Challenge Modes Tips and Tricks (Bugs)

[fuzzylolz]

Hey guys! Well, the title explains for itself, i have a group for CMs in a mid population server and we want to beat/improve the current server best times. We are familiar to the big pulls and items (Horn, Rod, Yak, etc.) but we want to know if there are ways to gain more time, like skipping the ~45s intro/RP on the first boss of MSP, among other things. Any tip/trick/bug and it's explanation will be greatly appreciated.

[Deleted]

watch the realm best videos from challengebash; there may be better tacts/times, but if you ignore stuff like rdruid/disc/dk SM runs with lots of cheesing, their videos are still the greatest imo.

[Deleted]

With regards to the MSP First boss, just pull all of the trash to the first boss and kill it while the RP is going on.

[KaylinBDF]

You can despawn the mirror images in scholomance by LoSing them for the second boss. I highly recommend it. Saves you a ton of time.

[Senen]

Hey guys! Well, the title explains for itself, i have a group for CMs in a mid population server and we want to beat/improve the current server best times. We are familiar to the big pulls and items (Horn, Rod, Yak, etc.) but we want to know if there are ways to gain more time, like skipping the ~45s intro/RP on the first boss of MSP, among other things. Any tip/trick/bug and it's explanation will be greatly appreciated.

Don't know if it still works but... die in the first boss room, put a brez on someone, reset the dungeon, have your mate use the brez.
I'm not 100% sure that it works that way but I think it's that. That should allow you to skip the RP of the first boss of MSP.

[Saiyoran]

Clear through the first boss slowly (doesn't matter how long it takes) in MSP, then have someone dagger right on top of where the RP is usually activated. Res them, then reset the dungeon before they accept it. Wait ten seconds after they accept res, start dungeon, run to the boss, and it should spawn. The way this works is that when the player accepts the rez it puts them where they were originally rezed before teleporting them to the entrance, starting the RP.

In Siege you can use two-seaters to jump through the gate, and I believe frozen orb pulls the mobs on the other side if you aren't dropping combat (with the kiting slimes strategy) which you can kill while you wait for the door to be blown open.

The Jandice Barov trick with LoSing her actually loses you time compared to just burning her and using a script or add-on to kill her clone, provided you only get one split phase.

When you banner off the student room in Scholo, make sure to taunt Professor Slate. He sees through invis and this lets you drag him to the boss with you without the students to have some vengeance for the last boss.

Monks and warlocks can teleport out of the first bosses room in Temple with personal port and transcendence if you place them against the first wall you see running in, allowing them to go kill the scroll in the second bosses room to have the bosses active with all those mobs.

Taunting Armsmaster Harlan right as he begins Blades of Light in Scarlet Halls (literally in the same second he jumps to the middle) stops him from casting it. The same trick works on Firestorm Kick in Scarlet Monastery.

Having at least 4 of your group members click the first purifiable body in ShadoPan and finish the cast causes you to get credit for all 4 bodies, allowing you to Yak > Banner or simply invis past the rest of the mobs provided you have kill count already.

When the first boss in Scarlet Halls starts RPing, wait for all the guards blocking the stairs to raise their arms at the same time, then jump and glider through them. Try not to hit them before this as it causes them to move when hit, which can juke some of your players into going early and getting globaled.

The second boss in Gate can be done without a tank using Earth Ele/Hunter Pet/Voidwalker and killing him before second strafing run, allowing your tank to kite all the other adds in the instance to the third boss for a massive pull.

There is a way to get under the map in Scarlet Halls using a candlestick after the first boss. It does not save you time as you can't pull the armory into Armsmaster this way, but it is nice for golds or carries so you don't have to blow invis pots. Don't really want to post specifics but you can probably find an explanation somewhere out there.

The ghosts with the stacking debuff on the first boss in SM can be MCed/Controlled by a priest or dk allowing you to get world bests with a rogue in blues and greens and a warrior without engineering! (not bitter i promise)

Aggroing last boss in SM aggros the whole cathedral, so you can run in and pull him without touching anything else first for that massive cathedral pull most fast times do.

Slime damage buff from Siege lasts through resets, so going in to get a few stacks then resetting and starting instantly allows you to get higher stacks in the end (or simply blow up the first group faster if you don't intend to refresh your stacks).

