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Storming Magister’s Terrace
By Cameron Sorden | March 25, 2008
I just spent the better part of my afternoon and evening exploring the new content in World of Warcraft’s patch 2.4, and I have to say, it’s pretty cool. The new zone was absolutely swarming with people doing the new dailies, but there was surprisingly little ganking for being on a PvP server (probably because no one was brash enough to gank people with twenty members of the opposite faction within a stone’s throw). There were a few pretty hectic battles at the entrance to Magister’s Terrace, the new instance, and it seemed that the meeting zone changed possession every fifteen minutes, but you could run straight through if you didn’t need to summon anyone.
Everyone was a little disappointed to find out that we need to do some legwork before we could start spending our hoard of badges on shiny new epic loot, although the first phase of whatever we need to do at the Isle of Quel’Danas is already at 18%, so we should be done by late this weekend. In the meantime, if you’re a newly dinged 70 or hard up for some starting PvP gear you can find high-quality new level 70 blues for a pittance at any of the five major Outland faction vendors. Also, I was glad to hear that Alterac Valley was back down to reasonable ten minute queues and even more reasonable match lengths. Maybe I’ll start to do some PvP now. I was decidedly underwhelmed with the changes to my Shaman class (though the 1-second totem cooldown is nice). But the biggest thing that I was looking forward to was the introduction of a new instance. While I haven’t actually run all of the other WoW instances, my Kara gear has already made them all, with the exception of a few heroics, obsolete. Magister’s Terrace promised to finally be a 5-man worth taking the time to run and provide a challenge at the same time.
After knocking out some introductory quests, a crack team of my guildies headed for the instance, with me healing. The people we brought in were mostly members of our A-team, and all of us were geared up in almost solid purple. We expected to walk through normal mode without batting an eye and head straight for heroic, given the ease with which we spank regular instances usually, but the place was surprisingly difficult on our first run. The pulls can be tricky and the groups are close together. You have to stay on your toes, focus fire, watch your aggro, and pick your kill order carefully. Two forms of crowd control are pretty much necessary for a smooth ride, three are ideal. This instance was made for groups with 2-3 mages.
After a few messy mistakes, we got the hang of the trash pulls and worked our way in. The first two bosses are nothing impressive: Selin Fireheart is a pushover and Vexallus is an easy-mode Curator. Vexallus’s room is pretty interesting, though. The whole thing is filled with little Brightscale Wyrms that come in groups of 10+ and need to be AoE’d down. The fights are a piece of cake if you get the groups one at a time and have a mage, but it just looks awesome to see that many mobs flying around the room.
After a short cut-scene and a chat with a blue dragon, you’re plunging off deeper into the zone. The second half of the instance gets a lot more challenging. It has a similar feel to pre-BC Scarlet Stratholme, with nasty casters that can mess you up badly if you don’t control them. You need to tread carefully and really watch where you’re pulling and fighting. The next boss encounter you run into, Priestess Delrissa, is actually a harder fight than the last boss, in my opinion. By herself she’d be a huge pushover, but what makes this fight so rough is that you have to fight her along with four companions, randomly chosen from this list:
- Apoko (shaman) - Drops Totems (Windfury, Fire Nova) Heals
- Eramas Brightblaze (blood elf fury warrior) Pummel
- Ellrys Duskhallow (blood elf warlock) - Uses Shadow Bolt, Fear, and Seed of Corruption. Has an Imp pet named Fizzle, which can be killed quickly.
- Garaxxas (satyr hunter) - Comes with a pet ravager named Sliver. Can use Freezing Trap.
- Kagani Nightstrike (blood elf rogue) - Uses Cheap Shot, Kidney Shot, and Gouge. Has Crippling Poison on his weapon. Can Vanish and reappear next to a random target.
- Warlord Salaris (naga warrior) - Uses Mortal Strike and Intimidating Shout. Hits hard. Taunt immune.
- Yazzai (ethereal mage) - Uses Frostbolt, Blizzard, and randomly Polymorphs a target.
- Zelfan (gan’arg engineer) - throws bombs
As you can see, the mobs all have a class and each of them behave a lot like an actual player might in a 5v5 fight. The one exception is that they don’t focus fire as a group, although it’s possible to have two or even three of them on you at a time. Having your tank maintain aggro in this fight is nigh impossible, since the mobs seem to change targets as they feel like it and split themselves up among members of your party. Healing this fight sucks a lot. The best strategy we’ve found so far is to just keep as many of them CC’d as you can, for as long as you can, and just focus fire the hell out of them, starting with clothies and pets. Imagining this fight on heroic with anything less than three forms of crowd control sets my teeth on edge.
The last boss fight is against Kael’Thas Sunstrider himself, and it’s just a short distance past Delrissa. This fight is fairly easy if you understand it and have a good group, but you need everyone to know what they’re doing. The first half of the fight is a plain old tank and spank with plenty of nuking from Kael’Thas. You’ll need to kill his phoenix when it pops out and then crack its egg to prevent it from respawning. The real fun starts when he gets to 50% health, though– this is when things get crazy.
