A weekend of achievement

I’m delaying the UI post one day so I can tweak some things tonight. It will go up tomorrow! In the meantime you can see my new UI in these screenshots.

Friday we were supposed to wrap up ICC-10 and finally kill the Lich King. Hell, I even named the calendar event “The Dethroning”. I was going all in on any possible, and probable, jinxes. Unfortunately, raid didn’t happen. One invited person didn’t show and two couldn’t make it. And those in guild were either severely undergeared or all ready saved. To salvage the night we instead went for some good ol’ fashioned Uld10 hardmodes.

They went last weekend (when I wasn’t around) and cleared up to Firefighter but couldn’t down that fight. So Friday we started on Mimiron and after finally managing to scrape up a healer (one of our super geared raid healers came on) we were good to go. We then defied our expectations and easily one-shot Firefighter. The glories of severely overgearing an encounter!

With that easily acquired feather in our caps, we then double backed and opened up Algalon’s lair. Because, why not? We had the keys, none of us had ever seen the fight, it would only take an hour max. Might as well take a few whacks at it.

Algalon is, to put it lightly, a very intense fight. I can only imagine what it was like to do this when it was end-game content rather than the playground of a pack of drunkards. There are multiple counters letting you know when different dooms are going to befall your raid, the least of which was definitely not the Big Bang. The way we ended up handling that was Morvain, the DK, would tank initially then when I picked it up from him, after my first phase punch, the first Bang would occur.

I’d get hotted up and a everyone would go in a black hole and the hit would typically proc Ardent Defender, and the hots would push me back up to nearly full health immediately afterward. The second one Morvain would take, using a guardian spirit for similar effect. The third I would have AD back for, so I’d eat it and maybe pop Divine Protection if I got uncomfortable.

We did a bunch of attempts just working out the various mechanics, usually wiping to some little mistake that would kill someone and then domino effect into a wipe. That would lead to us quickly sprinting back to our corpses ASAP to get another lick in.

With about 30 minutes to go I was getting a bit nervous if we were going to get it that night. Then that attempt everything clicked, I guess, and we pushed it to the sub-20% phase for the first time. Suddenly waves of enemies were appearing and Morvain and I just went crazy taunting as much as we could. In a blur, Algalon dropped combat with us and then went into his monologue. It was pretty cool to get to see the fight, let alone kill it, however cheap the victory might have been.

Also, Algalon is hands-down the most beautiful boss encounter I have ever seen.

After Algalon I started debating with myself which Keeper I wanted to send down for One Light. Normally you’d want Thorim to get rid of the Immortal Guardians, but at our gear levels Phase 3 would probably go by really quickly, and I would be capable of holding a huge number of the guardians. As long as I kept them far enough away to prevent Yogg from getting free heals. I was trying to talk myself out of sending down Freya who would bend the difficulty curve a bit by giving us sanity wells.

I eventually settled on sending down Freya, dooming that lockout perhaps. Nonetheless, during my epic wasting of time up top running back and forth between Freya, everyone continued to clear down to Vezax. Once I got down there we finished off the trash and then went on to one-shot Vezax’s hardmode with little difficulty.

The real challenge was, as I suspected, Yogg. And not because of the hardmode. A lot of us were tired, some of us were clumsy, others rusty. It was pretty late and we kept stalling on the normal mechanics of the fight. People not getting out of the brain room in time and getting mind controlled, not enough dps being done to the brain, etc. If it was earlier in the night, I doubt that fight would have been much trouble. We ended up calling it at midnight, server time because a few had to go.

On the last attempt, as we were wiping, I ran into a portal to check off at least one the visions from my In His House He Lays Dreaming achievement. The wages of being a tank, eh? Certain achievements you usually have to finagle or trick your way into getting, like Hot Pocket or Denyin’ the Scion or Take Out Those Turrets, or snatch them mid-wipe.

Then yesterday was, in addition to Easter, the beginning of Noblegarden. The latter being the last holiday I needed to get my Violet Proto. And of that holiday I only needed three achievements: Chocoholic (I was 25/100 on this), Desert Rose, and Spring Fling. So in the morning I buckled down and headed over to Falconwing Square, which was crawling with pink bunnies darting from egg to egg and I was immediately reminded why I hated Noblegarden so much.

