Glory of the Cataclysm Hero

I was lucky enough to finish Glory of the Cataclysm Hero and get the Volcanic Stone Drake the other day. I say "lucky" because unlike the last time I did an achievement like this, I basically got this on what we in sweden call a "shrimp sandwhich". That is without putting much effort into it. When I did Glory of the Hero I really busted my ass off to get all the achievements. This time I just tagged along for the ride and got nearly all achievements while passing by. Only for the last two achievements did I actually ask people to help me with them specifically, in all the other cases did I end up with people who wanted to do them or got them by "accident". Overall this metaachievement felt alot easier than the Wrath one, and the fact that I didn't have to lift many fingers to get them proves that. In a couple of cases I ended up in random pugs where the majority wanted to do them, and eventhough I didn't feel like it I decided to go with the flow. This is how I got all the achievements in BRC. In some cases I got the achievement from being lazy, like with I'm on a Diet. In some cases I got the achievement by doing the fight the easier way, like Ready for Raiding, No Static At All or The Straw That Broke the Camels Back. In some cases people did the achievement for me like with Extra Credit Bonus Stage and Rat Pack. Then I noticed that I only had two achievements in Throne of the Tides left for the whole meta achievement and when a friend of mine told me that those were easy I decided to get it all done.

Speaking of flaunting e-peens

I did feel like I as a healer rarely had to do anything special to get the achievement done. In a way that is both good and bad. I could ride on the wave of others, but on the other hand I had to rely on my party getting things done if I wanted the achievement. I could just keep them alive and hope for the best. I remember in Glory of the Hero there were a couple of achievements that rested alot on the healers effort, like Watch Him Die, Hadronox Denied and Zombiefest. Sure everyone had to pitch in, but if the healer didn't know how to handle heavy healing there was nothing you could do.

I won't attempt to write a guide on how to go about doing this. Exul wrote a really nice guide about this which was featured over at mmo-champion.com as part of their guide writing contest. If you're interested in pointers on how to go about doing this I suggest you check that out. Instead I am going to do what I did last time and comment a little on the achievements that I feel where the most noteworthy.

This mount is extra special since you don't actually ride on top of it, but underneath it!

Faster than the speed of light
Complete the Vault of Lights within 5 minutes of entering in the Halls of Origination on Heroic difficulty. 

I like to do things on time. There are few things that can get me pumped up like knowing I've only got a limited time to do something and every effort is needed and every step has to be correctly done. It is something I enjoy much about raiding, and probably one of the reasons I like Conclave of the Wind. Timing the jumps, and using the right heals for each platform are a few things that probably will entertain me for a long time. This achievement isn't as difficult as timing boss skills in a raid, but it still requires you to think more than when usually doing this. For one you can't hope for a mana break during those 5 minutes, so spamming heals is not recommended (that is otherwise something I don't mind doing when killing trash since I can drink afterwards). This is how I prefer to do this room even if I didn't get an achievement for it.

It's Frost Damage
Allow three Freezing Vapors to cast Coalesce during the Admiral Ripsnarl encounter in Deadmines on Heroic difficulty. 

This is a funny (?) achievement since you actually are awarded for failing. I liked it because of the doom feeling you got when you knew everyone was going to die, and that that was what you were aiming for. Kind of weird. And definitely not an achievement you like to repeat. You CAN survive it, since you apparently can run out of sight of the explosion, but rest assured that someone (most of you) will die when you're doing this achievement. I'd really like to know what Blizzard is referring to with the title name too.

Headed South
Defeat Siamat, Lord of the South Wind, with 3 stacks of Lightning Charge in Lost City of the Tol'vir on Heroic difficulty. 

