I never did Magisters’ Terrace at level 70. I’m not really sure why, other than I was holding out for a while to see if I could go with some of my guildies (we all thought doing a new instance for the first time together sounded awesome), but it never materialized, and then by the time I thought about going ahead and PuG’ing it I would’ve felt silly saying “So by the way, I know WotLK is coming out in a month or two but I haven’t done this instance yet…”
So I never did it.
There is one thing Kael’thas drops though that I really want: a minipet. So after sitting around thinking “Man, I should really find a group to go help me grind MgT with” for weeks, I decided “If you want something done, you have to do it yourself.”
Well, with your pet. But you know.
I had a couple things going against me. Lack of a Tenacity pet was a biggie (and my stable is full of pets that I… really don’t want to abandon), as was lack of a Super-Crazy-Pet-Tanking spec. But hey, you can always try, right?
I picked Eltanin, my Windserpent– a cunning pet– to be my companion on this experiment. I figured he would be a better choice than any of my Ferocities. Once out of the stable, I spec’d him into everything like Great Stamina and Cornered, and then headed off!
First boss was cake, even using my Beast Master glass cannon raid spec. He’s basically Warlord Kalithresh Redux if you don’t know how the fight goes (though it occurs to me that most of you who don’t know how the fight goes probably haven’t done Warlord Kalithresh either…)
Second boss was Curator Redux, aaaaand I soon realized I couldn’t do it with aforementioned Beast Master glass cannon raid spec. The solution? Hearthed out to Stormwind, spec’d into Super-Crazy-Pet-Tanking spec and bought a Glyph of Mending, and came back and tried again. He still put up a pretty big challenge and there was a point where I had to Distracting Shot pull + kite the guy for a while, to give Eltanin some extra Mend Pet time, but it all worked out in the end.
The next guy… isn’t a boss. But he’s hot, so I’m posting his picture anyway.
Third boss… oh gosh, how do I describe this. Close your eyes and imagine five guys plus a couple of pets and demons, all lined up in a row. And one of them heals, a lot. It’s like the twisted lovechild of Illidari Council and Moroes. Now imagine you’re by yourself. /gulp
The first attempt was a spectacular wipe, and then a little thought occured to me: hey, this is just like PvP. I should forget about doing the pet-tanking thing, and just burst-damage everyone to death. Plus, Aimed Shot would sure come in handy against that healer…
And so I did something nuts. I switched over to my Marksmanship dual-spec, and respec’d Eltanin to maximize my own survivability with things like Roar of Sacrifice. I basically pretended like I was spec’ing him for Alterac Valley or something.
Then I put a Frost Trap down, waited for the cooldown, and pulled…
…
OHYEAH! Combination of Frost Trap kiting, Feign Deaths and Readiness, that. /phew
By that point, I was feeling confident. I was on a roll, I’d just killed this boss fight that had looked near impossible on the surface, and there was only one boss left: Kael’thas himself.
But then there was something I wasn’t banking on.
These guys. They are all standing right in front of Kael’thas and if you don’t kill them all in one sitting, they all respawn.
Did I mention that they do this thing where they stun you and put stupidly painful DoTs on you? And do this explosion thing? It’s like being ambushed by a rogue, warlock, and mage. At the same time. All in some little room where getting range is almost impossible. Yeeeeah. I apologize in advance for the nightmares you’ll have about it tonight.
Needless to say I pulled out all the stops on this battle. I tried everything. I tried Beast Mastery, I tried Marksmanship, I tried kiting them to a more open area, heck, I even tried Frost Trap -> Volley -> Feign Death -> Frost Trap -> Volley. No dice.
…then, after about nine or ten wipes and a repair break, I found out you can sneak past them and get to Kael’thas! For a brief moment I had a glimmer of hope restored to my eye!
Got Kael’thas down to about 50% and then the Fantastic Five (or Six, or however many there were in that group) decided it would be really funny to aggro and go Jackson Pollock on my butt. I Feigned to reset the fight and tried again, but same deal.
So, for the time being, I will have to concede that Magister’s Terrace is prrrroooobably not solo’able without a Tenacity pet to Thunderstomp that last pull and keep them off of you. If you can figure out a way to do it otherwise, please tell me, because for the time being it looks like I may have to vote one of my pets off the island return one of my pets to the wilderness and obtain a Tenacity pet in order to conclude what I started.