I eventually just camped in one spot in Falconwing that had near me three to four different eggs, and just darted between the four spawns grabbing them as they popped. Eventually my eyes started to bleed, so I bought the Spring Robe for Desert Rose and moved on to Brill, determined just to do Spring Fling and not hunt anymore eggs.

Then I saw how nearly deserted Brill was and what easy pickings the eggs there could be. I found another fruitful camping spot and hung out for a while, getting enough eggs to finally put me over the top for Chocoholic. From there I finished up my epic rabbit breeding journey and then did a quick tour of the various dry spots in Azeroth. Finally I finished up the last achievement of the last holiday I needed for What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been.

I’m so glad that’s over.

… I should do Noblegarden on my druid if I’m going to use him in Cataclysm. Ugh.

The undying ghosts of the past

Note: This actually happened last weekend, I just let this sit in drafts for a while.

The very first time we tried Undying it was on a whim, a drunk Naxx run that we suddenly realized was going perfectly. We kept going through each wing until we reached Kel’Thuzad. Seconds from victory, one of our raidmembers (while very inebriated) died in a voidzone.

The second time we tried, months later, we got up to Sapphiron before one of the healers forgot you need to hide behind the iceblocks and was killed by a frost bomb.

The third time, a few weeks ago, I didn’t have my pet frame enabled, couldn’t quickly dismiss my mind controlled Student on Razuvious, and a warlock got killed. Raz died from dots before we could make a break for it.

Fourth time, we did it on a whim after a drunk Ulduar run and managed to fail on the second attempted boss (Sapphiron) because someone was too far to the left of an iceblock and couldn’t LoS the frost bomb.

Saturday night we went to Naxxramas for the fifth time to attempt an Undying run. With seven people: myself, two healers, and four dps (with one dps a possible OT).

We started on Razuvious, with me double checking my pet frame was active, and dropped him with no trouble. Considering each dps in the raid was doing 2-3 times the dps that someone was doing when Naxx10 was progression, that wasn’t much of a worry. Our main concern was making sure no one died to environmental hazards during boss fights.

After Raz we ported up to Saph to drop the two “hardest” bosses in the raid. When Saph died I’m sure you can imagine my relief, considering so many of our attempts have ended with her. After the dragon we took out KT, though that was a bit more stressful than I thought it would be. I knew we generally would have no issues, but I was still getting constant flashbacks every time a purple ring formed on the floor or someone got trapped in an ice tomb.

It didn’t help that DBM added this awful noise whenever someone got ice tombed–like a “woooo-ong… woooo-ong”. Very unnerving to say the least!

So KT was dead and we were raid for some less stressful fights. Or, at least, less stressful to me. Everyone seemed to be having a great time while I was seeing spots and grinding my teeth down into nubs.

The rest of the run went generally smoothly with only a few bumpy spots. Our biggest hurdles (or so we imagined) were going to be Heigan and Thaddius. For the former, it wasn’t bad at all, despite the fact that all the damn casters made me and the two melee do the dance rather than just camping on the platform for most of the encounter. Somehow I managed to not screw up all the dancing and we got through all right.

Once Plague was cleared it was on to Construct for what we assumed would be a straight run to Thaddius. And then we remembered. Gluth.

We had one tank and one dps switching to tank here and there. Moreover, there were only seven of us total. How the hell were we going to kite adds and pull off a tank switch.

As we stood on the pipe, eating the slow ticks of damage from the slime, the answer came to me. The offtank, Morvain, would kill zombies and I would solo tank Gluth myself. Once the stack hit 10, it should fall off rather than renewing, and I was pretty sure I could hold out that long.

How wrong I was.

We started the fight and I’m watching my stacks steadily climb, hitting about 80% healing reduction by the time the first Decimate was approaching. My first instinct was to bubble off the stacks, and I suppose I got lucky because I bubbled right as Decimate hit, didn’t take any damage, and yet my stacks continued to climb. In short order they were at a full 10 (and, eek, not falling off) and I was at 84% health. For the rest of the fight I basically dodged/block/parried/and absorbed (thanks to disc shields) every incoming hit. I never dropped below 80%.