The way I got this achievement was quite ironic. I did a random heroic with a couple of friends and guildies and we got into Tol'Vir. A guildie of mine had been trying to get the meta achievement, and Headed South was the last one he had to get it. He had tried and failed already, so when we got to this boss he asked if we could do it. I really didn't feel like it. The way the described the tactics it would take 15 minutes, and I didn't think that sounded fun at all. I started whining, asking them to do it another time without me. I really couldn't care less. But my guildie pleaded, and everyone was set at doing it (a couple of others in the group needed it too) so I finally gave in. "Ok!" I said. "One try! But no more". And we failed. And I said that that was it. But they begged. So I gave them another try. And we failed again. And I said that I'd rather leave than do that all over again. Remember that was 15 minutes of waiting basically for each try. So they said that they'd do another tactic, one that wouldn't require all that waiting. We'd simply nuke the boss down. "Fine then" I thought, as long as I don't have to stay here much longer. And we nuked him down, everyone got ready for the achievement and BAM! I was the only one who got it. The guildie had resisted the last stack, and the other two had died just before we killed the boss. So I, the only one who really didn't want to do the achievement, was the only one who got it. Of course.

Straw That Broke the Camels Back
Defeat Earthrager Ptah while mounted on a camel in the Halls of Origination on Heroic difficulty. 

I liked this achievement since you got it from riding the camels, which is the best way to do this fight. Beside the fact that riding a camel is fricking cool, it also allows us to move while casting which is nice for a change. It's not like the fight is difficult and riding the camel or not riding the camel makes much of a difference, I just really like the mechanic of being able to run around and throw all of my heals. I'd really like it if they somehow implemented this into a raid boss, which required you to constantly stay on the move. Unfortunately you can't use pets for some reason when riding the camel, that is both hunter pets and the Shadowfiend, so they'd have to fix that first of course.

Druids never seem to be able to just do stuff the regular way.

Bane of the Fallen King

This Sunday, December 5th, I finally managed to down Lich King on heroic. Honestly I haven't given it that much effort, since I had killed him the normal way and that sufficed for me. As long as I get to experience the content I am happy. That being said, I was intrigued by the healing challenge that LK hc offered. My guild had been doing some tries on 25man, but we were never even close. Towards the end of the expansion peoples interest was waning, and we couldn't collect 25 really dedicated raiders for it. But a couple of guildies still wanted to give it a try on 10man, and since I play a disc priest I was asked to tag along. Our first attempts at gathering 10 skilled enough people failed. Some asked if they could come with their alts and the raid comp was completely wrong, so we didn't even get it started. Then the other week a friend of mine felt like he wanted to give it one final shot. It would be the perfect raid or nothing. We managed to collect 9 interested people from our guild, but in the end we still had to pug a tank. Fortunately we found a really great one.

The raid was set to go off on Friday (3rd), and everyone came ready and focused for the task. We cleared through up to Sindragosa before the raid-instance servers died on us. Everyone who were in the instance could stay there, but leaving meant you couldn't re-enter. And not only that but your character was stuck in limbo and unable to reconnect to the servers. I had gone and done a quick respec on my mage just before Sindragosa when suddenly I just disconnected upon attempting to enter the raid again. Fortunately (?) I wasn't the only one, but anyone who had gone offline for any reason and tried to re-enter the instance was promptly booted from the server and couldn't log back on. This put a definite halt to out attempts at LK hc for that evening. So we re-scheduled for this sunday.

It wasn't looking too good at a start. We had some trouble getting everyone to be able to show, and had to convince some people from the last run to give it another try. Also one of the raiders could only attend for 2 hours. But since we only had Sindragosa left before LKhc we felt like that didn't have to be too big of a problem. If we didn't down him in the 1,5 hours we'd have at our disposal, we probably never would anyway. Then we had trouble being able to switch to heroic mode and lost some valuable time when everyone had to leave the instance and re-enter, before everything seemed to work like it should.

Sindragosa went down without much trouble, and we were ready to give LK hc a try. We all joked about being able to one shot him, while all of us probably were silently thinking that he'd never go down.

