Tips for a first timer in Scholomance?

[Calista]

Greetings everyone

As I mentioned in my introduction thread, I am a recent addition to the level 60 crowd and am looking for some advice from the more experienced instance goers. This is my first character that has made it to level 60, and although I am well versed in the leveling (be it solo or grouped) side, I am not so much when it comes to the high end instances. The first time I ran though Deadmines I made a few mistakes and the group I was with was none too tolerant. Through my leveling I have met some great, and some not so great people so don't want to risk another instance disaster.

I was wondering if those who know Scholomance well, could give me some starting tips? I am not asking for a full run through of everything, I am more than happy to experience it all first hand, however I don't want to risk slaughtering the group because of a mob I didn't realise I needed to Banish or something. Just after general tips of things I should be aware of as a Warlock?

Thankyou

(P.S. I made a different thread on each instance I am about to attempt as per Akasha's instructions. I'm not trying to spam. )

[Calista]

Sorry to bump, but I'm heading into Scholo for the first time tomorrow (to release the Imp) and was wandering if there was anything vital I needed to know?

[Tenchiro]

There really isn't too much to say. Stay back, CoW the humanoids, inisist on killing Jandice, she drops the Dreadmist Mantle. If you miss out though, the Deadwalker Mantle drops from Rattlegore it isn't a set piece but has 19 STA, 9 INT & 13 Shadow Damage. The Dreadmist Mask drops from Gandling, who is the big boss of the dungeon.

Oh and don't talk to anyone in that room.

[Calista]

Well I went to Scholo this weekend and it was a horrible experience :(

First mobs in have a knockback that drains your mana, skele's that are immune the magic (can only melee), while other ones pop back up after you have killed that. That all nothing compared to those green ones that cast the poison cloud... 350 each time, lost my pet numerous times before I realised what was going on, and my group didn't warn me about any of it. Least we got to kill Jandice, but I spent more time trying to attack her illusions until some random Warlock in Org that I pleaded with for advice told me to hit V as Jandice is the only one with a health bar.

I can't even remember some of the other mobs that tortured me except somewhere in there I was obviously meant to have an AE loaded (not always on my spell bar... don't use when soloing) and we wiped. I got booted from the group and flamed all over Orgrimmar as an ebayed character.

I don't care if I never see Scholo again. :(

[Kool]

Take a deep breath.

Don't worry about the skeletons that are melee only.. the warriors and rogues will take care of them.

The tall undead dudes that move real slow have very low magic resistance. The green ghouls have that disease cloud, stay out of it, and kill those from range.

Use Curse of Recklessness on the human spell casters, they run in fear.

There is no spot where you absolutely have to aoe. If people ask you to aoe, then give it a shot.

As far as not having stuff on your quickbar... you know you have 6 hotbars right? That's without mods, you have 6. There is always a place for all your spells. I keep my Hellfire on bar 4 spot 1, and RoF on bar 4 spot 2.

[Calista]

Yeah I currently have 4 hotbars up, but as I have a very small screen (15") I try to have as little up as possible, including my AE's as I never used them when I was solo'ing. We had a mage in the group, and he AE'd the...um... flying things (can't remember what they were exactly), but as no one warned me that's what we were going to do, I didn't, and got yelled at :( It was the room with all the mummies in the wall, when they pulled the skeletons though, we wiped there because the mage’s AE wasn’t enough, and again, I didn’t know so didn’t hit the AE quick enough.

I think it’s just that everyone else has run it so many times, and for me, it was a first so I didn’t know the fights.

[Tenchiro]

I wouldn't worry about it, everyone had a first time in there. Hell half the groups I go in with still have a hard time with it. It is a fun instance when you get the swing of things and with the right group.

[Lothe]

This is where a friendly guild or group of friends is good to have. Try and do your first instance runs with these type of people and they will have more patience for your mistakes and will most likely tell you in advance what to do next. PUGs suck for learning, actually Pugs suck no matter.

[Kool]

I didn't mean to keep all 6 hotbars visible at all times. This tip might help you since you have a smaller monitor. I don't keep multiple hotbars open since I don't like the clutter.

Normally you switch between the 6 hotbars by using either the little tiny scrollbuttons, or the default to swith between them is CTRL-1 through CTRL-6. I can't work like this.

I changed that to switch between my hotbars with the function keys, so hotbar 1 is F1, hotbar 2 is F2.

So I only ever have in view one hotbar, but I can switch between the 6 of them so fast with my keyboard.

[GeneSlicer]

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.