The Push for 7,000

Last week, we accidentally got a couple achievements while doing heroic Ulduar, so my push towards 7,000 achievement points is going strong. It started on Ignis - I was on construct duty, so it was my job to blow up the constructs when they became brittle. However, one of them got out of my line of sight behind a fire pillar (I just lost track of it), so when the call was made, it was too late for me to go shatter it. Our awesome offtanks quickly picked it up again, made it brittle, and before you knew it, when I shattered one construct, the other one that had been awoken by Ignis was shattered as well. So there we had Heroic: Shattered.

We continued on and we reached Kologarn who refused to let us pass. Normally, we focus all DPS on the right arm and down him that way, but recently we've found that just as he's about to die, his left arm has been DPS'ed enough via incidental damage (swipes, consecrates, death and decays, etc.) that if we just add a bit of DPS to kill the arm, all that damage is transferred to Kologarn and he goes down quicker. So when I saw we were close to killing Kolo and I saw that his left arm was getting low, even when the right arm popped up, I focused DPS on the left arm, knowing the call to kill the left arm would come when the right arm went down. With the extra damage I was able to provide to the left arm before the right arm went down, we were able to get Heroic: Disarmed.

Then, last night, while fighting for control of Wintergrasp, I realized after all was said and done that I was just 8 honorable kills away from 5,000. So this morning, I headed out a little early to the Strand of the Ancients and quickly dispatched of 8 hordies to pick up 5,000 Honorable Kills

Of course, while striving for achievements, I'm still doing my Crusader dailies each and every day (actually, Saturday was the first time since the patch that I didn't get my dailies done - ale comes first). A day before though, while out there, I found my evil twin! Finneal (achievement comparison) was there and he looked almost exactly like me! Just with more achievement points! I can't let that stand. But we did have some fun and we both popped our mirror images just to confuse some people and seeing eight little dopplegangers running around was a sight to be seen.

Lastly, last night, I went into a quick VOA since I really didn't have anything else to do and even though I don't need any items from there, it was fun to do single target DPS. Usually in Ulduar, I have to do crowd control, DPS some bomb bots, or just do things that don't allow me to go all out. Well, on both Emalon and Archavon I was pretty much free to do as much DPS as I could and it showed. I easily topped the damage meters and was quite happy with my performance. And all of this was done without an enchant on my purty new Runescribed Blade.

Emalon:

Archavon:

The Antechamber

With the Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, and XT-002 defeated on Wednesday, the Gold Team was left with a choice - continue into the Antechamber of Ulduar or finish The Siege of Ulduar...we chose the Siege! To Ignis we went. Our first strategy was to be the "normal" strategy whereby Aravic would tank Ignis in a circular pattern while Santorum would pick up the adds and, via Vetarra's roots, trap them in the fire until they became brittle, at which point I would blow them up. We tried this strategy quite a few times and it all worked well until Ignis would pick up Vetarra or Santorum and put them in his naughty bits bucket. Then the roots would be gone, we'd have extra adds, or they would have no tank and they'd run over the raid. So it was finally decided...ZERG!

The zerg strategy is quite a bit tougher, but really, the only way to complete Stokin' the Furnace - which we didn't even get close to, but perhaps with one less healer and more DPS we could get close. To zerg Ignis, you tank him right on the border of a pool so the Scorch he does doesn't leave pillars of fire. Meanwhile, Santorum needed to pick up the adds and just hold them while doing DPS to to the boss. It's a simple race against time in the zerg strategy. Because for each Iron Construct add left alive, Ignis gains a 15% damage buff. I believe at one point, he was doing 135% more damage, maybe even 150%. Our first attempt was a learning experience - trying to figure out where to place the Constructs, how to heal through the massive damage, etc. But after a couple of zerg attempts, Ignis went down, we received The Siege of Ulduar and a few of us got Hot Pocket.


With Ignis down, we gathered everyone up and prepared to enter the Antechamber of Ulduar. After getting past some trash in the antechamber, we were rewarded with a beautiful sight...


Ulduar truly is a spectacle of immense proportions. It's quite obvious that it was in fact built by the titans and they spared no expense. It's a massive, beautiful place to visit, until, of course, you encounter someone that wants to rip you limb from limb.


After learning the Kologarn fight, it took us 4-5 tries to defeat him using a strategy of blowing all cooldowns at the start to defeat the Right Arm, then having ranged DPS AOE down the adds while melee DPS continued to focus on the body. Ranged DPS then focused on the body when adds were down and everyone switched back to the arm when it was reconstructed. We found that defeating the left arm is not a good idea as more adds are spawned and the damage the arm does is inconsequential. Make sure you watch out for him when you enter his chamber, he does try his best to surprise you!


With Kologarn down, we considered continuing across his "bridge" to Auriaya, but decided to back track a bit to the Iron Council. At the Iron Council, we had 4 or so attempts before it was time to call it for the night. I'm quite certain we'll be able to get them down next week - we got close a couple of times but ran into healing or interrupting issues.


Next week I'm hopeful that we can get through the Iron Council and Auriaya to then have fun with the Keepers of Ulduar - I'm especially wanting to see Freya...go go Gold Team!