Magister's Terrace - 2 and a half runs

Now I have run through the normal version of Magister's Terrace 2,5 times. Once as a bear tank and 1,5 times as a holy priest healer (a half time when our tank dc'd just before the 3d boss and we couldn't find a replacement, be it tank, healer or dps).

Some reflections on the runs:

Party
I have played with most of the people I ran with many times before and all of us were Kara-or-better geared, so we were sort-of confident that we would pull it off with ease. Well, we downed all the bosses along the way but there were some unneccessary deaths and wipes that we will hopefully learn to avoid in coming runs :-)

The group set-ups varied a little:

Run 1
Warrior tank
Holy priest healer (me)
Demo warlock
Mage
Hunter

Run 2
Bear tank (me)
Resto shaman healer
Mage
Shadow priest
Enhancement shaman

Run 3
Fury warrior tank
Holy priest healer (me)
Shadow priest
Hunter
Enhancement shaman

As you can see we had at least 2 cc's with us at all times, which we utilised as best as we could. Sheep, banish, frost trap, mind control, seduce and enslave, all of it used as often as we could.

Dungeon
The dungeon itself is pretty nice, all made up in the style of Silvermoon with the light airy beautifully foliaged gardens and tastefully (?) decorated halls and hallways.

Most of the pulls along the way are group pulls, 4-6 elite mobs, many of them casters, and sometimes an imp along just to spice things up. There are multiple groups in every location, placed pretty near each other, and some 1-2 mob patrols between them. This makes it all too easy to accidentally pull a second group or patrol while you are fighting the first one, so pull back a bit to keep it safe. I will say this again: Pull back so you only have to fight one group at a time.

In all 2,5 runs we managed to pull multiple groups on several occassions. Sometimes we managed to kill all mobs in both groups with none or just a few deaths on our side (and with ensuing joyful shouts of our imbaness!), but other times (most of the times) we were caught between the rock and the hard place and smashed to little dead pools of red goo (at least those of us not lucky enough to be able to run out).

Since many of the mobs are casters the tank needs to pull and then go hide around a corner to make the casters come running to her. (Do I make this sound easy? It's not! Trust me on this!)

And if you see a lone non-elite imp on some path in the garden or hallways, DON'T kill it! Learned the hard way that the imp is linked to a 4-mob group that will come running from far away if you kill the little twitchy bugger.

Healing
It is rather easy most of the times to find good spots to heal from, where you have LoS to everyone and still be a bit away from the fray.

Some notable abilities of the mobs (from a healing priest's perspective) are:

Mage Guards drop some sort of magic field (looks almost like an arcane explosion frozen in time) that lowers spell damage and healing considerably - stay out of it! These nasty buggers also throw their glaives around, creating a hard-hitting AOE stun effect. The stun lasts for a few seconds only but it feels like a long time! Be ready with Renew and Circle of Healing to get all back to health . If you have a shaman healer, stay bunched up so the Chain Heal may come to full use.

The Physicians use a nasty poison on their weapons (notable for me since I can't remove poisons).

Tanking
Tanking in here is a mess. Period.

(I haven't tanked in months and I said from the start I was a bit rusty, but my friends seemed to have confidence in me and treated me like I had done nothing but tank for ages... ie sheep-pull, dish out a shitload of dps and completely ignore my properly marked kill-order, making me run around like a desperate sheep dog to keep the nasty blood elves hitting on me and not my over-dpsing, triggerhappy friends ;P. I am sure they do this on purpose! We wiped on occasion, but we did manage to survive most of the times, not in any way thanks to my tanking skills but rather luck and the skills of my friends.)

The casters make the pulls rather difficult, they seem to find a LoS to you where they shouldn't, so they are not bunched up sweetly and easily for you to take down. Oh noes, they are spread around and somewhere in between them is a sheep that you don't want to break.

The stun of the Glaive throw affects tanks as well, so suddenly you find that the melee mobs that you do have bunched up around you are going for some of your clothies instead and you just stand still looking confused, unable to move for those seconds-that-last-forever!

And then suddenly one of the cc breaks and you have another mad mob running for another of your friends and not you...

It was sweaty, what more can I say... (or maybe I just was a bit rusty in my tanking reflexes...)

Bosses
The first boss, Selin Fireheart, is on a platform with some crystals on it. Make sure everyone is in the room before you engage him, because the sudden appearance of a crystal door will bar everyone outside from coming in.

Its a simple tank and spank fight, he draws energy from the crystals at intervals and then you have to destroy the crystals asap.

The second boss, Vexallus, is like the Curator fight. He spawns adds that needs to be taken down asap, otherwise its a pretty simple fight-

Third boss, Priestess Delrissa, has 4 random thugs accompanying her. The Priestess heals her friends a lot and needs to be taken down fast.

The shaman thug, Apoko, purges the beneficial spells that your party have, so be aware and reapply if you really need them.

The warlock thug, Ellrys Duskshallow, and the naga warrior, Warlord Salaris, fears and if you haven't cleared the room you will probably draw another pack if this happens. On my second run here, when I tanked, we had 2 shamans who both put down Tremor Totems to remove the fears, but if you don't have that its advisable to clear all first, since the fight is pretty chaotic and you may have to run around a little.

All the mini-bosses are immune to taunt.

The fourth boss, Kael'thas Sunstrider himself, summons a phoenix that does AoE damage and needs to be kited away from the party. When the phoenix dies the egg that he lays must be destroyed or a new phoenix will be born.

He then makes you all come afloat in the air, tethered to him by some umbilical cord-lookalike, and sends purple orbs of arcane damage flying around you. Stay away from the orbs but if it's clear around the boss swim down and hurt him. Be careful, if you touch the ground you bounce right back up and might hit and orb. Otherwise ranged dps is very good here.

After a while he tires of keeping you all afloat and needs to rest a little, but then its up in the air again. This continues till he is dead.

And this is the only boss that drops an epic item in normal mode! On my first run he dropped Gloves of Arcane Acuity for our warlock and on the second Hauberk of the War Bringer for our enhancement shaman. Gratz, guys!