Glory of the Hero

Last week, my five-man group finished the Glory of the Hero achievement. It was a long road and the reward of a Red Proto-Drake was felt to be well deserved. As far as I am aware, this makes Aille, Ay, Bluid, Laeryn and I the first in the guild to complete the meta-achievement. Some of the achievements were very easy, and some so difficult that I am not sure how Blizzard intends for them to be done, but we completed all of them. We also did this without respecs or even a specific group make up. Our group consisted of a Holy Priest, a Rogue, a Feral Druid tank, a Retribution Paladin, and an Unholy Death Knight. The all melee group drove our healer batty at times, but in the end, we were successful. Now that we've completed this, I'd like to reminisce on the best and worst of the required achievements.

The Best

1. Emerald Void: This achievement requires players to Defeat Ley-Guardian Eregos in The Oculus on Heroic Difficulty without anyone in the party using an Emerald Drake. Because the Emerald Drake is the only drake that can heal in this instance, this achievement has to be done with zero healing. We completed this achievement by using five Amber Drakes—at least the first time we did it. We had to do this achievement twice because Laeryn was out of town the first time we did it. The second time, we used four Amber and a Ruby, but the strategy we used was nearly identical. This achievement takes a lot of coordination (probably more than any of the others). It also relies on skill and timing, not on luck. Properly timed Time Stops and perfectly coordinated Shock Lances and Temporal Rifts make this achievement possible and my favorite of all of them.
2. Consumption Junction: This achievement requires players to defeat Trollgore in Drak'Tharon Keep on Heroic Difficulty before Consume reaches ten stacks. To complete this, we had to play with line-of-sight and make sure that, when Trollgore cast Consume, everyone but the tank was out of his view. It took coordination and good timing. It was another very well designed achievement.
3. Volazj's Quick Demise: This achievement requires players to defeat Herald Volazj in Ahn'kahet on Heroic Difficulty in 2 minutes or less. It all hinges on players being able to kill their shades quickly enough during Insanity. We also found that stacking at a specific position during Insanity made it much faster to come to the aid of party members who were not able to kill their shades as quickly as others. This one took some crazy DPS and a good amount of skill.
   

Those are my three favorites. Here are the three I disliked the most:

The Worst

1. Watch Him Die: This achievement requires players to defeat Krik'thir the Gatewatcher in Azjol-Nerub on Heroic Difficulty while Watcher Gashra, Watcher Narjil and Watcher Silthik are still alive. We tried many many different strategies for this achievement; however, none of them really worked. Everything we found online said that players simply zerged it and hoped for good luck. Some kited adds away, and some didn't, but in the end it was simply a DPS race to the death. We wiped even when we successfully completed the achievement (as did everyone else we read about completing it). I can't imagine that Blizzard intends that the successful way to complete this is to wipe, but that's the only way that we were able to complete it.
2. Less-rabi: This achievement requires players to defeat Moorabi in Gundrak on Heroic Difficulty while preventing him from transforming into a mammoth at any point during the encounter. Unfortunately, his cast speed just gets too fast when he is below 30% health. Even with a few players who can interrupt the cast, it becomes nearly impossible to stop him from transforming. We took the easy way out on this one and kited him to the door so that he'd reset. I hated that we had to cheese it, but without stacking classes with silences, there was no other realistic way for us to complete it. Blizzard now says "Take the player, not the class," but that doesn't hold true with this achievement. This one needs to be reworked.
   
3. Defenseless: This achievement requires player to defeat Cyanigosa in The Violet Hold without using Defense Control Crystals and with Prison Seal Integrity at 100% while in Heroic Difficulty. The reason I dislike this achievement is not because it was too hard—in fact, it was the exact opposite. This achievement was a joke. We got it without even realizing we had done anything special. We did it with quest greens and blues. It was way too easy. Most PUGs have an easy time completing this one. It simply isn't challenging in the least. In order to fix this one, Blizzard needs to make the instance more difficult than it is.

There were many other achievements that we needed to complete, with varying levels of difficulty, but these were the ones that stood out to me. I very much enjoyed the challenging ones that were not absurd. If the achievement is too easy, it doesn't feel like an achievement at all. Hopefully, with future instances, Blizzard refines their achievement system so that more of them are a challenge to most groups but still feasible. But, for this round, I win—I have my Red Proto-Drake.

How do Achievements fit in to guild progression?

