Call of the Grand Crusade (25 player)

For those of you having trouble with this achievement remember to set the difficulty to heroic and then double check the difficulty is on heroic once you are inside. I thought I only had to set difficulty before I walked in but for some reason the difficulty was set to normal once I got inside the raid.

I successfully completed this achievement in a 25-man raid last night, so it is possible at level 85. Here's some notes on how we did the fight.

1. The fight requires a modified version of the level 80 strategy. Unlike the other encounters in the instance, you cannot brute force through the fight without significant adherence to strategy.

2. Start the fight with everyone's clothes off (tanks aside). Count down from 10. At 5, everyone hits a button to re-equip. The end result is that most of the raid is starting the fight at half health. If 20 people can knock even 50k off their health, this prevents the boss from healing a million health.

Mana is an issue when you do this, so as soon as the fight starts drop mana tide totems while priests cast hymn of hope. That'll restore most people's mana back up.

Just be sure not to any sort of healing abilities (especially vampiric embrace and healing stream totem) until phase 3.

3. Once the boss burrows, kite him around as normal. Make sure you leave two ice patches up.

4. When the boss pops back up, take the adds to the ice patches, burn 'em down, then turn all dps on the boss.

5. You'll need 4 healers. 2 to keep the tanks up, and 2 discipline priests with 2 points in soul warding (and no glyph of power word: shield) to shield anyone with an acid debuff or permeating cold debuff. Start shielding once health is low in phase 3.

6. Every group should have a healing stream totem or vampiric embrace in them. This will cause equilibrium of a group's health to occur around 2k or so health. Note that permeating cold, an acid debuff, or being hit by an add/the boss can cause death, so these people have to be watched a bit more carefully.

7. We used a nature warding aura (+195 resistance) and prismatic elixirs (+90 resistance) for a really nice 285 resistance to frost/nature. This helped lessen the chance people would die to permeating cold. Anyone who got permeating cold immediately popped a healthstone, iceblock, anti-magic shell, cloak of shadows, or any other ability they had to stay alive. The UI gets filled with icons so it's visually difficult for the disc priests to pick out those with permeating cold.

8. Once the boss hits 30%, dps him for a few seconds then hit bloodlust. Everyone blows dps cooldowns at that point. Even healers can toss dots on the boss.

9. Off-tanks whose adds were presumably killed before knocking the boss below 30% can dps the boss until more adds spawn. They then drag them onto normal ground, not ice, so that they can burrow for a while.

10. The adds do exponential damage (1 add = x damage, 2 adds = 4x, 3 adds = 9x, 4 adds = 16x, etc.), so you don't want any more than 2 adds on a tank if you can help it. 3 adds is workable if the tank is getting good heals and blowing cooldowns. 4 adds is a nightmare that will likely kill a tank in seconds.

G'luck. This IS doable at level 85. His healing is a pain, so try and keep your health low as you go into phase 3. It's gonna drop to 2k or so health anyway (tanks aside), so don't be bashful about having very low health. Healers should NOT attempt to heal the raid back up -- it heals the boss instead and your raid will die anyway.

For reference purposes

It is possible to solo the ToC on 25 m heroiic as a level 92 ilvl 567 BM hunter.

other than the last boss, I was never in danger of dying. Only then because i was trying for The Traitor King at the same time, which forced me to not zerg the boss but let the adds pile up on me until there are 25 of them. Even vastly outgearing and outleveling this raid, their stacking debuff does begin to take a toll. I had to abandon the attempt on the achieve and just down the boss.

Also note, the mistresses of pain during the Lord Jaraxxus fight can still do the pain spike (at least for pet classes) which can hurt a lot if you aren't prepared for it (like I wasn't).

Otherwise, spend 20 min, relive one of the most meh raids in Wrath, and get yourself some easy achieves.

Edited for teh spells