Challenge Mode: Scholomance

[Hybrys 199]

Introduction

Scholomance is a medium difficulty CM, with a relatively easy Gold timer.  This guide will assume you are familiar with the Heroic version of the MoP Scholomance dungeon.  Remember, to do Challenge Mode, you must complete the Heroic version of the dungeon on the character you are trying to do the Challenge Mode.

 

You would typically require an invisibility potion for this challenge mode.  The 15 second Lesser Invisibility Potion will suffice.

 

GOLD TARGET TIME: 19:00

 

1.  Trash to Instructor Chillheart
 

The first pull of this CM is brilliantly easy.  Down the two Risen Guards and make your way through the gate, and jump down towards the boss.  Make sure to toss a ranged attack at either the left or right add (but not the close one) and have someone else toss a ranged attack at the boss.  This will help ensure you make the enemy count.

 

2.  Instructor Chillheart

 

This fight is very similar to Heroic mode, but it will feel much more difficult, and has a much tighter DPS check, based on the first phases Ice Wall.  You should be using all cooldowns as well as Bloodlust/Heroism on this boss.  It’s recommended that you spread out 5 yards from each other, against the wall you jumped over to get into the boss room.  Make sure you don’t stand in the ice circle or stand near your teammates when you have the debuff.

 

Once you’ve defeated Instructor Chillheart, the room will go wild with small AoE effects.  These can mostly be avoided by standing at the wall, but make sure to move out of any of the arcane orbs that will spawn and slowly fall.  Avoid these, finish up the Phylactery, and start making your way to the next room.

 

3. Trash to Jandice Barov

 

You can pull the single Risen Guard on the ramp with ease.  Let your healer mana up, then make your way into the room.  In the second aisle are two Candlestick Mages.  Pick them up, and nuke them quick.  Once they’re dead, make your way out towards the boss, and pull the three remaining Candlestick Mages.  Once they’ve died, it’s time for the boss!

4.  Jandice Barov

 

This boss has almost no mechanical changes compared to Heroic, and the entire difficulty of it is finding the correct copy quickly.  There are several addons and strategies to help you with this, but it’s rather hard to be sure.  Killing the incorrect copy will cause around 100k damage to each player, so be sure before you kill any of them.

 

BarovHelper is the addon I use.  It will pop up a rather large model of the genuine Jandice, as well as what you’re targetting, for you to compare.  A few other things to look at are her headband, hair, stockings, and belt.  They will be a darker black than the others.

 

Beyond killing the adds, the entire fight is just dealing with not stacking for Gravity Flux and not eating her frontal cone, Wonderous Rapidity.  Once your team it done dealing with her, everyone but the tank should stand out of line of sight of the door to the next room to prepare for trash.

 

5. Trash to Rattlegore

 

These trash packs are rather powerful, and will test your tank and healer.  This is the time for tank/healer CDs for sure.  You’ll want your tank to use some hefty speed increases and ranged attacks to try to get all six of the Boneweavers, then pull them back into Jandice’s room, making sure to face them away from your group.  Once they’re all in position, your DPS and healer can go to town on them.  Once they’re down, make your way into the next room, and wait for the boss to spawn.

 

6. Rattlegore

This boss is mechanically exactly the same as Heroic, and not even the damage is challenging to heal through.  Make sure that you maintain Bone Armor (from the golden glowing bone piles on the ground), and stay out of the flames.  I’d also recommend that you keep Rattlegore’s stacks (which he gains each time he successfully melees a target) to a max of 8, but I’ve held him still until 15+ w/ cooldowns.  With new groups, a max of 6 is probably sufficient.

 

You will want to save any cooldowns longer than 3 minutes until the next boss at this point.

7. Trash to Lillian Voss

 

You can handle the next trash area in a variety of ways.  The Krastinovian Carvers explode when they die, giving each of the other Carvers within about 15 yards a 10% attack speed and 20% damage taken increase.  What my groups usually do is grab about 5-7 of the Carvers, and pull them back into Rattlegore’s room.  At about 30%, we stop DPS on them and pull them into the room, and engage the rest of them.  We kite them around for a bit w/ Earthbind, Frost Trap, Keg Toss, or other AoE slows until they pack up rather neatly, then AoE them all down.  You’ll lag for a couple of seconds as they explode together, but they should all fall over in no time.

