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8.12.2009

Achievement Runs!

Over the past few days, a few new friends and I have been doing achievement runs. Our group composition has been me--Protection Warrior, with Arms dps offspec; Survival Hunter; Blood DK, with unholy tank offspec; Boomkin, with resto offspec; and Resto Shaman, with Elemental offspec. We're all pretty skilled players, and between that and easy-to-get ilevel 226 gear (I acquired Gauntlets of the Royal Watch for 28 badges just yesterday), we've been able to roll through the achievements with minimal issues.

But now, I'll cover the ones that have been most difficult for us.

Special note: If I had a word count limit, this would have to be split up into multiple sections. I don't, so it's gonna be one long post. I've noticed that my posts have all increased in length. The first one was about 900 words, the second was about 1200... this will be big)
(EDIT: 2700 words whoo new record!)

Oculus:

Make It Count - Yeah, no. We attempted the instance with 5 ambers. But no. Just... no. I'll get back to you once we practice the instance more. I think a "normal" composition of 2 ambers, 2 rubies, and 1 emerald would make this a lot simpler. I think 5 ambers has potential once we get the fights down, though.

Old Kingdom:

Respect Your Elders - Okay this one was fairly difficult. The wowhead comments said something about kiting him far away, but then that you can't do that because he gets a +500% damage buff when you take him out of his room. Additionally, I was under the impression that the aura was LoS-based. So, this is what we did:

The DK went to his tank offspec. I tanked the boss where he stood, and the DK pulled the guardians into the field area that we entered from, and then around the corner. Thus, the healer stood on the stairs and was able to heal both me and the DK, even though there was a wall between his mob and mine.
=>THIS DID NOT WORK.<=
The aura, you see, is not based on Line of Sight but on DISTANCE. And it's a long distance indeed. SO, we did the following (positioning in italics):

In the process of fighting your through trash to the boss, you go down a fairly large flight of stairs into a field area. Going down the stairs, there is an alcove area between staircase and wall off to the right. This is where you tank the boss--and make sure none of your dps attacks him while you're moving him from his starting point to this corner! The boss will NOT enrage when you pull him here (I'm not sure where he does enrage, actually)
The DK tanked the guardians where they spawned, a bit less than 80 yards away. The healer stood equidistant between us, able to heal us both with long-range spells.
However, adds spawn under the effects of the immunity aura, and therefore are untankable--and therefore attack the healer. SO, about midway through the fight the DK popped a cooldown or two and the shaman ran over to where I was. The adds lost the invulnerability aura and the DPS let loose a quick hurricane/volley, and the shaman went back to his original spot.
We had a bit of a mishap where an add escaped the DK, who had to run over to me, deathgrip, and run back to the spawning area--but overall it was very clean and easy.

I believe our time was [1 minute, 37 seconds] according to deadly boss mods.



Volunteer Work
- This is much much simpler to explain. Right before the pull, I used an Indestructible Potion, then went as normal. When she goes airborne, we all just sit around, top each other off, easy times. Then, as she landed and began to attack with +200% damage, I popped Shield Wall (40% damage reduction). Not too hard. Second time she went up and down again, I used Last Stand (+30% hp). Third time, I used Enraged Regeneration (30% HP HoT), Lifeblood (herbalist self-HoT for a few thousand) and also a runic healing potion. GG.
I do have a few notes, though:
1) I didn't know this until the fight actually commenced: She creates a lightning-disc-thing below people's feet randomly. This IS affected by her +200% damage enrage, so it can do quite a boatload. Obviously, DPS shouldn't stand in the fire, but she did it under the DK meleeing her, and we both got hit. The healer was freaking out at the damage I was taking, so he went into Heal-The-Tank overdrive. The DK died. Luckily, we battlerezzed him the next time the boss went Airborne.
Remember that it's not just dps that has to stand out of the fire.
2) I called for bloodlust when she was at 95% or so, thinking "might as well". It wasn't a smart idea. She went up at about 75% (ie 5 seconds later) and we lost a good 20 seconds off of the buff. I recommend using it the third time she enrages, when the tank is out of cooldowns, so the healer has 30% faster heals and the dps can burn her faster (IF you need it at all. I'm 100% sure we could have done it without bloodlust just as easily. Like I say, we could only dps with it for about 15 seconds)