Our raidcomp was as such;

• Protection Warrior
• Blood DK
• Disc Priest
• Resto Druid * 2
• Elemental Shaman
• Arcane Mage
• Fire Mage
• Affliction Warlock
• Shadow Priest

As you can see our raid turned out to be caster oriented. This was because casters are better than melee during LK hc, for example for dpsing the Valkyrs and the Vile Spirits (and the Spheres in the phase transitions). We had an arcane mage to use slow on the Valkyrs, but our prot warrior did a tremendous job with stuns as well (both on Valkyrs and Enraged Shamblers).

Above is the recount of my healing for the fight. It's stuff I like to analyze, I'm nerdy that way.

We started out playing with only two healers, but switched the only melee (feral druid played by Love) to resto instead. Our first attempt went so well, getting to second transition phase but with a couple of dead, that we immediately noticed that we definitely had something going. On our next three attempts we failed on really minor mistakes. One tank missed the Shadow Trap and flew off, and one guy missed to run with the disease twice. I told them that if they couldn't handle such simple things, we'd never get this done. Dps was secondary, situational awareness was everything. In fact we had so much dps that we decided to switch to three healers, as mentioned above (the raid before we had downed Rotface in 46 seconds, so dps really wasn't a problem. We even decided not to use Bloodlust in the first phase, even after having removed one dps). After this people shaped up, focused and we only had one more wipe (one tank being lifted by valkyr while the other got Soul Reaper) before he went down.

As we healers noted, this fight might actually have become tougher after 4.0 than it was before. Setting aside that I am trying to blow my own horn here (ahem), the recent changes to mana efficiency made us all, even the druids (!), oom horribly by the time we had gotten to the third phase. I used potion, two shadowfiends and a hymn, and even got an innervate just before the end and I really used every drop of my mana pool. And so did the poor druids who oomed way before me and healed on fumes most of the third phase. I wouldn't blame bad skill management, because we had some really skilled healers (ahem again). LK is designed to be healed by healers who can throw Flash Heals (and the equivalents) like it was candy (wait a sec, I wouldn't throw candy around). After 4.0 this definitely isn't the case anylonger. On the other hand we had a full ICC-buff and only top-geared people in the group.

Looking back we healers thought there were some things we could've done differently. We made it, so whatever we were doing worked well enough, sure. But if I could change one thing I would've removed Divine Fury and replaced it with Veiled Shadows, for more Shadowfiend, instead. The druids too talked about removing haste talents in favor of throughput talents like Master Shapeshifter. LK hc isn't a fight where you can expect to ever be able to throw a Heal or Greater Heal (or the equivalents). You need fast and/or big heals, all the time. And by fast I mean instants or close to instant. I basically only used shields, PoM and Penance throughout the fight. The druids mainly used Rejuv, Lifebloom and Wild Growth. They kept an eye on the tanks and my job was to keep the rest of the raid alive and well, but we both had to jump in and help eachother. When the tanks dipped my Penance saved the day, and when I missed a shield for infest a Wild Growth or Swiftmend saved the day.

Another thing I might've changed was to downrank my shields. As it was now they weren't absorbed by Infest, and so I didn't get those awesome amounts of Rapture procs that make disc priests never oom on this fight. It would've forced me to handle two shield ranks, and in reality it's only effective in the first phase where you know only the tanks will take damage. For all the other phases people are hit by damage continously and you'd want your best shield on them for that. But still, it would've saved me alot of mana in the first phase and it is something I would recommend doing if you ever try this out (well, on level 85 you might not have to fiddle with things like this anyway).

It's difficult to say which phase was the toughest. In fact I think the transitions were the most healing intensive, and also in phase 3 when the Vile Spirits came since us healers were so low on mana then. But it was a truly epic fight and I really want to thank everyone involved for a great job and for pulling through magnificently. I can't think of a better timing to get it done than a day before the release of Cataclysm.

