So anyway I get home from work last night, turn on WoW and let the computer download the latest patch....all 261 MB of it. Fortunately most it must have been downloaded earlier via the background downloader, since the first 250 odd MB of it seemed to download nearly instantly. Yipee. Well anyway I patiently allowed the rest of the patch to download and install and agree to the Terms of Enslavement...skipping through the details of the terms and just praying that somewhere in between Blizzard didn't put in anything that legally bound me to owing them my next 7 generations, not like MMO players get laid anyway for those generations to come into existence.
So anyway, I log in, pick up a couple of quests in Shattarath for this Isle, take the portal to silvermoon, take the wyvern to the Isle (WHY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD CAN'T WE USE FLIGHT FORM IN OUTLAND.....WHY....WHY?). Land, talk to the people I need to, clear my quest log for these new quests, start doing a couple of dailies.....Kill stealing, you know the usual. So finally a couple of friends in my guild wonder if anyone wants to do Magister's Terrace. Now being the only available tank (the other one was already doing it with another group), I agree to check out the new place. So we get a group together, Me (feral druid/tank), a fury warrior, an affliction lock, a frost mage and a discipline priest. The lock and the mage were alts and were mostly blues and greens. Nonetheless, we do the summons, head on it and start.
My first impression was that it looks outdoorsy, can I use root...NO, travel form.....No dumbass, this sucks....oo shiny. So this was the first time I was doing an instance without any clue about mobs or bosses. So taking the names at face value was my only choice. Physician = Doctor or something (keel him, cause he probably heals and also must be a range attacker like a priest), blood knight oh must be a melee guy like a warrior, warlock...warlock, blood mage, must be a mage...etc. Ok turned out the blood knight can heal, the physician melees and so does the blood mage. Fine be that way. There are a couple other funky mobs like the Naga witch who does ranged attacks and uses forked lightning attacks, an ethereal smuggler who randomly teleports near a player and casts arcane explosion really fast...etc etc.
My last impression of this place was that the trash is harder than the bosses. The pulls usually involve 4+ mobs. The final pull before Kael is actually a 6 pull. A tanks nightmare with only one proper CC, and the kicker is that you are more likely to die on trash than on the boss. We 1 shotted the first boss, 2 shotted the next 2 bosses and 1 shotted Kael. But we died atleast 5 times to the trash, including 3 to the penultimate pull.
Since most of the strats are already online, I'll only mention minor details here and there.
The first boss is very much like the final boss of Steamvaults, every now and then he channels from a floating crystal and gains mana, its time to attack the crystal and dps it down fast, before he gets enough mana. Once its destroyed he spams a sort of AoE attack like arcane explosion until his mana runs out. His mana starts at 0 to begin with, so its not too hard as long as the floating crystals are taken down.Vexallus:
The second boss is in a room full of mana worms, its truly a beautiful sight for the first time. Its also in this room that you find the body of the guy whos the quest objective for the Magister's terrace quest to unlock its Heroic mode. By full I mean like 30+ mana worms, luckily for us they are non-elites. A tanks needs to pull em, and the dps AoE's them down. The plus side is they give the magic dps a buff which increases their damage output. When you pull about 10-15 or so will come at a time, so don't be alarmed. There are basically just 2 of these big pulls but nothing hard at all. Your clothies may die, but well who told them to wear cloth armor. This brings us to the second boss, he's basically like Curator if you have ever done him. I used my Violet badge to resist some of the arcane damage he dishes out. Every couple of seconds he lets loose an orb of electricity or something which needs to be dps-ed down, while the tank tanks the boss. At 10% he goes into some sort of overload and spams an arcane explosion kinda ability, except that it does 1k damage, has infinite range and adds a debuff which increases damage taken by 10%. So well kill him and fast. Also make sure you come into this stage with high or full HP.
Priestess Delrissa:
The third boss is in a large courtyard kinda room with 4 adds. You need to clear the front half of the courtyard before pulling her. If like us you try to kill the mobs on her side of the courtyard you risk pulling her, in our first attempt we decided to clear the entire courtyard but the moment we attack the mobs on the left side of her, she got pulled as well. It may be possible to pull them without pulling her, but its avoidable. Anyway this boss is a mayhem fight, the 4 adds with the boss are random and can sometimes be resistant to CC. Treating this like a 5v5 PvP match I hear works best and some tanks may consider donning their PvP gear. I remained in my tanking gear for the majority of this fight and made sure that there was no aggro on the clothies as best as I could. The boss is ridiculously easy to kill if you focus fire her, but its the adds that can kill your clothies really fast. I suggest that a tank handles the melee guys while the priestess and the casters get killed by the casters. There was a lot of mayhem during our attempt and I have nothing of use to share. We got a shaman, a fury warrior, a warlock and a rogue. The shaman heals and removes buffs. The warrior pummels and occasionally fears. The warlock has an imp pet and fears, the rogue uses vanish, cheap shot the usual. Keeping the rogue away from the clothies was key.
After this you come up to the dreaded 6 pack. 1 blood knight, 1 blood mage, 1 warlock, 1 naga witch, 1 ethereal smuggler and 1 sister of torment. We died to them thrice....thrice. So our winning strat, we pulled them down the narrow hallway at the end of which they stand, and I tanked the blood knight and the blood mage for the most part. The sister of torment was banished. The naga witch was sheeped and the ethereal was feared. The lock I believe my dps dispatched fast, so he was basically not a concern. My god the mayhem.
Kael'thas Sunstrider:
This brings us to Kael'thas, a shadow of his former self. For the most part he is a tank and spank fight until you hit the second phase. In the first phase he spawns a phoenix hatchling which does AoE fire damage and explodes when killed. Umm.....NO MELEE AT ALL. We had the warlock kite him while he and the mage burnt him down. Me and the fury warrior beat upon Kael the whole while. Now at 50% I believe he goes into Phase 2. No more phoenix. Instead there is a gravity lapse, making it very melee unfriendly, not to mention orbs, huge orbs that you need to avoid at all costs. He also seemed to be doing a constant damage to the party which resulted in a dead healer. Thankfully no longer needed for tanking, I rezzed the healer and threw a tranquility on the party. The healer died, the warrior died, I died, the warlock died, Kael died, the mage died....wait what...yup both the mage and Kael exchanged killing blows to help with finishing Magister's Terrace. Kael dropped the cloak of blade turning...yipee.....NOT. Drop something useful next time n00b.
For the rest of the instance remember:
1)Stay out of the purple bubbles
2)Locks cannot be feared
3)Isn't too hard except for trash and Kael
Best of luck in your endeavors and happy hunting.
No comments:
Post a Comment