Magister's Terrace: My Thoughts.

Before I stepped foot inside, the first thing I did was look at the loot table in AtlasLoot. In normal mode, my Shaman could use a LOT from this place. On heroic, the gloves from the first boss are actually better than my T4 and the trinket from the 3rd boss is amazing for an Affliction spec.

My wife had ran it twice and had gotten up to Kael on heroic before I even got a group for it. According to her, a lot of CC was needed and heroic mode was "no bitch." Exciting!

Also worth noting is that at the time of this post I still haven't ran it on heroic so the details of that will come in a future post (hopefully tomorrow).

My first group consisted of me (Affliction Warlock), a Survival Hunter, an Elemental Shaman, a Holy Pally and a Druid tank. After 2 pulls I could tell that she wasn't lying about the CC issue and our Druid tank called it quits. We replaced him with ANOTHER Druid tank but didn't get any further than getting the 2nd boss down before the Shammy called it.

I took a bit of a break but eventually went back in with my wife (Arcane Mage), another Hunter, another Druid tank and the same Pally healer from before. We had MUCH better luck this time due to communication not being an issue. The previous Druid tank was not from our guild and was not using vent with us. This tank was our guilds main Druid raiding tank as well, so that helps lol.

We downed Selin Fireheart in one shot. He reminded me a LOT of the last boss in SV when he siphons energy from the crystals around the room. Once he drains the energy or the crystal is destroyed he does AOE damage until he goes OOM and then goes back to tank-n-spank.

Vexallus gave us a bit of trouble and we wiped twice before getting him down. He's similar to Curator where he spawns orbs that need to be taken out between dps phases. The catch to this is that whoever gets the killing blow on the orb gets a debuff that increases the amount of damage they take by 50% and adds a DoT effect to you.

If they get 4 stacks it's pretty much game over so you have to alternate kills through your dps and heal through it. This makes it hard for Pally & Druid healers since they have no form of party heals. He doesn't have a lot of health and all of the damage is Arcane so your tank can actually tank in DPS gear. It's a DPS race to down the boss before your dps takes a dirt nap.

We one shotted Priestess Delrissa who is like a mini version of Moroes, Maulgar & Karathress. The boss isn't lootable until ALL of her adds are killed but thankfully they can all be CC'ed. We sheeped the rogue, trapped the shaman type and banished the engineer to take out the main boss first and then picked off the adds one at a time. LOS plays a huge issue since you have to fight around a few pillars but wasn't really that though of a fight.

Finally we pulled up to Kael'thas Sunstrider. WTF happened to this guy? This fight, in my opinion, is the funnest boss fight i've ever done. It starts off as a tank-n-spank fight where he spawns an AOE effect every so often on the ground that everyone has to avoid. He also summons a Phoenix that needs to be nuked ASAP. Wherever the Phoenix is there is an AOE consecrate-like effect so all DPS needs to DPS on the move. Once the Phoenix dies, it spawns an egg that needs to be destroyed on a timer or another Phoenix spawns. At 50% Kael will toss everyone in to the air and deal 400 damage every few seconds while you swim around in mid air (awesome!) dodging water globes. If you hit the globe or the floor it's instant game over. Once his gravity trick is over, he kneels to the ground to take a breather and you can unload on him before he sends you back in to the air. From 50% to death, the tanks job is just to pump out as much DPS as possible since he can't be tanked while you float around.

Overall, the instance looks AMAZING and the tactics on the pulls and the amount of CC needed makes the encounter very on-edge and interesting. I liked all of the boss encounters and can't wait to give it a shot on heroic on both my Shaman and Warlock. GG Blizz.