So while I already reacted in many other topics on this issue, I decided to create new own from my POV.
Original Mage Tower (Legion)
I actually enjoyed those. While players say you could overgear them at the end, you still had to follow the mechanics… it’s just that you didn’t have to follow them for very long as your dps got stronger… now we can ask a question whether it’s really great to have to do mechanics 10 minutes in a row without a mistake, or whether it’s more reasonable to do them in half as much time.
To me I believe latter is more reasonable. While the former might sound as more skillful, to me it sounds like more frustrating. Eventually it became less frustrating, but still challenging. I knew many ppl who didn’t complete them.
Expectation
Before I get to my experience, I thought I’d mention my expectation. Since they mentioned return of Mage Tower I expected to relive the experience I had. To learn mechanics, to prepare, wipe many times, but eventually finishing it as I grasp the mechanics and learn them on some level.
I also expected I will be able to finish it on my main 2-3 classes and possibly give up on alts (I did try alts in Legion however and finished most of the specs I played).
I expected simply some content, after there has been none for so long.
My experience
I tried many attempts at Mage Tower as my Warlock, but it feels like I’m tickling boss and I have to pay attention for a long time. That itself is way too frustrating. Sure, playing well is fine, I play PvP and sometimes paying attention in PvP is also important… but even there you have little “pauses” etc. where you can relax for a bit, in a longer match (and by relaxing I don’t mean playing badly, but just not having to focus on stopping every single thing my enemy does).
I didn’t finish it yet. I don’t know if I will. But the issue is there is too much HP for the bosses and too much unavoidable damage. For example a cast that a worm guy does in Destro Warlock encounter, hits me for 1/3 HP. That cast is uninterruptable. As a Warlock healing back isn’t really something you can do very well and for a long time. Especially since you have to focus on so many other mechanics.
I don’t mind the mechanics however. I mind that the damage of melee attacks, unavoidable casts, unavoidable AoE, etc. is too high. And so is boss HP, when it takes ppl 8-10 minutes to actually finish it.
Summary
Currently it’s extremely frustrating experience. Difficult and frustrating aren’t necessarily tied to each other. Stuff can be hard and not frustrating. Stuff can be easy and still frustrating. This is unfortunately both hard and frustrating.
Unavoidable damage feels overtuned.
It takes unreasonably long. Challenges in my opinion should take around 5-6 minutes. Possibly with the exception of healing challenge. That one does have breaks.
I feel it wasn’t clarified whether it’s gonna be purposefuly targetted at top 1% so other people won’t finish it and 99% aren’t supposed to even bother.
Most people didn’t get any content from this. Unfortunately. They leave frustrated.
I also decided to upload my attempt, if you’re interested. It’s one of my better ones, not best, far from worst.
Also I was pretty lucky. When the worm digs into the ground and moves, he’s too fast to avoid and so is the Earthquake when the stalactite (or stalagnite or whatever) spawns above your head.
In this try even if you killed the Tauren you would have wiped to the worm enrage. You need to focus more dmg on the worm and try to kill them at the same time.
Also it seems to take very long for you to remove worm shields. Try to stand so the worm charges to those rocks that drop down.
Also put Tauren on focus so you can always focus kick/coil the cast without paying that much attention to it.
Idk if you already do this put make a rotation in your mind on what you need to use to interrupt next and what mechanic happens next. The fight is extremely scripted and there is no enrage to worry about.
I’m not expert on the lock so I can’t really speak but you barely ever havoc the worm and you jump around endlessly even when not needed to avoid stuff which destroys your damage. Look at 5:03, you pop dark soul, get one havoc’d chaos bolt off on both, wiggle for most of your cd and then eventually get another off.
You need to seek or make opportunities to plant your feet and do damage.
There are alot of things to criticize Blizzard regarding the re-implementation of Mage Tower. However, Mage Tower for Destruction is easily doable and from your video I can spot alot of mistakes. I will list them here in case you want to learn from the mistakes and do the challange. I would advise you to do so as the Tmog is really beautiful.
You can interrupt the Sonic Scream from Jormog with Fear and thus avoid the damage. You occasionally do it; you can do it all the time. Just stay calm.
You can also fear Tugar itself and save your interrupt for the snake phase. Dealing with snakes, with Jormog’s movement and totem at the same time can be overwhelming. Thus, fearing Tugar’s Fel Burst means you can save your interrupt for Tugar during the snake phase. If things somehow go insanely wrong and you interrupt before the cast, you will still have your coil.
You didn’t pop your Infernal at the start? Pop it right away and start hitting Tugar. There is absolutely no reason to save your Infernal.
Don’t use Shadowburn as a means of “DPS” on the snakes. Spend the shards on 2x Rain of Fire, then use Shadowburn as a finisher and get these shards back.
Take potions with you. There are potions with 5 minute cooldown that restores, i believe, 5k HP. Can be a lifesaver and a turning point. Insanely cheap, buy from AH.