The dragon phase of the third boss in ToJS is immune to damage (at least dot applications I know) for a few seconds when it spawns. It also doesn't have a threat table for that time, so don't blow Black arrow/Flame shock into it immediately.

The elevator in MSP takes so long that equipping rocket boots after Gekkan dies (the actual boots, not nitro on your belt) will let them be usable by the time you get off the elevator. just don't get in combat trying to CC the two oracles at the top of the stairs or you won't be able to switch to regular boots.

Tagging some of the mobs in the first room of Scholo before the boss instantly kills them all will give you kill count without having to kill the flesh horrors or students later on, saving a huge amount of time. you need at least 2 mobs in the first room and all 4 risen guards to reach kill count without the horrors.

Thats all I can think of, most of these can be seen in world best videos and such but thought I'd try to rattle off everything I've seen that might not be apparent.

[Eliot123]

In Shado-Pan use http://www.wowhead.com/item=89770 to get to the 2nd boss faster after the corridor with sha.

[Kassina]

Hey guys! Well, the title explains for itself, i have a group for CMs in a mid population server and we want to beat/improve the current server best times. We are familiar to the big pulls and items (Horn, Rod, Yak, etc.) but we want to know if there are ways to gain more time, like skipping the ~45s intro/RP on the first boss of MSP, among other things. Any tip/trick/bug and it's explanation will be greatly appreciated.

What server is it? what is the times you need to beat? what setup will you be running?

[Mdev]

The ghosts with the stacking debuff on the first boss in SM can be MCed/Controlled by a priest or dk allowing you to get world bests with a rogue in blues and greens and a warrior without engineering! (not bitter i promise)

You sound pretty bitter. It's not like monks cheesing vengeance in every other dungeon isn't just as exploitative.

[Saiyoran]

All I mean is that from the video it looks like you and Mes are doing all the work in the run. Even with monk cheesing, theres still a lot of responsibility on the ele and healer to make that possible as I'm sure you know, and the other dps still contribute a huge percentage of boss damage. Your SM run is almost entirely Mes' damage and management of the ghost and you and the other priest keeping the ghost and Mes alive. Watching the warrior, he doesn't do much of anything until he has to tank the cathedral at the very end, and even then does very little damage compared to the ghost.

Edit: To be clear it's not the exploitative nature that makes me sad (as you are right, most Challenge Mode times are all about cheesing) just the fact that there is really just one or two people making the dungeon happen with little work from the rest of the group.

[Djuntas]

Just cheese the runs and exploit. Thats what CM is all about, a very bad design, fuss I was happy enough just buying a boost, and never caring about it at all. CM's are not about speed runs.

[Deleted]

Just cheese the runs and exploit. Thats what CM is all about, a very bad design, fuss I was happy enough just buying a boost, and never caring about it at all. CM's are not about speed runs.

u r a dumy

[Djuntas]

u r a dumy

Sure thing. Its not like I haven't seen all CM's done on gold, with me doing just fine all runs (Exspect I forgot to use invis potions inn one instance..>.< donk), and the group even carried some...erhm 40-60k DPS pvp geared rogue that has never done any pve, from what he had told.

Okay ill rephrase: CM's are also having 1 excellent healer, so you're tank (monk huhu) can pull over the top big pulls, cordinating stuns and sometimes interrupting 1 target together with you're elemental shaman. But thats also it. I saw how they did it, and every run it made me cry...All about exploting.

[Deleted]

Sure thing. Its not like I haven't seen all CM's done on gold, with me doing just fine all runs (Exspect I forgot to use invis potions inn one instance..>.< donk), and the group even carried some...erhm 40-60k DPS pvp geared rogue that has never done any pve, from what he had told.

Okay ill rephrase: CM's are also having 1 excellent healer, so you're tank (monk huhu) can pull over the top big pulls, cordinating stuns and sometimes interrupting 1 target together with you're elemental shaman. But thats also it. I saw how they did it, and every run it made me cry...All about exploting.

It's really not about exploiting at all, but it's ok.

[Djuntas]

It's really not about exploiting at all, but it's ok.

How the hell can you not say that? I saw so many cheesy things inn the end when they told tactics on skype as we we're going, they joked around with it and "Okay listen up we're gonna cheese this part, just follow and etc..."

