B3-

I feel your pain. We wiped a few times on that last pull right before Mr. Lord of the BEs. Our group make up consisted of mage (me), hunter, warlock, priest and warrior tank (new to tanking).

We also hit the instance without reading up on it trying to get the “new” experience. We had no issues with the first boss, wiped once on the 2nd, spanked the priestess and the trash around her. That last pull though, sucked! Seemed like it was just too crowded there. We decided to take the fight into Kael’s room. The ethereal guy needs to go down first since he ports all over and does a nasty aoe. 2nd would be the physician, 3rd the warlock since he hits hard. We were lucky to have the banish from the warlock for the succy. Without proper cc for her I would recommend doing her 2nd because of her seducing.

We were all exhausted so after a couple of wipes on Kael we called it a night. Figured out a good strategy for him so will probably take him down tonight after work.

Good luck man, love the site.

Dude John I totally feel you! My guild is in Kara and Grull’s and we are getting ready to set foot in SSC. My tanking gear while not the best has a few epics and I can tank heroics and I have OT’d all of Kara (fellow feral btw, if they name didn’t tip you).

Ok, so full guild group:

Shethornclaw – Feral Tank
Wingdeath – Rogue for sap and DPS
Daedamus – Awesome mage for sheep and DPS
Shient/Corrup – 2 different guild hunters we had to switch out after second boss, freeze trap
Milkgas – Awesomely geared holy pally

Ok, so much like you we had done no research and knew nothing. We wiped, but no biggie it was to be expected. Downed first boss first try (early aggroed him as well). Took a few tries on the second boss, but got it done. I was amazed but we managed to take down princess first try with awesome CC by everyone.

So, we get to the 6 pull. Let me say I am glad to hear that someone else feels like an inadequate tank thanks to this instance. I feel like a useless tank now. The 6 pull took us around four or five tries, I don’t remember. But I feel your pain. And even after we finally managed to pull off the 6 pull we wiped four times on Kael finally giving up.

Never did I think that I would spend nearly 4 hours in a normal difficulty instance with Kara geared guildies, but it happened. So trust me you are not alone in feeling overwhelmed by the fact that a normal difficulty five man ripped you a new one.

Long reply, but I wanted to tell you my horrible experience with the last 2 parts of MT.

It was pretty much a wipe-fest for my intrepid band of adventurers, too. Here was our group comp:
–Protection Warrior, around T4 equivalent
–Holy Paladin (me), T4+ with two good PvP pieces
–Shadow Priest, from what I can tell, our weakest link, with 6k HP and pre-T4 gear level
–Retribution Paladin, looked to be around T4 equivalent
–Beast Mastery Hunter, T4 equivalent DPS goddess

You’ll notice right away that of that group, one has legitimately good CC, three have situationally useful CC, and one has none at all. Trying to tackle this instance with little to no CC left us frustrated and defeated. The first pulls were good learning experiences on what to kill and what to control. The first boss, humorously enough, locked our ret pally and hunter out of the fight, but we three-manned him down with the tools we had. (For inquiring minds, when he uses up all the crystals, that’s it. He’s pretty much reduced to white damage and drains, which are easy enough to heal through, even with no mana.) Spirits were high moving forward, and even though we wiped once or twice more on the way to the second boss, morale was still soaring.

The second boss bolstered our confidence even more when we one-shotted him. Thanks to our DPS goddess, the hunter, who was on add duty, she had a huge DPS boost (which in all honesty was very difficult to heal). Additionally it was hilarious to look over and see a 20-foot tall night elf towering over my right shoulder.

Delrissa, though. My God… We tried using the paladins to CC the little demon guy who makes the sheep, but we weren’t counting on a frequently resetting aggro table to keep the squishies alive. Wipe one. Try again, same strategy, but this time let the warrior get some aggro before setting up the CC. No luck, the warrior charges in, is immediately CC’d, and the bosses make a beeline for the group. Wipe two. Try again, mixing up the kill order. Wipe three. One more try, different kill order with different trap target. Wipe four. Again as a funny aside: one of the wipes, the paladin cast Divine Intervention on me without realizing I was directly adjacent to the boss’ starting point. After the wipe, I’m standing RIGHT THERE. /vent “Uhhhh…”

I’ve never felt so inadequate. I had to pull out nearly every trick in the book to get the healing done, and we dead-ended on the third boss. We never even got close to taking her down, and though I enjoyed her taunts as she mopped the floor with us, the night was very, very frustrating. I guess I’ll try again tonight, but right now it’s looking like my new least favorite instance. No run should be that dependent on crowd control, but then again maybe I’m just not doing it right?

Yeah, my group wiped on a pull in the big room before the third boss when a pet charged into a mob and pulled another group >.< and then went through and didn’t die until Kael’Thas and proceeded to down him the next try. CC and coordination is very important here. That was the first time and we had myself tanking (rawr), pally healer, fire/arcane hybrid mage, destro lock, and hunter (not spec’ed for freezing very well, lol).

The way we dealt with things were to kill the Magisters (I believe that’s what they are) first always. They seam to have some kind of buff that increased spell haste every time they got a spell off and, although I didn’t notice it, someone else said that the buff was given to the other spell casters also. Anyhow, so we killed them ASAP, had a lock banish the charming demon, sheeped the ethereal, had the hunter freeze the blood knight and take care of the imp (he doesn’t have much health at all, though he does hit kinda hard), and the warlock seduced the other warlock the best he could. I tanked the Magister and the naga originally (naga low on killing priority list as long as it was on me since it’s one of the few physical damage ones).

So we killed the Magister and the hunter killed the imp ASAP. Then I came back for the warlock since he usually broke from seduce quickly while making sure the naga still hated me. After that the blood knight was important to kill since he healed and was under the other unreliable CC. Mage needs to make sure ethereal stays sheeped (does an AoE arcane explosion that is ridiculous and also teleports to random people, possibly the person farthest away or someone that is too far away) and demon needs to stay banished so no one is seduced. Then we come back for the ethereal, then the demon, and then it’s boss time =D

It’s funny because we got through easy the first time, but the second time when I had a different group makeup we were in trouble. No reliable CC at all. Two locks and the same hunter. The ethereal would break from CC so quick and AoE our own succubii (sp? lol) so quickly that it would just go crazy with everything running around.

It’s fun to finally do a new instance right when it came out (I started WoW last May, so nothing was new to everyone except me). I had a blast and will be doing it some more until farm status achieved and I’ll be looking for my Commendation trinket =D As well as some okay DPS leather.

Like yourself and many others I gave MT a try on patch day. My group consisted of 2 mages, a lock, a resto shaman, and a prot pally, the whole group was pretty much kara geared. After clearing the place with at least 7 or 8 wipes I don’t see how anyone could it without an insane amount of CC. Most of our wipes were do to bad pulls or CC breaking early, but that 6 man pull was the hardest. The long run back to the instance and back to that spot didn’t help either. What worked for us was, instead of banishing the succubus we enslaved her and used her charm on one of the mobs. So we had 2 sheeped, one enslaved, one charmed by the enslaved, and 2 being tanked by the pally. And even then we had to give it a few tries to get everything working.

So my point is, don’t blame yourself, you just had a less than perfect group make up. Next time bring a lock or an extra mage is place of the boomkin and I’m sure you’ll do fine.

My group went through this morning with Mind Control and Freeze trap as the only CC abilities. The fight we had the most trouble with was the priestess, where we wiped 5 times (our shadow priest said MC was not working in that fight). We were almost ready to give up on that fight.

I don’t remember the 6 man pull except for the sigh of relief our tank (who had been through the instance before) gave after we did it. Kael’thas was down to 1% the first try and went down the second try.

i dunno why, but the priestess had our number.

I hate to say this, but your biggest mistake was taking a Resto Druid to heal. I know, all my fellow druids will hate me for saying that, but here’s why I did…

1. Resto Druids are all about HoTs and Swiftmend, but even with that they cannot produce the big stack-heals an MT needs like a Pally, Priest or Shaman can and Healing Touch is not mana-efficient.

2. Pallys offer Blessing of Salvation, essential for putting out high DPS and minimized threat.

3. I know this is a sore spot with Restos and I do agree with you all, but in all honesty, 1-rez every 20 minutes is not sufficient when learning a new dungeon.

