The Crusaders' Coliseum: Downing the Black Knight
Posted by 
pixiestixy on Thursday, August 13, 2009 - 13 Comments Tags: 3:2, 5-man, argent tournament, army of dead, black knight, call of the crusade, crusaders coliseum, dungeon, eadric, exploding ghoul, forsaken, joust, normal mode, skeleton, trial of the champion, wraith
pixiestixy on Thursday, August 13, 2009 - 13 Comments Tags: 3:2, 5-man, argent tournament, army of dead, black knight, call of the crusade, crusaders coliseum, dungeon, eadric, exploding ghoul, forsaken, joust, normal mode, skeleton, trial of the champion, wraith 
It was the Friday after patch day, and my buddies in our small guild were itching to try out some of the new 3.2 content. Considering there were five of us online, we thought the best place to start would be besting the Black Knight in the new 5-player dungeon, Trial of the Champion, in the Crusaders' Coliseum.Here's the lineup: Warrior tank, Paladin DPS, Warlock DPS, Shaman Healer - all level 80s, and my lonely level 79 Rogue.
I'll be the first to admit that we weren't super-well prepared for this dungeon, even on normal mode. One of us had never jousted before, and I'm still getting used to the shield-break, charge and thrust rotation while mounted with a lance. So I was a little unsure of what we were getting ourselves into when the dungeon began and we had to mount up and face several waves of javelin-wielding champions. But the strategy was pretty straight-forward: focus on one at a time until they are dismounted, then trample them to prevent them from getting back up. Then it's on to the hand-to-hand combat.
Once through this set, you go on to encounters with several more argent trash followed by a nice fight with either Eadric the Pure or Argent Confessor Paletress. It was Eadric for us. Not the smoothest of kills; he's a bit tricky right at first before the tank picks up aggro, and even after that has an annoying Vengeance buff causing him to crit often. But we kept on him and took him out. Well, took him down to 1 HP, anyway. Then he ran away, like the bitch he his, but not before throwing in his loot chest. Thanks.
Finally, on to the main event: The Black Knight. From what I can gather from the Project Lore forums, it appears that several of us here already have tried out this new dungeon, but if you haven't and dislike spoilers you may want to stop reading here!This guy doesn't like to stay dead - he comes at you in three phases. And that's where my relatively inexperienced group wiped several times before we got the hang of things. The Black Knight starts out as a forsaken, then a skeleton and finally a wraith. Probably the most trouble we experienced was in the second phase when he started summoning an exploding Army of Dead. We talked through a couple of possible strategies - kiting the Black Knight to avoid the trash Ghoul Explosion, or throw some nice AoEs to kill the ghouls before they explode all over you. Neither of those seemed to be working for us, so we instead just ignored the jerks and focused all of our attention on the main battle at hand. It worked. When we downed the Black Knight in that form and saw the ghouls channeling their explodey spell, we just ran away.
From there, the boss enters wraith form, this time without any adds. He consistently casts Marked for Death on his enemies, which increases their magical damage two fold, and can make things sticky if you drag out the fight too long. Each DPSer pulled out all the stops at this point, and finally the Black Knight was downed... for good this time.
The best part: My very first purple item (/dance), and a pretty darn good one at that, at least for a 5-man on normal difficulty. Now I just have to finish off my last half-level to 80 so I can equip this beauty - Uruka's Band of Zeal.
Overall, I'd say the coliseum is about what I expected. Granted, I haven't checked out Trial of the Crusader yet (beyond watching Juggy and the TRS Guild take it on), but got a decent preview of that through the smaller battle. It's pretty short and to-the-point, which to some may be a disappointment. Others say they've felt underwhelmed by the small scale of the coliseum itself. And I can see that point. But as for me, I was happy with it, and plan to keep running it to get more loots! Hopefully next time, it'll go a bit smoother!
Any of you who have tried out the Crusaders' Coliseum so far? What are your impressions of either instance?
Reader Comments (13)
Grats on your loot. that is the only item i need from reg and it is rather annoying since all my other gear is a little bit o Naxx, OS, Ulduar & emblems.
wait till you can run it on heroic, those battles are even more fun!
Grats! and thanks for the strat ;o
I thought the instance was really fun..especially fighting the pally boss...i love throwing that damn hammer back at him! Still havent got the achieve for it yet...