Power Leveling to 85

A friend of mine is currently preparing to power-level his char to level 85. That's not my game, I enjoy experiencing new content to the fullest and often take the time to read quest texts or just wander around aimlessly to watch the beautiful surroundings. My friend is not alone however, in fact he's already managed to gather a couple of guildies to form a group that will power-level together. Actually he was recruited into the group by another guildie who also was interested in power-leveling, and my guild now currently has formed two instance power-leveling groups that are discussing tactics and most importantly - which will be the best, aka fastest, way to get to 85?

It seems they've both settled for instancing. The one group will also turn in a full set of dailies first thing when Cataclysm is launched, while the other intends on getting started with the instances as soon as possible. My friend plays a DK and intends to be server first dk, at least (he's aiming at server first 85 of course). The other group also has a dk, so there is alot at stake here. Honor! Epeen! So these people have some 24ish hours of power-gaming to look forward to, before they'll even begin to discuss a nap-break. And when discussing with my friend I found out that preparing is no simple business.

First of all we have the game related issues. Turning in dailies or not is one of them, and I am intrigued that the groups have chosen different paths since it will give a great opportunity to compare. On the one hand we're looking at some 500k exp in a matter of minutes. On the other hand we've got instance mobs in Cataclysm that by themselves give some 1/3 of a Northrend daily. So which will be better? Getting started with the instancing asap or boost your start with some turn-ins? Personally I believe the turn-ins are better. Earlier experiences tell me that the beginning of each expansion is erratic and unstable, at best. There might be unforseen factors to attend to before you can start instancing. Talent point reset? Addons that need to be fixed? Probably, and alot other as well. All this can be done while turning in dailies, while a group that is ready to go fighting at once would have to pause and fix this. Also, we're talking some really easy exp. I did some easy maths and you'd have to kill instance-mob at a pretty high rate to come close, even when counting travel times. Considering what we've heard so far about Cataclysm instances being considerably more difficult, I wouldn't count on anyone getting up to such a high rate first thing. Nonetheless, Blizzard have taken steps to ensure a smooth crossover from Wrath to Cataclysm so we might see the first expansion without much downtimes and other issues. And maybe the rumors about instances being alot tougher proves to be somewhat exaggerated, especially when we're talking about players dished out in 25man ICC hc gear. So there is definitely no easy way to tell which will turn out better, and this makes it all the more interesting of course.

Each group has also started one forum thread discussing these issues. There they have listed the participants and requirements to be able to join. Basically they intend to come prepared for each instance like if it had been a progress raid, which means fully flasked, buffed and with the proper food. Nothing is left to chance.
Everyone has of course decided to buy the downloadable version of Cataclysm. It is without a doubt the most secure way to get your copy in due time for the launch, and it's fast and easy with the installation compared to the other choices (buying online and buying in a store).

Other preparations include;

• Coming with empty bags and fully repaired
• Be aware of all and any changes that might come to your class when cataclysm is launched
• Discover the entrance to BRC (apparently this is necessary to be able to join the queue for it)
• Optimizing the character for instancing, not raiding
• Bringing enchants and gems ready to set on new gear that one might acquire in the instances
• Make sure no one will bother you irl. Tell friends, family, better half that you'll be unavailable for a couple of days.

There is a careful schedule planned from the exact moment the launch is off. One group will as mentioned spend the first 10 minutes turning in dailies, and at exactly 00.10 they'll start queueing for instances. There must also be time to learn Flightmaster's License and to buy JP gear within those 10 minutes, so you'll obviously have to know exactly what to buy beforehand.

My friend also discussed food. What will keep him awake and fit for fight the longest without it turning into torture towards the end (aka the nap)? Apparently he didn't want to drink energy drinks, and he also intended to avoid snacks of any kind since he had read somewhere that sugar and fat will make one drowsy faster. Instead he was going to buy caffeine pills and drink water. And the food? He was pondering between carbon hydrates and protein. I told him that the body usually needed alot of energy and time to digest meat like steaks. If he wanted something that wouldn't make him sleepy he should probably go for something vegetarian. My friend isn't too fond of green food (afaik) so we'll see where he ends up in this decision.