At around 5:20 that Chaos Bolt was a mistake. You always want to save up 2 or 3 shards before the snake phase begings. Thus, that way, you can Cata then quickly cast the 1st RoF then havoc and farm more shards and cast the 2nd RoF then finish them off with Shadowburn. (And again, at that phase you spent shadowburns as a means of doing damage)
Lastly; your haste seems a bit low? If you are missing pieces with no haste on it; you can simply walk to AH and get pieces with high haste distribution on it. Just make sure they at or above 50 ilvl.
All in all, that was a decent attempt and you can definitely take it down.
The problem is that you’re playing PvP while doing this fight. You probably have like 40% uptime because you jump around constantly and your positioning seems completely random.
When the snake is in the ground phase your only goal is to kill adds and put rocks between yourself and the snake (preferably 2 so its stacks drop as quicky as possible). You have a giant countdown for felburst but very often you opt for mortal coil or silence when you could just as easily fear and save your instant interrupts for when there are adds up.
This is a control fight now which it wasn’t in Legion when the enrage mechanic didn’t exist so it should feel a lot smoother once you get comfortable enough with the fight to focus on your positioning. The outgoing damage isn’t actually that high so good use of drain life should be enough to sustain you.
During combat, if you use the potion, it will have a 5 minute cooldown. After 5 mins, you can use it again so yes, you can use them multiple times during combat.
Alright I didn’t know that. I thought it works like HS.
I don’t even know how you can reach that. I had 27%, with food 29%. And you can see my gear on this char, I changed it specifically for the MT.
That said, and I appretiate the conversation, I still thinks my criticism of MT is valid.
Maybe the point that I didn’t mention is how gear dependant it is. Which is also terrible in my opinion. Basically it requires all sorts of consumables just for an attempt and to optimize your gear. When I did not do that, I didn’t even came close.
I checked the armory. Pieces you can improve upon;
Trinket: You can replace the highborne trinket with a basic haste trinket from the PvP honor vendor.
Ring: 1 of your rings have no haste at all. Keep in mind that fingers/rings have the highest secondary stat contribution. So thats alot of haste lost there.
Hands: 8 haste - 14 mastery. You can find an item with better haste distribution such as 12 haste - 10 mastery from the AH.
Head: Same with the hands piece.
With these changes, i believe you will hit around 32-33%, which should be a solid increase.
I did the destro challenge with way worse gear than you, 21% haste, forgot to use drums on kill, just +20 int flask and some piss mastery bufffood, no pot, no rune either. My warlock is scuffed, I lvl’d it 3 days ago to 60, after not playing it for 4+ years. If you play the mechanics properly, you do not need any gear at all. Haste obviously helps, so that you have more time to react to their casts, my fear cast time was 1.2s for comparison.
The worm always does the scream thing when he comes up from the ground, I’d always havoc him and double coil them to stop the first cast, then fear the worm on the 2. one. On my kill attempt I got maybe hit 4-5 times by the worm’s cast overall and not a single fel thingy from the tauren. I also made sure to keep curse of tongues up on both of them, the tauren and the worm, so I had plenty of time to fear the worm on the cast. The only unavoidable dmg in this encounter is their auto attacks, which barely go through your demon skin.
This is a perfect representation of why it shouldnt be nerfed. You don’t use havoc for the worm, you move a lot when you don’t have to, you don’t plan ahead in order to plant your feet and cast during CDs.
This, or any other mage tower problems are in majority of cases. It’s basics on how to play your class. No, you don’t need special gear, you just need to play your class better/the encounter better.
Everyone is focusing on his performance in the video instead of the feedback
HP is simply too high.
I completed it last night on monk, it took me almost double the time it took when I did it back in legion, with lower gear that what it was tuned for.
Ofc people are gonna critique his performance, whenever he complains that said content is too “hard”. Look at the way he moves his character, that’s the definition of being inefficient, so many dead globals. Furthermore, he clearly does not know all the mechanics of this fight and he’s asking for nerfs on it, in order to avoid having to learn how to deal with the “unavoidable damage” of the worm.
I have to agree with you on this one, Legion Mage Tower was far too easy, the hp pools should have been way higher back in the day.
I found most of them easy as well, but I’m a cutting edge raider and I’m not dumb enough to think that my level of skill should be considered the norm.
You’re a rank 1 glad, dude. Be serious. Of course you found it very easy. But you’re not even the 1%, you’re the 0.01% of players
But I’d argue that not all content in the game has to be tuned for every single player to be able to complete within an hour or two, especially if it’s optional cosmetic stuff. And yes, I get that there is content for hardcore players like us already in the game, but still I truly do believe that any skill level of player can complete the MT challenges, if they practice it enough. Sure, if you look at the 0.01% players, they might only need an hour or two, while a complete casual might end up having to do it for 10h+, but for good reason.
If people argue that the time limit on MT is stupid and it should be up more often or all the time, I have to agree with that. But nerfing it, in order to trivialize it, that’s where I disagree.
So how do you think it should be tuned then? Should every top 10% player just be able to 1 or 2 shot it and every top 50% player be done with it in 1 or 2 hours?
Ye, maybe. I 2shot ele+enhance and it felt really bland and boring. On my alts I had to progress through it for a bit and it was a lot of fun, but I guess it’s just me being selfish for wanting this to be a challenge for a player like myself.