4. Gift of the Wild is sweet, but it’s hard to top the tasty Stamina buff from a Priest. Besides, you have GotW being a Feral Druid. :-)

5. In addition to having a standard rez, Shaman can resurrect themselves in a pinch, either in combat to continue healing or after a wipe to rez te party.

6. Priests have “Fade” to drop aggro if needed.

7. Shaman have chain-healing and (some) Priests have Circle of Healing, which are both fantastic group heals that have little-to-no channel time, unlike Tranquility.

8. Pallys have their “Hand of God” bubble to keep them up in a pinch, which in turn keeps the party up. They also have Blessing of Protection they can throw on someone else in the party to prevent physical damage.

9. Priests have fear in extreme situations.

10. As a fellow Main Tank, I have to say that I love Blessing of Sanctuary from a Paladin or Earth Shield from a Shaman.

@Messyah
HAH! I healed this PUG-like today. PUG sucked but I can say for certain a resto druid’s gonna have an easier time healing Kael while you’re dodging bubbles in mid-air than any other healer you got. Tranquility, though it’s channelled, ticks for over 2k a second. That’s your whole party 2k up a time. And my gear’s only 1.4k +healing. And I was healing an under-geared dwarf warrior and a pvp-spec’d arms tank. There is nothing that says taking a resto druid is a mistake. A good resto druid will have all their HoTs up on the MT before anyone else takes burst damage, and if someone else is taking burst damage early then there’s a DPS or a tank problem. With rejuv ticking for 800 every 3 seconds, Lifebloom for 600-700 every second, and Regrowth putting in a short burst plus another amount of heal I don’t know off the top of my head every 3 seconds, a resto druid should have no issues with this encounter on Normal. They should also have Nature’s Swiftness and Healing Touch macro’d together.

That being said.

The 6-pull is a bitch, it’s true. Took my pug several tries. The major issue is the AoE damage. My group was lucky enough to have all caster dps (two mages and a boomkin) so the only one I had to heal mainly was the tank. But the AoE in there can hit hard, like 1k each time, so you’d need Cassie to be watching her health. As soon as it goes down to about half, she would need to run back down the hallway, towards the casters, and bandage. It’s a damage-heavy fight, but it can be done with any healer as long as they’re on top of their game. You have to keep everyone seperate to avoid the aoe damage, and be aware you’ll probably need your aoe taunt for this one.

Swipe tanking ftw. This pull will need a lot of CC, but it’s still possible if you don’t have it. Just make sure your healer’s on top of their game and any melee dps who is taking a boatload of AoE damage knows to run out and bandage.

I have never, ever felt so frustrated as after that instance. I didn’t tank it – I went kitty while a warrior went and tanked it. And that was probably a mistake.

The 6-man pull broke us. We wiped 10 times on that before calling a night. Our group was a warrior, feral druid, lock, mage and priest. We tried sheeping the ethereal, seducing the healer and working from there…no love. We tried basically every order we could think. Failed utterly. We’re at least Kara-geared, and we just could not get this done no matter what. We tried dual-tanking it, but that causes too much damage.

About the only thing we didn’t try was chain fearing. I think that might’ve worked; between the warrior, lock and priest we should have been able to fear everyone enough to get a couple people down, and then mop up the rest. The group didn’t like that idea though. I also wanted to try mind control but that was vetoed too; MC never turns out well.

I think the big thing is that you cannot take a non-CCing DPS to this instance because of this 6-pull. You simply can’t. You need to CC the ethereal, the blood knight (because of the glaive) and the mage – and ideally the succubus too. You can’t have one running around, and you’ll take way too much damage to the group if you do. Having one class that isn’t going to be able to CC much meant that we were basically screwed, I think.

I hate that there’s an instance where I must tank it or I can’t go, but there ya go.

I’m glad to hear others feel the same way though. I didn’t wipe that much on Heroic Sethekk.

I signed on later than most my guild being a west coaster. Several in guild groups were running it and one of the tanks had to bail right before the six man pull (after wiping several times) so I got the call to tank the six and then final boss. I had a bit different experience than BBB. We had two mages, a shammy, and a healadin along with my feral self. Sheeped two, other ran at me, swiped up aggro, down they go…no sweat.

Sunstrider was a different story. We wiped probably 4 – 5 times…I lost count. We then replaced one mage with a shammy healer and wiped 2 – 3 more times. The orbs kept hitting the healers. No healers, no win. Finally after getting used to navigating the orbs, we were able to down him. He is really squishy and even squishier when he takes the knee.

One tip I had that work well is that I am bear form when starting the fight and getting aggro solid, then first time we get tossed in the air and come down while he is kneeling, I switch to kitty form and start going to work. I remain in kitty pretty much the rest of the fight.

P.S. The new lacerate buff rocks…almost unfair now.

Hehehe the 6 pull….I’m suprised no one else mentioned it. It was horrible, but I wrote about this instance as well along with how we tackled it. Mind you we had 2 folks in greens and blues, not even mid-kara gear, so don’t laugh at our wipes, not to mention a disc priest for heals

Check my thoughts on this instance and the 6-pull:

http://wttfoodforthought.blogspot.com/2008/03/kaelthas-down.html

Not to toot my own horn, but I cleared Magister’s Terrace 3 times yesterday, twice on Normal and once on Heroic (the second Normal and Heroic runs were with a Restoration Druid :P) with a total of 2 wipes (our first attempt on the priestess and a bad trash pull in Heroic). I am a feral druid, but frankly, the key to my group’s success was that I was not tanking, my guild leader and Tankadin extraordinaire was. Our group consisted of our Tankadin, a fire Mage, an elemental Shaman, a holy Paladin/restoration Druid, and myself, a feral druid who spent the entire run in full DPS gear and almost exclusively in cat form. With only a polymorph we managed our way through the instance, the Tankadin holding aggro on everything that wasn’t dead or a sheep.

It is my opinion that this instance is tilted in favor of Tankadins, with such large trash pulls you either load up on CCers or take a Paladin tank. I shudder to think how the runs would have gone if either I or a warrior were tanking, with only the one CC, it would surely have been a disaster.

I had the opportunity to do MrT last night, just before the 6pull and up to Kael. We didnt’ down Kael, but the 6pull was insanely hectic. And the tank, idk what he was smoking, but he insisted on marking traditionally then tanking #3 and #4. I’m a hunter, so I was able to trap my square a bit, and basically it was just chaos for a full minute while we ran around and survived the 6 pull. I’m pretty sure nobody was doing the job properly. Skull was last to go down for example. But through exceptional heals (druid) we scraped by. I’m not sure if I can give suggestions, but the fact that we had all of the mobs engaged surely helped, plus the HOTs from the druid probably allowed the free-for-all style to work.

Next time I’d probably just say single target burn down. The adds do go down very quick. I will probably bring my pig next time and trap one while pig OTs another (throw mend pet and an occassion heal and she’s fine). Meanwhile I’d be working on whatever the tank is working on, which may or may not be the proper order!

You know what else is hard? Sunken temple. For me that’s the hardest thing for my little 60 druid to tank (I suck at tanking, admittedly). But this instance and its 5-6 pulls feels like ST all over again.

Like you, none of us had done it and we wiped a few times on that 6 mob pull before catching the hang of it. I dread what that must be like on Heroic. You pretty much have to CC the smuggler because that AOE is just annoying. After him, the hardest hitter seems to be the Warlock and his imp. Now – since his damage is spell damage, there was no advantage to having our bear tank him. In fact, spreading out the damage seemed like an advantage in this fight (as long you don’t get killed).

I’m a rogue, so after I sapped the smuggler and the bear pulled the others, I soloed the Warlock and Imp. The Imp died from my Blade Flurry and I kept the Warlock stunned long enough to get him most of the way killed. A couple of kicks, and a Cloak of Shadows bought me the rest of the time I needed to finish him off. I ended the fight around 30% health and required no heals. The rest of my party had finished off the Magister (our skull). From there, it was just a matter of taking the rest down as much as possible. We had our own Warlock for this fight who was able to seduce one and banish the demon, so that also helped considerably.

My impression is that the perfect group for this instance would include: a tank, a mage, a rogue, a warlock and a priest or druid healer. Under that setup, you could easily crowd control four of the six mobs in that pull and even keep one stunned up if needed.

