Dos Drakes

For the last couple of weeks, my 10-man raid group has been attempting Sartharion +2 drakes. We have been leaving Tenenbron and Vesperon up. The first night of attempts was an absolute disaster. After back-to-back tries leading up to respawns, we eventually went back to one Drake (Tenenbron) and completed the raid with ease. It seems that now, leaving Tenenbron up is easy for us. I guess that makes sense after a couple of hours of working toward killing 2 of them.

This past weekend we tried again. We definitely improved. Our DPS on Tenenbron was much faster, and we downed him pretty consistently before Vesperon landed. The practice and upgrades our group had gotten over the past week had made a difference. However, we still were unable to win. We got Tenenbron down and even got to the point to clearing whelps a couple of times, but never without losing people. The damage everyone was taking was just too high. We finally (again, after respawns) gave in and killed Sarth with one drake up—but this time we chose to leave Vesperon up. We wanted to get practice on this second drake. We all assumed it would be as easy as Tenenbron, but there was a distinct difference: When we were doing 2 drakes, we had to leave our third tank (me) and his dedicated healer (Tamzz) outside of Vesperon's first portal to continue handling the many whelps and fire elementals that were still up from when Tenenbron's last batch of eggs hatched. This left Laeryn (our Ret Pally) to attempt to tank the add inside Vesperon's portal and left Whammie (our Ele Shaman) to heal him. Basically giving two of our DPS players non-DPS roles in the portal. That just left Ay (Rogue) and Vressa (Boomkin) to burn down the dragonkin. By the time the portal was cleared, another was spawning—and people were dying. We learned a lot by switching it up. It was clear that we can't complete the fight with that strategy. Without trying Sarth + Vesperon (rather than Tenenbron), it may have taken us much longer to come to this conclusion. See, when we moved to one drake, we still used the same setup. There were no whelps, but Tammz and I still stayed out of the portal and just dealt with Fire Elementals. The four who went into the portals just were not set up for success. Once we discovered this we decided to have Tammz and I go in and let our DPSers get back to DPSing. Wouldn't you know, it was cake.

Lesson Learned: Six of us need to go into ALL of Vesperon's portals. In order to do this, when we have two drakes up, we'll have to clear out all of the whelps before entering the first portal. We were under the impression that the portal should take priority over the whelps, but freeing up Tammz and I make dealing with the portal possible, so the whelps need to take priority. Next time we go into Obsidian Sanctum and try Sarth + 2, we'll handle all of the whelps before any of the six of us enter the portal. Yes, that means a longer amount of time with no one in the portal (and more damage occurring outside), but it also means that (once we are in the portal) the dragonkin will go down quickly. Once the first one is down, it should be cake. I think we'll get it the next night we try it.

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.