Aces High!: A Quick Guide

Okay so this isn’t exactly hunter related, but I’ve seen a lot of people talking about how much they hate this daily quest and since it’s one of my favorite dailies ever, I figured I’d let you guys in on my secret.

wow_aceshighexample1

For starters, Aces High! is a quest and subsequent daily quest that becomes available to you at level 80. It’s in Coldarra and you need a flying mount to get up to where the quest giver is. This quest is basically about flying around on a dragon and shooting fireballs at other dragons.

“Oh that’s easy”, you may be thinking by now. “I’ve done that Defending Wyrmrest Temple a million times. This’ll be cake.”

Yeah, if you’re anything like me, you’re in for a very unpleasant surprise followed by vowing to never do this quest again.

See, the mechanics of this one are very different. Fortunately once you get the hang of it, as I finally did, it’s not that bad and actually becomes pretty fun.

This quest is very much based on HoTs, DoTs, and stacking them to open up and power up other moves. But you can pretty easily work yourself into a little rhythm to ensure you have little to no issues. Here’s how:

Your action bar will look something like this:

aceshighactionbar

The first button is going to be your bread’n’butter Fireball move (called Flame Spike) that you have to stack to unleash…
The second button which you will use at the end of your Fireball stacking.
The third button is your HoT which you will want to stack on yourself throughout the duration of the fight.
The fourth button is a big heal which requires combo points done by your Fireball. I only use it in an emergency (and I usually don’t have to use it at all.)
The fifth button is a protective shield which you will be using sometimes when the dragon you are fighting does a certain move. You need combo points from your Fireball to use it. More on that later.
And the sixth button increases your speed and I only use it if I’m outnumbered and need to escape.

Before we begin, you will want to go into the interface menu and enable “Auto Self Cast”. This will make your life five million times easier. Yes yes, I know, I have an addon that lets me right click to self cast too. But it probably won’t work with this one. In fact, a lot of addons interfere with this quest, so be on the lookout.

And now we’re ready to begin!

The first thing I do is stack about five HoTs on myself. Just hit ‘3’ on your keyboard five times. While you’re doing this you can be flying around to find a dragon to fight, try to find one sort of on the edge so you don’t have to go into a big group of them.

Found a dragon? Tag him by pressing ‘1’. Now press it three or four more times (to stack it up), and then hit ‘2’ to trigger your big DoT. Then hit ‘3’ five times again to stack up your HoT again, and… that is how you do it. 3-3-3-3-3-1-1-1-1-2-repeat!

wow_aceshighexample2

There is one other thing you have to look out for which I alluded to before. Sometimes the dragon is going to start doing a move called “Arcane Surge”. This move does a LOT of damage. Keep a careful eye on his portrait and when you see him start to cast it, toss up a few Fireballs (if you haven’t already) to get a combo chain started and then hit ‘5’ or press the appropriate button on the action bar. It will “bubble” you for a few seconds depending on how many Fireballs you had up. Typically I’m doing my spell rotation with my keyboard while I have my hand on the mouse hovering over that Flame Shield button so I can hit it quickly.

Beyond that, just use your big heal in the event of an emergency or your dash if you get outnumbered, and you should be good to go! This quest will give you 250 rep with Wyrmrest Accord every day and also give you lots of practice for the Malygos fight which will include a phase where you are riding a dragon and the controls are identical to the controls in this daily. So as you can see, if you are a raider, then practicing this quest a couple times is pretty much a “must”. Really it’s pretty easy once you figure it out and honestly I think it’s a ton of fun and I look forward to it every day because I’m a dork.

Okay, that’s all for now. I ding’d 25 today in real life, sadly this means I have no new skills to train but maybe I’ll get to open up a treasure box or two. Epics ahoy!

30 thoughts on “Aces High!: A Quick Guide”

  1. Happy Birthday! Mine is tomorrow :). Epic lootz FTW!

    Anywho, great guide on the quest. I’m not 80 yet, but I’ve heard a lot about that encounter so I’ll be sure to practice it before hand.

  2. Happy grats birthday!

    Happy birthday grats?

    Grats happy birthday grats.

    Something like that. Hope it’s a good one for you!

  3. Happy Birthday!

    By the way… should “5-5-5-5-5-1-1-1-1-3-repeat” actually be 3-3-3-3-3-1-1-1-1-2- repeat?

    P.S. what epics did you get?

  4. Gratz on the Birthday! Today is also my son’s birthday – he’s 19 and looking forward to spending time in the BG’s.

    I wonder who his opponents are going to be….hmmm….DOH!

  5. Happy bday Pike!!

    Oh i started a new twitter account, if you haven’t added it yet.

    It’s in the website field.

    So yeah, ADD ME!

    And help me out if I go on your server 😀

  6. Happy birthday. On my 25th earlier in the year I had no internets for a month -.- Hopefully you will look back on your birthday with less derision, lol.

  7. Pike,

    Happy Birthday. Good write up on the quest. Just so you know, as long as your stack of HoTs is ticking, you only have to refresh one to refresh the entire stack.

    So my rotation is Stack HoTs–> 3 x Fireball –> DoT –> Refresh HoT repeat until target is dead. Flame Shield as necessary of course

  8. Nice write up, and happy birthday!

    Oh, and it’s notable that practice with this daily is highly recommended for Phase 3 of Malygos!

  9. Great guide. This is the same dragon (same action bar) you ride to fight Malygos during the 3rd phase. I could never figure out how the heal buttons works.

  10. Thanks for the guide. I tried this one and spent an hour on it before I gave up on it. Eventually I’ll have to give it a try. I want the reward for completing it the first time.

    Have you tried the daily in Storm Peaks, I think it’s the Spear of Hodir or something like that.

  11. Happy Birthday, Pike!

    @jong: You need to target your pet (the dragon you’re riding) to get the big heal to work. As Pike said, some (many) addons may interfere with this. Generally, I don’t worry about it until I’m out of combat, to heal up before tagging my next target.

  12. Happy Birthday Pike!!

    Mine is coming up in Feb. but I’m not gonna say how old I’ll be. >.>

    Haven’t tried this quest yet, but it should be easier now that I know what to do! 🙂

  13. Belated “Happy Birthday”… even though ye’re a Capricorn… nobody’s perfect, I suppose. 😉

    Thanks for the great blog… it’s always a fun read, and sometimes I even learn something. Keep doin’ what ye’re doin’, luv.

  14. I’m normally the lurker kind of reader, but I just gotta say this:

    THANK YOU.

    Without this guide I would’ve been so frustrated with this quest and refuse to do it again, but this really helped.. and it’s a tiiiny bit late, but happy birthday. 😉

  15. Nice guide, I might actually be able to do this now! I can’t believe I only learnt that there was a self cast in the menu a few days ago – I’ve been playing for a year and a half! No more /target self /cast bandage etc again! 🙂

    Right, now to get everyone in the guild to get practicing this….

  16. I did not read all of the posts, but just so you know…

    When fighting Malygos in Eye of Eternity, phase 3.
    You get a dragon with the same abilities.

    Most consider this quest as a training stage for that fight.

    Nice guide, thanks!

Comments are closed.