Ulduar take 2, achievements run :)

[Catriona R]

Went back to Ulduar tonight, my bf is a paladin this week which was
kinda handy as a few of the achievements for the meta and the drake
are rather easier with something that can taunt and tank, but also has
independent thought to stop attacking (unlike the voidwalker we used
to tank last time!). We got a bunch of the achievements last week
without really trying but this time I had a guide to all Ulduar
achievements open in my browser and aimed for as many as possible
which we hadn't got last time!

Killing 100 dwarves before Flame Leviathan, no problem at this level.
Flame Leviathan with all orbs up: pretty easy, took 3 tries as we
weren't doing enough damage but once we managed to keep the dot up
more accurately, it worked nicely.

Making Razorscale kill dwarves... yeouch that one was annoying lol.
First time out we thought we'd get loads of them and wait for her
enrage... well, they hit too hard for that when you gather too large a
group so ok, instead we just kept pulling her down and making careful
use of our lowest dmg abilities to bring them down to low health, Holy
Nova and Judgement are both handy there. I killed the ones we didn't
need while my bf tanked the rest, and we got number 25 right as the
enrage timer hit, very nearly nuked her down but wiped with 41k health
left lol, killed her fine next pull!

Ignis was a weird one, it seemed from the guide that we had to dps the
constructs to kill them after making them brittle, but they just kept
vanishing, after 3 times we gave up, thinking it was bugged, killed
him and boom, achievement. Eh, ok, I'll take that anyway :-P XT-002,
we already had speedkill and heartbreaker, this time I nuked the
scrapbots before they could heal him too. Nerf Gravity appears bugged
though; neither of us died to gravity bombs, yet, no achievement, hmm.

Missed out on Can't Do That While Stunned by about 5 sec, he finally
cast a chain lightning *just* before he died, gah. Luck not on our
side, but with only one of us having any interrupt ability, it was
always going to be a pain, good thing it's not in the meta! Killing
Auriaya while her cats were alive was no problem at all, phew!
Kologarn's arms fooled us, didn't realise they take 15% of his health
off, so we killed one and boom, achievement for killing him without
killing his arms (huh? We did kill one but it killed him so maybe that
didn't count...), not the one we actually needed for the meta which
was killing all of them within 10 sec or whatever the time is. Doh.

By this time we were running low on steam and also hitting the bosses
that we'd already done the meta achievements on, so nothing new with
Freya, Thorim or Mimiron, good execution picked us up a few on Hodir
though, as this time we kept all NPCs alive , didn't get more than 2
stacks of Biting Cold and didn't get hit by flash freeze at all, yay
(had issues with that one last time :-P)

General Vezax is annoying as hell when you are two mana users, I can
tell you. My bf ran oom about halfway and I had fun trying not to take
aggro, while doing dmg but not running oom myself. Basically entirely
used mindbender, holy fire and penance, plus shadow word death when
low enough. Bit boring, and to add insult to injury, neither of us got
hit by a shadow crash (so far as we could tell) but no achievement.
Bah!

Finally Yogg-Saron. Doing this guy duo is pure masochism, especially
when you remove a few keepers. Urgh! I forget how many wipes it took
us to learn the fight last time but it was at least a bit better this
time... however removing the keepers (we kept Freya, no way we'd have
a chance without the sanity wells) made it even tougher. At least
having learned general tactics last time helped but still, we kept
getting overwhelmed by tentacles and then chainstunned, and with
damage reduction debuffs gone mad lol. Evenetally we hit on nuking the
first batch of tentacles and both jumping in the first possible
portal, which was enough to get the brain down first time, before too
many tentacles were up. Great! Only took two tries after we came up
with that tactic, first time Lunatic Gaze got us, 2nd time he died.
Phew! No bloody way am I trying zero keepers, just no way... my bf
says he never wants to do that fight again and frankly I agree;
there's nothing I want for transmog anyway so we are done with him,
happy to do the rest of the place but Yogg-Saron is pure evil :-P

Anyway, end result is, only need to kill Kologarn and his arms
together, and we'll both have a nice new protodrake! 15 new
achievements gained today, and a lot of fun, good way to fill five
hours or so (being fair we stopped an hour to cook dinner and had a
few pauses for checking tactics, we're not *that* slow :-P), and feels
pretty satisfying having got there!

[Catriona R]

And while it's not Ulduar I cleared a bunch more WotLK achievements
yesterday, in 5-mans this time - I'd been meaning to for ages,
especially as WotLK heroics give full rep when you wear the Huojin
tabard, and I hadn't got round to maxing that one yet, so tabard in
place, I went round most the 5-mans that I hadn't got achievements in
at the time.

