(WoW) A Trial
Managed to sample the new Trial of the Champion last night on normal and heroic. Oof. Learning fights and PUG-ing again. Whee. Well, Kyn was there too, and a rogue in the group at least had information about the fights.
Round One
First, you mount up on jousting horses and talk to the fellow in the center. Three horde (opposing faction) champions ride out, each with three one-shield minions. The minions will attack in waves and have to be jousted down, not unlike the dailies. Then the three champions take their turn at you. More jousting.
If you're unhorsed, you're temporarily stunned, but may be able to get to a horse and mount back up. You may get trampled as you try, though, with knockdown/damage/stun. Similarly, the champaions will do the same, and you have to trample them while fighting the others to keep them from getting new mounts (which seemed to put them around half original health, though I could be wrong).
Once they're all unhorsed, the tank needs to dismount, switch weapons from the lance, and get control of them. I found this transition to be the hardest part of the whole instance. Unless a group manages to knock them all down in the same area, they're going to go after people left and right. Controlling them is... a pain. We wiped here and re-entered the instance to find them on foot waiting to be aggroed, so it might be easiest (if not best or intended) to knock them all down and just expect to wipe.
The champions on foot have different abilities depending on class. We saw lots of fire from the mage and some polymorphs, and I think she was the one that knocked me around. The warrior whirlwings for a bunch, though didn't seem as bad as the commander in heroic Nexus. The rogue poisons like crazy and even makes poison clouds. The priest heals and makes little light fountains that shoot at you. The tank pretty much gets to hold all three while DPS burns them down.
Round Two
So far, I've not seen the Confessor who summons up old "memories" to fight, just the paladin.
Three groups of three lesser mobs to pull individually and fight. Then he comes in with no pause after the last one. He does some sort of flare move with a raid warning - if you don't turn away, you get... dazed or somesuch - a temporary debuff. He also hits someone (the tank, it seemed) with his hammer of wrath stun. As I understand, if you can free yourself in time, there's a hammer in your inventory you can throw back for big damage. I wasn't looking for it all the time, but I didn't see it when I did, so I dunno. Still, the fight's fairly direct.
Edit: So the stun and thrown hammer seem to be different effects from what I read. So... gets stunned, break free, watch for hammer, throw it back - or something. I'll need to examine the timing of this better in the future.
Round Three
The Black Knight returns. In phase one, he calls up a ghoul a ways off, so the tank will probably want to taunt or something to grab it. If left around too long, he's blow the ghoul up for big damage, so the strategy seems to be burn down the ghoul first.
In phase two, with almost no pause, he'll get up and summon up an army of dead, not unlike the death knight ability. Stack on the tank, if possible, and AOE them down - they can hit, but can't take much. He also desecrates. In normal, this seems ignorable. In heroic, it's a lot less so, which makes the stack-and-AOE tactic a bit more complicated since you don't want to stand in the stuff.
In phase three, he didn't seem to have any major tricks. He did appear to shoot ranged shadow bolts at people (probably most responsible for gibbing anyone notably weakened by the desecration a few seconds earlier), but otherwise is your typical tank-and-spank.
Rewards
For the first couple rounds, there's a chest. The knight was lootable himself, I believe. On normal, we saw item level 200 epics - that's about what you get from end bosses on most heroic dungeons. On heroic, we got an Emblem of Conquest for each, and what I believe were item level 219 epics. Sadly, we saw lots of leather and cloth. Kyn got an upgrade, I believe. There's a new tanking sword in there, and possibly some other things I'd want.
Edit: Doing further reading, and it was late last night. It looks like the first 'boss' gives one item. The second and third each give two. So 5 epics total. I'm also seeing some reports that the ilevel 219 seen in the tooltips might be wrong, and the heroic drops might actually be ilevel 213 equivilent instead.
In raw item level/budget, this still makes the normal drops as good as anything coming out of any other 5-man heroic (where you normally get only one epic drop), and the heroic drops equal to Emblem of Valor/most 10-man pre-Ulduar drops.
Round One
First, you mount up on jousting horses and talk to the fellow in the center. Three horde (opposing faction) champions ride out, each with three one-shield minions. The minions will attack in waves and have to be jousted down, not unlike the dailies. Then the three champions take their turn at you. More jousting.
If you're unhorsed, you're temporarily stunned, but may be able to get to a horse and mount back up. You may get trampled as you try, though, with knockdown/damage/stun. Similarly, the champaions will do the same, and you have to trample them while fighting the others to keep them from getting new mounts (which seemed to put them around half original health, though I could be wrong).
Once they're all unhorsed, the tank needs to dismount, switch weapons from the lance, and get control of them. I found this transition to be the hardest part of the whole instance. Unless a group manages to knock them all down in the same area, they're going to go after people left and right. Controlling them is... a pain. We wiped here and re-entered the instance to find them on foot waiting to be aggroed, so it might be easiest (if not best or intended) to knock them all down and just expect to wipe.
The champions on foot have different abilities depending on class. We saw lots of fire from the mage and some polymorphs, and I think she was the one that knocked me around. The warrior whirlwings for a bunch, though didn't seem as bad as the commander in heroic Nexus. The rogue poisons like crazy and even makes poison clouds. The priest heals and makes little light fountains that shoot at you. The tank pretty much gets to hold all three while DPS burns them down.
