The View From Down Here

Tempest Keep was just a Setback

The Magisters’ Terrace is just one part of huge amounts of new content that’s arrived with the patch – a new 5-man dungeon, to complement the last 25-man raid, Sunwell. And it’s been interesting, I’ll give it that. I’ll make no bones about it, my first run through the instance was something of a wipe-fest. It’s tuned to be harder than any other instance before it, and the group makeup didn’t help much, having only one CC.

It’s a nice instance, though, and by the end I was the proud owner of a new-born [item]phoenix hatchling[/item], though there wasn’t much else of value that dropped for me. It was, as I said, a learning experience, and knowing how the instance worked was a good warm up for Heroic mode, which I attempted yesterday.

I’d be lying if I said I’d seen any huge difference in anything in the instance beyond the skull on the instance portal. The group (admittedly well balanced, consisting of protection warrior, mage, warlock, balance druid and resto shaman) pretty much got through everything without too much in the way of problems. Some nice gear dropped, including [item]commendation of kael’thas[/item] and [item]Shoulderplates of Everlasting Pain[/item] (though I’m still less than convinced about the latter -when gemmed for hit will the haste make up for the shortfall?)

And then we hit Kael’Thas. His fight is very much a copy of the Tempest Keep one, but without advisors or weapons. And there’s the rub. His pyroblast now hits for 48,000 damage. I don’t quite have half that when fully buffed in a 25-man raid, let alone a 5-man group. The shield has 10,000 health now, but there’s only 4 seconds to knock it out and interrupt him. Ouch. We must have wiped about 10 times on him, trying different strategies (kiting the phoenix and getting Kael’Thas to 50% before he can cast pyroblast can almost work, if you have enough dps). In the end I just used shield wall to reduce the damage of the pyroblast to (almost) manageable levels, which helped there, along with a battle res and a soulstone helping keeping others alive long enough. It’s a tough fight, and I can’t see how, for example, a feral druid tank can be expected to survive it.

Anyway, as for the lore, I don’t see why people are concerned. We’ve known for months that Kael’Thas survives the battle against him in Tempest Keep – witness the scene which played out in Shattrath City after his orb was handed in – so why is it so surprising to see him resurrected as some sort of Felblood Elf? It’s a perfectly natural progression. And of players eventually see the raid fight after doing the 5-man, so what? If anything they’ll be better prepared for what will happen.