It's interesting to see how he, and the others as well I am assuming, are preparing for this like it was a trecking trip to the far reaches of the Himalayas. In a way it will be. They intend to push their bodies to the limit, all the while having to keep their minds active and agile. Imo this isn't any less cool than if they really were taking a trecking hike to the Himalays (ok, that would be a little tougher. No toilet!). It will take careful planning, dedication and hard work to reach that goal. This is definitely no small commitment they're making. I just hope they'll have time for some fun too.

Traveller's Guide to Sunwell Plateau

I went to SWP and all I got was this lousy post. Actually I got some tier 6 items for RP as well. I've never ever been to Sunwell Plateau actually. Back in BC when I raided with a 10-man guild I only heard vague stories about how awesomely difficult some bosses in SWP were. My guild managed to scrape 25 people together for SSC occasionally, but we never hoped to find enough good people for SWP, and we never did. The other day my current guild and I went there however for a little fun. The raid is easy nowadays of course, we were some 15 people of which most mainly ran around taking in the scenery or otherwise being useless (like me) and we had no trouble killing any of the bosses anyway. So if you're looking for a fun way to spend 30 minutes and haven't seen this raid before, I recommend getting some 10 friends together and check it out!

SWP looks just like Silvermoon City. Apparently Blizzard hadn't planned for releasing SWP, since BT really was supposed to be the final instance of BC (which is why it holds Illidan, the final antagonist of BC). But they needed something to keep peoples interest up before Wrath and so they implemented this instance. They made it really difficult to make sure people wouldn't bore too easily on it, forcing them to implement yet another unplanned raid instance.

That dragon looks out of place. And evil. It worked much like Halion with portals and stuff.

Outside the portals he is the pretty blue dragon Kalecgos.

Inside the portals he became a Dreadlord! No actually this is Sathrovarr the Corruptor who has turned the otherwise nice guy Kalecgos into a bad guy.

View through some sort of ice at a little event going on between two bosses beneath us. You eventually get to fight them both. Not at once fortunately.

Boss 1 - Brutallus

Boss 2, - Felmyst (originally Madrigosa) now in the pretty shape of a skeleton dragon.

The Eredar Twins (twins!!) were dreaded for being among the most horrible fights in SWP. They didn't put up much of a fight against us though! Apparently you used to be able to get different loots from them depending on the order they were killed, but when we killed them they seemed to drop everything.

M'uru also used to be really tough. There is something especially creepy about an evil piece of jewelry. Like something inspired from a Stephen King story.

Closing in on Kil'Jaeden. This will be interesting.

Can't get rid of those Fel Reavers anywhere it seems.

Kil'Jaeden is coming up through the floor in what is among the coolest bosses entrances I've ever seen. I wish I had been there when it really meant something. But it was still really cool.

He was a piece of cake though, but I can see that the fight must've been quite a challenge back in the days. Honestly I didn't understand much of what was going on, and I didn't have to it seems. I just enjoyed the scenery.

Hello there pretty. He looks angry.

Shiny.

Shinier.

Shiniest!

I really liked the SWP instance. It was beautiful and held what seemed like fun and interesting bosses. Since most of them died before some of the ”tougher” mechanics set in I didn't get to see them in full, but like I said, it really makes me wish I had got to try it back in the days.

Ulduar Hat-Trick - Mimiron's Head, Iron-Bound Protodrake and Astral Walker

I was going to post a very lengthy guide on warrior tanking in 4.0, but I was rather lucky in Ulduar this evening and just had to share it! And also some short thoughts on the healing.

Yogg+0
Trying to find new and interesting challenges before Cataclysm, my guild had set out to do Yogg+0 and get people some Mimiron mounts. Mimiron's Head happens to be the coolest mount in the game. The only mounts about as cool are Ashes of Alar and that damn Headless Horsemans mount that just won't drop for me.

