Raiding - Achievements on a Sunday casual run

Sunday attendance is dwindling and I can understand that - I still like going, though sometimes it's more of an obligation rather than a true enjoyment, but I have never disliked raiding on the casual day - and now that we have the Mannoroth portal, people don't really want to turn up anymore just to gear alts and whatever.

Kyxyn told me that he wanted to do Manny then take the rest of the night off and I was fine with that. I did wonder what we would be doing.

However, then the thought of achievements popped up and that got me all excited.

When the raid started, I was not looking particularly optimistic.  Firstly, a little bit melee heavy, and with Battousaix and Zyrekt there who hadn't done Manny before, I was worried we wouldn't get it. That, and Zyrekt had not struck me as the most raid aware person after having done 5 Timewalkers with him on the Saturday and he died continuously to melee/ground mechanics. And, he had a pretty crappy ilvl too!

But, we somehow managed to pull it off. Yuuda scoffed at me for being concerned.  "It's just Mannoroth," he said. "It's an easy fight."

Still. I was happy that was done after only one wipe.

I had the two trials there as well (Ashenik and Doublebrutal), and they also stayed on for the later part of the raid where we decided we would try for achievements.

So back we went to the beginning and tried to do the Nearly Indestructible achievement for Hellfire Assault.  All we had to do there was make sure that the cannons didn't take damage, and kill all the machines and demolishers as soon as they came out.  That actually went really well, considering it was a raid full of alts.  Taxar and Thohand (Danleet) were tanking and it went rather well, even considering we lusted at the wrong point, and I was pleased to get that achievement out of the way.  Even Crooked was perky, because he was quite animated and calling out things because he does quite enjoy achievements.

The second achievement was on Iron Reaver, Turning the Tide.  On the edges up in the stands around the area we do Iron Reaver there are Hellfire guardians standing up there.  We need to get Iron Reaver to do a Barrage on top of them to kill them.

It wasn't as difficult as some people said it would be.  At first we thought just facing that way and having everyone stand in a line in that direction (as Iron reaver chooses a random person and barrages in that direction) so that Iron Reaver would barrage the guardians up the top would be enough, but it turns out there is a range on it.  So we had to bring Iron Reaver closer, but then there was fire EVERYWHERE.  Thank goodness it was normal.  We had a few dud shots at first but we got the hang of it, and sometimes repositioning was a little difficult.  However, we got it down on our first attempt at the achievement, though it was messy.  There are guardians on both sides, so once we finish one side (hopefully you get one side finished before she flies up into the air so when she lands you can just take her to the other side) then you can just drag over and do the other side.  That was a pretty cool achievement to get, I thought.

Then we tried for the Council one, You Gotta Keep 'em Separated (Offpsring reference!). That one was not easy.  The healing required in that last phase is absolutely phenomenal and was horribly painful.  The idea is to kill them all within 10 seconds of each other but once you get them below 30% they enrage and do horrible nasty bad things.  We wiped a few times to it, and then gave up and just did it normally.  That might be something that you do with a bunch of mains and no alts.

Overall I had a fun night - any night with achievements is a fun night.  I wonder where Tacky was. He likes achievements, and I wish he'd been there.