- 10
- From Hell's Heart I Stab at Thee
- Defeat the Whale Shark in Vashj'ir (despite or perhaps because of the fact that he drops no loot).
Hell's Heart I Stab at Thee is an exploration achievement earned for defeating the Whale Shark in Vashj'ir. This achievement was all but impossible without a group, for the Whale Shark one-shotted anything it melees; however, it can be easily done solo by a level 100 character as of Warlords of Draenor.
Engagement
To succeed in killing the whale shark, one member of the group (preferably a ranged class) must gain aggro and then kite the whale shark around the area. This "tank" (so to speak) must avoid being hit by the whale shark while also continuing to do damage and maintain aggro, as even the best-equipped plate-wearer will be instantly killed if he fails to stay out of melee range. Healing in this encounter is thus pointless (save for griefing from opposing faction members, as the whale sharks usually patrol well away from other mobs) so all classes need to DPS and do so slowly; ripping aggro off the kiter is instant death for whomever does it.
Unlike some other outdoor boss encounters from "vanilla" World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade, there is no penalty for a character dying, resurrecting from a graveyard, and then rejoining the fight. In fact, it will be useful to locate a nearby graveyard and then kite the whale shark towards it, so as to shorten the distance a character must travel to reclaim his corpse and return to action. If the character dies more than a few times, however, he may be subject to the delayed-resurrection penalty where he has to wait a few seconds to a few minutes before being allowed to resurrect (except being raised by another player, or course).
Should the kiter die, it is imperative that someone else quickly takes over as the new kiter. Otherwise, the whale shark will rapidly go down his aggro list killing players, and he may reset if no character is in melee range.
Be prepared for a very long fight. Because of the care the group must take to not take aggro off the kiter, all characters must either let several seconds pass between attacks or use only low-damage attacks. The whale shark must pretty much suffer the "death by a thousand paper cuts."
Trivia
- The name of the achievement is a reference to the last speech by Captain Ahab in the 1851 Herman Melville novel Moby-Dick. As Ahab has his final, fatal encounter with the whale he has been vengefully chasing for years, he exclaims (among other things) "Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."
- Those not familiar with Moby-Dick may also recognize the latter half of the above quote as the last words of Khan Noonien Singh, the antagonist in the 1982 movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
- At one point during the Cataclysm Beta this achievement awarded the title <Ishmael> but this was later removed. Ishmael is the narrator of Moby Dick, who survived the final confrontation with the whale and is narrating the tale to the reader.
Patch changes
Patch 4.0.3a (2010-11-23): Added.