 

Now clean up the Flesh Horrors (attacking the meat grafts only, the same as on Heroic), and make your way to the next bosses room, stacking in the immediate left corner.

8.  Lillian Voss

There are zero mechanical differences between this fight and Heroic, but she represents a major DPS check that could save you up to 30 seconds.  Hopefully your Sated/Exhaustion has worn off by the time you get here, but it’s possible to execute it without it.  Using a potion mid-fight is not recommended, though, as you need to use an invisibility potion right after this boss.

 

Pull her to your group in that immediate left corner, and DPS her down to around 60%.  Once she hits 60%, use all of your cooldowns and DPS her down as fast as possible.  Even your healer should be DPSing with whatever cooldowns they have.  (Mindbender, Heart of the Wild, Avenging Wrath, etc.)  If you’re able to get her to zero, you can completely skip the second phase.

 

If you weren’t able to get her down, you’ll have to deal with the second phase for a bit.  The fixate isn’t as easily tankable, and the fire paths deal a rather significant amount of damage, but it’s a pretty basic fight.  If we get to this phase, we’ll often call out which direction we’ll run while we have fire, just so we don’t double up and cut each other off.  Once the shadow copy is down, get back on the boss, and finish her up.

9. Trash to Darkmaster Gandling

 

Once the door to the next room opens and you drop combat, you’ll be spending an Invisibility Potion to make your way past.  Diagonally approach the door down into the next room by jumping over the fences and on to the tables.  As long as you hug the right frame of the door at the bottom, you should be able to open it the door without pulling the close pack.

 

You can also have a Rogue / Hunter / Mage w/ G.Invis / Priest w/ Spectral Guise hit their potion first, run down to the door, open it, and drop combat to guarantee that you won’t pull extra students.

10. Darkmaster Gandling

This fight represents a major change to the fight compared to heroic, and there are two different strategies for handling it.  When Darkmaster Gandling ports someone into the ‘test’ room, he’ll begin to cast ‘Rise!’, and summon several adds named Failed Students.  Each of these Failed Students now explode after 8 seconds for a large amount of damage within about an 5 yard area.

 

The two ways of dealing with this mechanic are either stacking downstairs on the boss, and just AoEing the adds down ASAP during his ‘Rise!’ cast, or you can have the healer and ranged DPS stack on the ledge of the upper ring, opposite the stairs, and ignore the adds.  That way, they’ll explode while they’re trying to run towards your healer.  While stacking there, if your healer gets ported in for their test, you can have someone else pop an offspec healing CD mid way into the Rise! cast to gain threat, or just have the tank run to the group, maintaining line of sight on the boss the entire time.

 

Once he’s down, you’re done!  If you didn’t get your enemy kill count (which I’ve had happen once or twice due to a bug) make your way back into the room with the students, and single target one down.

11. Advanced strategies

For the trash to Instructor Chillheart, you can actually pull those first two risen guards right into the boss room, and engage Chillheart at the same time.  You’ll need some significant DPS and cooldowns to pull it off before the ice wall hits you and to AoE down the guards with the Phylactery, but you gain a good 10-15 seconds doing so.

 

For the trash to Jandice Barov, you can also pull all 5 Candlestick Mages together and AoE them down as you would other trash.  Make sure you have tank/healer cooldowns available for this, though, as they hit rather hard.

 

For the trash to Lillian Voss, you can run into the room and group up all of the Carvers right away, if you’d like to, but make sure every single targets one instead of AoEing, as it’s faster to do it that way.  With good targetting and kiting, I’d bet that you could save 5-10 seconds compared to my strategy of pulling a couple out before the large pull.

 

Good luck with your run!  Should you have any questions or other tips, you can post them here!

Edited February 28, 2014 by Hybrys

[Belloc 6]

I'm not sure how useful it is, but you can run Scholo on heroic for the buff in the classroom (invis pot area) before doing the challenge mode, since it sounds like you might be skipping it with this guide.

Edited February 28, 2014 by Belloc

[Hybrys 199]

I'm not sure how useful it is, but you can run Scholo on heroic for the buff in the classroom (invis pot area) before doing the challenge mode, since it sounds like you might be skipping it with this guide.

It's typically not even worth the time to do it, as it only affects the 'test room' enemies on Darkmaster Gandling, and those go down fast enough.  I get them down on my shaman in 5 casts, compared to 4 casts when I used the Polyformic Acid Vial.