We had cleared Ulduar last week and went on today to focus on just killing Yogg. We downed him on our third try. Our first try people failed miserably on the clouds in phase 1, on our second try people died in phase 3 and then we got him. I thought Sanity was going to be the big problem for this fight, seeing as you can't replenish it at all, but actually the adds in phase 3 turned out to be the biggest problem. So if you want to do this, save everything for the last phase and make sure to really nuke him down, because you won't be able to keep the tanks up for long.

Everyone rolled on the Mimiron's Head that dropped at the end and I won with a whopping 100 roll! I am now proud owner of the coolest mount ever. It makes the funniest sounds and looks so awesome, I love it. It's weird though that more people don't have it since Yogg+0 really wasn't that difficult. We had even pugged some 5 people in our 25man raid. Yogg is one of my favorite fights for Wotlk, and I'm looking forward to going back for more mounts to the rest of the guild.

Iron-Bound Protodrake
Having killed Yogg we went on to finish the achis we hadn't done the week earlier to get everyone the Iron-Bound Protodrake. That of Ignis, Razorscale and Iron Council. Compared to Yogg+0 this was some really easy achis to get. The only slightly tricky one was collecting dwarves on Razorscale because they just kept on dying. Fortunately you don't have to do them all in one go.

Astral Walker
Seeing as we were done doing everything we had planned for the evening way ahead of schedule, we set out to give Algalon a try. The good thing about Algalon is you can only wipe on him for an hour, then he disappears and you have to try it all over the next week. We had some wipes on him as well, and the aoe damage from the Collapsing Stars is actually really tough to heal through, even with our current gear. Kudos to anyone who got this with Ulduar gear.

Healing?
If you're interested, here are my recounts for healing Yogg and Algalon. 

The above is from Yogg. Shielding is nearly half of my healing, and atonement pretty high on nearly one tenth. I've even started to use Flash Heal way more than before. Even after all the healing I had to do, mana was never an issue. With archangel I get more than 7k mana every 30 seconds if I keep smiting. Crazy really.

This is from Algalon. Having PoH on top stands as a proof of the heavy aoe damage you have to heal through on that fight. I actually thought healing Algalon was tougher than Yogg, but the fight is easier. If that makes any sense. It's easy because you "just" have to aoe-heal alot. On Yogg you have to cleanse, dispel, avoid stuff and whatnot aswell.

Children's Week & Hearthstones

The title of this post is to reflect that I'm going to bring up two very different subjects, but they actually have something incommon (except for both being part of WoW), so read along and you'll see where it'll lead ya!
First of all, Children's Week is upon us. One might think it odd that I bring this up and not any other world event. Well the simple reason is that I don't care for the world events much, and I don't think I have done any of the achis included, except for the Winterveil one where you get to open presents! But there is something special about Children's Week and you've surely heard about it alot already - School of Hard Knocks achi. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not planning to do this achi either (I am however planning to get the third children's week companion for the "Nanny" achi) but I'm still affected since Love do all these achievements. When something bothers him, he makes sure I know about it. And when something bothers him extra much I might take an extra look at it to form my own opinion - is he being oversensitive or is there something really bothersome about what he is doing?
And for this achievement I concluded that he actually has some reason to QQ. The real cry isn't really from him tho, it's on the forums all over the internet and people state different reason for this achi having to be one of the worst so far. Some say they, as pve'rs, shouldn't have to do pvp-things for an achievement or that they don't stand a fair chance due to their lack of pvp-skill and gear.
I don't agree with this. The achievement being about pvp isn't what bothers me about it. Remember the Love Fool meta achi? You had to get some candies from a bag and it was all about luck. You could farm those bag the entire event through and still not get it. Blizzard said they wanted to remove the luck factor from the achievements and removed that candy-achievement from the meta-achievement requirements. And now they implement this. Some people on the forums say "oh it was so easy, I got it on my third try" and some say "I have done this for hours and still not completed it". No one has a good idea on how to accomplish it, even the "guide" at wowinsider.com only says "run and take the flag". Wow, I don't think anyone would've thought of that.
Yes, you only need to go get the flag, and it sounds simple enough. But everyone else doing the achi also "only needs to take it" and they're facing a bunch of people who think they're getting free HK's from players who're not even there to pvp. Whether you're gonna be the one getting the flag or not is not due to skill, but luck. The skill involved disappears in so many luck factors that they won't do much difference.
And all the pvpers get cranky because no one cares about defending bases in the BG's anymore and "noob!" is thrown all around for no benefit. Who is supposed to enjoy this achi? It is born from bad planning and ruins gameplay.

