Mists of Pandaria Mogu'Shan Palace

Mogu’shan Palace is a level 87 dungeon that will be added to World of Warcraft with the release of the Mists of Pandaria expansion.  You will be able to find it along the eastern edge of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms zone. The Palace is part of the of a larger Mogu’shan complex that also includes the Mogu’shan Vaults which is a raid instance.

Mogu’shan Palace contains three separate boss encounters and many different trash pulls.  Since trash is fairly easy for most groups to deal with we will only focus on the boss encounters.

Mogu’shan Palace Encounter #1 - Trial of the King

Trial of the King - Abilities

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This encounter is made up of three separate bosses that you need to deal with in a random order. They are:

Kuai the Brute (The Gurthan Chief) – This boss attacks with fist weapons and sends out a pet called Mu’shiba.  Mu’shiba can tackle players and deal damage to them while holding them on the ground dealing damage over time. Kuai also has a shockwave attack that hits everyone in a frontal cone knocking them back.

Mining the Cunning (The Harthak Chief) – This boss attacks with wind and lightning.  He can summon wind dervishes that circle the room dealing damage and knocking players back.  He can also spin in place creating a hurricane which pulls players in and deals damage over time.  Lastly he can send out a lightning bolt at players, but this targets the player with agro.

Haiyan the Unstoppable (The Korgesh Chief) – This boss attacks with a two-handed weapon that can cause a mortal strike effect reducing healing on the victim.  He can also attack with two different fire based attacks.  The fire attacks are conflagrate and meteor.  Conflagrate hits a random target dealing damage over time and can transfer to another nearby target when it expires. The meteor ability hits an area for a large amount of damage and can either be avoided or grouped up into as it splits its damage to everyone in the area of effect.

Trial of the King - Strategy

This fight is fairly straight forward as you only need to deal with each of the mini-bosses one at a time, and since there are three of them for the encounter Blizzard left them with fairly simple mechanics.  The order in which you must fight them is random, so it may not be as they are listed in this guide, simply adjust as required.

When dealing with Kuai the important things to realize are for the tank to face him away from the group so that they are not hit with the shockwave and that the pet has no aggro table.  This means that DPS should deal with the pet first so that it isn’t attacking and stunning the healer.  Once the pet is dead the fight becomes much easier.

When dealing with Mining it is all about getting out of the whirlwind and avoiding the whirling dervishes.  Overall it is fairly simple and straight forward fight.

Last of the three is Haiyan and there are two ways to deal with him.  The first involves everyone other than the tank grouping up so that no one needs to move when the meteor strikes as you will all survive the damage since it is split, and the second is to stay separated so that conflagrate does not jump targets to easily.  If you choose to stay grouped, whoever gets conflagrate should spread out away from the others as soon as they are affected.  If you stay spread out, make sure you move quickly when a meteor is incoming or the damage will be very heavy and the healer may have a hard time keeping you up.

Mogu’shan Palace Encounter #2 – Gekkan

Gekkan - Abilities

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The Gekkan encounter is another very much like a multi-boss encounter. It is only really a single boss though called Gekkan but he brings with him four minions.  The minions are essentially more powerful versions of the trash that you encounter on the way to this fight, and make dealing with Gekkan himself interesting.

Gekkan – In addition to his own attacks Gekkan can inspire his troops.  He has an ability called reckless inspiration that grants a minion a 25% haste buff and makes them immune to most CC, but makes them suffer 25% additional damage.  When Gekkan is defeated he does a mass version of this ability that affects all remaining minnions.

Glintrok Ironhide – Has the ability called Iron Protector that reduces the damage taken by allies within 5 yards by 50%.

Glintrok Skulker – Has an ability to shank the enemy inflicting damage and stunning the player for 5 seconds.

Glintrok Oracle – Has an ability to heal all allies within 60 yards for a huge amount (roughly 150,000).

Glinktrok Hexxer – This minions main ability is a hex that inflicts shadow damage as a DOT and increases spell casting time by 25% for 20 seconds, this can stack up to 4 times.

Gekkan - Strategy

This fight is about crowd control and kill order, and while fairly simple and straightforward on normal mode will be critical on heroic mode.

Due to Gekkans ability to increase all of the minions damage and make them immune to CC upon his death the best strategy is to save him as the last kill and deal with all of the minions first.  Of the minions the two most dangerous are the Ironhide and Oracle.  Since the Ironhides damage debuff is such a small AOE and he has no ranged attacks he should be CC’ed with something like root away from the rest of the group.  The Oracle is a good first kill target due to its healing ability, and then move on to the others in either order.

Once it is down to just Gekkan and the Ironhide it is your choice on which to kill first.  I would still kill the Ironhide so that there is less incoming damage while dealing with it later, but either way works. 

Mogu’shan Palace Encounter #2 – Xin the Weaponmaster

Xin the Weaponmaster - Abilities

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Ground Slam – This is a frontal cone attack that deals damage and decreases armor by 25% for 20 seconds.  Worse yet the armor debuff stacks if you are hit multiple times.  It does have a long cast time though so can be avoided even by the tank, and should be.

Whirling Axes – Several axes will whirl around the room dealing damage to anyone that they catch as well as knocking you back.

Circle of Flames – This attack targets a random player, drawing a circle of flame around them, once the circle completes anyone one inside is hit for fire damage and thrown in the air.

Inciting Roar – This deals damage to everyone in the room, about 50,000 per person.

Blade Trap – Xin activates this when he is reduced to 66% health.  Blades will swing across the room along various paths dealing damage to anyone in their way.

Death from Above – Xin activates this once he is dropped to 33% health, from this point on in the fight the crossbows around the room will open up on a random player dealing 4,000 damage per second for the rest of the fight.

Xin the Weaponmaster - Strategy

This fight is straight forward, despite the number of things going on during the fight.  The tank must keep Xin facing away from the rest of the group so that they are not hit by the ground slam, while avoiding the ground slam themselves.

The rest of the players must pay attention to the different abilities being used and avoid as many as possible.  Really there is no reason that anyone should ever be hit by ground slam, whirling axes, or circle of flames. Once blade trap activates even that can be avoided most of the time, simply remember that when you need to cross it, do so quickly so that you only take a single tick of damage from it. 

Once Xin is dropped to 33% and death from above activates someone will be taking damage constantly so that is the time to start burning DPS cooldowns to get through it as quickly as possible. Overall it is a very fun fight with enough mechanics to keep it interesting, but all of them are simple enough that it amounts to “stay out of the crap on the floor”.

Overall opinion on Mogu’shan Palace

This instance has some really fun encounters in it with many interesting abilities.  It has been viewed as one of the favourite by players in the beta for good reason.  You get to the first boss encounter very quickly and then the other two are different and interesting.  The whole instance has definite flow and while easy enough on normal mode, promises some real challenge on heroic mode due to the mechanics in the fights.

 


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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