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GeneSlicer · February 21, 2006, 02:42 PM

My warlock is not quite old enough to do Scholomance yet (44), but I went there two days ago on my 60 mage in a 5 person group *grins*. Mix was Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Mage, Mage. I will try to list the important things to know and remember (a bit of theorycraft since I havent taken my warlock there yet). Best thing is to make sure the others in the group know you are new to Scholomance and that they need to give you an idea what is coming and what they might expect for you to have ready. As mentioned above, PUGs are a very tough place to learn to play your warlock in groups. And I find that my warlock's group role is much more different from solo than I experienced on my mage solo -vs- group.

First big room:
mix of caster humanoids and undead in groups of 3-5. the humans run so CoRecklessness is nice when they get low and be very careful of where you fight because patrols can pass agro to other groups. We mostly used mage sheep and priest shackle for CC as there was only one demon minion (boss' succubus). The density of mobs makes fear really dangerous and seduce is actually better than sheep because the mob will not wander. In the instance we wiped at least twice because the sheeps wandered and then broke sheep while they were in the middle of another group. A hunter's ice traps can also help break up the mobs so long as your group is good about only attacking those mobs who are not ice blocked.

Second room( summoners ):
6 groups of 2-4 humans with spider/undead patrols which should be killed before starting on the groups.
Very important to kill the summoner mobs in each group as quickly as possible. As soon as they are agroed, they will start to summon skeletons about one a second. While these skels dont have high hit points, they hit pretty hard and without AOE you will be hard pressed to kill them quick enough. Again, runners are death as the groups are quite close together.

Third room( tutors hall ):
About 7 groups each consisting of a spectral tutor(name?) and 2-3 humaniod casters or undead melee. The tutors are nasty because at some point they will spawn illusions of themselves and you will loose targeting on the tutor. I know mage AOE cleared the illusions immediately, so I expect that any form of AOE on the group of illusions would work. We attacked these groups by having the priest make sure the tutor was shackled until we had finished the rest of the group. Again as before runners and rogue sheeps can and will cause wipes; Seduce and CoRecklessness are your friends.

There are three different paths from the Tutor hall, east to the courtyard and a locked door to the lower areas of Scholomance with diseased ghouls and skel constructs. West is the passage to Janice (sorry no info here as we skipped her) and south is a room with fire welps and a few human handlers.

We generally do the courtyard next because it allows us to avoid having to reclear the first two rooms if we wipe again. It is not obvious but the courtyard is just below the bridge you walk over at the very start of the instance, so once this courtyard is clear, if you wipe you can enter the instance and then just jump right off the side of the bridge into the courtyard.

Fourth room ( courtyard east of tutor hall ):
Contains three types of undead mobs; diseased ghouls, skeleton constructs and reanimated corpses. The diseased ghouls have an extremely nasty disease aoe dot when they die. All of your melee must get out of the death cloud immediately and its best if your ranged folk can kill these to not overtax the healer. The skeleton constructs are IMMUNE to all forms of magic as far as I can tell. Only melee damage will hurt them so your melee, hunters, pets can focus on those. The reanimated corpses were more annoying than anything, they move slow, have relatively low HP but will reappear from the dead after a short period so you have to kill them twice basically. Our strategy was to have the casters kite kill the ghouls in the tutor room while the melee focused on killing the constructs just inside the tutor hall.

Fifth room ( fire welp hall ):
Contains 5-7 large groups of fire welps surrounding a single human handler. The fire welps are fireball casters with average hp (think of a strong imp), the handlers are magelike casters with an aoe blastwave type attack and shadowbolts. You will get anywhere from 2 to 5 welps per pull here and this was where AOE attacks were the most helpful. Your group should setup in the tutor hall near the doorway and have the puller tag and then run back into the tutor hall to break casting line of sight for the welps and handler. This will cause them to run into the tutor hall and stop to start casting at the door. That is where you can drop a ton of AOE on them as they will bunch up quite nicely. *very important* be careful with tab target inside this room as you can target mobs from the lower floors.

Sixth room ( Rattlegore room):
Just south of the fire welp hall are some stairs down to where Rattlegore makes his lair. Luckily the skel constructs here seem to be vunerable to magic, but they hit hard and some have a knockback/stun type attack which is nasty. Shackle adds and try to focus fire on only one at a time to kill as quickly as possible. Rattlegore drops the key to the locked door in the courtyard. The key is one use only and will disappear if you log just like summoned items. This is the other reason we usually clear the coartyard before coming for Rattlegore.. as we can quickly run back and open the door to the lower levels. Like most instance doors, once opened the door stays open for the remainder of the time that instance is valid.

The remainder of the bosses in this instance are down in the lower parts of the castle past the locked door. Our one healer passed out and we had to stop our run just before went to take out Rattlegore so unfortunately I dont have more information about the instance.. *grins* It was tough but very good experience for the other mid-range raids and instances like BRD, LBRS, UBRS, as everyone in the group needs to be working well together and using their entire toolset to allow the group to advance. I actually classify Scholo as being harder than Strath has ever been for me, but then I havent tried a 5-man undead Strath run quite yet.. I expect that will be similarly hard as Scholo.

