Everything wrong with Mage Tower

Community General Discussion
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OK so first things - I did the MT for my main on day 3 or so of Legion timewalking… I’m now writing here after a while just to state what in my opinion was wrong with this thing. So it’s not a whiny post of someone who failed. It’s a whiny post of someone who completed it but still feels mad about the whole thing.

OK so it’s good there’s something challenging for a solo content. All good - no free stuff BUT it was challenging for all the wrong reasons.

First of all, it was more challenging than it was in Legion. WAY more challenging. Why?

POOR SCALING
the scaling was horrible. Having very good gear in SL did nothing in Mage Tower. You were basically forced into getting “timewalking gear”" but they at the same time disabled every “fun” thing you could have… so it was all down to sockets. But you can’t even farm sockets since they are random. Luckily, I had a bunch of old tier sets in my bank and void storage and I managed to get a bunch of sockets (not all tho). Also, for reasons unknown I kept the unstable arcanocrystal as a trophy so it was useful… BUT in the original MT you could use 2 Legion legendaries and now? No SL leggo, no legion leggos… you were gutted. All about sockets and enchants >.>
And guess what? Old gems gave more stats than current best SL gems. That’s just annoying*. It’s not challenging to buy an old gem - it’s an inconvenience.* I didn’t buy old gems since I had old socketed in the gear I hoarded (I’m a hoarder) - but many people sure had troubles or had to spend tons of gold for BiS gems. I saw them going for 10-15k per gem which is ridiculous. Why would you scale things so badly that your best SL gear is semi-useless?
But that’s not all about scaling. I read a wowhead guide saying that SL pots/food are the best but do you know what I discovered? That WARLORDS OF DRAENOR food/pots give MORE STATS than bfa/SL ones… holy hell that was so stupid. Luckily, again, I had tons of draenor herbs so I could make tons of draenic intellect pots but it was just dumb that you have to find out … loopholes, possibly coding mistakes… they didn’t code the scaling properly at all. This was infuriating to me because I wasted tries with expensive SL pots instead of using cheap draenor ones from the start. And the potion was actually crucial to kill Raest so it’s really more than just an annoying issue.
And don’t make me start on the fact the hp of NPCs in the challenge were apparently way higher than in the original challenge (as I read, I don’t know that for sure but it sure seemed this way - I remember it was easier in Legion)

You are also, for some reason, gutted of all your borrowed power, which is bad. Why? Because our characters are “balanced” with borrowed powers in mind. Some of them are crucial for your character - you get used to having them… no other timewalking takes that away from you… and suddenly you are stripped off all your power and that feels SUPER BAD. Just idk, give npcs more hp or something but don’t try to fake a challenge by gutting our characters like that. It just feels bad and serves very little purpose. Back in Legion we had artifact power and 2 leggos and now nothing? Soulbinds are like artifact powers. Why are we stripped of that Idk. It felt super bad and not fun at all. I was annoyed.

RNG
OK, I know – RNG is the staple element of WoW but it was absolutely infuriating when RNG wasted my tries. I did the frost mage challenge, arguably the best class for it, and I agree with that. But even as a frost mage some of my tries were absolutely thrashed by bad RNG, i.e. Raest spawning demons in the most inconvenient of locations - in some tries I had demons all over the place with nowhere to kite and simply impossible to AoE them all… so I was ran over by spawns. In other tries they were spawned in most convenient locations (behind Raest or the bigger group of demons) and these tries were relatively “easy”.
Same goes for the rune of summoning sometimes spawning under mobs where it was even hard to send the elemental to -becuase you kept targeting demons lol. Also, the intermission phase - if he spawned demons on you, making you move, you would lose precious dps… and ironically it could go down to 15-20% total hp difference on “lucky” try vs “unlucky” try. This all made for a very unfun and frustrating experience because not only you had to do everything perfectly… but also count on luck…

After completing that one challenge I decided simply not to do any other because it’s not worth my time, not worth the frustration and not worth getting socket gear on alts just to complete a challenged designed with a lot of flaws…

Very bad experience for me, overall. And I usually like the challenge but it needs to be consistent… and logical. Stripping characters off their power, making gear useless etc. is just a very, very bad approach.

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This i agree, i don’t get what’s the point of disabling certain effects while leaving Sockets and certain items with completely broken scaling working.

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What items do you think about? What did I miss? xD

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The scaling is 100% screwed.

