Magister's Terrace, heroic 3rd boss.

[Psykewne]

extremely annoyed... ever mob that can spawn with her is easy save 1... the ms warrior has intimidating shout and intercept which means unless you sheep him and keep him sheeped things hit the fan easily with him... not being able to tank these mobs sucks and when one of them can one/two shot a healer and even if cc'd can charge/stun/fear combo the second the cc breaks... the design of the encounter seems to be a joke, why offer up a fight that basically makes tank specced players an almost wasted slot unless they pack a good offspec set.

normal mode was fine because none of them hit too hard but having shaman, rogue, ms warrior and hunter was impossible on heroic and that's with a rogue, pally tank, priest healer, warlock and ele shaman... we tried fearing and banishing and blinding and everything... quite frankly it's not even a pvp fight, it's a pvp fight against hackers on heroic mode...

I love the instance but this fight ruins it for me, especially being the one that actually gives the only tank drop in the instance (ironic that the tank trinket drops from the anti-tank boss)

will look forward ot hearing other people's experiences because i really believe that this fight is too demanding on party make up, luck of the draw on adds and whether or not you have some pvp gear to fall back on. For a heroic i think it's very unfair to have a luck of the draw type boss as you can't reset if the combination sucks, as unlike ZA or Kara in similar situations, you only have 5 people to bring making filling cc gaps hard without getting strict on group composition.

[Chevy]

I haven't had problems with her, I've only ran it on heroic once though.

We got the Mage, Warrior, Rogue/Fury type, and Engineer.

Group was

Rogue
Prot Pal
Holy Pal
Shad Priest
Ele Sham

We kept the engineer feared, burned the boss, then the warrior, then the mage, then rogue.

Only CC we really had was the fear. Rogue couldn't get close enough to sap. I just helped heal, bop'ed liberally and cleansed. Given - Our holy pally was in tier 6 gear, but I think people are making it out to be harder than it is.

Got my steelweave off her

[Psykewne]

agreed that it's not as hard all the time, but certainly having a clothie healer and the ms warrior makes things very shakey, overall it feels like a very large jump in difficulty over everything up to that point and even more so for people who don't pvp (like myself and the people i was running with) It seemed very hard to get the dps to not worry about taking hits from the lighter attackers and just gun them down.

I'm sure as with everything, some practice will help resolve the issues some of us are having, but still the aggro dropping seems less a suitable fight mechanic and more just taking the piss to me... no reason to have it in the fight.

[Moses]

I got in like attempts today before the server dropped us and reset all the trash. We had me (tankadin) fury warrior, lockx2 and a holy pally.

They had the priest, rogue, shaman, MS warrior and the hunter. I think any set that has both the MS warrior and the shaman on heroic is going to be a real pain. On the positive side after pulling only the first 3 mobs (or two is you sneak up and check while the pat is on the other side) you can look down in the courtyard and see what he has. Since you haven't killed any of the bosses you can reset the instance and get a better pairup vs your group.

In my experience I agree with all those who said wear healing/pvp gear is the way to go. I went with about a 50/50 mix since I'm not that well geared just choosing my best pieces of both sets. Also we did not clear the groups on either side, and if you are using fear as a CC the feared mobs to not wake the groups even if they are feared right into them then it breaks. The side mobs will aggro if anyone from your party is feared close enough to them by the intimidating shout.

Another tactic that seemed to be working on the last attempt before the crash was to have the group stand behind the pillars and then when you pull run back and stand in the middle. This makes the warrior intercept you (the only one in LoS) instead of a crucial CC/healer in your group. That intercept wiped us twice when it stopped the hunter from being banished.

All in all a hard and interested fight. Although it makes me as a tankadin a weak addition to the group I do enjoy it and look forward to heading back tomorrow (hopefully with a mage) and giving it another shot.

[Tyaera]

On the positive side after pulling only the first 3 mobs (or two is you sneak up and check while the pat is on the other side) you can look down in the courtyard and see what he has. Since you haven't killed any of the bosses you can reset the instance and get a better pairup vs your group.

I hadn't thought of this.

[Fedaykin98]

This encounter kicked my group's butts last night. We were Tankadin, Hunter, Mage x2, Resto Shammy. They were Delrissa, rogue, MS war, lock, mage. We sheeped the two casters and targeted Delrissa for the first kill. That didn't work at all; after a bit, we moved one sheep from the lock to the MS war, but we still couldn't get it down.

I agree with the people saying that this is more like 5v5 Arena; I also feel like the whole instance is kind of like a 5-man raid. It's much harder than any other Heroic, imho, and I've never considered Resist gear for any 5-man before (2nd boss). We're kind of being asked to exercise some preparation and tactics that aren't normal to 5-mans, which is actually pretty interesting. I'd say that Blizzard is flexing their creative muscles a little more here, like they did in ZA. I enjoy that.

I'll enjoy it more when I've got my trinket, though.

[Fangwui]

to me this fight plays out more like a 5v5 arena match than a boss fight.

[Splug]

Yeah, this is much simpler if you treat it as an arena match against bad players in good PVE gear. They go down fast, they have no resil, but they WILL mess you up very quickly. Warrior tanks should throw on damage gear and spamstring the melee while trying to stun/pummel the priest. Paladin tanks I'd imagine are better off converting to a second healer. Druid tanks... I'd suspect cyclone/root/feral charge? It's all about using the base class abilities to CC or kite them, and if your team has some stamina gear/trinkets, they do come in handy here.