70 Hunter Marksmanship
70 Hunter Beastmastery
70 Warlock Demonology
70 Paladin Holy
70 Paladin Protection

We wiped so hard to the 6 pull. People left. We replaced the Warlock and Prot Paladin with…

70 Rogue Combat Swords
70 Druid Feral

Again we wiped.
Then we wiped again.

Eventually we Focus fired the Imp, Focus fired the Healer, Line of Sighted the Casters round the corner into 2 Hunter traps, took down the rest.

As the healer I found the line of sight trapping painful as I saw my Hunters taking HEAVY hits and I couldn’t reach them.

Our Feral tank multimob tanked amazingly. In fact so well that one wipe was because the Hunters couldn’t get the mobs off him!

Then Kael, who was easy. I died to a bubble in Gravity Lapse and we did 40% with no healing… Amazingly fun instance. And the 6 pull FAR harder than Kael.

I feel you pain, my friend in fur. I ran MT 2.5 times last night, and while the first run wasn’t too terribly bad (Especially considering we, too, did it with no prior knowledge of the instance), the second run gave us HELL at that very spot. The first time we only wiped on it once, though to be fair we did have a second CCer for that go-around.

Yeah, our first problem was definitely CC. For that second run, I was with one of each flavor of shaman and a mage, so we had. . . a sheep. Polymorphed the Warlock, I think, and. . . healer seduced. Ok, somebody needs to burn down that succubus. Elemental Shaman takes up the task and . . . silenced before she can kill it, healer seduced again. Third try, the succubus went down, but the magister was too close to our healer, and she got silenced. Fourth time healer stood further back, something went wrong on the pull, and everything ran past me to the healer. . . and so on.

In short, yeah, that last pull borders on the obscene. But we did finally down it and twoshotted KT (The first attempt I apparently forgot to mention that you can MOVE when flying, I guess telling them to avoid the orbs didn’t clue them in. But on the plus side, I very nearly managed to solo him from 25%, if only my mana had held for just a little longer!)

PS: Heroic mode really didn’t feel like it was that much harder. First boss was practically the same. Second boss was MORE fun (more sparks, bigger blue bear, god I LOVE that fight), Third boss. . . well, thats where the .5 comes in. One form of crowd control just wasn’t enough to win us a PvP match. Really not liking that fight, but I’m sure the PvP crowd probably does. I guess I’ll have to get used to it, though, I want that tanking trinket! Heroid Kael scares me, though, bear tanks have no way to survive his pyroblast if he gets the cast off (unlike warriors with spell reflect, and paladins with their bubble).

My first MrT experience was a lot of fun, though we did wipe quite a bit. Fortunately I went in prepared for the repair bill. Our group makeup was *very* interesting:

2 kick-ass ferals – me tanky tank and Kintarohki the kitty
1 very good lock – Xachlen
1 awesome shadow priest – Andello
1 amazing healadin – Nylan

All of us except the lock were fully kara geared, and though I was prepared for wipes, I did think we were going to kick some Blood Elf butt. Which we did! :D But it was difficult, and it severely tested me as a tank. I was excited because like others, this was the first “new” run I’ve ever done. Been playing for a couple years, but I took several months off during which BC came out. So I’ve always been a bit behind.

Anyway… with that group makeup, and with the lock never having done any real seducing (I know, I know… but she’s a great person, and she’s a good player too)… I was a little worried about CC. My schedule is late enough that I’d heard about the 7 man pulls from others that had run it. We decided to assault the Terrace anyway… we were all at least geared enough to be in Kara, yeah? So we should’ve blown through it, right? Right??

*sigh* Well, we finished it, but it was not easy. The group was a great group, but the CC was iffy. Thank goodness we had the lock, seduce or no seduce, or we would not have gotten through there. Kin (kitty) had been through half of the instance already, so had some good advice for us to get started. And yes, there are *lots* of mana using mobs in there. Xachlen either banished/enslaved/feared while I pulled around corners for LOS and more room. Andello MC’d and dpsed. Before we figured out just what mob did what, it was a wee bit messy. Then we were cruising along fine…. until HER… BBB I feel like you when you say no one was mentioning the 8 billion man trash pulls. You didn’t even hardly mention the Priestess in your blog today. My jaw dropped, since I had really wanted to hear your thoughts on how you handled that boss.

The 4 adds with her were the warrior, the shammy, the rogue, and the lock. We walked into her area and nearly cried. And YES, at least one of the mobs is immune to MC, and yes, MC is very difficult to control, but it almost always works out in my group – my best friend is Andello the shadow priest, and he’s the best MCer I’ve ever seen. The plan (the one that worked anyway, after a wipe and kill-order changeup): MC the shammy, me tank the warrior and lock, Kintarohki kitty on the imp immediately, then pick up and tank the Priestess, and fear fear fear the rogue. It was complete and utter chaos, and threat was a huge issue. I think Andello managed to hold the shammy either MC’d or at bay for all of 10 seconds, then went splat. :( The dps took down the priestess first easily, while I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to keep 3 mobs off the squishy and healer. Would have been easy if I could have swiped them, but couldn’t get them to *stay* in one place. >.< Oh yeah… they are all immune to taunts, by the way. Even more fun. Somehow we survived and killed them all, thanks to incredible heals, soulstones, and double the tankage. :D

The pulls after that were mucho fun with Andello controlling 2! mobs with MC. Yay for MC tanks. :D We had Xachlen enslaving and practicing her seduce skill, and Kintarohki squeezed every last utility out of the druid class. Kael’thas was a pansy. All you have to do is kite the pheonix away from the group, kill the egg, and avoid the orbs while nuking. AoE healer is nice, but we did it just fine with a pally healer.

So… MrT… going to try again tonight I hope! Maybe with some “real” CC in the groups. Can’t wait to master this place and attempt it on heroic! Good luck tonight BBB! I know you guys can do it.

Soooo, I agree that MgT is crazy hard on normal and look forward to wiping a bit through the Heroic version!

Anywho, this was our group build and my list on how to own this instance!

Findecäno – Drood Tank
Chaoscaller – Frost Mage
Ganj – Arcane/Fire Mage
Bluefart – Combat Rogue
Solith – Holy Priest

So, the trash is difficult at time and the bosses are not too bad. Here’s my major tip! study up Wowwiki!!! http://www.wowwiki.com/Magister’s_Terrace

Seriously though, a little reading goes a long way and this is what I came up with.

How to own MgT Trash:

Come with a full CC/DPS group, healer, and tank. Preferrably a mage, mage, lock/rogue combination for best results.

Here is a list of the trash, from top to bottom is what to CC first, from bottom to top what to kill first obviously

CC these first——->

Sister of Torment – Will seduce anyone! EVEN TANK! AHHH!
Ethereum Smuggler – drops aggro and AoEs fast!
Coilskar Witch – Casts forked lightning! Reminds me of mini vashj!
Sunblade Physician – Cast prayer of mending and throws daggers
Sunblade Blood Knight – Hits decent, casts heals
Sunblade Mage Guard – Circular domes that decreases healing/spell dmg
Sunblade Warlock – Immolate, Incinerate
Sunblade Magister – Arcane Blast, Frost Bolts
Imp- Can be one shotted, waste of space

Coilskar Witch
—-> Ethereum Smuggler
- Our mages ran to the bottom of the stairs (NEAR CURTAIN) with our healer
- Mages one shotted the imp and focused fire on kill order I was tanking near door at the top of the stairs
—-> SKULL = Sunblade Magister
—-> X = Sunblade Warlock
—-> CIRCLE = Remaining mob
- While our rogue stunlocked the Sister of Torment to death

So, as far as tanking goes I found that tanking the casters and using the hallways and corners with beautiful LOS in this instance worked great! The casters in this instance are soooo squishy that even short CC would not be a problem with most of the pulls.

Using the above tactic has gotten me past the 6 mob pull multiple times now without problem, I just make sure that when I go into an instance to tank that I bring the CC I know I’ll need.

Final tip to those diving into MgT! On Kael’thas when he goes to the gravity phase everyone should fly to the back of the room near the door right away! DPS from max range while the arcane orbs slowly come towards you, then fly quickly back to him! rinse and repeat, he’s soooo squishy!

Wish all you MgT groups great luck and hope that the above is semi-helpful!