Volazj's Quick Demise
- Really, not so difficult. We used several tricks to get ahead.
The first one: Have everyone stack up tightly, so when Insanity is cast, the adds all appear within melee range. Thus, you can volley/shockwave/hurricane them down very quickly (unless the hunter uses Deterrence, which was annoying)
The second one: Bloodlust at 70%. He starts to cast the first insanity at 66%, and it's about a 5 second cast. We took him down to ~45% before we went into our little dreamworlds, with a good 30 seconds left on Lust. We finished the first insanity in about 15 seconds, brought him down to 33%, he started casting--and we got him to about 20% before the second insanity took hold.
The third one: When the DK entered his first Insanity, he used army of the dead. This killed his adds with superlative speed. Remember, when you break out of your insanity you can help others break out of their own. Therefore, while I was finishing off the Shaman and the DK, both of them were suddenly overwhelmed with a swarm ghouls that popped out of nowhere.
The fourth one: Spell Reflect his mind flay. According to wowhead, it ticks on him for something like 18k per hit. I tried to do this, but alas... Spell Reflect's effect lasts 5 seconds while the cooldown is 10, and if you try to Spell Reflect midway through the channeling, nothing happens. He only Mind Flayed two times, and SR was on cooldown the first, and I was late the second.

However, the fourth one was not really needed. His Quick Demise was carried out about a minute and thirty seconds into the fight.



Azjol-Nerub

Watch Him Die
- This one can be a toughie. It requires strong dps, heals, and tanking. I attempted this in mostly ilevel 200 epics a while back, and it failed miserably. Now, with mostly 219-226 gear, it was much simpler. I've heard strategies with 2 tanks, but I think that reduces overall dps by a bit too much. Here's what we did:

Slow and steady wins the race. First, we pulled the leftmost boss+adds. Killed the two adds, did nothing to the boss. Then, we went after the middle group, knocked down the two adds. Went on further, got the rightmost group, killed the adds.
NOW, I pulled the boss. Three or four seconds to give me aggro, then Bloodlust, cooldowns, the whole shebang. He died fairly quickly. I THINK the mini-bosses despawn on the death of the main guy, but I'm not 100% sure.
Here are some keys to the fight:

1) Face the bosses away from the group so they don't get hit by the cone of poison.
1a) A druid with abolish poison on the tank trivializes that aspect of the fight. Also a paladin with Cleanse, a Totem of Cleansing, etc.
2) Dps priorities are on the webwraps, at all times. If a tank gets wrapped, it's probably a wipe. If a healer gets wrapped, it's a wipe. If a dps gets wrapped, it's likely a wipe due to the nature of this dps race.

3) Like on "Volunteer Work" (Or Mimiron Phase 1) Chaining cooldowns is the way of the future. Shield Wall, followed by Last Stand, then Enraged Regeneration + Trinket... and then you pray and/or envy Death Knights.

If you can do this, you know that you've got good tanking ability, strong heals, and great dps.


Hadronox Denied
- I only know how to do this with a hunter. I suppose it's doable without, but then deaths may ensue. I have some theories on how to do it without the reset strategy, which I'll talk about after we go over the way that I did it.
After you kill the first boss, you encounter a bridge over a web. Below, on the web, is a small group, led by an "Anub'ar Crusher".
What you want to do is have the group just chill, up on the bridge. Have your hunter run down, aggro the pack, and Feign Death. Everything will despawn.
Now, everyone needs to run down onto the web. There is a tunnel off to one side leading further down (the tunnel to the hole to Anub'Arak himself). Enter this tunnel, and go into the room at the bottom. Look up. Above you, through the web, you should see the Anub'Ar Crusher group respawn. More importantly, you will see Hadronox respawn. Then, fight her as normal. No problem.
When she dies, some adds might run down the tunnel you entered through. They are not elite, so just aoe them down.
NOTE: I'm sure this (exact method) can be done without a hunter, but whoever goes down there has to die. If they've got itemrack (or use blizzard's built-in one), they should take off their gear before they run down so they'll have no durability damage, then hit the button for that specific gearset to put it all back on. Conversely, they could just suffer the durability damage.
HYPOTHETICAL WAY OF DOING THIS ACHIEVEMENT: Kill the Crusher, as normal. Kill the next two Crusher groups, as normal--but do all of this quickly. Run down the tunnel and just pull the boss, who will probably have a ton of adds attacking her. AoE down the adds, and then just have a dps (preferably a ranged dps) kill the adds as they come out of their holes at the top of the staircases.

