Artifact quests, difficulty

[Normie]

I'm not complaining about the difficulty of the artifact quests but I think some players (don't know how many) will be surprised at it.

Here are some of my thoughts:

* LOL when taking a character with action bar half empty because spells gone, into an artifact quest. Fire mage was kind of fun because I was at about 10% HP pretty much forever and somehow scrambling to find the right keys (and finding/dropping spells onto my bar in the process) until finally the "boss" got me. I thought that quest in particular was *exquisitely* tuned because the incoming not easily avoidable damage was very, very closely aligned with what ice barrier can absorb.

* Disc was easy because dude you're healing can't die. Ehhhh might have been hard if he could die, but then if you didn't die, it would be strange, because there would be no one to tell you where to go next. Maybe you would have to resurrect dude.

* This is a much MUCH better way to conduct a basic skills check on a player than PG. I do like PG in a way, but it needs variety and rewards.

* The difficulty will be shocking to some new players. Not really sure how I feel about that. Maybe you can fail your way through the quests with 10-20 resurrects? No idea.

* It's certainly not on the order of difficulty/nuisance of some things in MoP, for example some of the un-nerfed legendary quests/scenarios, and definitely not something you would prefer to use a guide for, like green fire early on with crappy gear.

[Nefarious Tea]

Maybe... make sure you have all your spells on your bars and know where they are and what they do before you start questing in current content?

[Darsyek]

Fire mage was kind of fun because I was at about 10% HP pretty much forever and...was *exquisitely* tuned because the incoming not easily avoidable damage was very, very closely aligned with what ice barrier can absorb.

Perhaps I'm an exception to this statement, but while I was doing the artifact quest on my Fire mage, I never dropped below about 60% health, if that. And I wasn't even making very good use of my ice barrier because I didn't particularly feel the need for it. As a mage, regardless of the spec, you're going to be squishy and you have to know how to play around that. Yeah, if you're just standing in one spot casting while you're being wailed on, you'll probably find yourself with not a lot of health. But, that's what Frost Nova and Dragon Breath are for. Get some distance, cast some spells, lock the enemies in place, and repeat. Truth be told, I didn't find any of the artifact quests to be particularly challenging at all.