Next time, mister… next time.
I have to say, even if you weren’t able to bump that last trash group off, this sounds like quite an accomplishment. So cheers! And special kudos for defeating the “Priestess” and her entourage. As a tank I always loathed that boss, and the last trash group as well.
Nice work soloing this! You should submit it to Big Red Rhino. I might try this once my internet’s back up, sounds like fun.
I’m not sure if this is going to help, but…
snake trap for the grp before last boss?
>_<
***Kohaku***
That last pull was THE noob killer boss. If a pug was doomed, it was because of that pull.
Tehehe. You + Kalecgos = very cute.
Aaaah the “Boss-Trash”. Many a MGT group we disbanded right there before Kael. If you didn’t have enough CC (or crazy overgeared, or amazingly skilled people) this was nothing short of a gigantic pain.
I haven’t, ever (and that includes raids), seen a trash pull coming even close to the difficulty of those bastards 🙂
My God, congratulations. I managed to run this instance, on non-heroic, with 2 other people not so long ago and even then it was damnably tough, but then we were a bunch of noobs =P
Also what’s with the hot blue-haired Ambassador guy? Is he Ambassador to anime or what?
Gratz on the 5v5; that one is tough. Pretty well done overall with not having a tank pet 🙂
Also – you don’t need to spec BM-tank to do this; BM-DPS should be fine as long as you grab a tenacity pet. I’ve soloed the first 2 bosses on heroic with a turtle; normal mode would be a lot easier 🙂
Some days I wish Feral Druids counted as pets.
I feel your pain – a feral druid here… When I tried to pug it in TBC, then groups couldn’t even get to the first boss. So today I decided to do it just for giggles, some SSO rep and achievement. I’ve got a mix of heroic/naxx epics and heroic blues, so everything was pretty doable just with ordinary mangle/maul spam (glyph of maul helps a lot) until Kael’thas. The phoenix and his spamming of fireballs (bash is on a pretty long cooldown compared to how much Kael spams it) is just insane. So I just concluded, that due to fight mechanics he is pretty much unsoloable… Maybe a good protection paladin could do it?
I can’t even handle the arena boss with a full group. I can’t imagine soloing that thing. Hats off to you for pulling that off, and for getting all the way to Kael’thas! /salute
Also, that place truly sucked at 70, especially on heroic. Trapping was a nightmare. It’s one of the few things about TBC that I was not sad to leave behind. >_>
I know a DPS DK that solo’d the thing on heroic for a week straight for his pet. @_@ Still haven’t dusted off my BM to give it a hand myself. I imagine I might wind up duoing it, though, for simplicity.
The fact you were able to make it to Kael solo is really an accomplishment. It sucks you weren’t able to deliver the final blow and get yourself a neat little phoenix, but you’ll get it here sooner or later. Now if I could only convince some guildies to farm Ahune so I can get that scorchling pet…sigh.
@ Kohaku – Yep, definitely tried Snake Trap. Didn’t help sadly =(
@ Tamarind – I’m the Ambassador! =P He’s Kalecgos, a dragon, and he’s hot. *nods*
I gave it a bit of thought and this is how I would approach that last 5-pull:
Spec SV, which gives you an extra CC and chain trapping. Wyvern sting and trap 2 of the hardest hitting melees. Face off against the caster at range while your pet builds aggro on the other 2 mobs. If all goes well, you can kill all 3 by the time Wyvern Sting wears off, and it’s smooth sailing from there.
I have a buddy that i regularly run this with for both the mount and pet. Over the last few months, we’ve had two mounts, two pets, and the orb dropped only once. I was lucky enough to win both a mount and pet, and of all my 50+ pets it is by far my favorite. My suggestion is to get a buddy or two to run it with you every day. We would normally have 3 – 5 people in our group. But hands-down: the fact you made it that far solo as a hunter is downright amazing. I certainly do not have that kind of skill on either my hunter or my mage!!! So that alone is an accomplishment in itself! Major props to you!
