One of the most irritating things about raiding would have to be ninja AFK's. You wait for the results of a ready check only to see that -- oh, crap -- someone hasn't returned a verdict. Now, AFK's can happen for good reasons (children, explosions, children with explosives), but just as often
they don't. On farm content,
it's an irritating wait. On progression content, you check your watch and realize you're inching that much closer to a respawn timer and a raid leader who'll need a prescription for that skyrocketing blood pressure of his. As time passes, the clamor to just pull the boss rises, but that's not really possible on an achievement-oriented run like
The Undying or something like a 3-drake Sartharion.
There are still a few fights where you can AFK entirely and no one would be the wiser (here's looking at you, Patchwerk), but they're a dying breed.
Too Many Annas, much to our surprise,
managed a successful Heigan kill with an AFK player, and Heigan's notoriously unforgiving even to the inattentive. The tactic involves a Paladin and what I assume to be a supremely annoyed heal team, but apparently it worked -- and I am mightily tempted to suggest it for our next Naxx clear.
Tags: afk, patchwerk, raid, raiding, raids, the-undying, too-many-annas
Filed under: Humor, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding
Feb 7th 2009 at 7:00PM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Kakistocracy Feb 7th 2009 7:11PM
I can think of another way to get someone who is afk through that fight. It involves pulling the boss then letting the person die. It won't get you undying, but afk people really don't deserve it.
Duerma Feb 7th 2009 8:13PM
Oh, I know I don't deserve it. I was fully expecting them to let me die. There was nothing I could do about the AFK, though - my husband suddenly had to work late and there was no replacement for me, and they figured a warm body that had to AFK to chase rabid preschoolers from time to time was better than no warm body at all. I was dumbfounded to find myself alive when I came back.
Apparently, a couple people reeeeeeally wanted the safety dance achievement. o.O
Kakistocracy Feb 7th 2009 9:57PM
lol, well, congrats on that.
Hmm... does DI count as dying in a boss fight? If not, we may see very good guilds selling the tittle like guilds were selling the ZA bear, by bringing some pallies and druids, and keeping the buyer DIed though the entire fight.
jaxson_bateman Feb 8th 2009 6:49AM
You only have to be present for the KT kill in a clean (ie. no death) raid ID to be awarded the achievement and title. As such, after guilds get their title they'll sell it by offering a few spots in the KT kill, with the stipulation that if the buyer causes the failure of the achievement then they still have to pay.
Ilcyra Feb 7th 2009 7:16PM
Here's a post from the player's POV: http://community.livejournal.com/wow_ladies/8654743.html
It was kids. Possibly with explosives.
Mizzle Feb 7th 2009 7:26PM
Our guild downed Heigan with only 4 people this last week ^.^
We had a few members that were new to the fight and didn't realize how fast they needed to run during the dance phases. Looking back, maybe we should have just wiped it, but I think the 4 of us that were still alive were so pumped to be alive that we just kept going.
Longest fight ever
http://truthinessguild.net/images/screenshots/wrath/misc/16minheigan.jpg
Allarion Feb 9th 2009 9:03AM
Haha! I can beat that!
We were learning the Heigan fight, and soon into the fight it was only me (resto druid), Warrior tank, Enhancement shammie. I decided NOT to wipe the raid as revenge because the week before we were doing some "retro-raiding" and after the RL called a wipe and half of the people had died and released,3 guys decided to stay and kill it (no achievement for any of us!)
Well, it took us a great deal of time (we were at that time mostly in blues), but we finally did it:
http://img517.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wowscrnshot122108005014un4.jpg
Fun fact: I had set up for that try the "Benny Hill Show" theme as a loop on my media player... the one thing I learned is you do NOT want that tune playing for 41 minutes.
Mizzle Feb 7th 2009 7:28PM
Our guild downed Heigan with only 4 people this last week ^.^
We had a few members that were new to the fight and didn't realize how fast they needed to run during the dance phases. Looking back, maybe we should have just wiped it, but I think the 4 of us that were still alive were so pumped that we just kept going.
Longest fight evar
http://truthinessguild.net/images/screenshots/wrath/misc/16minheigan.jpg
Alexander Feb 7th 2009 7:42PM
Had a similar deal back in beta. Only we had three, priest healer, me(boomkin) and a warrior tank. It was pretty epic, not to mention it took forever
Belynar Feb 7th 2009 8:05PM
Psh, that's nothing. A resto druid and I did Naxx10 Heigan for almost 22 minutes. It was quite interesting. I almost was able to re-rez a dps, but couldn't find a safe moment. Druids seem well suited for that fight.
AyaJulia Feb 7th 2009 8:15PM
You think that's bad? Our guild, which has an awesome 10-man group that I am proud to be a part of, just had their second group do their first Naxx run last night.
We had only three deaths, but we took 15 minutes. :( I made our druid battle-res me because I was the only dps over 2k (and in my defense, I died because Heigan smacked me on his way back down from the platform, not because I failed the dance).
Speedmonkay Feb 7th 2009 8:25PM
A few weeks ago we did a Heigin run that lasted over 37 minutes. It got nasty early on but for the majority of the fight (about 25 minutes) it was just 5 people - 2 tanks, 1 dps, 2 healers.
http://www.wowmeteronline.com/combat/1420420
Kolo Feb 7th 2009 11:31PM
Yeah we were 8 manning Naxx, 4 people died as soon as the fight started. So we had 1 tank, 2 healers and a hunter with a dead pet fighting him. took 21 mins.
jaxson_bateman Feb 8th 2009 6:53AM
"(and in my defense, I died because Heigan smacked me on his way back down from the platform, not because I failed the dance)"
No offense, but failing to watch a threat meter, something used in every fight, is probably worse than failing a gimmick in one fight.
superstone Feb 7th 2009 7:59PM
We had a bunch of people basically afk on a Normal Heigan kill. Only three people lived. The tank, a priest healer, and an elemental shaman that we pugged (who had died and resurrected) lived to down him after the rest of us had died to random reasons (slowpokes in the goop, not getting cleansed, etc.). It was ridiculous.
Alzoid Feb 7th 2009 8:46PM
I actually had to gkick a hunter last night from our raid because he kept going ninja afk'ing...
Granted, there we're plenty of other things that attributed to his kick, but damn if that didn't piss me off enough to finally do it
Tarquin Feb 8th 2009 12:22AM
That may be the first time I've ever had someone in raid come back from AFK and go "Why am I ALIVE?!" Usually it's the opposite.
JDM Feb 8th 2009 12:21AM
Heigan with one AFK? Is that even difficult? :-/ We've done Heigan25 with a tank, 3 heals and 2 dps, after the rest of the fail raid got wasted in the splash. Heigan is one of the most forgiving bosses in Naxx, imo.
Tarquin Feb 8th 2009 12:24AM
Not remotely. Getting the achievement with someone AFK in Zone One. on the other hand, took a little bit of creativity.
jaxson_bateman Feb 8th 2009 7:00AM
It was never really clarified, but I'm guessing they were on follow which is why they were actually in Heigan's room.
It would've been much simpler on the entire raid if you had DI'd them just outside the room. They would've been in range for the achievement and nobody would've had to have paid them any heed (if/when the DI wore off the person they would've stopped following as the person they were following would've moved out of range, meaning they would've just stood outside like a statue).