Did it in Legion.
Had 80 attempts on Druid Guardian MT wiping at 4 - 10% now.
Put on 3 bits of Timewalking gear.
Did it first try.

It’s not a happy victory. It proved what I was saying before when people were constantly screaming “noo nooo ur just baaad ur just baaad gut giiddd!!!”

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I also did it on “1st try after upgrading gear a little more” ;p and it wasn’t a happy victory. More like “yeah whatever duck this thing”

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I smashed my face against it for 2 weeks with my druid. Full socket with +4agi gems all around. Finally got that lucky pull after about 280 pulls (some didn’t count on DBM for who knows what reasons). Using full BFA consumes, scrolls, augment runes, good etc.
On my winning round took 3 annihilates to the face, and popped SIX orbs, talk about lucky RNG.
When they were doing the final post fight RP, a new set of nether horrors spawned and went for Velen, had I been dead they would have killed him and bricked the run no doubt.
Talk about bugs and RNG.

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Eh I don’t remember names but I saw a lot of people testing some specific trinket that were doing insane damage.

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what’s Timewalking gear?
you mean literally timewalking gear, or just old gear with sockets

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Pod trinket from Nightmare raid 1st boss and Gaze of Sethe from WoD raid, which is an intellect trinket are the best combo for bear druids.

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he obviously means old gear with sockets haha

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No I mean, i have seen a couple of garrison items, a Timeless island one.

I really don’t remember their names tho because they were such strange trinket.

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Oh sorry; the Nethershard helmet from the woman at the tower, the Ursoc melee weapon legendries, and the Seed from Emerald Nightmare first boss.

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you mean Dauntless helmet?
I understand the other two, but is the helmet somehow special from the other dauntless (“nethershard”) items?
It has random stats, right?

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from interesting items, I used Terror from Below trinket - it did pretty good damage. I used it mostly because I had it with a socket but the damage was really nice.

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Yeah the Dauntless helm had Versatility on it, which my SL helm didn’t - I made another forum post about how it’s Versatility that’s the key for Guardian MT, when people keep linking ‘see people did it in green gear you just suck!’ or ‘so what gear doesn’t matter only skill!’ and people starting going “lol u bad git gud!!!”

Put on some Vers gear.
Suddenly can do it first try after 78 wipes.

Actual joke.

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is it better than Agility? I have some Vers gear, but currently I’m trying with Azerite pieces… and I got Kruul to 5%.

I have like 14% Vers

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I ended up only having 13% Vers in the end.

If you’re wiping at 4 - 5% and 1 Orb is still up, then that’s the reason you’re wiping. If you can just pop that final orb, you’ll do it, even if your HP is like 80%.

Try to keep Kruul tanked at the edges of the room while moving around the edges to doge out his AoE (and make the Infernals move toward the edge, rather than the middle). Wait for Lasers to come out, wait for Portals to open, wait for Adds to run toward Velen THEN run to Velen, Thrash to pick up the adds, IMMEDIATELY run back out to the edge again.

This prevented so much AoE And Infernals being in the center so when it -was- time to run and pop an Orb, I didn’t have lasers + infernals + Kruul AoE all over the floor.

In my kill I got Kruul to 5%, adds were coming up, 1 more Orb was up. I stampeding roared to the Orb, popped it, ran to Kruul and laid everything I had left into him, including using Maul to dump rage as DPS into him, as I knew the next Annihilation will just kill me anyway, no point putting it into Ironfur etc.

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Might be.
You kinda guessed what I am doing wrong, my issue is than when I try to kite them, I won’t make it to the orb in time.
And when I hang out near orb, I’m dying and flying out of platform.

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Try to keep Kruul on the edge, only run into the middle as the Netherspawn run to Velen, pick them up, immediately DPS and run to the edge (unless you absolutely need to pop an orb during that time) but never wait around in the middle, or the Infernals will slow-walk there and screw you over later on.

Then if he’s at 5%, an Orb is up - that’s go time, forget what your HP is. Stampeding roar, get to that last Orb (WAIT for the Lasers if you have to, don’t risk getting shoved around while trying to pop it), then DPS everything into Kruul (forget cleaving adds, or using Ironfur, just everything into Kruul while everyone is stunned) as if you’re on 4 stacks the next Annihilation will be killing you anyway.

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Alright! Got it.
I died in process, but I finished it! :smiley:

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