~Findecäno

So, my post cut out but here’s what was supposed to show up, I pulled the six man pull with Hurricane at the top of the stairs and stepped right for LOS after a tick
-Then our mages sheeped the following
—> Coilskar Witch
—-> Ethereum Smuggler
- Our mages ran to the bottom of the stairs (NEAR CURTAIN) with our healer
- Mages one shotted the imp and focused fire on kill order I was tanking near door at the top of the stairs
—-> SKULL = Sunblade Magister
—-> X = Sunblade Warlock
—-> CIRCLE = Remaining mob
- While our rogue stunlocked the Sister of Torment to death

Hola BBB. I feel your pain. MgT is not a friendly instance and the main reason my group got through it with only 2 wipes is that our tank tested the heck out of it on the PTRs and knew the deal.

Something we did on the “5v5″ boss match was… Turn Evil (the new Turn Undead) works on the demon guy so I would use that as often as the CD would let me on him and some Hammer of Wrath in between. It kept him busy most of the time till we were ready to pwn his face. I felt like a Priest shakling mobs in Moroes :D (but so not as cool.)

Mmm fun instance. We went in completely cold, wanted to get the “new” experience.

The first boss was accidentally pulled while clearing trash, locking the priest healer and ranged DPS out. Then we were like – what’s he doing with that crystal – whoa, he’s like the SV boss…. GET THE CRYSTAL! Which we didn’t, in time, but not biggie, cos the priest had worked out in the meantime that Prayer of Healing works thru the door :) Anyway, he turned out pretty easy.

We had a tankadin, and I was OT/kitty DPS. Didn’t really have any big issues with any of the pulls – all the casters were a pain, and we puzzled for a while over what the deal with the purple domes was. Just did kill order on assist from the tank’s tab-target.

Princess was a pain, because we didn’t really want to clear the entire room, and the priest kept fearing mobs which pulled others…. argh. Also, Princess didn’t seem to have an aggro table, and the shaman we had wasn’t the most reliable at interrupting. Most annoying of all for me is the unbelievably long freezing traps from the hunter add o.O

The pull before Kael was annoying, because the wall beside the door didn’t honour it’s promise of LOS. Next try we charged in, and wasn’t an issue. Kael died shortly after after a try or two. None of us had ever seen Kael in TK, so had no idea what to expect or how to manage it, but it didn’t take long to get the hang of.

Having said all that – Pally tank is a huge advantage. I’ve seen a lot of QQing of Warriors about how unfriendly the instance is to them, and to a lesser extent druids, just because of how many large pulls there are. I’ve also read about a lot of people having trouble with the pull before Kael – so it’s not just you.

I’m nervous about trying on Heroic tho, I have to say.

I felt your pain as well BBB. First run…. 3 and a half hours with a less than perfect group makeup that kept switching cuz people were going in and out. Second run… little better 2 hours 15 minutes. First heroic run…. 7 hours. Yes, i repeat yes. 7 hours. Started with a great group makeup of Spriest, fire lock, fire mage, feral tank, resto druid. downed first two bosses fairly easily, 2 silly wipes on curator clone. Then…. brick wall. Fire mage had to go, swap in a feral druid…. not good. wiped on priestess about 10 times. Kitty graciously stepped out and let us bring in a mage and we proceeded to win fight first try. Wiped once on 6 pull, got it down second time. Kael was a 3 shot. Trick is to have a mage or another ranged dps class run up behind Kael on ramp and when phoenix spawns kite phoenix up there then jump down when it gets close. should be dead by that time or close and then you can take out the egg. All melee stay the heck away from phoenix including the tank.
If you don’t bring an interrupt of some sort. (feral charge would work i think, but mage did it with counterspell) is actually impossible on heroic. Once you get to bubble phase it’s pretty easy though.
So after we finish heroic we are all pumped, and a friend logs on that wants to run it regular. Breeze thru it like it’s shadow labs, so my thoughts are that it’s probably just like any other heroic once you get it memorized. Just don’t go in there without crowd control from each dps class, it is painful. DOable on regular, not so sure about heroic.
One thing i would say is always CC the destro lock and the mage guard, they cause havoc.
Once you get the right mix in there should be no problem at all. And by the way, I was starting to feel like the worst tank ever after awhile too but I slowly regained my confidence after we took it down on heroic. It is brutal first run though.

The 6 man pull near the end was indeed a bitch to get, and the rest of the instance after the cutscene was quite frustrating for a feral tank too. unless you have perfect cc ( which i didnt, stupidly i thought, its normal we can piss through it! and took 2 holy priests 1 resto shammy and a rogue friend :P) you end up running all over the place trying to keep agro on all of the ranged casters. However it was a fun instance, and the thrill of a new place is always nice. Some of the rewards are pretty sweet aswell. On our first run one of the new 20 slot bags dropped, a nice blue tanking ring (with expertise instead of defence for those above the def cap) and the lovely purples from kael.

I enjoyed the challenge of this one, reminded me of SH but shorter, and therefore more fun.

GL on getting the trink in heroic dude

BEARS FTW!

Yeah, my first group wiped alot too, Luckily we had a full T5 warlock with us who knew the fights, they’re really just re-tools of the kara bosses. We didn’t wipe on that 6-mob pull, but we did have a very interesting fight with Kael’thas.

Kael’thas killed all of our group but our warlock, and Kael still had 15% of his health left, we were getting ready to release to the graveyard when suddenly we see our lock just solo Kael right into the ground. I was laughing like crazy.

But i didn’t get the Phoenix hatchling that dropped… :(

1st time in there, I went with a PUG, and ended up tanking more than the tank. Absolutely useless. When 90% of a priest’s healing is binding heal *something is wrong*. 3rd boss…Priestank ftw…not. Did I outgear the tank, yes. Tank’s #1 job = keep aggro off the healer, if they die you die. It took 5 attempts to get the 6 pull before Kael, where I ended up tanking 2 mobs, the tank had one, mage had one, and the lock juggled fear on the other 2 because the huntard was only good for 1 trap (if that). Kael = fail, b/c ppl didnt pay attention and stood on phoenix, then didnt kill the egg.

#2 PUG worse than #1, only a mage for CC. Feral druid kept aggro on ONE and ONLY ONE mob per pull and was completely happy with that. I bailed after 3 attempts on the 3rd boss. I can tank 2 and keep myself and the group up NOT 4.

#3 run was with guild (after they finished their raid for the evening), 1shot the place. I didnt involuntarly tank a single mob. People payed attention, maintained CC, focus fired, and won.

I agree that this instance will make any but the best tanks feel lost and helpless, similar to Shadow Labyrinth before they nerfed the shit out of the place. (QQ on wowforums+NERF inc)

This is also a VERY good instance to test your PVP healing ability (or give a potential teammate a trial run).

Oh yeah…be sure to inspect ppl’s gear before you run this place, b/c anything less than T4+ equivolent means that you’re in for a VERY rough time.

Totally feel the pain BBB.

I am a Warrior and have MT and cleared all of Kara and even stepped into Gruul a couple of times. I went in there with a Mage, Lock, Healer Priest and Enhancement Shammy.
Going in I thought we had a great team. Couple of CC options, some flexibility with the Shammy to back up heal/dps as needed and a very solid group of players but boy was I wrong.

Here are the issues that I have with the instance:
1 – A number of the mobs are immune to Seduce
2 – Things are WAY too tight. Too many multie pulls in way too tight areas.
3 – Too many banners and branches, so every time I tried to move and pick up another mob they would get in the way and I could not see what was happening. I eventually had to basically move to a first person view just so I can see the mobs.
4 – The Third Boss is a PAIN. We had the Naga Warrior and as soon as I initiated combat he would Intercept me and stun me for three seconds….good luck even trying to do anything after that. The Priest ended up tanking all the mobs becuase of his healing while I was running around trying to pick anyone up with the threat output from a one handed weapon. Without a liberal dose of Fear’s there is no way that we would have got past that encounter.
5 – There are a number of pulls where you have to kill every mob in the ecounter or they will all respawn.

I never felt that useless as a Tank even when I first strapped the Shield to my arm and stepped into my first instance as the MT. Its as if Blizzard decided that there was not enough for Pally tanks to do, so they designed an Instance just for them.

I have posted on my guild boards refusing to Tank that instance again until they tweak or change it a little. Luckily we manage to take this boss down (after four and a half hours) due to our Lock wanding him to death when everyone else was dead, so I am keyed for the heroic.

