Tag Archives: instances

Playstyle

Farming for Shattered Sun Rep

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If your server is anything like mine, finding groups for Magister’s Terrace can be … challenging, to say the least, since apparently every single tank has gone on holidays this month and the only ones left are kinda Donald-y. But you want your Shattered Sun faction, don’t you, for those tasty recipes and epics? And the dailies just don’t roll your faction rewards in fast enough…

Lo, paladin, find yourself a friendly mage, preferably one who’s as eager for SSO rep as you are so they don’t bitch and moan about how tedious this is going to be.

Then hie thee to Magister’s Terrace, and kill the first four mobs. Over and over again.

  1. Set it to normal mode. Do not try this on Heroic unless you are uber.
  2. Zone in, pally in tanking gear (with tanking buffs, ie Righteous Fury *ahem*), salv the mage.
  3. Take the first pair, making sure the patrol isn’t pathing anywhere nearby.
    • This pair will be 2x Mage Guards. They’re basically melee mobs, although they have an annoying ranged damage/stun attack called Glaive Throw.
    • Sheep one, tank the other. Tank and spank, and the pally should have little risk of dying unless things go pear-shaped.
    • Of note: when they throw their magic dampening field thingy, pull them out of it and tank them a decent way away from it. The field dampens all spell attacks against them, which makes them slow as hell for your mage to kill, and your threat generation drops to almost nothing.
    • Before breaking the sheep, bandage yourself back up to reasonable health. Then kill the second one.
  4. Eat and drink back to full health. Don’t bother trying to heal yourself up; your mana pool is tiny and your heals won’t do jack. It’s quicker to just eat as well as drinking.
  5. Check out the patrol. There are a number of mobs that can be in the patrol:
    • Warlock: very high dps caster, fire based, with an imp pet. The pet should always be the first thing to die.
    • Magister: frost-based caster, fairly high DPS but manageable.
    • Physician: a melee mob, despite the name, with a poisoned melee attack. Fairly trivial.
    • Mage Guard: same type of mobs as in the first stationary pull. (I think these are potentially in this patrol, although I can’t remember.)
    • Blood Knight: pain in the neck. A paladin mob with a self-heal (or cross-heal if you have another mob up as well) and an aura/dot that does a surprising amount of damage.
  6. Tips for dealing with the patrol:
    • Physician + Magister: the easy pair. Sheep the magister, kill the physician, then kill the magister.
    • Some other combo: relatively easy. If the patrol has the blood knight or the warlock, sheep that mob first. If it has both, then read on.
    • Warlock + Blood Knight: the difficult pair. Sheep the warlock, tank the blood knight, kill the imp, then kill the blood knight. The pally should be ready to interrupt the blood knight’s heal with a stun; the mage should be ready to spellsteal the blood knight’s buff as soon as it appears. Once the blood knight is down, bandage and regen some mana – drink a potion if you’ve got some cheap ones (eg Major Combat Mana Potions) on hand. You don’t want to tackle the warlock when you’re already half-dead and low on mana.
    • The reason I suggest this order is: if the warlock breaks sheep early while you’re killing the blood knight, the warlock will get a spell off and do a bit of damage before being resheeped, no big deal. If the blood knight breaks sheep early while you’re killing the warlock, the knight will get a heal off and you’ll have to kill the warlock all over again, which – given how much damage they do – could well be fatal.
  7. Zone out. Eat, drink, reset the instance.
  8. Perform above steps four more times.

This will net you 240 rep (264 for humans) in about 20-30 minutes, and will use up your five instance resets for the hour. Go make some lunch, do some chores, come back in half an hour, and repeat steps 1-8 again.

I used this to push me over the line to Revered so I could make my healing trinket in time for our first night in Mount Hyjal, since the daily quests were going to reset in the middle of the raid. I used this again today to push me over the line to Exalted so I didn’t have to wait til tonight for a fresh daily reset to get more rep.

