49 Attempt Champions

The 49 attempt curse dates all the way back to release of Anub'arak and opening of ToC hard modes. This was back when Sleep was in what I consider it's second 'phase' as a guild (or what the forums trolls call "When Sleep was only 3 guilds instead of 10"). We were running one 'stacked' ten man a week. I don't remember when how long it took us to get Tribute to Insanity in ten man, but we finished at 49 attempts for at least a month. We finally got Insanity in ten man after the In and Out players faction transfered and artificially boosted our WoW Progress 10 man ranking with their server first 50 attempt ten man. The In and Out group kept the majority of their ten man going and eventually my ten man was able to break the curse and finally get it.

Now here we are again, able to easily kill Anub'arak on 25 man heroic and we're unable to get Insanity, failing at 49 attempts, yet again. So, time to appease everyone's curiosity. This is where and how we failed at Tribute to Insanity 4 consecutive weeks (sorry Jechtt).

Week after Mad Skill: I think this was the week Patch 3.3 was released. We made it to Anub'arak with 50 attempts. Somewhere in the middle of the Anub'arak fight Jechtt, one of our holy priests, tells us that his Penetrating Cold mod wasn't working. Please don't quote me on this, though, as I'm not a healer and I have no idea what they use on this fight... all I know is a mod of his wasn't working. He did fine for a bit, but eventually his target died, which I believe was another healer. Chain reaction leads to a wipe. We kill Anub'arak flawlessly our next attempt.

The next week a few things went wrong. We made it to Anub'arak again with 50 attempts. Early on in the fight I d/c'd. I think I d/c'd in the beginning of phase 2, so nothing was really screwed up if I could make it back online before the next phase 1. However, we didn't make it there. Jechtt was chased twice consecutively by Anub'arak. He was unprepared for the second chase, ran the wrong way, and with forbearance already on him, he died to that. We kill him flawlessly next attempt.

We didn't do ToC heroic the following week because of the holidays. January 3rd, the day before that text message was sent, we tried going back to ToC just to get it out of the way, even though we had a few raiders not getting back until the 5th. Our raid consisted of friend ranks and four tanks (three prot warriors with no other specs). We wipe to faction champions. We kill it the next attempt. I sit for BC on twins, he sits so we can somewhat round out our group for Anub'arak. We end up killing Anub'arak with a mediocre raid, although sloppily, in one attempt. Some luck, huh?

And now onto Sunday, January 10th. Last raid week we lost 5 raiders, and Watzmental is taking a break until February. Down 6 raiders, we were surprised to even have a raid Sunday. We bring in some new apps, primarily casters. We end up having one of our best nights in ToC ever, beating some of our kill times by an entire minute. We get to Anub'arak, knowing we have a few people who haven't done the fight before, but decide to go for insanity. But guess what. Ameranth, our add tank, d/c's. Apparently avoidance is client side because you can't block, dodge, or parry when you go offline. He immediately died to adds as soon as the "Ameranth has gone offline" message popped up. The adds killed two people. We were wiped entirely, though, as the fight progressed into phase 2 and Gobie was chased by Anub'arak and then inexplicably Anub'arak changed targets and immediately insta-gibbed someone. I guess we're just bad because even the game doesn't want us getting this achievement. We killed Anub'arak in 47 attempts that night. One more wipe to Penetrating Cold failure and then Necromonius having some issues clicking off DI and insta-removing an attempt. On a side note, 4 people got their Trial of the Grand Crusader achievements!

And that's the story of the 49 Attempt Champions. Maybe better luck next week? I doubt it.