February 21, 2006, 02:42 PM	#10 (permalink)
GeneSlicer Lurker Character Info Vaertis 70 Blood Elf Warlock Silver Hand US RP Talent Spec: 40/21/0	Re: Tips for a first timer in Scholomance? My warlock is not quite old enough to do Scholomance yet (44), but I went there two days ago on my 60 mage in a 5 person group grins. Mix was Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Mage, Mage. I will try to list the important things to know and remember (a bit of theorycraft since I havent taken my warlock there yet). Best thing is to make sure the others in the group know you are new to Scholomance and that they need to give you an idea what is coming and what they might expect for you to have ready. As mentioned above, PUGs are a very tough place to learn to play your warlock in groups. And I find that my warlock's group role is much more different from solo than I experienced on my mage solo -vs- group. First big room: mix of caster humanoids and undead in groups of 3-5. the humans run so CoRecklessness is nice when they get low and be very careful of where you fight because patrols can pass agro to other groups. We mostly used mage sheep and priest shackle for CC as there was only one demon minion (boss' succubus). The density of mobs makes fear really dangerous and seduce is actually better than sheep because the mob will not wander. In the instance we wiped at least twice because the sheeps wandered and then broke sheep while they were in the middle of another group. A hunter's ice traps can also help break up the mobs so long as your group is good about only attacking those mobs who are not ice blocked. Second room( summoners ): 6 groups of 2-4 humans with spider/undead patrols which should be killed before starting on the groups. Very important to kill the summoner mobs in each group as quickly as possible. As soon as they are agroed, they will start to summon skeletons about one a second. While these skels dont have high hit points, they hit pretty hard and without AOE you will be hard pressed to kill them quick enough. Again, runners are death as the groups are quite close together. Third room( tutors hall ): About 7 groups each consisting of a spectral tutor(name?) and 2-3 humaniod casters or undead melee. The tutors are nasty because at some point they will spawn illusions of themselves and you will loose targeting on the tutor. I know mage AOE cleared the illusions immediately, so I expect that any form of AOE on the group of illusions would work. We attacked these groups by having the priest make sure the tutor was shackled until we had finished the rest of the group. Again as before runners and rogue sheeps can and will cause wipes; Seduce and CoRecklessness are your friends. There are three different paths from the Tutor hall, east to the courtyard and a locked door to the lower areas of Scholomance with diseased ghouls and skel constructs. West is the passage to Janice (sorry no info here as we skipped her) and south is a room with fire welps and a few human handlers. We generally do the courtyard next because it allows us to avoid having to reclear the first two rooms if we wipe again. It is not obvious but the courtyard is just below the bridge you walk over at the very start of the instance, so once this courtyard is clear, if you wipe you can enter the instance and then just jump right off the side of the bridge into the courtyard. Fourth room ( courtyard east of tutor hall ): Contains three types of undead mobs; diseased ghouls, skeleton constructs and reanimated corpses. The diseased ghouls have an extremely nasty disease aoe dot when they die. All of your melee must get out of the death cloud immediately and its best if your ranged folk can kill these to not overtax the healer. The skeleton constructs are IMMUNE to all forms of magic as far as I can tell. Only melee damage will hurt them so your melee, hunters, pets can focus on those. The reanimated corpses were more annoying than anything, they move slow, have relatively low HP but will reappear from the dead after a short period so you have to kill them twice basically. Our strategy was to have the casters kite kill the ghouls in the tutor room while the melee focused on killing the constructs just inside the tutor hall. Fifth room ( fire welp hall ): Contains 5-7 large groups of fire welps surrounding a single human handler. The fire welps are fireball casters with average hp (think of a strong imp), the handlers are magelike casters with an aoe blastwave type attack and shadowbolts. You will get anywhere from 2 to 5 welps per pull here and this was where AOE attacks were the most helpful. Your group should setup in the tutor hall near the doorway and have the puller tag and then run back into the tutor hall to break casting line of sight for the welps and handler. This will cause them to run into the tutor hall and stop to start casting at the door. That is where you can drop a ton of AOE on them as they will bunch up quite nicely. very important be careful with tab target inside this room as you can target mobs from the lower floors. Sixth room ( Rattlegore room): Just south of the fire welp hall are some stairs down to where Rattlegore makes his lair. Luckily the skel constructs here seem to be vunerable to magic, but they hit hard and some have a knockback/stun type attack which is nasty. Shackle adds and try to focus fire on only one at a time to kill as quickly as possible. Rattlegore drops the key to the locked door in the courtyard. The key is one use only and will disappear if you log just like summoned items. This is the other reason we usually clear the coartyard before coming for Rattlegore.. as we can quickly run back and open the door to the lower levels. Like most instance doors, once opened the door stays open for the remainder of the time that instance is valid. The remainder of the bosses in this instance are down in the lower parts of the castle past the locked door. Our one healer passed out and we had to stop our run just before went to take out Rattlegore so unfortunately I dont have more information about the instance.. grins It was tough but very good experience for the other mid-range raids and instances like BRD, LBRS, UBRS, as everyone in the group needs to be working well together and using their entire toolset to allow the group to advance. I actually classify Scholo as being harder than Strath has ever been for me, but then I havent tried a 5-man undead Strath run quite yet.. I expect that will be similarly hard as Scholo.