So where does the hearthstone fit into all this?
Well, some patches ago Blizzard decided to fix the "ghetto hsing" that people were doing. People went haywire since alot of game content takes place in totally different areas and travelling hither and dither is not what people are paying for. So Blizzard agreed to lower the cooldown on the HS from 60 min to 30 min and people were a little happier. But I thought to myself, why do Hearthstones even have cooldowns? It can only take you to one designated place in the world anyway, how imba can it be? Ghostcrawler said we should be happy with 30 min, but why? Why can't we have no cd? Would it make the game too simple? Would it make some aspects too easy? The only good reason I could see was that Blizzard simply don't want things to be time effective. We would be able to move "too fast" through the world if we could HS at any time. Much travel time aka wasted money for the players aka gained money for Blizzard would be gone. Think about it? This game might not cost much per hour, but how many of them hours have you spent not doing anything but trying to get from place A to B and back again?

Both these things stand to show that Blizzard often and in ways more obvious than other game developers actively work against the players. The time sink-holes in this game are sometimes so obvious it makes me laugh. Some are optional, like grinding exalted with some faction, but most aren't.

Undying

We did a retry on getting "the Undying" achi done yesterday, after having failed last time due to a minor mistake from one of our paladins. We made it without much hazzle. Actually, in 10man Naxx there aren't many bosses where there is any big risk of dying. Maybe Patch, but no. He is really easy on 10 man. Sapph, KT? Well yeah. If you have too many melee characters on KT that could become a problem. One of our melee, a druid, respecced boomkin to help solve that problem.
It's funny how I have looked upon people named "Uglyman the Undying" and thought "my, that is so cool!", but now that I have it it's just not all that anymore. Because I know how easy it was. In fact, bosses like 4Horsemen were easier when doing them the "achi-way" (splitting the entire raid equally over the bosses) than our usual way. Glory of the Hero was way harder imo.
But I know other people who haven't got the achi yet will look at me now and think "wow, that is so cool!" and that is what it is all for ;)
And the paladin who did the mistake last time wasn't with us this time. He cancelled in the last minute due to lack of sign-ups, but we got a full raid together in the end anyway. Dunno if I should think it divine retribution or feel sorry for him.

Proto-Drake

Flying a proto-drake (because we finished the Glory of the Hero thing yesterday and got our proto-drake mounts) feels like you will plummet to your death at any second. The wings move as if they're heavier than the body, and although I know it's all bound by the laws of programming I still feel uneasy when riding my proto-drake, eyeing my levitate button, just to be ready. You know, like you hold on to something in an elevator just in case the floor would fall out... Well maybe that's just me.
We did AQ20 today too, and only had some trouble on Ayamiss, because no one had bothered checking what to do when she/he/it paralyzes someone and how to get her/him/it down from being high up. Some wowheading solved those problems.
We cleared some trash to first boss in AQ40 and two mounts dropped. So getting those seems fairly easy. Really bothers me that you can't take those awesomely cool mounts outside the instance tho! You should at least be able to pay someone somewhere to be able to ride them anywhere, seriously.

We started out on a try for the "undying" achi in Naxx and everything went just swell (we were only 8 people too, trying for the "dedicated few achi at the same time) when it happened. On Gluth's decimate the retridin judges himself to death with SoB. Don't know if someone killing themselves counts (but I would think it does), but still... of all the ways to fail that achi.