Yesterday I wrote about achievements that I thought were broken. The original plan for today was to talk about how I think achievements could be fixed/improved. I am still going to touch on that, but some posts on our guild forums have caused me to expand on the original topic.

Last night in Naxx 25, some of our members asked if we could try to do some of the heroic raid achievements. Now, I am all for a good challenge, but not just for the sake of making the encounters slower or more difficult. I like heroic achievements that are about doing the fight the right way but without mistake, or faster, or with less handicaps (such as resistance). However, achievements that ask you to do a fight in a way that it was clearly not intended, just to make the fight harder, are a complete crock (I.M.n.s.H.O.). Yesterday I mentioned Spore Loser as an achievement that I considered broken. Well, I also consider it a crock. This was the achievement in question last night. Some raiders wanted to try it, but some did not. We did a quick poll in the Officers' channel, and it was a unanimous decision (at least among those who responded) to not attempt the achievement. So, why is this? There are probably several reasons that players don't want to try something like this, but my reasons are as follows:

1. Not killing the spores prevents players from getting the crit buff, which in turn increases the length of the fight significantly. Many of us want to clear Naxx as quickly as possible. If the achievement were to ensure that every spore results in 5 people gaining the buff (something else that would take skill, but would also speed up the fight), I would be all for it.
2. The reward for completeing this achievement is achievement points. Yes, that is all. So, we make the fight more difficult and a heck of a lot slower and we get bragging rights. Wow, sign me up >_<
3. This isn't how the fight was designed to be completed. The spores were put into the fight to provide the buff so that players had to coordinate (ensuring that the maximum number of players were affected). So, the achievement is to do the fight improperly—it's just not my cup of tea.

In all fairness, not all of the achievements incite those same thoughts in me. In fact, some of them are just what I think they should be. I would love to see us complete Make Quick Werk of Him, in which we would have to down Patwerk in 3 minutes or less. This achievement both speeds up the time in which the fight is done AND takes skill. This is the type of achievement I can stand behind.

However, there are players who want to complete all of the achievements (or at least the ones that are required for the meta-achievement Glory of the Raider. The Glory of the Raider meta-achievement has a reward of a Black Proto-Drake (a coveted 310% speed mount). I understand why some players want to work toward this, but a faster mount (or, at least this specific faster mount) is not at the top of everyone's priority list. Sure, most of us would like a faster mount, but there are other ways to get one, and not everyone is on board for working toward this one. So, my question is, "How far should a guild go, for several players, for something as unnecessary as this mount?" That's a difficult question, but here are my thoughts:

1. I don't like the idea of asking 25 people to work on achievements that maybe half of them really want. It could be more than half, but from a guild poll we are running, it looks like it's less than half (at least at the time of this posting). It just feels unfair to me to ask people to jump into this when they are really there to clear the instance.
2. Players can acquire a Plagued Proto-Drake by completing the non-heroic version of this meta-achievement. Finding 10 people who are like-minded and want to complete the raid achievements is a lot easier than finding 25. Of course, the 10-man content is a bit more difficult, but it's within reach of a balanced group of good players who really want it.
3. For those that cannot get the 10-man achievements done, time (and gear) will improve their chances. By the time Ulduar is available, players should be much better geared. Also, once our guild is in Ulduar, we will most likely not be running Naxx 25 (at least not regularly). This makes the perfect opportunity for players to form a guild PUG for the achievements. If players are interested in getting the mount, they will attend. If they are not, well, then I'd rather not have forced them to do it in the first place. And, hey, a guild PUG can always be filled out with a few non-guildy PUGers.

I guess I have made it pretty clear where I stand. I don't want the achievements to get in the way of speed, progression, or the proper way of completing a fight. If all achievements were challenging, but met these rules, I would be the happiest of "cheivers." The only other way you could pull me in would be for the achievements to offer more rewards. Sartharion does just that. Not only is there a mount drop, but there is also upgraded gear (and more of it), from doing the achievement. And, clearly, the fight was designed to be done with three drakes up in the first place. this is an achievement handled correctly. It offers a challenge and appropriate rewards for overcoming that challenge—not just a faster way to move around when we are not raiding.

That's how I think Blizzard can fix achievements: They need to make sure that the effort to reward ratio is appropriate in the eyes of the majority of players. From what I have heard, this is the direction Ulduar is headed. I hope that ends up being true, because if it's not, I will be sorely disappointed.

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.