The concept for this post was thought up by a IM conversation I had with Matticus after my guild banged out a bunch of achievements in Naxx last night. Thanks for the brainstorm!
You’ve cleared 25 Man Naxx and Malygos and you’re making progress (or have completed) 3 Drake Sartharion… 3.1 and Ulduar are a ways off…
My guild has been focusing on these for the last couple of weeks. Up until then, we didn’t put much effort into them as we were mainly pursuing Sartharion + 3 – which we finally got last week. Some people feel the Achievement System is only a check box system- who cares? However, it allows your guild to fine tune and hone its abilities in preparation for Ulduar – then add in the fact if you can get Heroic: Glory of the Raider, you can score yourself a very brag-worthy mount.
The key to many of these achievements is being smart and having strong DPS. I will again refer to a quote from TardFactor “higher DPS is the best MP5 there is”.
Arachnophobia
Matticus did a great write up on Arachnophobia tips, so I really don’t want to usurp any of that thunder. I do have some points to add though: Do loot last if you are worried about time. You can go back and do loot on all 3 bosses before going into the next wing. The bosses/loot won’t despawn in the 20 minutes that it should take to do this Achievement. Or just have the master looter do it from afar. You can assign loot to anyone in the instance.
Momma Said Knock You Out
What we typically do to control this fight is to kill the Followers and leave up the Worshippers. We left the worshipers on our offtank and had a Druid maintank Faerlina. We chose a druid to simply soak up more of her damage during Frenzy. Shamans need to have poison cleanse totems out, and the healers need to be ready to step up healing during Frenzies. Use cooldowns to keep the tank up if needed. Other than that, its simply heal through her increased damage. If your DPS is strong, you shouldn’t be spending much time with Frenzy; she should die quickly.
The Safety Dance
If you have people who have lag/connection issues: sit them out for this fight. The fight isn’t a DPS race, it is purely a “don’t stand in the fire” fight. You could conceivably 2 man this fight: one tank, and one healer. Healers watch the people who are falling behind. (Week to week it usually is the same people.) Be ready to Shield them or snap a COH on them or even Guardian Spirit/Pain Supression. Stay as close to the platform as you can without getting AOEd, the distance between the safe zones is much shorter.
And They Would All Go Down Together
This fight is all about control. Split your DPS into 4 groups. Assign each DPS group to each Boss. Split your healers accordingly. We ran 1 healer on each ranged tank, and then split the rest up on the front two tank groups. Stay with your group: DPS, Healers and Tanks and rotate together. DPS needs to be ready to stop DPSing and just move with their groups if they get too far ahead of the other groups. This isn’t a DPS race, it is all about control. Stop DoTs at 10% and slowly peel them down to 2-3%, you don’t want your DoTs to push one of them over too soon. Once all 4 are at 2-3% and you have split your DPS appropriately take them out.
Make Quick Werk of Him
This is perhaps one of the more cut and dry achievements. Plan and simple: DPS harder. What can you do to make DPS increase. Short answer: Bring fewer healers. We do this with 5 healers. 1 on the MT, 2 on the two OTs. Your healers should be able to spam heals for 3 minutes, so having “only” 5 healers is a non-issue… heck, if you can bring fewer, even better. That is 17 DPS. If you are going to do this fight, be ready to wipe to reset. Use the in-game achievement tracker to see the countdown timer. HOLD on Heroism. The trick on this fight is to know if your BASE DPS fast enough. If you blow heroism in the first minute, you really don’t have a grasp if you are on pace. What you don’t want to do is learn too late that you are going to miss it by 2 seconds, since you have then wasted a week’s reset. Once you hit the 1 minute mark, your raid leader is going to need to make a judgement call- with that baseline DPS PLUS Heroism will you make it? If a wipe is called, EVERYONE must die to clear out the Exhaustion/Heroism Debuff and try again.
Shocking!
This achievement so many guilds struggle on. Heck, we only got this last night, and according to www.WoWProgress.com had it as US Rank 178th and Realm 1st. However, this achievement is simply a “pay attention” fight. That being said, you do need to be ready to adjust if something goes wrong. If someone DC’s, move around them… shift the whole raid away from them and continue on. Further, if they come back online they should stay out of the groups until they get a polarity back. To quote a guildy, “You literally run back and forth depending on what color you get. I’m pretty sure mice do a version of this in lab tests.” Be aware, be aware, be aware.
The Hundred Club
Simple: no Frost Resist armor, no Pally Aura, only Mark of the Wild. The net difference between the damage taken from the AOE DOT is changing from 10-12% resist(MoTW only) to a 18-20% partial resist(MoTW & Aura) . Healers be aware, you will have increased duty on this fight since more damage is going out, however the net difference is fairly negligible. If you are struggling, have some of your hybrid DPS classes (Elemental Shaman and Boomkin) assist on healing and try again.
Just Can’t Get Enough
18 Aboms in Phase 1, once we tried this we found it incredibly easy. Just have your tank proactively pull them, and burn them down fast. Assign 1 or 2 people to DPS the skeletons as they come, and call out the banshees when they come too. Other than that, focus on your 18 Aboms. Keep count. We kill 1 or 2 more than we think we need just to be safe. You won’t get the achievement credit until after KT dies, so be sure you got 18, otherwise you’re waiting another week.
Spore Loser
This is not part of Heroic: Glory of the Raider. This encounter was pretty buggy up until 3.08 and often caused you to fail the achievement by having the spores despawn. Just be sure your tank keeps moving from the spores, and your classes that have passive buffs that do damage to attackers as the spores will aggro on players and attack them. That means Thorns, Molten Armor, Wandering Plague, and the like need to be either turned off or spec’d out of. Our Unholy DK respec’d for this fight. Losing the buff does make for a longer fight, and the damage to the raid by the spores does strain the healers some (on a fight were healing can’t happen a bulk of the time), however we only added about 1 minute to our normal fight time. On this achievement, per WoWProgress.com, we actually tied for US 2nd, and World 4th with a few other guilds. Give the achievement a try, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
The Immortal
Having successfully getting The Undying last week, The Immortal is the next Achievement in our sights. I strongly suggest not going for Immortal and these other Achievements at the same time. The Immortal will require a lot of focus and effort, and getting the other achievements first will be a good warm up. (It will also help you see which raiders will be a possible detriment and need Priest Guardian Spirit macros in your Immortal runs). Once we get The Immortal, will share any tips I can glean from that experience.
I hope this write up provides some insight to those out there that are having fun with the Achievement System. With some time, execution and effort, you’ll get these and more.
For those lurkers out there, here is a link to my Armory’s Achievement Progress.
