Fail Friday - First time in Mythic plus Seat of the Triumvirate

"Nads, you don't go into Seat without knowing what you're doing," said Spoon to me yesterday.

Of course, he was telling me this after in the middle of wiping for the zillionth time attempting Seat of the Triumvirate as a mythic plus for the first time.

Of course, I have done Seat before. I did it once (as a normal Mythic) for the quest chain and had no idea what was going on when I did the dungeon. Heal this, avoid that, it didn't seem that bad. Lots of black crap on the floor to avoid and some things damaged us but nothing I couldn't heal through.

But, both HK and I ended up with keys for Seat this week, and we thought well, let's give it a go. And we'll ask Anna and Gal to come too! They weren't raiding so they were keen to learn it, and so was I. HK was ambivalent. He should have known what was coming.

I had asked Spoon and he laughed at me. I asked Pancake and he said he hasn't done it before and he doesn't want to end up like Arcway and CoS (he had never done normal mythics of them - just pluses and started at 10s all the time). So poor sweet Lushen was asked who never refuses (though now he might start making excuses) and he came along to learn it with us.

I learned one new thing when this dungeon came out. And that was what "Triumvirate" means.

A triumvirate (Latin: triumvirātus) is a political regime ruled or dominated by three powerful individuals known as triumvirs (Latin: triumviri). The arrangement can be formal or informal. Though the three are notionally equal, this is rarely the case in reality. The term can also be used to describe a state with three different military leaders who all claim to be the sole leader.

- Wikipedia

Interestingly, a synonym for triumvirate is Triarchy. I wonder if Triarchi got his name from that! I should ask him. A dungeon named after him! Cool. I suppose the

So we start the dungeon (which was a +13) and wipe a LOT to the first sets of adds patting around the boss. Almost as bad as trying to do blobs with Raging, Bursting and Fortified, but our affixes were only Explosive, Teeming and Fortified. I think it was stacks of Dark Withering that were mowing down HK, but we eventually got ourselves sorted. Once we got that down we tackled Zuraal.

Zuraal casts Decimate which makes a rapidly expanding void pool spawn. Our first attempt we had it in the middle of the room, but our subsequent attempts we moved it off to the side. Standing in it is bad for us as it does ticking damage but it also buffs the enemies in it so they need to be moved out of the sludge. There were also blob adds spawning that moved slowly towards Zuraal which can be slowed or stunned before they are killed. They aren't suppose to reach Zuraal they explode and do a ton of damage. Also one person gets kicked into the Void realm and they have to DPS some blobs to get out. Fortunately it happens to everyone except me (even the tank can get it) so it's not a mechanic I have to worry about. At that time Zuraal fixates on someone so fortunately doesn't need to be tanked - as long as he's not kited into blobs you'll be fine!

It wasn't long to get to the next boss (though there is a bit of RP to do with Alleria first), which was Saprish.

First we had to close 3 rifts before Saprish spawns, by defeating 3 Void wardens. Geez their fear is annoying! There are a lot of pats around, but it wasn't super terrible. Saprish, however, took us a bit of time as we took our time to learn what to do properly.

Saprish has 2 pets with him - a cat, Darkfang, and a glowbat, Shadewing. The three of them share a health pool.

Saprish throws out Void traps which are easy to dodge. If you step in it you get stunned for 5 seconds, which sucks. Sometimes he does Overload trap which causes them to explode. It's not too bad to move out of them, but you're screwed if Shadewing screeches which disorients you for 4 seconds and you walk into a trap. Luckily, that's interruptable.

Darkfang randomly teleports behind someone and casts Raving Darkness, which is a slashing ability for 6 seconds that you have to move out from. If you get hit by it, the tank suffers as Saprish gains Hunter's Rush. That bit wasn't so bad.

Saprish also dashes between marked players doing damage, so don't stand in the way of the dashes as the  more hits he gets off, the more Hunter's Rush he gets.

You need a fair bit of room to get this boss done. And what is also NOT fun is the explosives, which were sometimes in void traps. I could help get them down a bit, but that made the fight harder than it would have been with different affixes. It took us a while to get that boss down (often died to a missed screech or an explosive) and by the time we did, the timer had run out.

Then it was onto Viceroy Nezhar. He had tons of trash patting around him which gave us a lot of trouble - I suppose that was the teeming thing. We couldn't cleave them all down even with lust, so we ended up cc'ing a few off and then the pack would pat away and then we'd get down the cc'd mobs. We could only cc the small adds, and then it was onto the boss.

A bit of a DPS check on this boss. You have to kill adds and interrupt him so he doesn't cast Howling Fear, which lasts 4 seconds and it is deadly. The first lot of adds are tentacles which apply a stacking healing debuff, so it would be good to interrupt that as well - though I don't have any interrupts except a warstomp which was a bit rubbish.  He also does a pushback so you need to stand on him so he doesn't push you outside into the black stuff on the edges. He then summons two adds which put a shield on him and you have to DPS them so the shield comes off and then interrupt his cast, otherwise he kills us all. We couldn't have even one person die or we'd miss the DPS check on those adds. It took us a while but eventually we got it.

Finally we headed over to Lu'ra, which compared to the other bosses was easy. DPS her till shield, kill adds from portal, stand in the Fragment of Despair so that the bolt doesn't hit the ground and kill everyone. Backlash happens then we DPS her for a bit and we start again. When she goes into the next phase, we can DPS her but now the Fragments of Despair are underneath us and we have to get out of them. Not too bad if you just clump and move as a group.

Phew! So, almost 2 hours later we were done LOL. Now that we know the key, we will definitely do it better the next time - but it was a fun time learning (at least for me and Anna - not sure about everyone else though!)