Magister's Grand Terrace

I pugged a group with one of my guildies (Azshanas) over the weekend for MGT. We got in a really good group with a paladin tank and druid healer. This is the best combination of tank/healer for this instance as I soon found out. The reason is, some of the pulls are 5man pulls with maybe two cc. That leaves three more elites to tank. That can be very intense at some points.

The first boss is tank and spank basically with a nasty AOE that he does a couple of times after charging from one of the crystals. If you have enough dps you don't have to worry about the crystals as you can down him before he wipes the group, which is exactly what we did. The second boss is the third hardest fight in the instance. He's something like a giant elemental and he spawns energy sparks that have to be killed. If they get to a member of the group that member is going to be hit very hard. If you kill them, they put a debuff on you that ticks for 300 damage and increases your damage output by 50%. Being the only mage in the group I killed the first two that spawned, iceblocked off the debuff and killed the next two as well to get the debuff back. You have to have the debuff for when he gets to 20%. At 20% he spams a chain lightning like spell that hits everyone in the group and must be killed asap or he will wipe the raid. So having that extra 100% damage output is necessary to be successful. Me being the big bad dpser that I am, we got him down first try, and I died right at the end...darn. The boss was down and everyone else was still alive so it was cool.

All of the pulls leading up to the next boss encounter are 4 and 5 mob pulls with at least one caster type and one paladin type. This can be fun as the order of kill must be laid out correctly unless you like your healer dying. There's a witch in a couple of the groups that goes straight for the healer, so she must be sheeped or cc'd. The next boss fight is a fight against five elites with no aggro table. It's basically a pvp type fight against 1 of each of the classes of character. You just have to stay alive and down them as quick as you can. I used every cooldown/trinket I had and only one part member died. The best strategy is to keep moving and stay out of melee range of any of the melee class elites. Be sure to clear the mobs in the two libraries on the sides of the encounter area. Up next is the second hardest pull in the instance. It's a six mob pull that has one of each type of mob in the instance and is very intense.

So we clear up to Kael'thas Sunstriders sanctum, and this is where the six mob pull is. There's a consortium looking mob in the pull that does an aoe that can kill the entire group. It's best to try and kill him first. If you have a priest with you, you can mc the witch and have that group kill her, then cc the consortium guy and the healer, then go after the paladin guy first. It sounds easy, but there's nothing easy about this pull. I can see why they call this the hardest regular 5 man in the game. It takes a good plan and good players to get to Kael'thas. We finally cleared the last pull, btw if you wipe on the pull they respawn immediately so you don't get credit for any of the kills, it's all or nothing.

There stands Kael'thas Sunstrider...the baddest mage in the game. This is a very tricky fight if you've never done it before. The first phase is dps maddness. Ranged dps is essential here. During this phase he spawned fire phoenixes that must be killed by ranged dps. We did it with a hunter+me (firemage). They are immune to fire, so I had to use up alot of mana downing the big birds and the eggs they leave behind. After phase one is done he casts an anti-gravity spell that puts you all up in the air, and three purple orbs float around and follow players doing a huge amount of damage if they get close to you. So you have to continue to dps the hell out of him, and avoid the purple orbs. I had a hard time in this phase as it seems like I was always letting the orbs get too close to me trying to cast fireballs and keep my dps up. We wiped 3 times on him, and time was against us as one of our members had to leave to do guild raids. The last attempt we were doing really well and killing him quickly, then the anti-gravity came and those big stupid orbs start floating around....I was doing a good job avoiding them, then the anti-gravity goes away and we're back on the ground getting back into position, dps is steady, then he casts the anti-gravity thing again and shoots us all back up in the air. Well, I'm still casting and doing everything I can...next thing I know an orb is directly to my left and I have no where to go....dead, next our hunter drops from the same orb, it's down to three and Kael'thas is at 4%. They do the dps job of a lifetime and big props must be given to my lovely guildie Azshanas. Without her going all out the way she did that 4% would have been enough to wipe us. She kicked the crap out of him for that last bit of life.....Kael'tha down, dungeon run success! He dropped the one thing that I was there for...the staff. It turns out Azshanas was there for the same thing. We rolled, she won. Now I have to go back again....but I don't mind too much, I did complete the quest for the epic gem and now have a +12 spell damage gem to put into my fist piece of epic gear....Yay me!!! If you're going to try this instance, try everything you can to get a Tankadin to go along, they are essential to making a few of the fights alot easier!