Personally I think that its a terriable design on Blizzards part to *require* so much CC to run the instance (or a Pally tank). On the Heroic version I would not want to even attempt it without three forms of CC (at least two of which renewable forms – so 2xMage and Sap/Seduce). Not all classes have that CC which will result in them being basically unable to run the Instance.

Overall just a really terrible job of instance design.

Did Blizzard not get the hint that people dont like to fight 5, 6 or even 7 man pull in Instance runs?? How many people do you know who will even attempt a heroic Shattered Halls run?? Personally Thrallamer is the only Faction that I am not exalted with becuase the Heroic is just too annoying with all the 5 and 6 man pulls. Its not FUN to run that place for me as a warrior.

MrT is rough, that’s for sure. We had

Me – feral tank, entry Kara level gear
Hunter 1 – MM I believe, mid to late Kara level gear
Hunter 2 – Also MM I think, early 25 man gear
Rogue – early 25 man gear
Druid – Resto, early 25 man gear

Luckily our hunters are very good at trapping, because they had more than their fair share of casters to deal with. Also lucky was the fact that our DPS and healer are all very good players. Other than one accidental overpull (we pulled the entire hallway with the mana wyrms, oops) we one-shotted all of the trash, including the 6 pull, mostly because our DPSer’s were each able to solo one of the mobs.

I’m pretty sure that no other 5 man instance ramps up in difficulty as much as MrT does. We took down the first boss in one try, then got the second boss down on our second try after wiping at 2% the first time due to poor strategy with the adds.

However, the third boss took us 3 or 4 tries, and it was still hectic as hell. Of course, the next morning I read up on it to find out that tanking is impossible and I should have been in kitty mode. Oh well, moving on. We one-shotted the 6 pull, again thanks to our DPS each soloing mobs and our healer keeping us alive through all that carnage. Then we faced Kael. Ugh, he took us 4 or 5 tries. Part of our problem was that he would keep spawning a second phoenix at around 55%, which we’d burn to 50% and get to the gravity lapse phase with a phoenix throwing fireballs all over the place. Once we figured out to stop dpsing and take down the second phoenix before going to phase 2 I think we one-shotted him.

To those that have cleared MrT congrats! To those full of the QQ please stop and remember this instance is MENT to test you and see just how good you are, you will only get better by facing more intense fights. Blizzard wouldn’t be doing their job if everyone had just walked up and spanked the instance. When SoLK comes out I don’t expect to walk through it, and if MrT is any idea of how tuff its going to be I am looking forward to the fun

Cheers

“Actually, on an interesting side note, somewhere midway between the 2nd boss and the 3rd, I accidentally switched to my DPS gear…and did BETTER. We wiped a first attempt on the 2nd to last boss with me in tank gear…being expected to hold aggro right off the bat on 5 elites was ridiculous. What do I look like, a pally?

The 2nd attempt, again, I accidentally hit f3 (my macro for my PvE DPS gear) and wound up switching to my 2hander…and we downed it no problem. I did the same thing for Kael’thas…and killed him in full DPS gear. That instance just wasn’t designed to be tanked.”

Button Mashing

I ran the place with a T5 Druid tank, T5/T6 Rogue and Hunter, and a T4 Warlock. Me, I’m in T4 healing gear.

We cleared the place in about an hour / 90 minutes. Had one full wipe, two partials, and several single deaths (mostly the rogue). Those saying that this instance requires a Paladin Tank… well, just feel solace in the fact that this is NOT a Paladin Healer friendly instance. Too much damage being passed around for the one class without a multi-heal to keep up.

What frustrated me, though, was that we COULD have done better. We didn’t use a single Hunter trap. Never tried Seducing. I know we used banish during the 3rd boss, but that’s the ONLY time we used a CC that wasn’t Sap. Guess our guys were feeling confident in everyone’s ability.

The 6-man pull before Kael? I honestly don’t remember it. Probably because I was just focused on keeping everyone alive. I know our rogue died on that pull though.

I got the killing blow on Kael’thas with a Holy shock. :)

Our Terrace story..

Group was a mixed guild bag plus two loaners.

70 Prot Pally on MT duty
70 Resto Druid on Heals
70 Mage on CC
70 Elemental Shaman on DPS/Off heals/Off tanking/whatever
70 BM Hunter – *ME* – On DPS/Additional CC

I’ll agree that this place is a challenge. Trapping is difficult at best for Hunters due to the large number of caster mobs. Anyways, I’ll start from the beginning.

The 4-pulls go down easily. No problems there. Chain Trap the lone melee, sheep the healer, pet blasts the imps, everyone else on Skulls and X’s. We get to the two 5-pulls in the 1st boss room and those go down easily too. Paladin does the frisbee of aggro, mage frost nova’s them in place. DPS and AOE the piss out of them.

First boss, the crack head. Your basic tank n’ spank except when he goes to take a hit off his crystals. He goes down without much trouble. Have everyone stay out of his aoe range and basically blast the crap out of him. He dropped a decent bracer but nothing awe inspiring.

Move to next room and AoE the hell out of the fish. Simple enough. Vellaxus is a pain though. I’m pretty sure backup heals are required here no matter what. I was put on spark duty. Whenever one popped, I hit it, got nailed with the supersize me buff with the bonus 300 dmg per second on me..problem is..that crap stacks… Shaman was on healing duty just for me. Everyone else concentrated on Vell. I eventually die when Vell is at about 10% because I’ve stacked about 7-8 of these things and Shammy couldn’t keep up with 2K+ dmg/second on me. Vell still goes down though so one for the team isn’t bad.

We move on, do the little video journey thingy at the orb. Then keep going. Get to the courtyard with the 4x 6-man pulls. Shaman now solo’s the succis, pet still blasts imps..everything else as normal. We blow through all 4 packs in short order and get to the “enemy party”

I think this fight is dependent on kill order. We had healer dude with the hammer on Skull. Demon woman on X. Rogue was mine, lock was sheeped, and we burned down the others. Wasn’t a pretty fight but it seemed to work. Rogue is simple enough, generate aggro, drop freeze trap, stand on it, dps something else while waiting.

Now the infamous 6 pack before Kael..7-8 if you count succi and imp. This fight sucks because there is no room to manuever. It’s a hallway maybe 3-4 people wide and you’re trying to pack 11+ people/creatures in it. Again, Shaman soloed the succi. We pulled the ethereal back down the hallway and around the corner and trapped him. Pet was sent on the imp then switched to skull. Lock was sheeped. The blood knight was first kill since he flash heals which gets annoying obviously. We kept ethereal trapped and helped shammy kill succi to free him up. It’s a fun, but frustrating fight. As BBB said, if you don’t kill them all, they all respawn..so you have to get them down.

Past them is Big Chief Kael Eatmyface.. I’ll just come out and say a dozen wipes on this guy was not worth it. That’s right..12 WIPES! What can I say, we were persistent. WoWWiki has a decent write-up on this fight that I recommend people read. Phase one you just start blasting..around 85-80% he summons the first bird. Birds HAVE to be killed at range..they do massive damage to anyone close by. But once bird is down, the egg it becomes has to be killed as well. Now, depending on speed, Kael is usually down to 75-65% when first bird/egg is done. Somewhere between 65-50% he summons a second.

I cannot emphasize enough how much it SUCKS if he summons a bird when he is near 50%. If he is close to 50, you have to take the tank off of him. Kill the bird/egg BEFORE Kael is at 50%. At 50, Kael enters Phase 2 where he casts Gravity Lapse. He throws everyone in the air, tosses out three arcane balls, and starts hitting everyone for 300 dmg a second. Avoid the balls at all costs because they do somewhere around 1.5-3K dmg. “Swim” away and stay alive is the name of the game at this point.

Ranged DPS can still continue but just watch your surroundings. Heals need to be kept up with too. After 30 seconds, Kael tires and drops everyone, then becomes weakened and stunned. At this point, DPS the living hell out of him. Great groups can kill him after this first lapse. Good to subpar groups will have to probably go through another lapse to get him.

Some notes:

- This was on regular…heroic has to be…well I really don’t want to think about it…
- Kael is more luck than skill I think. If he summons a bird at 51%..be prepared for a wipe. While you’re flying through the air during the lapse, the bird is going to continue to hurl damage.
- During a lapse, do whatever you can to stay alive at all costs. Blow pots, use trinkets, whatever. If you live, you win
- I recommend everyone “swim” to the door and heal up there..where range isn’t an issue. The balls will take a few seconds to get to you and everyone will be close for heals and whatnot. Then scatter and head back at him.

