Achievement Unlocked: 25 Respecs

Achievements: Some of us love them, and some of us hate them, but most of us are probably somewhere in the middle. I am in the "somewhere in the middle" category. There are some achievements that I am actively working toward and others that I just don't care about at all. However, a post on our guild forums got me thinking about something that happened in our 10-man run this weekend and I thought I'd bring it up here.

See, in my opinion, some achievements are just broken. The specific one that was on my mind today was Spore Loser. To get this achievement, the raid must kill Loatheb without killing any Spores. The problem here is that some classes have passive damage that they can't control. For example, my Death Knight has a talent that gives my diseases a chance to do damage to nearby enemies within 8 yards. This damage is entirely passive and the only way it can be prevented is by not casting my diseases on my primary target (which is really not an option at all), or keeping all additional targets at least 8 yards away from what I am pounding on. So the solution is clear: we have someone kiting the spores with a non-damage taunt. I don't know how easy this will be, but it's either that or I respec out of a very common Unholy talent just for this fight. So, my question is, if the kiting method doesn't work, should players have to respec out of common raid builds for specific raid achievements? I am not asking if they should or shouldn't do it for their guild, but should respeccing be necessary to complete a raid achievement in the first place? Now, maybe the kiting method will work, and this will be a moot point, but I am still curious what everyone thinks.

Another achievement that I think has been poorly designed is Watch Him Die. On the surface, this achievement is pretty simple: Defeat Krik'thir the Gatewatcher in Azjol-Nerub on Heroic Difficulty while Watcher Gashra, Watcher Narjil and Watcher Silthik are still alive.The problem is that, as far as I can find, the only way to achieve this is to die at the end of the kill. You leave the adds up and kill the boss, but after the boss is down your whole party ends up dying due to the adds. I am sure that Tier 8 or 9 gear will help with completing this achievement while remaining alive, but until then, is the intended way to complete this really to have everyone die at the end? I was in a very competent group that worked on this for 2 nights. We did finally get it, but we still all died. It was crazy close, and three of the five of us were dead even before the kill. From all of the comments on WoWHead, this seems to be the way people beat this one. It just doesn't seem right that the achievement comes with death. Shouldn't this be do-able while remaining alive? Now that would be an achievement!

The last one I want to mention is Less-rabi. To gain the achievement, you must defeat Moorabi in Gundrak on Heroic Difficulty while preventing him from transforming into a mammoth at any point during the encounter. Now, this one is very possible without cheesing the encounter, but only if you stack silencing classes. If he even attempts to cast his transformation while he is below 20% health it's pretty much an instant cast. GhostCrawler told us "Take the player, not the class." Does this not carry over into achievements? Now, there are other ways of getting this achievement, but they all involve cheesing the encounter and having someone drop from combat to reset the fight after Moorabi transforms. It's a blatant exploit, but it the only way some of us will ever get this achievement as it currently stands.

I may be up the middle on how I feel about achievements overall, but with the game getting so easy, the achievements that are a real challenge draw me in. I am just not a fan of achievements that are not possible without a certain class/spec makeup or ones that have to be exploited. Hopefully Blizzard fixes these and improves the achievement system overall. I have some ideas for that, that I will discuss in the near future.

Changes to my Death Knight's Spec
Several weeks back I decided that I needed to up my single-target DPS. My AoE DPS was astounding, but when it came to a single-target fight like Patchwerk, I felt like a wasted spot in the raid. I made some changes that helped, and I did a lot of research, as well. I found that the best spec for DPSing single-target boss encounters was a dual-wielding DPS tri-spec. I guess I have found my second spec for when patch 3.1 releases. For now, though, I have decided on making a couple of additional changes to my current Unholy spec:

• First, I am taking the four points I had in Desecration. This will actually lower my DPS on fights where we don't move (like Patchwerk), but it is an absolute waste of points in all encounters where I do have to move (which includes most of the encounters in the current raids—at least to some degree). I just don't get the 5% damage bonus if I can't stand in one spot for any significant period of time.
• Second, I am taking two of those four points and putting them into Unholy Aura. I had this in my first raiding spec, but sacrificed it to up my personal single-target damage. I have decided that the overall damage increase for the raid that will result from everyone being able to move 15% faster outweighs any personal benefit I had from using those points elsewhere.
  
• The other two points I removed from Desecration will be invested in Night of the Dead. While the talent is pretty lame right now, in the next patch it will also include 70% passive AoE spell avoidance. That will help my ghoul stay alive and make him usable on many more encounters than I can use him on now.

We'll see how those changes work out for me. I expect to see my single-target DPS falter a little, but the overall raids DPS rise. If that's the case, it's a sacrifice worth making.