Challenge mode Gold complete. Disc Priest.

Priest Challenge Mode Set

This week my group and I completed our Challenge Mode Golds. By completing Gold you automatically complete Bronze and Silver so obtain all of the rewards.

Rewards.

Bronze - Title. The Undaunted
Silver - Pandaren Phoenix mount. Which you can see the in the screenshot above. You can only chose one. I went with Emerald. In 6.0 if you have one mount you'll be rewarded with all of them.
Gold - Class specific armor set. Transmog only, it has no stats. Challengers Path ability in your spell book. Which allows you to teleport to the entrance of each of the challenge modes you've completed on Gold.
Completing each of the Challenge Modes on Gold in a guild group will also reward you with Thundering Serpent Hatchling pet which you can purchase from the guild vendor.

What are Challenge modes?

If you haven't yet done Challenge modes, I urge you to do them as they're incredibly fun!
Challenge Modes are timed heroic instance runs. They are however not just super fast heroics. They're heroics on steroids. Any gear over 463 will be scaled down to that level. Meaning you can't just bullshit your way through them with superior gear.

In terms of gear I didn't go out of my way to gather a BiS I had a few older pieces which I used. While your gear is scaled down gems aren't so I just went with the pieces which had the most gem slots.

Challenge mode. Disc PoV.

When you enter the instance on the Challenge Mode setting you're faced with a wall and an orb. Clicking the orb will give you a five second count down and then the wall will go down. On the right hand side of your screen you'll be given an objective.

Challenge mode. Disc PoV.

Once you begin a timer will also be added to the right hand side of your screen showing you how much time you have left to complete the instance.

The first two instances we did were Temple of the Jade Serpent and Gate of the Setting Sun which I did as Holy but then switched to Disc for the rest. They're all completable as Holy I just wanted to try them as Disc and also to help out with DPS during low damage parts.

I wouldn't say that the Challenge modes were difficult. They were challenging and a little bit stressful in parts but certainly not what I'd call hard. I was incredibly nervous going into our first one. Gate of the Setting Sun which has the bomber-man part at the very beginning, these bombs will one-two shot you. People's deaths weren't my fault but as the healer they felt like they were. We must have wiped on that first part about 12 times with me proclaiming "I'm not good enough to do these!" but once we all stopped being bad at life they went smoothly. We had quite a few wipes at the beginning of Scarlet Halls due to a bug, mobs not resetting properly. At the beginning you have to use the buckets of meat on the NPC and let the dogs chomp on him, however if he's stunned the buckets don't seem to work correctly. It took us a few tries to figure out him being stunned was causing the problem. Of course we were only going for gold and not going for realm best times so I suspect that would increase the difficulty if you were pulling more mobs, rapidly.

Bosses were easy but the trash hit like trucks wielding trucks and required ample cool down usage. Unfortunately our Tank didn't have a mic which made things a bit more interesting! Particularly the trash at the beginning of Temple of the Jade Serpent, mobs before and after the second boss in Scarlet Monastery for example. Thankfully my boyfriend is a great Paladin and helped out with some of his own cool downs.

I'm really glad we got a chance to do them before they go away and hopefully we'll start challenge modes much earlier in WoD so we get a chance to try for some more competitive times.

Priest Challenge mode set