We found (after completing this instance several times) a shadow priest very handy for dealing with the Army of Dead that the black night unleases on you. They can AOE them down very quickly leaving everyone else to focus on the boss. ;)
I've got a group of folks in the PL Fan guild who run it almost on a daily basis. I(who just recently hit lvl80, monday to be exact) love it,i wasnt too sure about the jousting part myself, since i am completly horrible at it. But we brevailed. the only part that we had trouble with was the Black night part. The first phase was a breeze,but that ended quickly on the second, we wiped multiple times before we tried the ignore the adds strat. that worked, i still havent beaten him on heroic yet, but we are working on it. the main issue we have noticed is that our healers are burning through mana like its water. But in all happiness, the next night we were schedualed to do Nax10, but to my suprise it changed to Ulduar 10! i had no clue what i was doing and i had a blast! we wiped on FL once than made it all the way to the guy with the two arms. we wiped a few times and called it a night. What a great night that was!
@ Vayder
"...made it all the way to that guy with two arms..."
I believe you are referring to Kologarn. The boss with the annoying eye beams and the breakable arms.
i beat the black night on herioc it was a random grouped 5 strangers gathered frakly i found the lengh of the instance disappointing 10 minets and done but jousting wwas the best part of the instance horses charging left and right those spears flying e verywhear and me trying to stay aloof enough to be able to charge and trying to make sure taht it is a direct blow everytime i run teh instance i make a make i a game that i get though the whole incounter wit hthe horse i started with i end up being a target dumy a distrection i run around the field with one of the champions chasing me and one of my party mats try to give it to him/heras a rogue i usaly try to take out the healr first by i grown to learn that it doest realy matter the final medetion in the second fight is realy annoying killed me a few times when first did it black knight showing up was a suprise to me because i was under the impression that the black knight was dead but i shook it of and went all out on the black knight his first phase died all to fast but his second phase ghoul phase though me for a loop i was not ready for zombies blowing up all around me but i sovived i sprinted out of the circle of explodign zombies i was in and focused all attacks on BN finnaly going down and rising aas one of those ghost thing and taking him down for good igot a very nice mace from the first i did it a mace taht went perfetly with a fist wapon igot back at naxx 10 i allways wanted to go combat and now i had the wapons for it trial of the crusader was a diffrent story my guld wasnt even able to get past the worms
Ive both tanked and dps'd this heroic 5 man.
I enjoy it, it is interesting considering the story behind it. Not to mention the loot. Omg, the loot is up in par with naxx 25 on heroic difficulty.
I grabbed the Edge of Ruin for my paladin who was still weilding a titansteel destroyer, and instantly my dps went from about 3900 to 4300. haha.
oh yeah... ToC what great place to be
I've only dinged 80 the day b4 the patch and was stillwearing dungeon blues unchanted and not very gemmed.... imagine my joy when i got 3 items on my first run (wich only wiped once at dismount).
It took me 2 days (5-6 or more runs of the place) till i had the nerve to move on from ToC normal and rep farming, to hc's
havent missed a CD on ToC hc since then (well yesterday i was unable to play all day..) and now i have full superior for all 3 gear sets and 5 213 items and 3 badges, (OFC 90% of my items are from ToC normal or hc)
Now im just farmin normal for the plate gloves and that ring (damn u pixiestixy)
To Cocopuff
Did you write that with your dick? It was so full of mistakes that I couldn't read more than three words without having to re-evaluate. It gave me a headache to try and read that crap. Thanks for ruining my day :P
Kwon im glad ur day got ruined and i hope the rest of ur life get ruined to, With the attitude u got im surprised that ur still alive tbh
@Kwon: Yes, it is a bit hard to read. But i hink it says more about you when you let it ruin your day.... You must have OCD or something brah.
@ Kwon
wow dude, I have to say I did laugh when you asked if he wrote it with his dick but seriously your literary abilities suck balls if you're being serious.
Anyhow onto things more relevant.
I personally love the new dungeon. As a normal dungeon the loot is still pretty fantastic but on heroic it's completely off the hook, just picked up edge of ruin and it's pretty awesome. It's worth farming just on normal mode if you're still doing pre-heroics to gear up because the gear on normal mode stands up to most heroic gear and naxx 10 gear in it's own right and the dungeon itself only takes around 15 mins to do in total if you've got a good group. Very cool stuff indeed. ^^