Although, keep in mind the boss's team ARE npc's. They don't get the reduced duration from CC that players do, going over ~200 resil makes you crit immune, and they won't try to bait your casts.

-Splug

[Riyan]

Lemme try to remember it on heroic:

Us: Prot Pala, Holy Priest, Frost Mage, Combat Rogue, SL/SL Warlock
Them: Priestess, Rogues, Warrior, Hunter (/w pet), Shaman.

We banished/feared the Hunter, pet stayed on me the entire time. Initial Sap on the rogue, Continuous sheep on the warrior. Killed the shaman first, priestess second. Then the rogue, and then went for the warrior.

Warrior is actually quite capable of two-shotting clothies (he killed our mage and rogue before we realized how hard he hits). Fear-kited the warrior to death (I love warlocks), then finished off the hunter.

So we lost the mage/rogue.
On the whole we could've done better too if the rogue had some more PvP experience and remembered to use blind, vanish, gouge, etc. in the fight. As it was, he pretty much straight dps'd. With the extra CC, it would've been even easier.

[NarfJones]

Hi-

Just went in with a group of great players to heroic Terrace. We blasted through on normal, then had an easy time on heroic until the third boss.

We got all humanoids: fury warrior, warlock, rogue, and shaman. We also had no viable CC for the humanoids besides a succubus and fearing.

I noticed after the first attempt that the shaman was purging me like crazy, dispelling Righteous Fury. We tried locking him down/fearing the rest and killing him, but it seemed like I'd have to refresh Righteous Fury constantly.

Any suggestions on how to go about killing that Shaman when we don't have CC?

Thanks for the help!

Vladimir

This is the same combination that my group got last night, and I have to say, it felt impossible. I won't tell you how much time we spent trying to make it happen, but it was in the multiples of hours. With one sheep, one trap, a sap, and a fear bomb, we thought we could do it, but the rogue and fury warrior would tear our clothies apart in a few seconds.
I could see no viable way of dealing with this particular combo with anything other than a party full of plate or three "3 minute" mages, as sheeping seems to be the only chainable cc in this fight.
Another problem was that the rogue was constantly running around cc'ing people which would interrupt spell casts which caused the other cc to get loose.

This fight was an absolute mess, and personally I can only see one way to fix it. Give them a God damn aggro table. I understand what Blizzard is going for in this fight but ffs, how the hell do you deal with 2 mobs in the same fight that cannot be controlled and can two shot half your party?

Oh, and stacking a certain class or specific party build for one encounter in an instance is not a viable strategy. It's the result of poor game design.


And the adds you see when you look down from the terrace are not the mobs you'll see when you get there.

[jere]

I did it on heroic for the first time last night. It actually didn't seem all that bad. We had the MS warrior, the rogue, the hunter, and the mage. I tossed on healing gear and cleansed/feared/healed/stunned most of the fight. Nothing seemed to hit too hard with the largest chunk of damage that any of us noticed being in the 2k-3k area. Only our priest with his wonderful 6k unbuffed health was in any real danger, but I pretty much spam healed him between cleanses and it all went pretty well.

All in all, a fun fight.

[Gray]

I've never reacted violently to any raid or instances wipes, but this boss had me cursing and punching things in my room. We're pretty well geared by any standards, and didnt bother taking alot of CC with. What a mistake that was. Wipe after wipe after fucking wipe. I get RF dispelled, stunned, feared, stunned again, wipe. We ended up calling it (embarresing for us).

Edit:

Was on heroic level btw.

[Gimorth]

I agree with the people saying that this is more like 5v5 Arena; I also feel like the whole instance is kind of like a 5-man raid. It's much harder than any other Heroic, imho, and I've never considered Resist gear for any 5-man before (2nd boss)

This is kind of OT for this post, but I definitely agree with you here. I am not entirely sure, but I am starting to put together an AP/Resist set (yay for rep PvP gear) simply for this instance. I have found that all my def, dodge, parry and block is generally wasted in most pulls. My general idea will be to gear for resistance (mainly fire) to lower the magical damage I take considerably and use Seal of Blood to ensure that I am taking SOME damage.

With regards to this fight specifically, I have to believe that there is some semblance of aggro generation here. My brother (hunter) and I were the only ones left standing with only the MS warrior left to go. For as long as my brother was alive, the warrior would NOT get off of him. He only targetted me once my brother died. If we were dealing with random aggro drops, I would have to assume I would have nabbed aggro at some point. (The funniest thing, of course, is that I was able to solo the warrior from about 75% health. Everyone was ready to give up and I was like, "Guys- JoL, SoL and HoJ- we're fine.")

I am wondering if aggro is simply generated according to PvP-ish rules. Perhaps it's not so much random as it is fundamentally different from standard aggro generation. Players don't care that I have RF up, if I am not doing much to hurt them or doing much to keep my teammates alive, they will generally ignore me. It might be the case that aggro-reducing abilities/talents aren't taken into consideration...

[Riyan]

The 3rd boss is basically the fight you need CC for, just like in 5v5 arena. But most classes have some form of CC, tbh, and you are supposed to be using them, whether it's a full CC like sheep, or just partial like the Daze affect on Avenger's Shield.

It's hard to give specific advise without knowing the composition of your party though.

[Stroja]

to me this fight plays out more like a 5v5 arena match than a boss fight.

Nah, if they wanted it to feel like a 5v5, they'd have pillars there for druids to hump... oh wait...

Yes, this is very much a PvE 5v5 match. My first time in happened to be with a very high arena rated druid healer, so survival was almost a non-issue. It was pretty much just keeping the warrior sheeped and killing the healers.