Round Two
So far, I've not seen the Confessor who summons up old "memories" to fight, just the paladin.
Three groups of three lesser mobs to pull individually and fight. Then he comes in with no pause after the last one. He does some sort of flare move with a raid warning - if you don't turn away, you get... dazed or somesuch - a temporary debuff. He also hits someone (the tank, it seemed) with his hammer of wrath stun. As I understand, if you can free yourself in time, there's a hammer in your inventory you can throw back for big damage. I wasn't looking for it all the time, but I didn't see it when I did, so I dunno. Still, the fight's fairly direct.
Edit: So the stun and thrown hammer seem to be different effects from what I read. So... gets stunned, break free, watch for hammer, throw it back - or something. I'll need to examine the timing of this better in the future.
Round Three
The Black Knight returns. In phase one, he calls up a ghoul a ways off, so the tank will probably want to taunt or something to grab it. If left around too long, he's blow the ghoul up for big damage, so the strategy seems to be burn down the ghoul first.
In phase two, with almost no pause, he'll get up and summon up an army of dead, not unlike the death knight ability. Stack on the tank, if possible, and AOE them down - they can hit, but can't take much. He also desecrates. In normal, this seems ignorable. In heroic, it's a lot less so, which makes the stack-and-AOE tactic a bit more complicated since you don't want to stand in the stuff.
In phase three, he didn't seem to have any major tricks. He did appear to shoot ranged shadow bolts at people (probably most responsible for gibbing anyone notably weakened by the desecration a few seconds earlier), but otherwise is your typical tank-and-spank.
Rewards
For the first couple rounds, there's a chest. The knight was lootable himself, I believe. On normal, we saw item level 200 epics - that's about what you get from end bosses on most heroic dungeons. On heroic, we got an Emblem of Conquest for each, and what I believe were item level 219 epics. Sadly, we saw lots of leather and cloth. Kyn got an upgrade, I believe. There's a new tanking sword in there, and possibly some other things I'd want.
Edit: Doing further reading, and it was late last night. It looks like the first 'boss' gives one item. The second and third each give two. So 5 epics total. I'm also seeing some reports that the ilevel 219 seen in the tooltips might be wrong, and the heroic drops might actually be ilevel 213 equivilent instead.
In raw item level/budget, this still makes the normal drops as good as anything coming out of any other 5-man heroic (where you normally get only one epic drop), and the heroic drops equal to Emblem of Valor/most 10-man pre-Ulduar drops.
Phase Three Black Knight note: He puts a stacking debuff that increase the amount of shadow damage you take, while shooting you with shadow bolts, so.. it was like, four casts and I was splattered. I dunno if they're "Cleanse"-able or if just becomes a DPS race at that point.
ReplyDeleteI'm jealous. :P But I was tired and didn't really want to concentrate on learning new things, so it was best to wait.
ReplyDeleteYou'll get your chance, I'm sure. ;) I imagine we'll be running this a lot.
ReplyDeleteHmm. Fairly certain I didn't see the debuff show up in Decursive - my usual signal to cleanse something. But I could have missed it, that could be a failing in the addon right now, or it might just not be removable.
ReplyDeleteMaybe wasn't the stacking debuff that killed you, just read this: Phase 3: He Rezzes as a spirit. He will periodically inflict around 3k dmg on everyone (Every 1-2 secs or so) and apply a stacking debuff which increases magic damage by 5%. He will also randomly target party members with what seems to be a "Demonic Hunter's Mark" (Marked for Death). Marked party member will receive 200% increased magic damage. Mages / Palas, it's immune time!. Save your cooldowns for this phase because the guy needs to go down really fast. If you let him stack the debuff too much on you your healer won't be able to catch up.
ReplyDeleteSaw the 'Demonic Mark' hit one of my Mirror Images. No, the 5% damge increaser is cast every 5 seconds or so. I went from 3k damage to 4.5 to 6 to 8 before I Ice Block'd
ReplyDeleteFurther reading from MMO-Champion seem to be, "If you wipe on this fool, your healer sucks" as it's everyone group on healer and AoE heal. Well, y'know, not everyone's in Uld gear douchebags <.<
ReplyDeleteRE: Uld gear - LOL yeah. Though, 3k to 4.5k to 6 etc isn't 5%... more like 50%? Still, I wonder what paladins do... not yeah Holy Light splashes are fine but... I guess you just hit dsp+yourself with Holy Light and keep Beacon on the tank?
ReplyDeleteI didn't do any seriously inspection of the rogue, ret paladin, and priest we were teamed with. At a glance, I'd have guessed them in early Ulduar gear. I think familiarity (in encounters and in the group) will prove a big benefit here in the long run.
ReplyDeleteOn the stun/hammer thing, do you have to have Every Man or a pvp trinket to get yourself out, or is there some other trick?
ReplyDeleteI really don't know at this point. I've read some confusing things. Some say it just ends up in your inventory. Some indicate you have to do something to catch it. Edit: It appears you have to escape (or perhaps resist) the stun. Trinket, Every Man, Cleanse (from someone else) or other magic-removal is probably necessary. I've seen some mention, however, that if you're far enough away, the hammer might take long enough to reach you that you'll be out of stun by the time it lands. That last one sounds a little iffy to me.
ReplyDelete