– To BBB: Don’t try tanking during this phase. If you touch the ground, he throws you back up in the air..best to just play dodgeball and keep everyone healthy..

Anyways, our Kael dropped the defense Cloak and the plate Helm..boo…but his head earned me my nice new red gem and a handful of gold! Good luck!

BBB, if it makes you feel any better, pretty much every group guild’s t5/t6 geared players that tried this instance for the first time wiped on trash in normal MgT/MrT.

While the tanking/class restrictions seem pretty stringent for this instance, I really believe that they’re not set in stone. Blizzard is still allowing people choices with who they bring to the group, but the group can’t simply be “one tank, one healer, three DPS” and expect to blow through the instance.

The way I see it, if your group is light on CC and your healer doesn’t have great multi-target heals, you’re pretty much locked in to needing a pally tank.

If you have moderate CC and a druid tank, you can slack a bit on your healing.

If you have a warrior tank, your CC either needs to be exceptional or your healer needs to be badass (and have a good group heal) to keep up the party members that will inevitably be soloing mobs.

Frankly, I’m glad that Blizzard made an instance that forces groups to take all four aspects of group makeup into account (tanking, healing, DPS, and CC).

…and to those of you that are frustrated because this seems like a “bring the tankadin and win” instance, keep in mind that while having a pally tank DOES significantly reduce the need for crowd control, it puts a lot of stress on the healer (who needs to keep up an main tank that’s taking huge amounts of spike damage from up to 6 mobs at once) and on the DPS (who has to put out enough damage to kill the mobs before the overtaxed healer goes OOM).

A final note: bring a warlock. They can enslave the succubi that are present in so many of the mob groups, effectively reducing the number of mobs in the pull by one and increasing the number of damage-dealers/CC on your side by one. And if they’re really on point they can also fear and banish another mob at the same time.

That 6 pull on heroic makes me want to poke my eyes out…

Short and sweet; second boss pull can be messy but that trash mob before the last boss….. ugh. We have an uber Shammy healer who couldn’t get one heal off, seriously, without being aggro’d. What he did? Used all those corners in the hallway to his advantage. Seems he didn’t pull aggro when he was LOS from the mobs. Rogue beat down the Magister in the room and druid pulled the rest out of the room. Two hunters dropped traps in that doorway catching whatever hit it first. Killed the rest. As long as we kept our Shammy out of LOS, Chain Heals FTW.

Yeah I’m going to have to agree and say I’m not going back in till some tweaks are made. I’m not talking big stuff but seriously, some of the pulls in here are just mind numbingly lame. I’m all for making things a challenge but where is the line drawn between challenging and fun vs. I want to throw my keyboard through a window?

How anyone does this instance in Heroic is beyond me though. Especially the last few fights where things will be absolutely crazy. But yeah, they could make the place more tank friendly. I started seeing the Tank protest late last night with MrT groups pleading for tanks that were readily available but were refusing to go in..

The instance is supposed to be harder, on all levels. Blizzard didn’t release 2.4 to give players more of the same. They released it to give people some new, challenging content to work with.

2.3 brought ZA and a lot of people were disappointed because the difficulty was higher than Kara, but the people who had Kara on farm but did not have the means to do 25-mans rejoiced at the new, challenging content that they now had available.

2.4 has given us regular MT, which is a nice step up in difficulty for people running regular lvl 70 instances.

It has given us heroic MT, which is possibly the hardest heroic out there (a really nice addition for those of us who are bored with the rest of them).

It has also given us Sunwell. Now guilds that have been farming BT for weeks/months have new, CHALLENGING raid content to work on.

If these new additions didn’t significantly up the difficulty level, they would have all been cleared the first day the patch came out and people would have been left wanting more until WotLK comes out.

No tweaks necessary, IMO. Treat it like a learning experience and you’ll get it dialed. If you’re really hitting a wall with clearing it, you might want to consider going back to some of the earlier instances and honing your skills. Neither the regular nor the heroic 5-man are a gear check. They’re just a coordination/CC/group composition check.

I did it for the 1st time yesterday. I didn’t tank because God knows I’m not geared up enough for that. It took us 3 wipes until we found a solid strat that might have worked for you since you got uber heals, and our healer was good too. My group was Warrior Tank, Priest Healer, 2 Mages and me (feral druid). So we sheeped two peeps, the Warrior tanked two peeps, and I tanked the succubus and the mummy guy. It with perfect. So maybe your boomkin could have brought a semi-tank set to help tank… then sheep and sap the others. The last boss is cake if 1. you got decent DPS, and 2. learn to dodge things while swimming in the air. We wiped about 3 times though. 2 of which were getting use to swimming and dodging the orbs and the other where everyone was laughing at the site of me in bear form flying around. The only real tip for the last boss…. burn down birds and eggs ASAP.

My guild is all varying degrees of Kara geared, and though I’ve not been in an MT run yet, I’ve seen their comments on MT. That 6 pull has given them trouble too.
What I feel I should share with you is a recent experience in Heroic slabs.
Feral druid tank, DPS warrior, lock (think he was affliction at the time), BM hunter(me), and resto druid. A little light on CC for slabs, but we are all experienced players and we felt we could handle it no problem. Everyone but the resto druid was Kara geared to some extent.
We did fine up to the room where Blackheart the Inciter waits for you. The shadow priests whipped our asses. We had no consumables to mitigate the shadow damage, so if they got mind flay off the tank took heavy damage. Either the druid would pull agro healing through it, or the tank would die when he backed off. CC broke like it wasn’t there. Every trap i dropped got a heartbeat resist. On one pull, the mobs broke CC and focus fired the warlock’s succubus before turning to the rest of us.
I lost count how many times we died.
The only way we made it through it was… well let me quote the warrior: “F*$% CC, everyone burn the shadow priest and if we wipe, at least his ass is dead.”
We got blackheart, but everyone was so tired and frustrated that we couldn’t bring murmur down. We had to talk our druid tank out of rerolling boomkin.
Everyone has bad nights. Don’t let it keep you down.

Well, I know my favorite bear tank reads this site so I’ll throw in our experience. Frankly, we slightly overgear the place. Full kara and badge gear for the:

Feral Druid
Resto Shaman
2x Mutilate Rogues

and a fairly freshly dinged 70 Mage.

We wiped once on the 6 pull, yeah yeah same way everyone else did. Healer seduced, loose mobs everywhere, tank having to run all over the place to pick them up.

Our second try involved sapping and sheeping at their initial location and our Bear pulling the rest all the way back to the 90 degree turn in the hall to get them to come to him. Once he had them in swipe range we only had to worry about the saps ending. I was healing and I made sure that I was completely out of LoS so that if they wanted me, they had to run right past my tank swiping. We had zero issues on the second try.

We had 3-4 tries though on Kael’Thas before we got him. The AoE of the Phoenix spawn gave us some trouble with a melee heavy group, but I think we have it down now. (maybe..I hope)

That was a tough pull, but don’t let it get to you. All I can say is.. focus fire. Do your best to keep the CC up, but then just focus fire ‘em down.

We had to pull back to the Priestess’ room (the bend in the corridor), and lost 2/3 of our CC (two warlocks, our succy’s died) in the first half of the encounter. Wound up chain-fearing the witch until we were ready for her.

I don’t wonder if you couldn’t LOS most of them and have some of your DPS start on a single mob first, especially if your DPS can take some damage before the healer has to get to work on them. ie: you the tank make most of ‘em run away with you, CC is in place as much as possible, then ya’ll just open up on the one that’s most likely to die quickest, the healer doesn’t do anything until you get the rest of ‘em under control, then focus fire down each subsequent fellow? Play LoS games with the casters on the bend in the hallway?

This is the first instance that has ever made me verbally curse at my computer. Loudly.

I did my first run yesterday, jumping in with a group that was mostly a guild group save for myself and the healer, a resto druid.

Our tank had apparently done the run several times already that day, both on normal and heroic, and this was to be his sixth run. Naturally I’m fairly confident in his abilities.

The first half of the instance went really well. We had a few wipes due (notice the trend?) to CC issues. Our hunter apparently wasn’t good at chain trapping, and my seduce was hitting the wall of IMMUNE pretty regularly. We had one other wipe (again, due to the hunter) on the mana worms because he opened up with an explosive trap before the warrior had established enough aggro.

