3 Man Heroic Magister's Terrace

[Yano]

Alright, so I posted this in guides because I think that although the process involved is a bit of an exploit, I want to provide a guide to follow for clearing up to and possibly through the 3rd boss with no tank whatsoever.

I did this last night, so it is not only feasible, it is actually fairly reasonable for farming badges.

My group setup:
1 shadow priest
1 mage
1 warlock (myself)

My recommended setup:
1 healer/shadowpriest
1 mage
1 warlock

A dot class is the central point here, mainly because using this method you won't have many opportunities to cast. You should consider that my group was well geared, t5/t6 gear.

For the groups up to the boss, you need to have the warlock solo one of the classes, it doesn't matter much (I would suggest classes that can't heal). This takes a bit of skill, but isn't too bad, just pull the group of 4 and fear one when you get to the entrance, you'll want to keep an eye on it and throw recklessness up if it runs towards the other group of 4. The mage should be frost, for the sake of survivability. They should be able to solo one, again, not a healer, and sheep one, the healer. The other mob left over should either be a mage guard or a warlock (provided you all are fearing/soloing the melee, which is preferable). The warlock is easy, if the healer has aggro just watch the lock's cast bar and LoS him over and over using the corners where the entrance is. Once the mage or lock is finished with their solo, which should be quick, you can kill the add. If you chose a shadowpriest for your setup, simply mind control one off the pull, they will kill it, and you'll have 3 adds to handle. It can be tough but you can do it!

Repeat this for the group of 4 on the opposite side.

The group guarding the entrance to Fireheart's room might be a 5 pull, but I can't remember off the top of my head. If so, sheep the healer, MC/kite the warlock or a melee using CoEx (you'll want CoEx as a warlock) or slow (if your lock doesn't have CoEx), fear kill one, mage kill one, and use fear bombs if the other gets too close to the healer. If it's a 4-pull, it shouldn't be too bad. Still, can be done, just a bit of a challenge.

When you get to the goons that look strange, you'll see a 2 pull in front, and 2 5 pulls. The 2 pull is easy, just kill them and CC and such. The 5 pull is a bit more complicated but since you have 2 casters, you can use the corners to essentually never get hit by them. Use all your CC and kiting abilities here and with 2 casters not even able to hit you all half the time it's a fairly easy fight. Repeat for group 2.

Selin Fireheart with no tank:
Here is where I am somewhat torn between you all bringing a healer and having a shadow priest. The shadow priest is great up to this point, because that's another CC for trash, which in my opinion, is more difficult than the bosses. So...try to grab a shadow priest with healing gear. At this point, you will all run in to the room and stand in front of Fireheart. This part takes a bit of skill, but after three tries I was able to do it. Have the warlock do their highest threat spell, aka Icon of the Silver Crescent + Soulfire. It's recommended the lock be affliction for CoEx during trash and dot power on bosses. Once you have aggro, you're going to dot up firestarter and watch which way he runs, you run up the opposite set of stairs and when he comes up and gets right on you, you jump down. You'll not be able to dps down the crystals with this group on heroic, so don't bother, the only time you should need healing is during that phase if you all are doing this right. Selin is much faster than you, but you can use the pedestal he stands on to outrun him. When you jump down, he doesn't bug and ride down right behind you, he runs back the way he came down the stairs, essentially allowing you ample time to get back up top to dps and wait on him. Keep dots up while the mage does DPS. You need the mage to stay below you in threat, otherwise they will be kiting, not you. He also stops and mana drains, that's not a big deal but can be annoying, still it buys you time to run to the top again. One thing worth noting, DON'T get caught on the stairs, when you try to cut them close, you get wedged underneath. Instant death. If you find he is absolutely destroying you, I had 10k health, and the shadow priest had 9k, while the mage had 10k. I would suggest sporting gladiator gear for survivability, the aoe phases can be nasty, but the shadow priest should be healing you all this fight. Free badges, and some decent loot, and a surprisingly easy way to kill him.

Moving on:
Aoe the eels, you want the mage to pull with a low aggro spell to get as few as possible. Start seeding RIGHT away, with tab-target SoCs like mad. When they get close, have the mage frost nova and then seed more. The mage needs to watch for your first seed to go off, then they need to go crazy with aoe. Simple, we didn't die once.

Vexallus:
This boss was easier than Selin tbh. Just have the same procedure, nuke him with Icon + Soulfire and dot him up as you run back to the pedestal in the previous room where Selin stood. He's fast but you can make it if you don't stop running. When he gets behind you, jump down, he's a little buggier than Selin going up the stairs because of his size, so keep a moderate lead on him. All it takes for him to kill you is 2 hits, so make sure you have a good lead. Have the mage take the first 3 orbs, then iceblock to remove the debuff. As a warlock with siphon life ticking (or so you hope hehe) I took the last debuff and used a healthstone to stay up. He dies, very easy fight, the slow dps with only 2-3 people doing kiting damage is ideal for this boss anyways.

Sadly, the instance reset before I got any further than the 1st pack of adds after the machines. The machines can be kited with CoEx, so just kite and kill, very easy. The packs can be done as well with a banish, an MC, and sheeps + soloing, however, at this point we might want to buff that group to 4 people hehe.

Congratulations, you've just 3 manned half of Heroic Magister's! And the best deal is, like Heroic Slave Pens, once you get a group who has done it a few times, it's easier than having a tank (unless the tank is geared fairly well)!


I hope this helped, when/if I 3 man the 3rd group (joy), I will edit this to explain the strat. I'd also like to post some screenies to explain positioning, I'll see if I can't get you all a few this weekend.

[Forgiving]

I will deff have to try this but sadly im pvp mage, either way i think i could fair pretty well, 10k health w/ priest buffs

[Dupes]

I have four maned it, but have yet to try 3 manning it. Will probably do that soon :]

[Yano]

Update: Full clear with one added player to make 4 players. Kael'thas was drain tanked...I would not recommend going further than the third boss unless you have a healer and can buff yourself to 14k health. If so, all in all it was a pretty easy run.

I would recommend this run as far as ease much less difficult than with a bad tank or even mediocre one. We wiped 4 times, once to trash resisting mind control, twice to Kael'thas, and once to me getting slowed by a robot who caught me because I was careless. Total time 1 hour 50 minutes, but keep in mind we were learning as we went.

Again, this was VERY easy up until Kael'thas. After that it was somewhat more heavily reliant upon gear than I would've liked (balance of whether this is worth doing versus getting a semi-shoddy tank being the case). Up to Kael, I would say this is definitely worth farming every day, and much easier.

[Yano]

I'd love to hear some feedback on this if anyone has used it, how it worked for you, anything you did differently, etc. It would help me improve my own run of this which has become pretty profitable badge-wise.

Apologies for back-to-backing them.