He uses a special move that basically eliminates gravity in the room, throws everyone into the air, and you move as though swimming really fast. This goes on for about 20-30 seconds. During this time, everyone in your group is taking 300 damage per second, every second, and also being chased by four or five slow-moving orbs. If the orbs get near you, they smash you for 2000 damage per hit. That basically means that if an orb catches you, you take a dirt nap pretty quickly. It’s during this phase where people need to be good players, because you need to swim around and actively dodge orbs while keeping the heat on Kael’thas. If the effect ends, you only get a 10-second reprieve before he does it again, so you kind of have to suck it up and just kill him under the tough conditions. It sounds bad, but it’s not too awful, really. Once you’ve done it once or twice, you get the hang of it– shammies and pallies will always have a tough time healing this fight, since they have no HoTs, limited group heals (chain heal is useless here), and have to keep moving.
All of your hard work pays off though, since Kael’thas seems to drop an epic item and a blue item every time you kill him, even in normal mode. That’s another thing I should mention, actually. The loot in Magister’s Terrace is unreal for a five-man, although that’s not really surprising given how much trouble even a Kara-geared group can have there. All of the blues are just under Kara quality (and will definitely carry you into Kara), Kael’s epics are Kara-quality or better (I replaced my Kara DPS breastplate with the one he drops), and the heroic items are all arguably better than Kara stuff. Haste-endowed items are especially plentiful. Sadly, we saw neither the 20-slot bag nor the blood-elf disguise orb after four normal Terrace runs.
All said, the new instance is a blast, and patch 2.4 seems to be the breath of fresh air that WoW needed to grab the attention of many of the players whose eyes have been wandering, of late. I’m looking forward to working on the new rep and taking a stab at the heroic mode of Magister’s Terrace (an exercise which I fully expect to be brutally punishing). I’m also excited to be a part of the events that unlock more of Quel’Danas and go dabble a bit in the retooled Alterac. I can tell that I’m definitely hooked hard again, and it looks like it’s going to be a fun few weeks.
After that I expect that it’ll be back to waiting for Warhammer, Age of Conan, and Wrath of the Lich King. Sigh.
Topics: World of Warcraft, mmorpg |
March 26th, 2008 at 6:52 am
[…] Cameron has a freaking fantastic writeup on what it’s like to do the 5-man Magister’s Terrace run. Go check it […]
March 26th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Very nice guide.
March 26th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Interestingly, your take on the bosses is a bit different than mine. I found the third boss to be pretty trivial and the second boss to be much more difficult. She is REALLY REALLY soft. This is a good instance for mages (which one isn’t), but also a good instance for Rogues (who sap and stun) and Warlocks who can both seduce and banish at the same time.
March 26th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Man, I can’t believe that Kael’Thas is single groupable. Lorewise, that seems a bit odd. =/ Hrmph.
March 26th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
It’s actually his shade, I think. I believe that lore-wise, Magister’s Terrace happens after the Sunwell raid.
March 27th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Is this lore being presented in-game better or is it still business as usual: go to our website and read the lore; go to the dungeon and kill shit? You mentioned a cinematic, just curious if they’re trying new ways of getting the story across or not?
March 27th, 2008 at 10:51 am
The cinematic is interesting… I think they are making an effort to inject some more lore.
April 8th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
that’s a decent rundown of the instance however I disagree that this instance is difficult and running heroic w/ 2 cc isn’t hard at all in face ive done it w/ one me as ele. It’s really about coordination realizes which mobs to pull and downing them fast. Personally me and my guildies pug this quite often but we do prefer to use vent for this instance as it saves a ton of time concerning broken cc or in the 5v5 fight who’s getting ff’d.
April 11th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Did this instance with only a Warlock (myself) and a Rogue for crowd control. the others were a warrior, priest and ?non- ranged dps, crap, can’t remember what class, anyway accidentally set off the third boss fight when I got too close, no one panicked cause we had cleared the rest of the room, I used all my mana for fearing all the npc’s non-stop, the group just beat up anyone who stopped running, it was only funny afterward. The final boss had a long learning curve, (6 wipes) first tank the phoenixes with a pet because the hellfire that they put out is intense,destroy them and their eggs quickly, if they are alive when you fly up into the air, people are gonna die, secondly, focus on avoiding the orbs that are chasing you, its a 3-D swimfest and you can out run them, once they’re close, it’s too late. Also dot’s and ranged dps can finish off the boss if you just avoid those pink death bombs. As a Kara geared group, we de’d 4 out of 6 drops but now I have the giant dps sword from the second boss, Latro’s Dancing Blade that no Warlock should own but it’s too cool looking to not wear in Org. Thanks for listening.