Scholomance: Gold

Lessons learned on our way to gold:

- Skipping Professor Slate and most packs in his room seems the most reasonable as it saves at least a full minute.

- Instructor Chillheart: You can skip all trash in this room by pulling him jumping over the balustrade after killing the first two mobs in the instance. He must start the combat before you hit the ground, otherwise at least one mob will add (which is actually managable, but not what you should aim at). During the boss fight, never move sideways but stay on a single line between the boss and the entrance.

- Jandice Barov will summon her copies twice. This macro helps a lot (thanks to lancore89 for this):

First, this one:

/run frm = CreateFrame("PlayerModel");frm:SetPoint("BOTTOMRIGHT",nil,"BOTTOMRIGHT",0,100);frm:SetHeight(600);frm:SetWidth(300);frm:RegisterEvent("PLAYER_TARGET_CHANGED");frm:SetScript("OnEvent",function(self,event,...) frm:SetUnit("target") end);

It will show a huge model of your current target at the right of your screen.

Then, target the boss and use that one:

/run frm2 = CreateFrame("PlayerModel");frm2:SetPoint("BOTTOMRIGHT",frm,"BOTTOMLEFT",0,0);frm2:SetHeight(600);frm2:SetWidth(300);frm2:SetUnit("target")

It will display the original boss next to your current target.

And to deactivate the model box:

/run frm:UnregisterEvent("PLAYER_TARGET_CHANGED");frm:Hide();frm2:Hide()

This way, you will have huge full body models and have an easier time spotting the right one.

- Rattlegore is pretty straightforward. However, you should try to clear his room in one pull. Our tank aggroed everything and ran out again (using jumps, engineer boots and stuff like that) to LoS them. None except the tank must stand before the mobs as they use a cone attack.

- Use the Boiling Bloodthirst ability (increasing damage taken) of the Flesh horrors in the next room to kill them even faster. The idea here is to never let a Flesh horror die without the next one present (it will inherit the stacks). Of course, this will mean A LOT tank damage. Start the roleplaying of the boss in the next room asap.

- Lilian Voss. It might be possible to skip phase 3 completey by dpsing hard enough in the intermediate phases. We weren't able to, but at least dealt enough damage to end the fight quickly. Open the chest immediately to skip the final speech.

- Pull only one pack in Slate's room and skip the rest (including the boss).

- Darkmaster Gandling: when standing on the upper rank (healer, ranged dds), the adds will simply despawn before reaching you, so just tunnel the boss. Mass Dispell on the friendly adds will immediately kill all enemies in range in the surrounding rooms (don't know it regular dispells do too, we were running with two priests (don't ask...)).

Despite the number of bossfights, I considered this to be one of the easier gold modes.

Let me finally say that Challenge Modes are the most fun I had in 5-mans since Classic and early BC, thanks a lot Blizz for this truly challenging (see what i did there?) experience.

Completing these Gold achievements rewards a teleport spell so you can quickly get to the instance when ever you want. These spells are fly-out spells, meaning they are grouped and only take one actionbar slot -that's nice. The fly-out group consists of:

[spell=131204]

Temple of the Jade Serpent: Gold

[spell=131205]

Stormstout Brewery: Gold

[spell=131206]

Shado-Pan Monastery: Gold

[spell=131222]

Mogu'shan Palace: Gold

[spell=131225]

Gate of the Setting Sun: Gold

[spell=131231]

Scarlet Halls: Gold

[spell=131229]

Scarlet Monastery: Gold

→

[spell=131232]

Scholomance: Gold

[spell=131228]

Siege of Niuzao Temple: Gold

The complete list (in case this gets outdated) of Gold dungeon challenge achievements can be found here.

Also, if you ever wonder what heroics you have yet to complete and unlock challenge mode for, simply paste this into the chat on your character:
/run for x,i in ipairs({6456,6470,6756,6758,6759,6760,6761,6762,6763})do local _,_,_,c,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,m,b=GetAchievementInfo(i)print(x,"\124cff"..(m and"00ff00C"or"ff0000Inc").."ompleted\124r",GetAchievementLink(i))end

Boiling Bloodthirst is the humanoid carvers not the flesh horrors