Obviously, this is not an awesome way to get to Revered or Exalted SSO by itself. However, a few iterations of this – if it’s in company with a partner you enjoy playing with – can be a fun way to polish some skills and get just that bit of extra rep to reach a particular milestone when you choose, instead of being dependent on being able to get proper Magister’s Terrace groups.

Game Info, Media

Magister’s Terrace: the Kael’thas Fight

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I’m racing to hit Exalted with Shattered Sun before my server gets to Phase 4, so I can get the title – I’m on track, being a third of the way through Honoured with SSO while Proudmoore’s somewhere between 25% and 30% through Phase 2.

This means I’m keen to spend a lot of time in Magister’s Terrace, and I’ve developed a few tips to maximise the likelihood of success. Since some others might find it useful, here are some handy strat tips and a video!

Magister’s Terrace: Boss 4, Kael’thas (Normal Mode)

Kael’thas is a caster boss, and the fight revolves around fire- and arcane-oriented attacks. You can read up on him in detail WoWWiki (and he’s basically a trimmed-down version of his 25-man self), but here’s a quick summary of how I explain the fight to groups I run with:

Phase 1

This is a basic tank-and-spank with a couple of things to watch out for.

  • Kael hits like a kitten, and can be tanked by off-spec people in tank gear. I’ve done it as holy spec in tank gear myself.
  • If you don’t have anyone in melee range, he just casts spells. He can be tanked by a ranged DPSer with high threat, if they have enough stam – a mage with part or all of a Krosh tanking set is a good example. This seems gimmicky, but can be useful – for instance, having a hybrid tank in healing gear to help keep the party up in phase 2. However, this can be problematic, because:
  • Periodically throughout Phase 1, Kael will summon a phoenix (heralded by him saying “Vengeance… burns!”). This phoenix will aggro onto a party member and fly slowly towards them, with a pulsing fire AoE as it goes; when it dies, it explodes with AoE Fire damage. The phoenix should be kited while all ranged DPSers burn it down fast; everyone needs to stay out of melee range of it.
  • When the phoenix dies it leaves an egg. If not killed fast enough, it will spawn a new phoenix. All DPS should burn down the egg as soon as it appears.
  • (If you have a ranged DPSer tanking Kael, you may not have enough spare DPS to get the phoenix and egg down quick enough.)
  • Kael will periodically cast a flamestrike with a very showy graphical effect. Move out of its area, because it burnsssss, precious.

Phase 2

At 50% health, Kael’thas enters Phase 2. Here are the salient points:

  • He stops casting and drops all agro; he no longer attacks anyone directly for the rest of the fight.
  • Tanks are completely useless here. Pally and druid tanks should heal if needed, otherwise DPS. Warrior tanks should do what DPS they can.
  • Kael will cast a Gravity Lapse that “turns off” gravity in his room. Players can move freely in three dimensions; it’s just like swimming, but at normal movement speed.
  • Gravity Lapse does 300+ damage every second to everyone in the party. Ouch. This is very hard for a paladin to solo-heal, and not easy for a shammy either. This is why hybrid tanks need to help heal: one barkskinned Tranquility from a bear tank, for instance, will make the difference between wipe and win.
  • While Gravity Lapse is up, there are also three large Arcane Orbs that move around the room in three dimensions. They do huge arcane damage if they get into melee range of a player, so everyone needs to keep mobile constantly, panning the camera around to watch for incoming orbs. This is essential.
  • Periodically Kael will drop the Gravity Lapse (and orbs) and stand there, stunned, while regenerating energy. He does nothing during this period, and reportedly takes extra damage at the same time, so you should absolutely go to town here. If he’s not dead by the time he’s done regenerating, he’ll start the Gravity Lapse again, repeat until he’s dead or you are.

Summary

  • Phase 1: The “tank” (whether melee or ranged) keeps agro, burn down the phoenix as soon as it appears, burn down the egg as soon as the phoenix dies, keep out of the flamestrikes, don’t let Kael go to Phase 2 with a phoenix or egg still up.
  • Phase 2: Keep as mobile as possible, stay out of range of the Arcane Orbs at all costs, healers need to AoE heal (or spam like mad), let loose during his regen period.

