So while we had no time to play during the actual Holidays we’re now on vacation and had some fun. We had been talking about doing “Glory of the Hero” and got off to a very slow start with that.
But of those few achievements we tried we managed to get a pretty good number done for example “Better off Dredd” in Gundrak. Quite easy you just have to kill all the adds you keep getting feared into during the fight (actually there is one add too many in the pen which you can pull before the boss fight). The fight is a bit longer of course so it puts a bit of strain on the healer but if you’ve been running a lot of heroics with the new LFG you should be well enough equipped to handle it. I did have to Innervate however 
We also managed to do “Split Personality” in the Nexus. We chose to simply AoE the mirror images (I think one of them is channeling a spell, interrupt that to kill it timely!) and so it was super easy.
Not quite so easy was the “Chaos Theory” achievement also in the Nexus. The rifts spawn lots of mobs when not killed, cause tons of chain lightning damage and the boss becomes stronger. But you cannot kill the rifts when getting the achievement. We had cleared lots of space around the boss to be able to kite him all over the place. We did it but I would advise to get some better strat than ours which was to just kite and burn him down! We were quite close to failing when at some point a player died and someone yelled on Teamspeak: “He’s healed himself” meaning the boss. I nearly let us wipe then. Reminds me to always but the boss on focus in such fights!
For us druids “Intense Cold” is stupidly easy: just jump all the time and shift when she freezes you. I had already done it but our druid tank got it during this run.
Yesterday I finally completed the 3rd and last of the new instances in Heroic mode with the promised guild group. Actually we completed a wipe-free run of all three of the Ice Crown 5-man instances on heroic and even managed to snag the “We’re advancing in a different direction” achievement (and probably by a long margin, too, or so it felt). The final fight (some Tyrannus guy) in the second one turned out to be tricky as I was killed pretty early on in the fight by an add shooting at me which we did not notice and so they had to complete the fight without a healer – believe me: listening to them do the fight on Teamspeak was … quite nerve-wracking. Now the next time someone tries to tell me I am not geared well enough for Halls of Reflection I can tell them to … whatever. Of course since that first LFG encounter with the instance my gear has improved by at least 15 iLvls.
After Icecrown we got together a guild group – 13 people online! – and quickly cleared out Archavon & his friends. Not a single wipe!
But just for another jab at LFG: we used the tool yesterday to fill in a missing tank and dps and landed in Utgarde Pinnacle. I used my new Dreamstate spec to DPS a bit on the side and managed to not let anyone die because of that 
The run went fast and smooth. In the end however the Paladin tank had to post is Recount stats which showed he had done the most damage and while I was still thanking people for the nice group he left without a word. Could he just NOT have posted the stupid stats? What did he gain? I am a healer I am not offended by only doing 5% of the damage … but after a smooth run it just leaves a bad taste which was completely not necessary. Not everybody is raid-equipped … and we still did not complete the gauntlet fast enough for the achievement
