Second Magister's Terrace run

Ran it for the second time with my guild, again on my healing priest. This time I better appreciated its virtues, I think. It's a fun, interesting, and relaxing instance, perfect in length. It runs like a greatest-hits version of Burning Crusade boss-fight design.

Of course, both times I've healed it have been with a very talented protection paladin doing the tanking. Protection pally tanking everything is easy-mode for everything but boss fights. I haven't had to heal the group with a protection warrior yet, which I'm guessing would be (cough) a bit harder due to the aoe encounters. The sad state of warrior tanking is well known. We had a mage, rogue, and hunter, which gave us ample crowd control. The hunter was one of those lovely people who like to put an ice trap in front of me instead of him. Just a nice run from start to finish, and the reason I like the game. Group up with guildies, laugh through an enjoyable instance together, where effective teamwork matters.

I forgot that someone gets a zomgepic just for completing normal mode. Last night that someone was me, when I lucked into [Kharmaa's Ring of Fate] off Kael'thas Sunstrider. The socket (on a ring, whee!) goes perfectly with the quest reward gem ([Teardrop Crimson Spinel]). I'm not sold on priest healing with spell haste yet because priest healing is a mix of instant/non-instant spells, but I'll experiment to see if it's better than my [Band of Halos]. Not that you can actually tell most of the time. More on that later.

An interesting healing note is that in both wins on the Kael'thas, two dps'ers died. It actually got much easier after that, when you have only three people to keep alive instead of five. Most of the time when someone dies, that means that the full damage of that part of the encounter then turns to someone else. This event has constant global damage, so the group takes 100% damage with five people, 80% damage with four, and an easy-to-heal-through 60% with three. I'll shoot for four teammates alive at the end of the next run.

This is a very fun instance. I'm looking forward to trying this on heroic.

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