Sethekk Halls (Auch) Notes

[Arcdelad]

okay...so Voc, Kaid, Tyban, Moonrose, and myself went into Sethekk Halls...here are some notes:

This place is probably meant for levels 67+, as all of the mobs are 67-69 elite (with the exception of a bunch of birds that come in packs of 5-8). You are mostly fighting bird people (like the ones in Blade's Edge), and it gives you really good Lower City rep. Its a really fun, challenging instance though, and I beliee its the lowest instance to start dropping Dungeon Set 3A items (a rogue / feral druid piece drops off of the boss for sure). Also, the key for the 4th Auch instance (Shattered Halls, level 70) drops from the final boss, so anyone who wants to go there needs to hit this place at least once. There are various group compositions in here, but the most common seem to be:

- group of two guards...each of them will do a war stomp that does AOE damage in the neighborhood of 2-3K damage. Kaid came up with the great idea of pulling these two apart from each other and letting the MT handle one on one side of the room and the OT one on the other side to avoid getting overlapping AOE stomp damage. They also enrage and start wailing away pretty rapidly at the end of their health.

- The second common grouping (these are in order of appearance) are one guard, one undead bird guy, and one bird prophet. The bird prophet has to go down first - he heals the other guys, and he spams a really bad fear that lasts a good 5-8 seconds. He casts fear a LOT, and it can get really really annoying quick. We didnt have shackle in our group, but I would definitely shackle the undead guy, make the prophet your primary target, with the OT on the guard as the secondary target. When a prophet dies it releases a ghost like the guys in ZG, so you might have to dance away from that ghost as your killing the rest of the group.

- The third common grouping is the hardest one of the bunch...we wiped a few times on this particular group type. It consists of two prophets, one shaman bird, and one ghost...this also comes in the one prophet, one shaman, two ghost variety (sometimes they have an annoying bird that is part of the grouping two...not a hard MOB, but the damn bird has 19K health). The shamans will throw down a MC totem that mind controls someone. This MC lasts until the totem is gone...I was MC'ed once for about 10-12 seconds, so it can go on for a while. Also, the shaman heals everyone else, so if you try to kill the prophets first becuase they are spam fearing X2, youll never kill them becuase the shaman keeps healing them. So...the challenge for this fight is that you have two people spam AOE fearing everyone, one guy MCing people and healing, and then a MOB just wailing on you. We had zero CC except hunter traps, so we froze / slowed what we could, but it still makes a hard, long fight. Ideally you would havea  priest / mage / rogue / lock and could shackle / sheep / SAP / succy succy some of those guys...

This place only has two bosses...but dont let that fool you - its a pretty lengthy instance. The first boss isnt that hard - but he does spawn 3 waves of four elementals that do some stacking debuff. Basically you can either do a priest /lock fear on these guys and pick em off, shackle one, or just let the tank stay on the boss and kill these guys quick. They dont have a whle lot of health, so the adds arent that bad.

The second boss is a pain in the ass. Hes in a room with four columns...this guy will periodically charge up and release an AOE shadow damage ring that does 6K damage to everyone. In our group, Kaid and Voc didnt even have 6K health at FULL health, so it meant instant death for most of our party if he caught you. To make things more complicated, he teleports at times...when he does that he immediately charges his AOE and launches it withinna few seconds. Also, its really hard to tell sometimes when he is charging that thing...the animation for it is exactly the same as his other attacks...I made a macro to tell people when he was charging, but I ended up looking stupid since I used that macro a bunch of times he wasnt charging...I think you can shield bash / stun him for that, but its hard to tell since the druid bear form stun doesnt work great on bosses and has a long CD. This guy will swing away at the tank and do some decent damage, but also while hes doing that he launches shadowbolts at every member of your party, so even if your not directly attacking him you WILL take some damage.

He drops some really good clothie gear, great mail and plate stuff, and the first rogue / druid dungeon set 3A piece...plus the key like I mentioned before.

We had probably a really challenging group to go in there - no crowd control. I think if you take some CC in with you the instance will be a lot smoother, but the bosses are still going to be pretty challenging, even for a group of 70's...

[voctovian]

The final boss is the first that I have seen that does primarily arcane damage.  All that +arcane resist gear that I have vendored and DE'd.. /cry.  His Arcane explosion does 6k damage (range >35 yeards), which he follows immediately with some arcane missiles for up to 1500 each.  Soooo, you definitely want to stack up on your stam and arcane gear that you can lay your hands on.  For our successful attempt at the boss, I put away healing gear (5k health) and put on my soloing gear to give fully buffed 7500 health.  Even so, I mistimed my cowardly run behind a pillar to break LOS and died (from full health) after the 2nd AOE followed by the arcane missile volley.  This is a VERY intense fight. 

If you use a hide and kite approach, you stand a much higher likelihood of surviving .  This was a significant change in tactics as a healer... continually spamming heals is out.. big heal and run for cover is much better here. 

The same goes for the fearing mobs... when you arent feared, use big heals as you will be seldom have more than 8 seconds between fears. 

I have not tested this, but if you can pull the undead mobs well back, it may be a useful tactic to turn the undead as pallies.

[Grendeel]

I just finished this instance and it was with all level 70s, so take it from that perspective only. 

The first boss was extremely easy.   The tank took the boss and on the first wave of adds, we focused on downing them.    Then it was an all out dps on the boss.   When the second wave of adds spawned, we feared them and continued with the dps.  By the time the fear wore off the boss was almost dead.  Once the boss dies, the adds despawn.

The second boss for us was exactly the way Arc described it.  We had a rogue who stun locked it (i think) when the aoe was coming.   The boss only got one aoe off the whole fight.  It still was a challenge, and all of us being 70, we had enough hp to survive the aoe.  I can see that being a huge problem at lower levels.   Interrupting the aoe is huge.

The biggest problem we had with the instance (3 wipes, not on the bosses) was the fear factor and the knockback the birds do.  The fear and knockbacks aggroed mulitiple mobs on several occasions for us.  So my suggestion is to pull them far enough away so that if/when they fear/knockback, you still have enough room to not aggro other groups.  Getting to the bosses requires some good tactical pulling.  If done right, this should make the mobs leading up to the bosses fairly easy.   

[un4]

You could actually stun the 2nd boss?  There's a surprise, most are immune.

[Grendeel]

I assumed thats what he did   He said he would take care of the interruption and did.   Maybe it wasnt stun. 

[un4]

Probably kick.  Some bosses are immune to that as well, but I've found that TBC bosses are vulnerable.