Breakfast Topic: Unintended ownage
by Allison Robert 
Feb 20th 2009 at 8:00AM
With better gear, some free time on our hands, and the siren call of a cherry-red drake, heroic achievements became less an afterthought and more an interesting challenge. The odyssey's been an education on the limits of the otherwise admirable mantra "Bring the player, not the class" (does said player bring Bloodlust?), how much DPS you can squeeze out of your tanks and healers ("Smite harder!"), and the welcome role that luck often plays. I am ashamed to admit that Less-rabi, one of the most difficult and frustrating hurdles of Glory of the Hero, was accomplished because yours truly can't tell the difference between her Maul and Bash hotkeys in the heat of the moment. Accidentally interrupting a 0.4-second cast ability within a tenth of a second is going to go down as one of the great Fortunate Fool moments of my tanking career. My friends, if you're working on heroic or raiding achievements, whether casually or seriously, I wish you that kind of dumb luck.
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Humor, Bosses, Wrath of the Lich King, Achievements
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
native Feb 20th 2009 8:07AM
what exactly are we supposed to discuss here?
Malkia Feb 20th 2009 10:05AM
Dumb luck and or achievements I think.
Matchu Feb 20th 2009 8:09AM
Accidentally hitting death coil, watching now feared trash mob running towards the next huge pull of trash then suddenly drop dead from your dots. /dance
Sometimes you get lucky. Like "Gonna Go When the Volcano Blows" is pretty much all luck unless you want to really annoy the raid and kill yourself as soon as it starts.
Viper007Bond Feb 20th 2009 8:14AM
Having a couple people kill themselves on purpose is pretty much the old way to do it. That last 10% is essentially impossible to not get hit during.
We always just have a few people die if we aren't doing a 3 drake run. Takes a few weeks to get everyone the achievement, but worth it.
Kanuris Feb 20th 2009 12:14PM
Easy on a Paladin if you PuG Sarth.
"Oh whoops, must've hit Shift when i scrolled my mouse wheel to zoom in, hit Divine Intervention instead of Holy Light"
Then pray none of the druids tries to res you :)
Evoker Feb 20th 2009 8:16AM
Well I have only timed Oculus left and for 3rd time last night we failed because the ruby drake rider decided to fly too close to Eregos thus getting a melee hit and getting owned.
The Glory of the Hero is fun to do and the reward is yet another proto-drake. I guess it will go nicely next to my blue and green one :)
sephirah Feb 20th 2009 8:23AM
"The Glory of the Hero is fun to do and the reward is yet another proto-drake. I guess it will go nicely next to my blue and green one :)"
I hate you.
sephirah Feb 20th 2009 8:22AM
For some achievements, you must work hard to *not* get them.
Take Defenseless for example: after getting it I wondered "Defense Control Crystals? What are they?"
h8rain Feb 20th 2009 9:57AM
*whispers to sephirah*
Me too. I got that one by pure accident. Shoot I think I have done that instance one time when a DPS *used* the defense crystals.
Malkia Feb 20th 2009 10:05AM
I used the crystals on the only time I was in there on heroic. See there's this thing about the void walker boss and undergeared paladin healers....it was not pretty..
Kanuris Feb 20th 2009 12:26PM
Those crystals are pretty much a neccessity for getting the achievement from the Water Elemental boss.
vexis58 Feb 20th 2009 12:57PM
Same here. We were actually TRYING to hit the defense crystals, but they weren't lighting up as clickable, so we got the achievement. Go figure.
Just like the voidwalker boss guy. "Wait, we could kill those things? WTF"
Karilyn Feb 20th 2009 8:28AM
3 heroic achievements left.
Less-Rabi
Emerald Void
Make it Count
:(
This is going to be difficult.
Allison Robert Feb 20th 2009 1:33PM
Those were among the last four I had as well (the fourth was Herald Volazj as I just could not get a shaman for love or money).
Make It Count: this is actually actually a lot easier than it seems. While Bloodlust helps on the boss fights, it's by no means required. Speed is mostly dependent on your group's ability to avoid trash and handle the bosses quickly. Do Make It Count with a 2-ruby, 2-amber, and 1-emerald setup that's agreed upon in advance. Clear your first platform, then the central ring, then the next platform, then fly *through* the central ring to get to Varos (this keeps travel time to a minimum). Only stop to clear 3 -4 dragons on your way between platforms. Don't bother looting Urom's corpse -- he won't despawn by the time you've dealt with Eregos. Doing this we typically end up with between 2-5 minutes left on the timer.
Emerald Void: Try this on a different run because you do run the risk of a wipe on Eregos costing you the Make It Count timer. We used a 1-ruby/4-amber setup and had 2 ambers always channeling while the 2 others spammed Shock Lance. Time Stop all of the enrages and fly clockwise or counterclockwise around the platform during the phase shift. The damage should be high enough to kill Eregos before he kills the ruby drake, although the person on the ruby should know what they're doing.
Less-rabi: Honestly, this achievement is still dependent on luck to a certain extent. Even if you count down to each Transformation attempt, any amount of server or player-side lag will usually screw you over, as will a badly-timed Stomp from him. Past 40% health you're looking at a 0.3 to 0.5 second cast Transformation, which is VERY hard to catch. So my only advice would be: a). bring a Bloodlust, b). bring very, very competent DPS, and c). bring multiple interrupts, have everyone count down and attempt to interrupt the last cast. And, if at all possible, have the second or last Interrupt be a Counterspell, which will give you 8 seconds of uninterrupted (pun!) DPS.
Heilig Feb 20th 2009 2:58PM
I wish people would stop saying this. Counterspell, even Improved Counterspell, DOES NOT LOCK OUT BOSSES. All you get out of it is the interrupt. Having a mage in the group does not give you any more time between casts. We have tested it six million different ways, and NOTHING increases the time between his casts.
Dzikus Feb 20th 2009 8:42AM
For Less-Rabi, what actually helped us, we counted seconds between changes. Below 50% he casts it every 5 seconds exactly, so if you have good timing, you don't actually need to watch cast bar. We needed some practice, but it worked :)
Allison Robert Feb 20th 2009 1:48PM
The most frustrating thing for us was the combination of lag and several attempts where he just never seemed to try "on time," and -- oh yes -- some truly awful timing on his stuns.
Aymuhdroowud Feb 20th 2009 8:54AM
For what it's worth last week we got Momma said knock you out in Heroic Naxx because our priest in charge of MC figured it'd be a good idea to use the worshipper to cast fireballs instead of dispell frenzy. Brute force ftw eh?
Lyraat Feb 20th 2009 8:55AM
Author reminds me of my friend, a hunter-turned-prot-warrior. He doesn't like achievements, but after we forced him to tank a few heroic achievements, he started getting interested in the red proto-drake. Now, after a few more achievements, he's more than excited, he's addicted to getting that proto-drake.
Agreed. The whole "bring player, not class" doesn't work well on achievements. How is a group composed of a prot pally, SV hunter, lock, boomkin, and holy priest supposed to complete Less-rabi? They cannot. Simply not enough interrupts. And between heroism/bloodlust and 5-second interrupts and totems, shamans are almost required for some of these achievements.
Malkia Feb 20th 2009 10:02AM
That's the issue we faced with Less-rabi.
I'm a survival hunter.
They counted our interrupts and then said Malkia you can interrupt too right?
Ahaha no. Survival sorry.
However we did get the achievement for fighting the last guy while all smelly...