The last part of the instance really did a number on us though. It took us several tries to kill the third boss, relying on Sap, Freeze Trap and Banish to control the mobs. Our warrior explained that he’d be of little use apart from being able to tank the pets, as the Priestess herself didn’t have an aggro table per se.

We did NOT clear the groups left and right of her, which made for some cramped quarters and disallowed me from fearing. That may have made all the difference.

We figured out that, after the sap, the rogue had to off the warlock’s imp FIRST, then dps jumped on the warlock. Kill order looked like:

Imp (one-shotted by rogue’s Ambush)
Warlock (pull her back, she fears)
Hunter’s pet (Tanked by warrior)
MS Warrior (Freeze trap target)
Priestess
Monk (Sapped)
Hunter (Banished)

It’s a heck of a fight, made worse the two times someone got feared into the mob packs. If I were to do it again I’d almost insist we clear at least one side, just to give more room. Our tank hit the nail on the head though, this fight requires EVERYONE know how to ‘tank’. When one of the mobs jumps you you need to pull him/her/it back to a safe distance. None of the targets have terribly high hp. Our group 3-manned the priestess while the other two handled CC.

That six-pull though, THAT is a nightmare.

We wiped twice on it, leaving one or two of the targets up. Banish really helps with the succubus, but your lock needs to be on his toes. Everyone who has one should equip their PVP trinket to break charm effects. I was able to seduce one of the targets here, the ethereum I think, and it works well if you have the succubus positioned by the door to Kael’s room on STAY so that she’s out of his AOE. Seduce should be in range as long as the group fights in the middle.

We ended up beating them with just the warrior and the hunter up. I’d banished the succubus right before going Double KO with the other mob, giving the two just enough time to run back a ways and bandage.

Kael took us three tries, the first time was really good, we got him to 9%, but the second time we failed because we dropped his HP too fast and the phoenix had just gone into egg form when we all started floating. Wipe.

The last try had three people die, one right after the levitate from (of all things) FALL damage, but we did it. 2 hours and 40 minutes.

It’s not a big instance, but DAMN is it hard. Don’t feel bad BBB, we only managed it through sheer stubborness. I had to repair midway through the run, and by the end most of my gear was yellow again. I can only imagine what the tank’s bill was.

Weirdest runs ever.

I’m in pre-Kara gear (PMC set, ~1360 +heal, ~200 MP5 unbuffed).

First run: With a warrior MT, we make it to between 2d and 3d boss before quitting because of the late hour. One shotted both bosses, but wiped on trash. Lesson learned: pre-bubble AOE on the mana worms. Also, pull THROUGH the S-curves and have hunters trap inside the curves.

Second run: another warrior MT. Hunters & lock. Wipe on 2d boss NUMEROUS times (which I one-shotted w/ different group). Proceed to wipe numerous times on 3d boss, before figuring out to put a slowing trap in the center of the columns, pull through that, then liberally use fear by priest and ‘lock as well as any other CC.

THEN PROCEED TO ONE-SHOT THE 6-PULL AND KAEL! Kael died after I died the first time, came back with soul-stone and was able to heal up the tank and ‘lock (only two left) before dying again, and them killing him! Holy. Crap.

Strange times. Cats. Dogs. Living together.

PS – one shard & the quest reward were the only “drops” for me. Oh wells…

Love that quest reward. Prior to 2.4 people paid 200g+ for each of those gems… and that was only if their server had guilds in Hyjal/BT… and only if those guilds had extra gems on hand… which they usually didn’t.

It’s funny, we went last night to try magisters’ terrace, good work from blizzard there, that instance is just beautiful (gotta love the cut scene ;) ).

But into the matter at hand, we were after the phoenix pet for a mage friend (Changoo), so we went there with the following configuration:

1. Johnnynapalm – Prot Warrior
2. Miguelacho – Fury Warrior
3. Changoo – Arcane Mage (I don’t know anyone who does more damage than this guy)
4. Alizee – Holy Priest
5. Me, Cycomantis – Combat-Sword Rogue

We a’re currently starting BT so we have good gear, must of us full T5 and some good weapons from Hyjal.

We had no problems with the bosses whatsoever, but it’s just too damn funny and frustating to keep wiping on trash. I know we were overconfident for all the gear we have and the trash in that place is just too damn tight; for example, after killing 4/5 in one pull there was a sheep left (actually turtle :) ) and I went in to kick-pull it to make it come in melee range. Bad mistake, the other group aggroed instantly and they went straight for our healer.

So, the point is, even with good gear a couple of bad pulls can put you to rest easily. But it’s a good instance, I’ll probably hit heroic mode tonite and see how that works.

Btw, the baby phoenix dropped /cheer /happydance Changoo.

We used two hunters for CC on that six man pull. I had a hell of a time keeping HOT’s on everyone. The effing lifebloom nerf is a pain and I had to do some adjusting of healing rotations. In the end the pets pulling imps, and the ice traps saved the day. The Tankadin we had wasn’t very well geared and didn’t really do very well on the agro front, so my healing very, very easily overcame him in agro. You would think that trees would be tougher to kill. Haha. I got the last couple hots off before dying and watched everyone else sink in HP, slowly and painfully. I hate that as healer. By the time the dust cleared the tank, a hunter and the healer (me) were down, and the best hunter I’ve ever seen, (can’t remember his name now cuz this was a pug group) kited the last boss while helping the rogue take out the second to last mob, (which killed the rogue with its dying breath,) then took down the imp with his pet, and then killed the boss. He was the last man standing with his trusty pet. That guy was good!!!

And I have to say, that was probably the best dungeon fight I have ever seen. And of course, it was at this point that that hunter had to go help his Guild in Kara. /cry

I think we would have killed Kael if he had stayed.

Just a thought. I did it twice last night.

First time the party make up is Me(bear tank), Paladin (healer), Shaman (enhance), Shaman (Elemental), Mage (Arcane).

Everyone is in pre / entry lvl Kara gear, but we did it fairly easy. key being CCing the right target and focusing the right target, while 2 shaman interrupts big spells /w earth shock and spam grounding totem to eat DD-spell and help healing at times.

we did not wipe once untill boss 3, a few single death on enhance shaman, due to his low HP ( around 7k after buff… its a bit low to take hits with that). first challenge was the boss 3, we had 2 wipes on it, but once we get the kill order correctly, it wasn’t bad at all ( rogue – warrior – warlock – Priestess; Mage kept CC the mage till the end)

The 6 man before kael was a bit trying, but we did it alright utilitzing the grounding totem, LOSing, and keep the sheep target in the adjacent tunnel to avoid breakage. after that we one shotted Kael. elemental shaman and me died early around 40%, mage died around 30%, so the enhance shaman and the paladin basicly Soloed kael for 30%.

2nd run, composition changed to Me (bear), Enhance shaman (same), Hunter, Mage, Druid healer.

it was mostly the same, with the druid healer in higher gear. However, the druid healer did a wonderful job with mobile healing. we finished boss 3 fight with no death and everyone close to full hp (well timed tranquility /w bark skin on).

The 6 man before kael proved to be more challenging this time, we wiped 2 times before mage start to sheep correctly (in the first section of the tunnel, and we pull the rest of the mob in to the 2nd section), we wiped once on kael with this group, since druid was not familiar with the phase 2 floating; but afterward it was smooth sailing. (mage had to go, so we swaped him with another hunter for kael fight). we finished the kael fight with me in cat form, and 2 hunter. Kael was burst down too fast so phase 2 only happened once.

I am thinking of challenging the heroic MrT tonight ;)

Now that I got a chance to reflect upon my runs there last night, I have to give Blizzard a big thumbs up for desgining MrT.

Not only you have to have a decent composition for the group, everyone has to utilize the character they are playing to its full strength.

Every class/build has something great to offer for this instance, while some might do it better than other, it is not pigeon-holed that you can only do it with certain combo. 2 CC might be nice to have, but it is definitely not required.

On the same note, this instance requires some creativity in problem solving. if you have a less than perfect group composition, you need to use every bit of game mechanism to your advantage: LOS, grounding totem, all form of spell lock and interrupt, all class who can heal should off heal at spot, clean spaces and plan routes ahead that you can kite or retreat to… Etc etc; all in all, it mades the game more interesting and exciting. (amazing isnt it? it actually requires you to think about it before u execute it)

In my opinion, more instance should be designed like this. Where planning and execution trumps simply gears. planning and strategy should be disccussed at length and requires a few tries to get the execution right.