So despite the odds we managed to pull that one out pretty smoothly. Likewise, Thaddius went according to plan with some minor dps pacing issues on Fuegen/Stalag and then I guess at some point during the fight someone got zapped denying us the achievement for that. Ah well. Nonetheless, no deaths and we marched onward.

At this point we started to debate our next step. It was obvious the biggest hurdle now was going to be doing Four Horsemen with seven people. Finally, we decided to bite the bullet and head right for 4HM, doing spider wing last. One way or another Undying would end on that fight.

We ended up bringing in the pally healer’s fiance, a warlock, for some extra dps since we were stretching ourselves out so badly. Two priests went in the back, as heals, and healed themselves. In the front Morvain tanked Baron and I tanked Thane with the rest of the dps plus the pally healer. As soon as the fight started we burnt down Thane very quickly, so I yanked Baron off Morvain so he could go to the back and relieve them. We burnt the Baron down, then fled to the back to kill the remaining two Horsemen.

Once Zeliek dropped we got an interesting surprise.

Considering we hadn’t cleared Spider wing yet, looks like the achievement is bugged a tad. I wonder what the requirements are? KT and 4HM? Sapph, KT, and 4HM? Everything but Spider wing? Who knows!

At this point I was feeling a little hollow about the achievement. It wasn’t bad enough we severely outgeared the place, but it was just adding insult to injury that the damn achievement was bugged. Nonetheless, we went and cleared Spider with no deaths, scoring our Dedicated Few achievements in the process.

Perhaps not as epic as it would have been pre-3.1, but it was pretty fun overall. And it’s nice we finally put that nagging desire to nab Undying to rest, finally.

Highs and lows

Low point

On Saturday I was struck with the desire to bring my lvl 65 hunter (my very first WoW character, rolled the day after the game was released) out and try to finally get him going again. I bought 145 emblems worth of heirloom items, paid for normal flying, and then tried to figure out how to play a hunter again. I lost interest immediately.

High point

Rolled a new warlock instead–yes, this is on top of my other alts: the 42 druid, the 41 shaman, the 48 mage, the 80 DK–I have Alt-ADHD.

Spent the better part of yesterday leveling it with Cendra’s new rogue. Was pretty fun, and I love all the spells it has at such a low level. I’ll probably play it until 40 or so and then get bored.

Low point

Saturday I threw together a somewhat impromptu Undying run. Razuvious was the raid weekly this week, so turns out half the people invited were saved already. Finally decide we’ll just 8 man it, everyone’s pumped for a fun drunk raid, and we go to do Razuvious first. While manning one of the Understudies, my pet frame was turned off and I couldn’t drop mine in time to save Zilga’s from dying. I pick Raz back up, we’re doing good, last 10% of health. Then I lose aggro, Razuvious runs over and instagibs a poor warlock and then before we can all flee to reset, the boss dies. I screwed up Undying on the first boss.

High point

Went and did ToGC-10 instead, finished it with 48 attempts left. Got a few upgrades for the warlock, who I hope will start raiding soon. One for the win column, overall.

Low point

After that tried a late ICC-10 alt run. Never got past Marrowgar because people couldn’t switch to spikes or avoid dying in the fire.

High point

No one got saved to a fail run.

Low point

Didn’t kill Putricide last night in ICC-10 (mains run).

High point

On our best attempt we got him to 26% and there was a marked improvement every attempt that didn’t have some crazy RNG screw up early on (ie, every “real attempt”). We definitely could have killed him with a lot more time.

Also, as you might have guessed, we killed Roface on 10man for the first time. We had a third healer in the group switch to actual heals for the fight and it reduced a lot of the “one healer dead = wipe” issues we had last week. Our first try we wiped at 7%, second at 1%, third a clean kill with no deaths. Was a thing of beauty.

Low point

Went into an AV yesterday to drop a Great Feast and score my Dinner Impossible achievement. Someone asks if there’s a tank and some tool responds he can tank it. Another guy says “Rhidach has 51.1k” (no wasn’t me) and the tool retorts “I’ll out threat him and live longer.” I kept trying to type in /raid a witty riposte (“Oh ho ho, so you think …”) but I failed to realize that you use /bg to talk in the battleground raid channel. I lose my chance to salvage my ego.