Agreed, this is a pretty amazing piece of work, given that you dont have a tenacity pet. Esp that 5vs1 fight, that was insane at 70. In heroic, i only did that fight once ever. Was just insanely tough.
Also you *can* do CC in the 3rd boss. You need to just spam steady shot until the mob comes to you. They have a aggro table, but it resets every 5 seconds (or maybe sooner). That is why the party’s healer is usually killed very quickly.
That is pretty impressive!
MgT sucked so very, very much at 70. I did it a fair number of times, but I always hated the place. Which is probably why it’s so nice to roll in there with the husband now and stomp face. >_> (Our combo works pretty nicely for duoing instances. Prot warrior means I can stay SV and just go to town)
The furthest I got when attempting a solo run of MgT was that room before Priestess. The big group pulls were annoying me too much so I made my husband come help me finish. ~_~
I had it quite a bit easier as a feral druid soloing this on normal for that Phoenix Hatchling recently. Kael’thas is a bit tricky with the timing. If he hit that 50% mark while the phoenix was still out, I was probably going to die. That would be easier to deal with when you have ranged DPS that isn’t laughable. I did smash the egg with my puny feral Moonfire a couple times, though.
Vexallus made me laugh like a madman when he died so easily. He was such a pain to PuG on heroic. If you had too much DPS, the sparks came too fast and either AoEd everyone to death or just stacked the DoT too high on whoever was killing them. It was like pulling teeth getting DPS to slow down. But now, at 80, that DoT is pretty ineffective. By the end of the fight, I had it stacked up to 5 for a 250% damage bonus. Oh, and it increases your size, so I was half as tall as he was. 8k tank DPS, RAWR!
Oh, and one more tip for melee types soloing Kael’thas: During the Gravity Lapse, you can still get some DPS time in if the orbs are far away by swimming over to him at just above floor level (so you don’t get tossed back up) and chewing on his head.
That’s one place I’m personally afraid of. I’d probably be willing to duo it with someone, but for some reason, I always have all these really close calls on my Druid when trying to do bosses. I think it’s because I need more stamina. XDDD;;
As for Kalecgos though, he’s from the one WoW manga, The Sunwell Trilogy. About three or four of the main characters appear in-game, and a few were pulled FROM the game to be in it. It’s a really good storyline though, and you get to see Kalecgos all the way through! 😀 <333
Bleh..okay I had a huge thing typed up before i forgot to fill in allt he reply fields. Anyway I dont know if this would help but this is how i managed it as a marks/dualed surv hunter. No tank pet what so ever(For some reason my woof lives a hella lot longer then my bear)
What I found worked after many..many attempts of this retarded pull was to keep my pet stayed behind a corner on submissive. Lay a trap down by the door, wait for the cooldown to have like, a second let, md him, pull run like hell lay another trap making two of them trapped and allow my pet to at least get as many as he could. by this time im not really worrying about mend petting him but i am mding as much as he stays alive. Kill the sucubus first or the blood knight depending who’s up.(and who didn’t get loltrapped).
At the same time, disengage/deterence as much as its up. By this time your pets a dead carcass on the floor and your going to either frost trap or freezing trap again while you run kite. It takes some trial and error but this was the only way for me to manage it was keeping my pet around a corner to double trap. usually i can burn one down while they’re running to him. If not more.
Thanks for the inspiration, Pike. I had never been to Magister’s Terrace, nor Black Morass, and they were the last Outland dungeons I had left to do (raids are another story).
In a fit of boredom, after having visited the Dancing Troll Village in Darkshore, I decided to at least try to clear an old quest in my log, and get the key to Karazhan. I ended up clearing Black Morass on the first try without wiping.
With that success under my belt, I recalled your post about soloing Magister’s Terrace, in a zone that I had completely skipped while leveling, too. I wiped a few times while learning the boss gimmicks, but took Kael’s head in the end.
Oddly, I didn’t have much trouble with the pack before Kael, but I did bring a turtle tank, a BM “solo” spec, and stamina gear. You might be right about needing a tenacity pet, but the thing that might have (unintentionally) saved me was having my PvP trinket equipped. I had it equipped for the 190 AP, but it was really useful during BM and MgT to recover from stuns and fears.
Good luck grinding the minipet!