2 Feral Druids (I was the dps druid in S3, I think the other druid was mainly Kara)
1 Priest
1 Mage
1 Hunter

3rd boss was fricking fun! Two brez’s / innervates / mana pots. We thought we were screwed when Priest + Mage quickly went down leaving hunter + druids, but as the hunter kited and we (druids) alternately healed each other. The new NI talent rocks 900 healing in my dps gear when I do a weapons swap.

The 6 pull before Kael… I just OT’ed 2 of them.

Think arena =]
Healers down first, any extra healers keep cc’ed.
I’d suggest major boss first or keep a warlock on him like in an arena match.
Take down easy to kill first. etc. etc.

I hate that I couldn’t taunt in there as a tank, seemed like the healer kept getting more aggro than I could output. Felt like I was better off in cat form than bear.

You’ll get it tho, been doin’ it nitely with a similarly set up group, me feral druid tank, 2 rogues, 1 lock, 1 priest. Lock would banish the demon if he was there, rogues would solo the main target, and i’d do w/e i could to keep whatever was left off the healer. It’s chaos for sure. GL with that, just wait til you see the last pull before Kael :p.

Hello there!
Just wanted to add some comments on instances in general. I have been reading your blog for quite a while now and really like although I do not play a druid…
I am sharing a small guild with some of my real life friends and we are just large enough to meet once a week and do some 5 man instances. We are on the European server lightbringer and our guild is called “Knights of the Coconut”.

Anyway, as said before we do an instance run once a week. Thanks to PvP our equipment is good enough for most of them on heroic. Two weeks ago we wanted to see how good we really are and decided to go into Arcatraz on heroic.
Our group was:
1 tank (epic equipment)
1 healer (epic equipment)
1 mage (decent equipment)
1 hunter (average equipment, most PvP)
1 rogue (pvp gear (epic) and elemental leatherworking set)
This group has quite good cc, but only one healer. Most of the guides said that a group without a second healer shouldn’t even try to encounter the first boss. But we tried anyway and after one wipe we got him fairly easy. For the rest of the trash and bosses, we wiped maybe three times, but at the end we managed everything fairly easy.

So, why am I writing this? Just to show that you don’t need uber equipment to be successful in this game. Our biggest advantage is probably team speak. If you are really clicking as a team, you make up much ground on bad gear.

I am really looking forward to our first run on MT. We will probably fail without a warlock, but it will be fun.

well for all of those talking here im a balance druid on shandris realm whit fair gear :p ( yeah right) on my frist try the group was

Hoot–prot war
dragonsbane-hunter
rosalie-hunter
coralblue-holy priest
and me–balance druid

happens that we had some problens whit the mana things there and wipe twice but we talked about pull them to the hall and took down everything just before the doors in first boss close leaving drag and rosalie outside well that was time for a starfire and DoT marathon. and we got it down fast that was our only problem right ther in this group

second time there

bornah–prot war
blackthom-holy priest
pandoracats-hunter
thuggos-mage
again me- balance druid

this time whit a little more exp we manage to get to kael whit no problems then our healer died follow by hunter mage and war. he was at 23% and then again marathon or DoTs and starfire whit a couple of moonfire everytime to keep the DoT coming and that was so far our problem thanks god my rez was 1 min CD and we finish the run whit a score of just 1 death of each player ( i died on the priestess pull)

Hey,

Man this makes me feel better,

I am a kinda new decently geared feral tank, and man that last pull raped me. First time i did it we had to shammies..double fire ele ftw.

2nd group was

Druid tank
Priest healer
Rouge-sap
Mage sheep
Shammy-untankable damage spikes (though he kinda pwned)

we wiped allot on the way there mostly because i didn’t know where not to step and aggro to much. W/e that’s practice but that last pull..wow.

I just couldn’t keep aggro. At all. If you ever can get a recomended group and a cc order it would be amazing!

thanks =)

My guild (warrior tank, warrior DPS, affliction lock, mage, pally) gave up on that last 6-pull as well, although I think that was just as much about the lateness of the hour by then, and our being completely demoralized by wiping what seemed like two dozen times already. We made a mistake by not starting the run until 10pm. By 1:30am I was ready to hurl the computer out the window, so it was time to take a breather.

Anyway, we might try it again tonight. The AOE squishes my succubus every time, meaning the seduce is useless as CC in the hallway. So I think the way to try it (if we get that far again) is to pull the group out into the courtyard where you face Boss #3.

This instance I have now run 8 times, as a feral tank. I’ve run heroic twice and regular once. Each time has been a different setup. Heroic is vastly different to regular in the mob hit points and the second boss. Other than that its not really that bad. I would REALLY recommend you bringing one renewable CC and one other CC to complete it due to the large trash packs. The problem with heroic is that if your group together cannot output 3k+ dps you are not going to get past large parts of it. That being said the only two real blocks I ran into were: a heroic group with players mostly in prekara blues and a few badge items not doing enough dps to bring down the second boss. The other was non heroic with a nearly all melee group. Fury warrior, bear tank, Beast Hunter, Paladin and Rogue. This group simply cannot bring down Kael. The hunter was SSC/TK/ZA geared, the tank was mostly T6 geared, the rogue SSC/badge geared, the warrior kara/badge geared and the Pally SSC/badge geared. There is just no way a melee heavy group with a pally healer can take care of the adds. Other than that, yes, I am pretty sure with good execution you can make any group work in there.

Ran MrT first time yesterday, as tank with an über group (or so I thought). Totally undergeared compared to them, just attained uncrittable status. Had 13600 HP / 18700 armor / 416 Def. Had read about the hell it was in this thread, so I was skeptic. We had a Warlock / Mage / Druid healer / shadow Priest /, and me Feral tank. We wiped 3 times. One time on the first 5 man pull, as I didn’t knew what LOS meant. Lol, the Mage almost fired me, as main target was always the magisters and I couldn’t reel him in. Next wipe was at the fountain courtyard, were I accidently went after a magister who had fled to the fountain, and then accidently pulled another 5-man mob.

Last wipe was on the 6-man pull, but at least we only wiped once there. All bosses went down pretty easy the first time. We had very good DPS, and the other guys knew the instance well. The Cc we had was perfect. Sheep, enslave succbus and charm and finally MC. We actually had too much CC at some mobs, were I had to targets, 3 were Cc’ed and the last one was killed almost instantly.

But true, as a tank, the place sucketh big time. The bosses are easy, as you only have one goal as a tank, the DPS classes are doing all the work. The trash is tough as it’s very tightly packed, and because you are using LOS all the time, your TABbing finger needs to be fast…Other than that it’s fast and pretty in there. I’d call it mini-Kara.

Will surely go there soon again, at least for the epic pants and the epic cloak. Got the
blue kitty pants from Fireheart, but not as good as the Skystalker’s Leggings of the Beast http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31564.

My first run of the normal MrT was a success as a bear tank (Yoru @ Draenor).
We did have a few wipes but normal for a first. We (guildes) had a hunter, lock, priest, mage and feral tank (me) all in KZ and arena gear.

We wiped a few times on the 6 pack but finally beat them and wiped on Kael once. Man, watch for those bubbles. lol.

The 6 pack had me worried for a bit. Thank god for swipe, roar and good guildies.

Just to give an update on how our first run last week went.

Our group as mentioned before:

1 Worrior (tank)
1 Priest (healing – with a pvp spec)
1 Mage (sheep)
1 Hunter (trap)
1 Rogue (me, pvp spec, arena gear)

We wiped a total of four times. One time at the second boss, because we did not kill the adds quick enough. Another wipe at the second boss, because we pulled him while still fighting another group… And two more wipes at the last boss. Our priest thought it would be funny to fly into the bubbles, i.e. not funny! We never wiped on any of the trash groups. Our strategy was always to sap one, sheep one and trap a third one. Our tank took two and I killed the imp and the succubus. Once these two were dead the main target was already down and the sap came. Still only two at the same time. Overall very easy to manage. However, I am not so sure anymore, if our gear is as bad as I thought. The season three stuff must be really competitive…

Good luck to all and good luck to us, as we will try to get through the heroic one on Wednesday…