Posts with tag deaths

It's safe to say that we've been around the block in World of Warcraft. We've been witness to epic events, scenic vistas, and many, many untimely deaths. Mostly our own. But of those many deaths, some were more memorable than others. Some we've stored away in the recesses of our memory to be revisited and laughed over at a later date. So just what are our favorite WoW deaths? We consulted the WoW Insider team as well as some of our extended network of friends and compiled the best answers into this list.

You might want to look before you leap
WoW can be so beautiful that sometimes we forget it's a game. A game that can kill you. And so sometimes we find ourselves exploring, wandering, or accidentally autorunning to our doom. Oops. Many -- most, in fact -- of our so-called "favorite" deaths seem to involve untimely falls.

• Sarah Pine: My favorite way of having died was when I first made it to Hellfire Peninsula at 60, running around on my mount exploring (flying was at 70 at that time!), I leaped over a little hill only to find that there was no more land on the other side, because that was the edge of the continent. You fall for a while off of Hellfire before you actually die, I found out.
• Anne Stickney: Once I decided to see if Outland had invisible walls around the edges. Um, for the record, it does NOT.
• Brian Wood: I still have fond memories of a multitude of deaths from failing the shortcut jump to get to the Molten Core entrance in vanilla. Had lots and lots of opportunity to practice during ghost runs.
• Michael Sacco: I liked going to the top of the Temple of Storms and leaping off.
• @DoctorOddfellow: Well, #1 has to be tree-diving from Teldrassil, right?
• @hestiahdruid: Shadow Step, Heroic Leap, or the Druid version behind a boss to fall to your doom.
• @screwlewse: Falling into the lava where Magmaw stands.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

This is it -- the last priest healing boss guide of the expansion! (After this, it's pandas or bust, baby!) Are you excited? You should be, because the last boss fight of Cataclysm is a loot piñata that's actually easier than the second to last fight a lot of fun! Hopefully, you all remember the drill from last week ... You want to familiarize yourself with the mechanics of this fight before progressing further into this guide. LearnToRaid.com has a nice video guide for Madness of Deathwing, and Icy Veins has an excellent written guide.

Priests of either spec should know that cooldown management is the key to succeeding in this encounter as a priest. The encounter as a whole is not particularly difficult, but using your regen cooldowns at the right time will pave the way for you to hold onto just enough mana from start to finish. I recommend using your first Shadowfiend after the Mutated Corruption dies on the first platform, and your first Hymn of Hope just after jumping over to the second platform. Your second Shadowfiend should be used as soon as it becomes available, which will allow you to pair your third Shadowfiend and second Hymn of Hope together (just like we used to always do it in Wrath -- cast Shadowfiend, then immediately follow it up with Hymn of Hope). From there, use everything on cooldown, and you should be sitting pretty for mana the whole fight.

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading on the Matticast.

Just a quick heads up for healers: If you haven't visited Plus Heal in a while, do check it out, as it has undergone a facelift. If you've registered there in the past, you'll need to re-register, because user information was not able to be transferred.

On to this week's post. This is a classic case study for healing leaders and handling player deaths -- healer deaths, to be specific. In this case, I goofed up big time. We were tackling the heroic version of Atramedes. There are two ways that this encounter can be done:

Option 1: Move everyone together as a single unit.
Option 2: Split the raid in half and assault Atramedes on both sides.

We went for the second option. I split the healers up, four in one direction and three in the other. Somehow I ended up with three priests on one side and a mix of shaman, druids and paladins on the other. I wasn't thinking properly; for Leap of Faith reasons, I wanted at least two priests on that one side.

So what else happened?

There are a few accomplishments in this game that truly amaze me anymore. Leveling characters is routine now, and having an army of high level alts at your disposal isn't something super uncommon anymore. However I have been amazed by this:

Cautious, a Warrior, leveled to 80 without dying.

She had no deaths. None. Nada. Zilch.

There is no achievement for doing this, however I wouldn't blame Blizzard one bit if they went in and retroactively added one just for Cautious. Lord of the Rings Online has a no-death achievement, but only up through level 20. I got to level 18 without dying on LotRO on a recent attempt, however I perished when some "really really super awesome person" trained a bunch of mobs near me just as I executed an AoE attack. "Really really super awesome person" is what I called him too. Honest.

A few months ago in The Queue a reader asked if there would ever be (or is) such an achievement for WoW, and my response at the time was no, there is not one now and probably would not be one later. I reasoned that including such an achievement would just present undue psychological damage on the player if they died at 79 from an unforeseen circumstance. I still don't think there will be one, but it's pretty awesome someone managed to do it sans in-game achievement.

There are some interesting statistics Cautious had upon reaching level 80 without deaths. You can check out a lot of them on her armory profile, but those are inflated just a tad since she has played since reaching 80.

Some of her key stats upon reaching level 80 include:

This was hinted at the other day when the idea of an "Immortal" achievement for Ulduar was thrown around, but Bornakk has stepped up to clear up exactly what's supposed to be happening with Naxx's ultimate "flawless victory" achievement.

He clears up all the questions that people have asked. To get the achievement, you only have to be present for Kel'thuzad, as long as no one has died on any of the other bosses. And "dying" on the other bosses means any deaths at all -- including wipes, or any other deaths while bosses are engadged. Deaths on trash are apparently fine, and will not lose you the achievement, but if anyone dies on a boss, the raid ID is lost for the week and you've got to start over again next time (of course, you can still go through and get all of the loot and other rewards, so it's not a total wash).

It's tough, no question, but remember that this is an achievement, not a part of normal progress. It's designed to really push your guild (or at least show you've got some good gear). While most of Naxx won't give an experienced, well-geared guild much trouble, achievements like this one can and should be more of a challenge.

While you may think that no death is a good death, some are definitely worse than others.  I can pinpoint my least favorite immediately - it was a full party of mid-40s players running through Jintha'Alor to finish making Zul'Ferrak mallets.  The final pulls as we approached our goal were level 51 elites, and quite challenging for our under-leveled group.  We finished and started heading out, to be met with respawns.  I, a cloth wearer, was taken out pretty quickly, while the rest of the group managed to run, and keep running, to safety.  I must say that extracting myself from this temple, swarming with angry trolls, was quite interesting.  But there are still other scenes that come to mind - instance runs gone wrong and particularly underhanded PvP tactics.  What about you?  Do you have a least favorite encounter with your friend the spirit healer?