Nothing was really difficult tbh, even not getting hit by icicles in
Pit of Saron went fine (probably far easier with only one person than
5!), so, great. I now only miss five dungeon achievements from that
era: two involve interrupting stuff (I have no interrupt), one just
looks annoying (defeat Eadric with his own hammer), one needs at least
2 people (Bronjahm and corrupted soul fragments) and one needs 5; a
shame, as the 5 and one of the interrupts are all I miss for the red
protodrake but chances of getting 5 people together for it are slim.
I'll keep an eye on tradechat though, if I ever see anyone forming a
group for it I'm in!

With all that, I also hit exalted with Huojin Pandaren, which leaves
me with very few factions I don't have maxed, as I finished Brood of
Nozdormu a few days ago too. Unless I've somehow forgotten some, all I
have left is:

Nat Pagle (not really a faction but still, I need to go fishing more
often)
Ashen Verdict (I had a poke around in Icecrown while I was doing 5-man
yesterday and certainly the first room is no problem solo, even killed
two bosses, which surprised me; I expected to die!)
Avengers of Hyjal (maybe some of the trash is soloable now, but I'll
likely leave it a bit and focus on Icecrown)
Shado-Pan Assault (guess I need to do more LFR!)
Warsong Outriders (slow and painful)
The Defilers (slightly less painful but still slow)

Hmm, at this rate I'd better start building up my pvp set, there's not
a lot else left to work on! Shame I hate WSG :-P

[Catriona R]

On Thu, 16 May 2013 19:09:18 +0000 (UTC), Lewis
<g.k...@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> wrote:

>In message <avjtk5...@mid.individual.net>

> Catriona R <catrion...@totalise.co.uk> wrote:
>> Ashen Verdict (I had a poke around in Icecrown while I was doing 5-man
>> yesterday and certainly the first room is no problem solo, even killed
>> two bosses, which surprised me; I expected to die!)
>

>Two bosses in ICC? I farmed the first boss to get the rep maxed as I was
>unable to kill the second boss. Impressive.

Heh, I was assuming my lack of dps as a healy spec was what made the
second boss hard for me, guess it's not just me then! I just ignored
the adds and nuked the boss once I realised that 15 sec cd on every
ability was going to be a problem; I'd never kill the adds faster than
they spawn, but killing the boss worked well enough, when all dmg
abilities were on cd I'd throw a heal on myself instead. Wasn't easy
by any means but it worked, surprised me I could get that far solo
tbh. Didn't try further as I expect it to get tougher; will likely go
back duo with my bf one day and see how it goes.

[Cryptoengineer]

I'm in pretty much the same boat, but on the Alliance side. I'm
working on SPA (about 11k/21k atm), and am not very far with Nat
Pagle. As far as i know, I'm still missing AofH, the Rogue one(?), and
some PvP factions. That's about it. From what I hear, getting the low
level PvP bg factions is next to impossible.

pt

[Catriona R]

Sounds fairly similar, the roguey one will be Ravenholdt; you can farm
to revered on Syndicate Mobs in Arathi/Alterac (takes ages but it's
doable), for the rest you need a lvl 60ish rogue alt, or a *very*
friendly rogue willing to farm junkboxes for you (some will do it for
good payments!). LBRS was the best farming spot when I did it as no
competition from other rogues plus a decent droprate, probably still
is best tbh, and is fine with a lvl 60 rogue, so you don't have to
level really high for it.

SPA I'm not quite honoured with yet, you can tell I've been slacking!
Now I'm on the secrets quest I'll pick up the pace a bit, hopefully
I'll make progress soon. Nat Pagle I got some way with but slowed
right down, time to get back in the habit of going fishing; I'm some
way off but at leats not right at the beginning.

Pvp factions are outright evil; if you didn't do them in vanilla WoW,
when it was possible to turn marks in for rep, it takes *forever*. AB
is slightly less bad than WSG, in that even if your group is rubbish,
you'll likely get *some* rep, as it comes from resource ticks; WSG rep
is 100% tied to flag caps, so no rep if the other side is good at
defending. I'm just honoured with WSG and about 3/4 towards revered
with AB, having done quite a lot of battlegrounds in TBC, back when
there were only four to choose from on random BGs so I got those two
quite often... I can see myself getting revered AB, but exalted, ack.
As for WSG, I doubt that'll ever happen unless they revamp it, I don't
really have the patience!