Im sorry but every instance seems to have some lame part from skipping trash and then soulstone/combat res, to down right exploiting something to make it much faster. There is a reason why CM carriers can be 3 people and 2 boosters (even 2 melee), cause off thoes tricks.

[Thursley]

There are a few reasons CMs can be carried with 3 people (though frankly I would argue that while 3 people is possible it's much more reasonable to use 4 as the real example). First, people have now had years worth of practice and experience doing these runs. That much time overwhelms a lot of difficulty.

Second, gear has improved considerably since they were implemented as well. Yes it scales down to 463 but that doesn't account for all the extra gem slots, the ability and time to select perfectly itemized pieces from multiple difficulty tiers, the legendary cloak stats, and access to potentially more powerful trinkets. This makes more of a difference than most people think.

Third, class mechanics have changed since they were implemented. Yes, in some cases these changes made things tougher, but on balance I would say classes are more powerful now relative to the release of MOP. In some cases a lot more powerful for this particular type of run (hunters got massive attack power improvements and full mobility, for example, among other buffs that were necessary at higher item levels but excessive at 463). Even in the cases of nerfs like Brewmaster's damage penalty, there were plenty of other buffs to offset that in challenge modes (see old vs. new rushing jade wind).

Fourth, and this is the big one, these instances were designed by blizzard, from the beginning, to be beatable. Even gold mode needed to be something that a non-"hardcore" but coordinated and fairly dedicated group could accomplish, without resorting to the really crazy tricks you're talking about that blizzard knew they wouldn't be able to perfectly foresee and prevent. If you want to argue they should have done a better job bug-proofing these instances, that's fair (I agree, I think there are a few obvious places they should have noticed and shored up, like the beginning of siege with the amber ooze debuffs). But they correctly recognized it wouldn't be fair to make specific changes to these instances once people had already gotten times.

As a result of all this, the dungeons are less difficult to beat on the hardest difficulty at the end of the expansion. It's not a big deal. In fact, if you've been playing this game for a decent amount of time, you should be shocked to see anything else. Plus, as long as you aren't interested in going for the really ridiculous realm/region/world best times, you don't need to use the "exploits".

And now that blizzard has a better sense of what to look for, I would expect them to be a bit better at preventing some of the more outlandish tricks in WOD. If you want a legitimate challenge, do the new challenge modes early on, without perfectly itemized gear, years of practice, and researching super fast strategies on youtube or forums. It's too late to complain about MOP challenge modes now.

[Bobum]

Sorry to hijack this thread but I'm encountering a bug in CMs and I'm wondering if anyone else has seen it or knows how to fix it.
Using the Garrosh heirloom staff in CMs causes my secondary stats to be reduced massively to the point where I would lose 8% mastery by equipping the weapon.

[Oggiva]

You should compare it versus another staff, not versus an empty slot, and see what happens then. The picture to the right looks correct with regards to the amount of secondary stats on your bracers.

[Neyzio]

All I mean is that from the video it looks like you and Mes are doing all the work in the run. Even with monk cheesing, theres still a lot of responsibility on the ele and healer to make that possible as I'm sure you know, and the other dps still contribute a huge percentage of boss damage. Your SM run is almost entirely Mes' damage and management of the ghost and you and the other priest keeping the ghost and Mes alive. Watching the warrior, he doesn't do much of anything until he has to tank the cathedral at the very end, and even then does very little damage compared to the ghost.

Edit: To be clear it's not the exploitative nature that makes me sad (as you are right, most Challenge Mode times are all about cheesing) just the fact that there is really just one or two people making the dungeon happen with little work from the rest of the group.

There is a lot of work that went into planning those pulls than you really notice in the video. From cc, to glyph choices, to mob placement and of course to pulling. I wouldnt say running to the cubby and mashing your aoe heals with AG is particularly skilled either - just a lot more risky. Monk does all the damage anyway in that pull. Furthermore, feel free to point me to the fotm dk video that tells you what to do on every pull for every instance like the method grp does (lol).

[Mdev]

I wouldnt say running to the cubby and mashing your aoe heals with AG is particularly skilled either

It's funny because the monk actually does more healing than the priest on those pulls.