Glory of the Hero

Me and some friends have been working on the Glory of the Hero-achievement, where you do a set of achievements in the different heroic dungeons to get a cool proto-drake mount. And it has been a tough ride, with many wipes and many tears of joy when you finally hear that "clonk"sound from a succeeded achievement. But it has been fun! We're not completely done yet tho, we still have on measly achievement left to do - Make It Count in Oculus.
But why I really bring this up at all is because some of these achievements are really easy, some are fairly difficult and need plenty of planning and timing, and some are... nearly impossible.
Here is a little list of my personal favourites (from a healers perspective).
Zombiefest; This is a really fun achi majorly because of a major flaw (although it's not the only flawed achi) - all those zombies dying at once can actually make you majorly d/c. This happened to us on both our tries, where me and the tank both d/c'd simply because our connection to the server wasn't fast enough to process all that information. I know it's because I have a bad computer, because Love - who was sitting next to me - didn't d/c, and he is sitting on the same connection. The first time this happened we wiped big time. The second time we wiped too, but just after we got the achi fortunately. So be careful if you have a slow computer!
Volunteer Work;
An achi that is just enough difficult to still be fun. She hit's way harder when enraging, but it's copable with skills and timing (like moving from the whirlwind), which is what achievements should be all about imo.
Share the Love;
If you look beside the point that this achievement is bugged (which means you don't always get the achievement eventhough you succeed) it's a good one, since it isn't easy, but not extremely hard and boring. You can "help" the boss choose the right target (by placing them closer) and so this is mostly about gear and skill.
Good Grief;
Especially fun for a healer, since this is all about the healers skills. The dps/tank don't have to do anything different, but the healer has to nukeheal (I think I had something like 7,5k hps on this achievement). And this is where a holy-priest really can show their skills (basically spam PoH, CoH and PoM), so this was a fun achievement.

And then... the really hard, but fun ones;
Watch Him Die;
A really fun achievement, because it is extremely hard and all about skills. This is what I would call the Sarth 3d of heroic dungeon, because it requires everyone to do everything exactly right. I would never do it again, but it was really fun when I did ^^
Hadronox Denied;
The difficult thing about this achievement is aggroing Hadronox before she has closed the gates that spawn more mobs. This is a fun achievement because the mobs that spawn heal her when she kills em, if they don't go for the healer (me) first. This mean you really have to grab her in the neck and nuke her down. And that's always fun.

And the pain in the ass one - yes, there is one achievement that really should be removed from the game. It is all about luck and nothing about skills, and worst of all - the healer is basically useless.
Less Rabi;
Grrr, just typing it makes me angry. I was the only one in our group that hadn't gotten this achi, and everyone else had gotten it by pure luck. Like they went into the instance for the first or second time ever, didn't even know or think about achievements, and got it. Seeing as Make it Count really isn't that difficult I thought that this was really all that stood between me and my beautiful proto-drake. And we tried and tried and tried and tried. But seemed as if our dk's (our group consists of 2 druids, 2 dk's and me) just couldn't get the interrupting right. So yesterday we hired a resto shammie from my guild, got him to spec Reverberation (I paid of course) and got this done. But it still wasn't easy, oh no. Still took us about two hours and 20 tries-ish. Because even if you have the shammie just spam the earth shock/wind shock button, stuff can still go wrong. Interrupting him after the third transform isn't really about skills, it's about luck. Sometimes he uses quake and transforms while everyone is stunned. What is there to do about that?! And if you bring him below 50% too fast (and thus speeding up time between transforms) he can actually cast a new transform within 4 sec of the previous one. So although it's supposed to happen every 5 sec, it sometime happened every 4 sec and even 6 sec apart! And all I could do was stand and watch and hope the interrupters would get it right.
Well he drove me crazy, but we finally -finally- got this done last night. And I swear, it was the best moment of my wow-life so far.