Video

Here’s a video version of the above strategy – a bear tank, a pally healer, two mages and a rogue, all in Tier 4-5 gear. I don’t actually have a video of any of our wins, but the strategy remains the same.

You can also check this video out directly on iMeem for a bigger, better-quality video. Enjoy!

Playstyle

It’s only for a night…

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I’ve never been one of those hybrids who changes spec at the drop of a hat to meet the needs of a group; I change specs once every few months at most, agonising over the placement of every talent point. Regardless of my championing of the “hybrids should be able to perform all their roles”, that doesn’t mean I want to respec twice a week and go holy for raids, prot for 5-mans and ret for soloing.

But. After a fruitless day of searching for Magister’s Terrace PuGs, wherein it seemed I was competing with every healer on the server for a group spot, and there were about 3 tanks compared with the 789237852 DPSers and 11872735 healers looking for groups… I snapped.

And here I am, one Magister’s Terrace group later – still Prot-specced, with my new best friend Bernie, and a good chunk of Shattered Sun rep up my sleeve. I’m just happy my group was patient and understanding about my utter nubbyness.

Time to go back to Holy… although perhaps not before I see what the PuG scene looks like tomorrow.

Game Info

A Guide to Daily Quests: New in 2.3

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Patch 2.3 has not yet been released, but it’s going to include a number of new daily quests. Here’s a brief introduction to them:

Instance Dailies

From the 2.3 Patch Notes:
New daily quests are available in the Lower City for 5 man heroic and non-heroic dungeons (Once at a time, a bit like battleground weekends, each day you will get quests for a different dungeons). The following non-heroic dungeons are concerned: Shattered Halls, Steamvault, Shadow Labyrinth, Black Morass, Botanica, Mechanar, and Arcatraz. All dungeons will get quests in Heroic mode. If you’re getting the non-heroic and the heroic quest on the same day for the same dungeon, you can complete both by running it in heroic mode once. Non heroic quests will reward you with a Ethereum Prison Key (various reputation), gold, and reputation with the Consortium. Heroic quests will give you 2 Badges of Justice, gold, and reputation with the Consortium

As an example, I’m looking on the test realm right now. The quest givers are two Ethereal NPCs in the Lower City, one aligned with the Consortium – Wind Trader Zhareem and Nether-Stalker Mah’duun. (They can be found by looking for a blue ! on the minimap – another new feature in 2.3.) The normal-mode daily quest today is for Steamvaults, and requires you to kill 14 Coilfang Myrmidons – reward: 16 gold and an Ethereum Prison Key. Today’s heroic-mode daily is for Heroic Old Hillsbrad, for the Epoch Hunter’s Head – reward: 24 gold and 2 Badges of Justice.

Battleground Dailies
Each day you can do one daily quest to win a battleground; the reward is 12 gold and 419 honor. The questgiver is in Lower City; I don’t know if there are also questgivers in other cities, or if it can be done before level 70. The problem with this quest, of course, is that it requires you to win a battleground, which is a problem in battlegroups where one faction dominates.

Cooking Dailies
I’ve been wondering how these are going to work, so here we go! The quest giver is a goblin called The Rokk <Master of Cooking> in the Lower City. Today he’s asking you to cook “Demon Broiled Surprise”.

“I want you to take my beloved cooking pot and head out to Blade’s Edge. Throw in some shortribs and crunchy serpent – already cooked for extra flavor – and broil it over an abyssal’s corpse, the only thing hot enough to do the trick.”

Rewards: 7.5 gold and either a Barrel of Fish (flavour text: “A warning label reads: Do Not Shoot”) or a Crate of Meat (flavour text: “Mostly meat and whatever else was sitting around.”) Both items are white-quality and BoP; they contain a few high-level cooking mats (scarce fish, useful meats, etc) and also have a chance to contain a new cooking recipe.