WTFlux

I got a chance to wander into the PTR yesterday, and got a group for Magister’s Terrace (normal). The MT (as I will refer to it from now on) is in the northeast portion of the zone. In the PTR - if you go to the flightmaster in Ironforge, you will see that you automatically have a flight path out to the island. The first thing I noticed was the barrage of blue exclamation points. There are daily quests EVERYWHERE! This might be a gold mine for all you aspiring daily quest doers. I hit the map, joined the queue and had a group in about 2 minutes from touchdown.

The instance itself is typical blood elf in the look and feel. You are faced with a ton of those “O” corridors throughout the instance that are familiar with Blood elf construction. You can reach the first two bosses amazingly fast. The first boss, Selin Fireheart is guarded on both sides by groups of summoning blood elves, and in the front 2 undead guys who look like they are cannibalizing a poor little green orb. They keep saying things like “I’ll never stop”. It’s kind of eerie. Once cleared, (we LoS pulled the groups of summoners into the hallway and aoe/focus fired them down. And just nuked the 2 undead guys) the boss is elevated on a platform in front of you. I recommend that you go from the hallway entrance around him on either side and engage him “from behind”. The reason is, once engaged, he puts up this magic ward that prevents people in the opening of the hallway from moving into the actual chamber. Make sure you are completely in the room before you engage.

I wasn’t able to tell what kind of melee damage he did, but he does periodically do a decent amount of AoE/drain life debuff damage- I’m still trying to figure out what it was called, and what it actually does - but I was taking about 1-2k damage every other second for about 10 seconds it seemed. If you can heal yourself through this as a priest, pally, druid- I think you would be fine. Oddly enough, you can cast spells through the ward, and we ended up killing him with 3 people on the wrong side of it. He dropped a healing cloak - Cloak of Swift Mending.

You clear a few hallways - and then all the sudden you face a large corridor with about 1 million of the little Brightscale Wyrms. Paladins and mages are great here, cutting the large groups down extremely quickly. The next boss is Vexallus. Apparently he is very similar to The Curator in Kharazan. He spawns something that zaps certain people with electricity bolts. For a brief second I was able to target the spawned thing, and I thought I would be able to burn it down, but right after it zapped someone it disappeared and we could not target it. There was no perceivable warning to when they hit. He targeted our mage with these (see the video) what seemed like every time. It visually enlarged the mage, and seemed like he was taking a large amount of damage even after the lighting bolts hit. Somewhere around 15% he “Overloads” and starts shooting the electric bolts all over the place. We kinda just stood there and took it, and actually this is what killed me in the fight. He pulses the bursts at about 1.5k and it seems like the range for the bursts is very long - over 30 yards. I would love to try to spread out somehow, and see if that range is finite or not the next time. He dropped a dps cloak - Cloak of the Coming Night. The video:

Then things get a bit tougher. You wind back down around, beat up some of the big sentinels, and get to a courtyard where there are 6 mobs per pull. I guess I should back up and explain some of the trash mobs you’ll encounter. Sunblade Blood Knights will hit like a 70 elite should, but this guy also heals - so he’s often a priority to kill first. The Sunblade Mage Guards drop this sphere thing that looks exactly like the bubble shield from Halo 3. It isn’t. It reduces spell damage and healing done by the target (whoever is in it) by 75%. I don’t think that Rogues or Warriors will have any problems if they are targeted - I’m pretty sure it only applies to healing THEY do - not healing done to them. The Sunblade Magisters get a spell haste bonus every cast, so kill them quickly. Sunblade Physicians heal, so you need to CC or kill them quick. The Sisters of Torment do a seduce type curse that takes you out of the fight, so stunlock, or crowd control them as well. FYI - the Sunblade guy that I tried to mind control - was IMMUNE. Yes that resulted in a wipe.

There were 3 in our group that weren’t focused and always leaving for something, so the run we had was plagued with AFK’s and looong pauses between pulls. We did not get to the third boss.

Overall, I liked the instance. You can get the first two bosses REALLY quickly. If you have a complete group with good CC and everyone is on the ball, this seemed like it could be an extremely fast instance. Chalk another one up for the casual players.

Link Dump:
http://www.wegame.com/user/wrathofgod/
http://www.wowwiki.com