High point

I haunted him the whole way to Vann where he pulled and after a few seconds I pulled aggro by out tpsing him. He taunted back, the healers didn’t have enough time to react, and he died. And I lol’d. Oh, how I lol’d.

Interrupting the Council, and some achievs fun

After Tuesday’s lagtastic night we had downed the first five bosses of ICC, leaving us Rotface and the Blood Council as Wednesday’s agenda. I admit, I was full trepidation, our Rotface kill last week was a bit messy and I was worried we’d get bogged down in that fight.

The first attempt though alleviated a lot of my worry, we got him to 17% on the first go, and that was with a snafu involving someone’s first time on the fight and them not realizing they got infected. So, messy finish, but hopeful nonetheless. Second attempt we got him down to 12%, mainly due to another ooze issue where a second Big Ooze got made and it ate a few people. Third time, however, was the charm and despite everyone going to hell at 5% we got Rotface down. Very exciting.

I don’t want to say to say the “f” word just yet (er, I mean farm), but we’re definitely getting there.

With Rotface down the time came to go put some attempts in on the Council (my thinking being we’d have more success against them than against Putricide). So happily off to the Blood Wing we trudged and lined up for a trash pull.

The trash before the Blood Council is… interesting. It requires strategy and–believe it or not–crowd control. For the two huge packs before the Blood Council’s stage we ended up shackling one guy and trying to use hunters to take one of the Tacticians out of commission. The Tacticians (basically Rogues) suck. They pop in out of no where, sap a tank, making him drop aggro, and then the mobs run roughshod over everyone. Definitely do what you can to burn down the Tacticians one at a time while the other is controlled.

Once we cleared out the trash we were ready for some potshots on the Council.

The fight itself isn’t too awful, it just requires a lot of juggling, so to speak. There’s the shock waves, the beach ball, the conjured flame, and the dark nuclei all to contend with. The fight is a huge orchestra of different clashing cacophonies, and the point of the fight is to get everyone to herd those dangers into one smooth harmony. Not as hard as it seems, but we spent the rest of the night learning everything that can go wrong (as is our usual habit) which lines us up for a kill next week.

Some things I learned:

• When Valanar is empowered and casts his shock wave you have 4.5 seconds not to run away, but you find your own spot away from other melee. When the cast time ends a shock spot appears under you and explodes for a chunk of damage. The trick is to be by yourself so you don’t get hit by other shocks.
• When someone gets chased by an empowered Conjure Flame they need to run for it (this means all ranged need to be at max range from Taldaram) and wave through everyone around them. Every time the Conjured Flame incidentally hurts people around it, it will do less damage when it explodes. So the kiter should take it through ranged, burn as many stacks as possible, and then explode it with them 15 yards away from everyone.
• The ranged tank on Keleseth has a really hard job.

Some things I read today that I wish I knew last night:

• It might make more sense for a melee tank to deal with Keleseth in the 25 man. If he gets into melee on the ranged tank (especially while empowered) that poor ranged will go splat. I think next week I’m going to try to tank him and Demo can take Valanar and Purraj (the druid) can get Taldaram. It’d be a boon for raid dps at the very least.
• If you sic a hunter’s pet on a beachball the pet will stand under it, wait for it to get low, and then hit it enough to send it up in the air. This will trivialize the beachballs.

Pretty complicated seeming fight, but once we get the hang of it, it should be cake. I’m looking forward to trying it next week.

Speaking of months behind!

Probably the more exciting thing last night was the last minute achievement burst I was inspired to do. Before raid I gathered some buddies (Cendra, Ildara, Gulliveig, Gandy) and we jumped over to Gundrak to try to do Less-Rabi. The strategy I outlined was gently get him to 51%, interrupt the next transform, then bloodlust and push to the kill while throwing interrupts like nuts at the 5 second mark.

I pulled and after the first transform he was already at 41% health. I boggled a bit but kept going. Somehow, not sure, we nailed the next interrupt which must have been a millisecond long since it took place at like 10% health. Moorabi dropped before he knew what hit him. So, Less-Rabi done and two more to go: Share the Love and Amber Void.

