Magisters' Terrace: First Experience; Regular and Heroic

Last night, after our raid didn't made due to people stuck downloading the patch and fixing add ons, a group of us decided to hit up Magisters' Terrace!!

Our group consisted of:

Prot Paladin - Tank
Feral Druid (me!) - Kitty DPS
Rogue - Shadowstep (aka lawlstep)
Warlock - Destruction/Demo
Holy Priest - Uber healz galore!

Magisters' Terrace - Regular

Upon entering MTr, we were greeted with the golds and reds of the Blood Elf decor. However, rather than being the super bright and sunny look of Silvermoon City, it was toned down a bit to give it that dungeon feel. I actually preferred the toned down colors. What? You didn't come here to read my opinions of their decor? Gah! Fine! Then I won't mention that if you're using any type of camera expanding view, a lot of that lovely decor (trees, banners, curtains) gets in your way and becomes extremely annoying! You can just go in there and find that out on your own!! ;p

As far as the instance went, we found it extremely easy...in fact, we were in and finished in under an hour. Even though there were quite a few 5 mob pulls, I don't even think I got a single finishing move off on trash. Most often, it was dead by the time I had 3-4 combo points. Granted, we all are pretty well geared, mid to late T5 range (except for my Kitty gear), so if you're still gearing up T4, you may find it a little more difficult with the prolific use of magic and multi-pulls.

The bosses on regular mode were a walk in the park too. The first boss, Selin Fireheart, was similar to Warlord Kalithresh in Steamvaults wherein he siphons mana from the surrounding crystals. In fact, this boss was so easy that we were able to down him without our holy priest as he got stuck, along with my kitten, outside the door. I did pop out and cast Tranquility, but that was the only healing I did during that fight. The second boss, Vexallus, spawned 'sparks' like the Curator in Karazhan. The third boss, Priestess Delrissa and her court of 4 others, was similar to Karathress in SSC, Hex-Lord Malacress in ZA, and/or Moroes in Karazhan. Actually, she and her entourage seemed pretty much just like another trash pull. The forth boss, Kael'thas Sunstrider, was easy as well and he does the same gravity lapse thing he does in TK.

Magisters' Terrace - Heroic

After turning in our quest and gaining access to Heroic mode, we charge back in for another run. After a few pulls, Silveria spoke up and said what the rest of us had been thinking, "Did I put this on heroic mode?" We all confirmed that he did and continued on.

At the first boss, our healer made it in the doors, however, my kitten did not. He must have been napping, which was OK as this boss didn't seem any more difficult on Heroic mode as he did on regular mode. Granted, we had heals this time, but the speed with which we dispatched him only took marginally longer than it had on non-heroic.

We then made our way to the second boss all the while mocking the 'Heroic Difficulty' of the instance as we cleared the trash. I did notice that, on occasion, was able to get in a finishing move on the trash, but quite often, it was dead at 4 combo points. The second boss was a little harder on Heroic and would spawn 2 sparks instead of one. I think we did have a death on this encounter, but he was still easily killed.

On our way to the third boss we continued to mock the instance and even laughed at ourselves when we had a couple of wipes on trash, 'obviously' (read sarcasm in there) we weren't paying attention or something or perhaps we were getting a little tired.

At the third boss, we clear the first trash pulls on both sides. Along with Priestess Delrissa, we had the Furry Warrior, Naga Warrior, the Mage, and the Engineer. We did a LoS pull on them into the hallway area as we'd done in non-heroic and promptly died. We discussed the problems, tweaked our strategy and pulled again and immediately died again. That's ok...discuss, tweak, pull, die. Hmmm....discuss, tweak, pull die. OK. So. That's what we get for mocking the instance! At this point, we begin to take the instance seriously and decide to clear the entire room so we can add fears into our CC arsenal. We have our strategy all mapped out, we have our game faces on, we pull, and we die. We discussed, tweaked, pulled, and died a couple more times and at this point we're all pretty well broken.

Wait! We have a Warlock and live with the new patch he can summon directly into the instance! We decide to summon each other so that we could hearth and repair. This little tactic even works for the Warlock. He summoned himself before he hearthed, was able to repair, accept, and spawn back into the exact same location! Absolutely the best class change ever!

So, we're all repaired up, we have our serious game faces on, and we're ready to own this woman and her peeps! We discuss strategy again, get a plan of action, and jump in, and then die...rinse and repeat! Honestly, I don't know how many times we died on this boss. I will tell you that we did have to do the summon/hearth/repair/accept trick again and then still wiped another 2 times after that before we were finally successful.

How we managed to succeed was to have our Prot Pally tank Priestess Delrissa. Our Rogue sapped the Mage and threw blinds on her whenever possible. I tanked the Naga Warrior. Our Warlock banished the Engineer and feared the Fury Warrior. Once the Naga Warrior was down, I then picked up the Fury Warrior and tanked him. While I was tanking the warriors in turn, our rogue helped to DPS them and interrupted the Priestess' heals. However, while on the Fury Warrior, the Priestess and the rogue got too far away. So, I finished the Fury Warrior and he killed the Priestess. After that, we directed our energies to the Mage and then the Engineer.

I skipped over all the unsuccessful strategies we tried because we tried so many there was no way I'd remember what and when we used them. Just suffice it to say that we tried variations using all our CC abilities available including Cyclone and our Priests fear...we just mixed and matched until we found what worked above. The only thing I didn't try and I wish now that I had was Entangling Roots. I'm not sure if that area was considered 'outside' or not, but it was grassy and there was a hole in the roof. If anyone tries this, let me know if it works!

After the trials of the third boss, we went to the forth one expecting to struggle there as well. However, even though we wiped on the first attempt, we did down him fairly easily on the second try.

Magisters' Terrace - Summary

My main impressions from this instance is the abundance of multi mob pulls which averaged around 5 mobs. Along with the multiple targets to juggle most of them were spell casters requiring a lot of LoS pulls. Honestly, I was glad I was not tanking. Our Paladin, Silveria, tanked and even with his amazing AoE tanking abilities, it still looked like a pain in the arse.

If I were tanking this instance, being a Feral Druid, I could see using a lot of Hurricane pulls to generate initial threat on them all. I also might even consider a Flask of Chromatic Wonder to help mitigate some of the spell damage. However, I'd need to experiment to see how well that would work (it's only 35 resistance) and depending on the strength of the healer, it may or may not be needed.

All in all, it was a fun instance. However, I'm sure that was biased by the fact that we ran it with such good people...not just skill wise, but just plain good folks. One of the reason's I love my guild so much is that everyone in the guild are good people. Take our experience on the third boss, for example....we wiped over 20 times on that one boss and through all that no one yelled, got mad, complained about repair costs, got bossy, dictated, demanded, no egos or e-peens, etc. None of that happened. We viewed it as a challenge to be overcome and worked together to succeed.