The Nexus

Chaos Theory:
This achievement was very hectic. What we did was very, very rough, so here I'm putting down some mild improvements. We got it down the first time, but we didn't REALLY know the strategies involved. All we knew was "Don't kill rifts" and someone mentioned "Stand over 15 yards behind the tank when he goes invulnerable".
Preparation: You must clear out the platform before his, and also the land area north of that lower platform. You need room to kite him.
The fight: As normal, pull and dps the boss. He does arcane damage and spawns Chaotic Rifts. At 75/50/25% he will go invulnerable for 45 seconds and Charge Chaotic Rifts, which spams lightning on the group.
75%, First Invulnerability: The whole group runs down to the platform below. The tank stands at the top of the ramp to Anomalus' platform (still within LoS of the healer, but close to the boss). The adds that spawn from the Chaotic Rifts most likely will not aggro the tank, and they'll just stand on the upper platform, floating around. Lightning will strike the closest member to Anomalus (the tank) quickly and constantly for about 500 damage a tick. If any group member gets within 15 yards of the tank, they'll get hit by lightning too--as will anyone within 15 yards of that group member, and so on and so forth.
When the invulnerability fades, Anomalus will go to attack the tank, who will tank him on the lower platform. Again, this is as normal--EXCEPT when anomalus goes to attack, so will the adds that have been spawned (10 or so of them). They are non-elite, so aoe them down. Then bring Anomalus down to 50%. (Note: We didn't aoe down those adds. I just picked them up while the group stayed on Anomalus. This came back to bite us later).
50%, Second Invulnerability: The whole group runs down to the land below, and only you will stand up on the top of the ramp. Nobody but you should be hit by chain lightning, and adds shouldn't aggro you (if they do, DPS is free to aoe them down from range).
When the invulnerability fades, MORE mobs will come with him. Kill them, kill him.
25%, Last Invulnerability: Anomalus is gonna be at the bottom of the ramp to the lower platform, you'll be standing near-ish him, the rest of the team >15 yards away.
When it fades, there will be more adds. Just go for Anomalus, then mop up the adds.

You might wipe during this achievement--we did...

Now, my group did a shoddy way of not really pulling him far from platform to platform to land, and not really killing the adds. So, after the last invulnerability, there were about 30-40 mobs attacking every single person, AND to top it off, we didn't clear the trash north of the platforms, so there was a chaotic rift BEHIND us, spawning mobs (you cannot kill chaotic rifts, even if they were not spawned by Anomalus). But we got it, even though the healer (and then very rapidly the dps and myself) all died in succession. I was the last alive before he died and as he did, I did. The cheers in vent were awesome.


Utgarde Pinnacle:

Lodi Dodi We Loves the Skadi AND My Girl Loves to Skadi All the Time

These complement each other very well, so we completed (and therefore I will explain) them together.

This event is a good one, and fairly easy (especially with good aoe). Our method involved a reset.

First, we did the event as normal, up to a point. We ran down the hall, aggroed the mobs, etc. Two of our folks were assigned to grab 3 harpoons each. When that happened, we ran back down the hall from whence we came, back into the Trophy Room.

The moment the mobs chasing us despawned, we ran BACK to the end of the Skadi Hall, by the harpoon launchers. Skadi respawns but does not aggro when we're this far behind him, so the DK ran to pick him up. Thirty or so mobs spawned but were dispatched with Shockwave, Volley, and a Hurricane from the druid (who got 5500 dps that fight!). Once Grauf, the protodrake, got within range, the two dps launched their harpoons. Skadi landed and I picked him up, while telling the DPS to take down the remaining add or two.


Almost immediately upon landing, though, Skadi did his devastating whirlwind. DISARMING SOLVES THIS (be it a rogue's dismantle, a warrior's disarm, or that one shadow priest ability, and whatever other disarms there might be)
Additionally, while he chases a random target with his whirlwind, remember that it slows him down to about 50% run speed, and that you can taunt him. Thus, if he attacks the Hunter, I can taunt him away so he just attacks my plate-covered self.

The shaman used bloodlust the moment Skadi dropped the ground, and we polished him off quickly. Overall, these two achievements are easy--the hardest part is the moment he takes flight, when many mobs pour out of the hall stacked up on each other. A pally or dk with aoe threat trivializes that aspect (as well as a druid spamming swipe). For warriors, however, the best bet is to use Vigilance on the top AoE dps, and shockwave as early as possible (so it comes off cooldown as early as possible).

---------------------------

Well! There you have it! A mountain of achievements--here's hoping you all get Glory of the Hero and a shiny red protodrake!

Tomorrow: Ulduar and how I hope Blizzard keeps with the style of it.




-Hyperiom

2 comments:

  1. Regarding Make It Count -- use a comp you're comfortable with, and practice in normal once or twice to see if your drake skills are sufficient. The run is made or broken on the drake assuming you downed the normal bosses in sufficient time.

    When downing constructs, avoid as many drake pulls as possible. This is achieved by using the inner ring as your pathing (switch to platforms between constructs in the pulls).

    While doing the summoned trash, move as quickly as possible -- aggro before everyone is there if need be. Every second can potentially count. If your healer and dps are good, simply tank the 3rd boss behind a pillar with your ranged and healer standing outside the frostbomb.

    (If you need any advice with the others, I've got a mouthful for all of them to offer :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm sure it's quite doable, it's just trying to do Oculus for the first time in months combined with doing Emerald AND Ruby void... was a bit too much for the group. With practice, we'll get it down.

    ReplyDelete

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