Since we were already in Gundrak we finished the place up to get to the last boss and then Gandy jumped on his DK to initially tank at first. Once I got impaled I took over and held him for the rest of the fight. After about three rhino phases everyone was impaled and we dropped the boss and grabbed the achiev. That was the last one Cendra and Ildara needed for Glory of the Hero so I dropped a mailbox for Cendra so he could retrieve his Red Proto, which was then the 100th mount he needed for Mountain of Mounts. Crazy achievement day for Cen!

After the raid we then headed over to Oculus so I could grab my last Glory of the Hero achievement, Amber Void. It was a quick run (as Oculus is stupid-simple now) and it wasn’t long before a Proto was also waiting in my mailbox.

Now to help Gul get his Glory achievement.

Let’s talk tankey… er, turkey

Home again, home again, jiggedy jig.

I’m finally back from my work trip to the Czech Republic (beautiful country, btw) and ready to get back into the blogging swing of things.

When I logged on this morning at 6:30 am, riddled with jet lag, I discovered it was Thanksgiving in game. Completely slipped my mind that I’d be coming back during a new holiday. Anyhoo, I ran through most of the achievements this morning, and I have some Pally-themed advice for those of you burning through the achievs as well.

The Turkinator is a bit rough, and more easily done on a low pop server or early in the morning/late at night when no one is on (like 6:30 in the morning perhaps). For us Paladins, the easiest way to do this is first make the following macro:

/target Wild Turkey
/cast Hand of Reckoning

Then do a circuit of Tirisfal Glades (or Elwynn Forest, if you’re into that sort of thing) and just mash whatever hot key you bound that macro to until 40 birds bite the dust.

For Tirisfal I recommend this path:

You should run into more than enough birds to complete the achievement just following the pink line. Moreover, I hear the area south of Scarlet Monastery has tons of birds, if you want to frontload your count a little.

I have no idea where the best turkey spots are in Elwynn (being a Hordie). If anyone could suggest for our Alliance friends an optimal path, I’d appreciate it.

Now, I need to start checking out what I’ve missed on mmo-champ. I’m sure lots has happened in my absence.

It’s not Insanity, but I’ll take it

My quest log is empty

It really wasn’t that bad. Eastern Kingdoms was a breeze thanks to Quel’thalas. I thought Kalimdor was going to consist of scrounging for drops that started quests, but at the 650ish mark I realized I still had Razor Hill and Zoram’gar Outpost to go.

Hrm… now what to do…

They call me the Seeker

Hooray, one grind down. And now I have the title of a random Paladin npc from Warcraft III. Great success!

The not-so-Undying

Tuesday is typically our Sartharion night, but now that we’ve been focusing on 2d it’s been moved to Monday (aka Progression Night). So Tuesday indeed rolls around, as it is wont to do, and we don’t have a raid to raid to satisfying that raiding itch.

Indeed.

So an impromptu Naxx10 forms, and it was all and all very successful. We steamrolled the place, finishing in about 2 1/2 to 3 hours. We didn’t wipe once, which was excellent.

In fact, we were doing so well that for a period of time I had that nagging little though in my head saying “hey, we’re on track for The Undying.”

“Quiet, you!” I immediately commanded it, fearing a jinx. It was too late though, the Jinx Gods were alerted by my hubris.

We burnt through spider wing and plague wing without a single death, and marched all the way up to Four Horsemen without incident. Then disaster struck.

We switched Rivendare and Thane, but the two bosses were kept too close after the switch and the stacks continued to pile on. A priest got stuck with a 5 stuck and couldn’t heal himself through it. He went down. Crap.

Moving on, we ignored a pull in the lead up to Patch, and of course–of course–when we engage Patch the pull comes, and in the confusion a dps warrior is taken out by a hateful strike.

We also racked up two more deaths on Thaddius. None on Kel though, which is awesome.

I think if we bring a few more A-teamers (maybe use 3 healers) and are deliberately more careful we can do it. Might as well try before they take the Black Proto Drake away!

Achieving great things in the kingdom of the spiderfolk

This past weekend my buds and I did an achievement-o-thon in Azjol-Nerub and the Old Kingdom. We managed to bang out every achievement those two instances had to offer except for two–one being Party’s Over, which we already had, and Volazj’s Demise, which we tried a few times but couldn’t nail down. I’m going to share the strategies we used so you can pick up these achievements too. [...]