Magister's Terrace

I, along with 99.799% of all WoW players, went into the new 5-man dungeon last night.

Yay for new content!

In deference to the patch and the new zone, I took my "A Team" character, ie: Kikidas, along with the two members of my triangle, Owaru and Boon, to the new instance. Now, it's a 5-man, not a 3-man, so we took along two "A Team Groupies", namely Owaru's lovely and talented wife, Neshura the Beast Master Hunter and Absitively, a short-masculine version of Kikidas with a higher pitched voice (also known as a gnome warlock).

We stepped into Magister's Terrace and started to have fun! A bit of muddling around as we figured out that Mage Guard bubbles will break traps and that Mage Guards, though seducable, broke it really really easily.

We discovered that Magisters need to die fast and are not seducable. We discovered that Blood Knights seem to go from 5% health to 85% health with no warning (Who healed them, damnit!). I discovered I can 1-shot the non-elite imps (woot woot!).

The first boss we started without any warning (our hunter says "Oops." in ventrilo!) and downed him without any problem (well, he managed to channel his first gem all the way through.) and had a fun chuckle at the silly silly hunter.

The second boss hallway was really fun. Two warlocks make for pretty pretty AOE. The second boss, dead swiftly! Woot woot.

We get to the third boss and suddenly our delightful run turns into hell-fest. According to what WE knew, "seduce should work" on the mobs. Yeah well, they didn't. I mean, what the hell. SHEEP works but not SEDUCE? Seduce is about the most easily broken of all CC. A small, almost unnoticed, animation alerts people to the seduction. It lasts only 12-15 seconds if not resisted or broken early. It depends on the relatively small mana pool of the succubus, who also isn't exactly robust in the health department either. And they're IMMUNE?

So, whomever wrote that all CC works on the humanoids by the priestess needs to be shot. For our group makeup, we had a cruddy cruddy grouping. We had the naga warlord, the blood elf warlock, the blood elf fury warrior and the satyr hunter. The only CC we could do was banishing the hunter and having OUR hunter chain trap someone and possibly fearing one (though that did backfire on us a little bit, as one of our wipes was due to a feared Sliver running into friends.)

We tried multiple multiple multiple frustrating times. The warlord, though we tried to trap him, would get off an intimidating shout and there goes everyone! The warrior, though no one did anything to him at all, invariably came and pummeled me to death, while I was running in fear. (This happened twice.) The satyr did manage to stay banished. The imp was one or two shotted adequately. The priestess ran amok. We kept dying before we could get the warrior feared.

Unfortunately, our hunter had to go, it was getting late for her. So we called in a good guild friend, a mage named Gaaron. And lo and behold, they can be SHEEPED (I hate you, Blizzard). After Gaaron joined, we one-shotted the group. Satyr stayed banished, warlord stayed sheeped and warrior stayed feared. Priestess died. Warlock died. Warrior died. Warlord died. Satyr died. We lived!

As an aside, the boss fight is resettable if you run far enough. :) We learned this.

Then a brief jaunt to a big ass pull that we handled decently once we figured out how to pull 'em. (Our pally's consecrate was right where we were trying to seduce) With one wipe on them, we downed them the second time.

Then to Kael'thas. Ah, Kael'thas. This was a very fun fight! We wiped once on it, in part due to me starting on Kael'thas too early, and though I didn't do more than dot him up and turn my attention to the phoenix, he still decided to eat me. The second attempt was... humerous!

So, we decide to have Absitively kite the phoenix (not DPS it, just kite it until it died), then we turned and killed the egg. Otherwise, we all kept on Kael'thas. Unfortunately, we didn't take into account that the phoenix has that little aoe thing going on, and Absitively dragged it over a few of us before we learned to move out of the way! Heehee. You should have heard Boon, "How the hell am I supposed to heal EVERYONE?!" he would shout.

Then the reverse-gravity thing. NEAT-O! Like swimming, only much faster! We keep at it, swimming around. I almost got eaten by an orb because I wasn't paying attention (and in fact, my health dropped down too low!). At 10% or so, everyone but Absitively and myself are dead. I die at 4% (like I said, health was too low to survive the periodic damage) and then Absitively, brave little Absitively... killed Kael'thas. All by his lonesome! It was a brave sight. This little gnome standing toe to toe with Kael'thas and shooting him with a shadowbolt. All of us holding our breath that we wouldn't have to fight him again! And down he goes! Woot woot! WARLOCK POWER!

All in all, a fun evening, if a little frustrating (Seduce should work, damnit!) at times.