obvious they had to do that if they were going to make the gear the same.  The other thing that kept coming to mind is that they intended to try and make the difficulty of 10 and 25 man as close as possible.  So the elitist shouldn’t complain they are catering to casuals because they want it to be equal.  Obviously getting 25 people in sync is still always going to be harder than 10, so they are doing a few things to help with extra badges/gear.

Things are really getting exciting with Cataclysm now as this new information comes out almost daily.  Come on Blizzard, I want more!

I found myself alone when I got home today so I snuck on and completed my frosty random dungeon run for the day.  It was a terrible run of DK.  All the DPS were so bad I kid you not, the Paladin tank was doing 50% of the damage.  In fact the warrior was so terrible I was able to start dpsing as Disc in the middle of the instance and still out damage him by the end…  The ret pally was picking up most of the slack after the 50% of the tank, followed by a terrible warlock, me and the warrior   It took a while and yes was truly sad

I still found myself a lone so I switched to Laneir for some Mage goodness and did some combination Icecrown questing and dungeon runs.  Got to finish out his set after all right?

I ended up in a UP which went really fast, with some awesome people.  Then I got OK, which we just did the fast route on.  The people were not terrible though so it went fast.  I’ve been messing around with being creative on how I use my spells for fun.  Even though I’m not frost I’ve been enjoying using cone of cold again actually

In the UP run Laneir ended up getting some achievements that I don’t even think Laneer has   Need to see about some guild achievement runs I think.

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!

I got home at almost a reasonable hour, a little over an hour later than my old usual   The house was empty so I got on to try and have some fun and get my new hat!  The daily today was Utgarde Pinnacle which isn’t a bad run, doesn’t take too long.  I got  a group pretty quick, a Tank saw me in LFG and started up one.  The longest part was waiting for everyone to get over there, my hearth is set over on that side so I can pop over there

The run was pretty smooth other than no one wanting to throw the spears, or knowing how to do it   Overall though it was  a fairly pro group.  After we finished I was able to buy my new hat, the Helm of Clouded Sight.  This was a very nice upgrade for me in every way.  I had my gems and enchant waiting and tossed that on.  I went with the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond for my meta, and Brilliant King’s Amber for my sockets.  My head enchant is the Arcanum of Burning Mysteries, got to love spell power and crit!   I debated on my meta again for a while before deciding to stick with the Insightful Earthsiege.  Int is an easy choice for Disc, though I try to keep a nice balance.

This hat was all part of my over all plan as I was maneuvering some of my crit to it, and the haste I had there other places.  I got my crit back to 30% with food, self buffed.  When I’m raid buffed I should be sitting pretty sweet.  I still have a few upgrades to get from Triumph badges too, mainly I want both caster rings   I’m also still thinking about that int trinket

I almost have enough badges to buy an heirloom weapon for my upcoming Worgen Warrior too.  I’m still debating on whether to go with the sword or the two handed axe, not sure which would be more useful at first   Haven’t had a chance to log onto the PTR yet but it is installed, and I’m copied   Didn’t get much play time today though no sooner did I finish this quick run did my wife and son come home and I had to watch him so I never got back on.  Tomorrow is going to be a hectic day, I’m worried I won’t be able to get on for the raid, though I’m trying dearly.

Got on this after a nice RL Easter to relax a bit.  Got a tell from a guildie after finishing my cooking quest wondering if I was interested in doing some instance runs.  They wanted to do Nexus, after my mace of not screw mace and the daily.  Inien got home just in time for me to get him in on the action.  It was so relaxing not to have to worry about what kind of people I was ending up with.  Guild runs are truly the best!

We tore through Nexus pretty qiuck and went on to UP.  One of the guildies had to go so we grabbed a Feral Cat druid from LFG.  He was actually pretty amazing DPS for the spec so that turned out well.  We did probably the fastest UP group I’ve ever seen completing it in just over 30 minutes.  I managed to even pick up an achievement I hadn’t got yet, though we didn’t get the incredible hulk one done though we tried.   Even better as we finished the end boss he dropped the Girdle of Bane for my shadow set.  A very nice hit belt I put a buckle in and a 19sp gem I’m going to have to grab the stuff I was going to with badges and see how well I do, 3.1 should be interesting.  I wonder if it is coming Tuesday?

Well I had some of my usual bad bad luck in choosing groups tonight.  I put myself in LFG for Heroic Naxx, OS or Vault.  I noticed the dailies were for both UP so I figured I’d do that if someone needed a healer.  I eventually saw someone that needed a healer for UP so I joined them.  Then after inviting me and we got there they made me leader and told me none of them had ever been before.  They were also all fresh 80s.  To make matters worse they were horrible slow to respond AND didn’t listen to me. After we wiped on the first boss, with me dying to the sword I actually left the group…I don’t do this very often but I was in no mood to be wiping in UP all night.

After that I went back to Sithillus to turn in my head.  This got me my nifty new Cenarious title and only 48 rep away from exalted with the Brood.  I also noticed while I was there they have a quest now for the head of broodlord and everyone can pickup the head which means I need to do BWL again

Next disaster was Naxx 25.  They said they had the Military quater, the silly dog boss, and the end guys left.  I joined them of course they didn’t mention they had been wiping to Gluth a lot before I joined.  We wiped to him again after I got there, some how with tons of mages they still were not able to aoe the adds down before they got to him…  So we wipe and like 6 people leave, then they are trying to replace them and people start saying they are going afk for 20 minutes.  At that point I just left the group I don’t have  a lot of play time to spending waiting.

After that I noticed my wife was up and I’d rather go spend time with her than mess around with WoW so I logged for the evening.

I’m not going to lie I’ve been fairly down lately.  I haven’t been playing much so maybe it is just stress build up.  WoW is really my only release at the moment.  I got on tonight with some reasonable play time available and went off questing but what I really needed to do was heal.

I had put myself in LFG for Heroic Azjol-Nerub because I’m still after the silly wand that drops there. There was like no action in LFG channel so I had little hopes.  I got invited to a group though eventually that was full and ready to go.  Thank god it actually had decent people in it, because though I wanted to heal I didn’t want to repeatedly wipe because people suck.

We tore through Azjol no problem, of course the stupid belt dropped again and we headed out to Utgarde Pinnacle.  That went pretty fast though we did the silly spear farming method, I prefer to just run the gauntlet myself it’s more fun but whatever.  No mount from the guy, never seen that mount it must have a stupid drop rate.

Finally we headed over to Gundrak.  I considered going to bed, but this enhancement shaman really wanted to go and I figured I’d be fast.  It was a quick run too.  The shaman didn’t get what he wanted though.  He was probably the best Enhancement shaman I’ve seen.  I almost thought there was no such thing, he was pushing around 1800 dps and he just turned level 80 so apparently there are a lot of bad shaman around.

We ended up with 10 dream shards, and 2 crystals which wasn’t a bad hall.  I must say I was a bit rejuvenated by the playtime.  I’m glad I found that group and got in some fun stress relieving runs.