ARTIFACT CHALLENGE Salt thread

[Andromedes]

Beat me to it.

It's completely optional content that Blizzard decided to release early to allow players to tackle it undergeared. If it's "too hard" for someone, maybe that someone should just wait for the raids to release instead of whining.

"How dare Blizzard give me something to do right now!?!"

Yeah, its too hard for me, because i couldnt bug out Variss(tank boss), and as a prot pala my boss has 80M HP and other tanks boss has 40M HP. I am so fucking worthless.

[Kalador]

Yeah, its too hard for me, because i couldnt bug out Variss(tank boss), and as a prot pala my boss has 80M HP and other tanks boss has 40M HP. I am so fucking worthless.

good news is they hotfixed the druid bug for the tank one... i don't mind it being to hard for current gear, but it's kinda shit when a class can just break the boss via somthing as simple as opening in cat form/ use balance affinity. It's kinda insane they didn't tested that...

[Deleted]

Maybe tanking isn't as challenging as ya'll make it out to be, and perhaps rdps is already used to a higher caliber and thus more prepared for how "challenging" it is. I am not a mythic raider by any means. Managing the cluster fuck that is most mythic raids (because Blizzard thinks that equates to fun) is far more difficult than what is going on here. Even the warlock green fire quest was more to manage. If you are a mythic raider... this shouldn't be difficult at all.

This sounds encouraging. Now I just need to get my gear to 910.

[Marrilaife]

There are pros and cons with every system.

1) They wanted to less skilled do it eventually with more gear, so no item scalling.
2) They can't just tune it around 880, because they wanted to it be challenge for everyone.

If you are solo player, just wait for 7.3/7.3.5 catch up gear.

The biggest con of gear scaling is:
1. If they scale the mobs to your ilvl it would be again "lololol unequip your ring / vendor your bracer ez pz"
2. If they scale you down people would find optimal "twinked" gear setup like for timewalking and you'd get big disparity between these who have the "perfect setup" and those who don't, and it will be harder to get these perfect items than just "up your ilvl". Atm it's still a factor of having "correct legendaries" and so on, but as time passes, this will be less of an issue.

Could it not have been tuned around mechanics and your gear gets normalized? The mechanics alone seem to be tricky and challenging already.
Ok, I guess the concept is that you should have shown dedication to your class by maining it and raiding on it for this skin (which seems to have worked for Brawlers guild, why else would Blizzard keep putting in this kind of design?....)

Pointed out flaws of scaling, now all the QQ you have to raid to get gear, no you don't, there is this thing named mythic+ that isn't raiding, also there is a nethershard vendor, the higher tokens have a chance to grant you any raiding, dungeon, pvp or legendary item, they're 880+ with chance of titanforge like everything in the game, yes, it's a long grind but no one said it's gonna be easy. Easy you can buy a NH HC boost / M+ boost.

Not to sound rude but that sounds much easier than the Fury Warr fight imo

Yep, well, Xylem / Agatha seem to be done by less people overall than the other 3, the twins kinda depends how many kiting tools your class has, I've seen tons of boomkins bragging about it so it can't be that hard.

My gripe is healing / tanking scenario seem to be tuned around higher gear than the dps ones, I mean requiring 10-20 ilvl more when comparing people who did them. At least twins / sigryn / feltotem ones people reported doing sub 900 ilvl, even as low as 880. And each of them has 1-shot mechanics so it's not that some require higher gear but are offset by less mechanics.

[Stardrift]

So, you're mad they didn't wait until the raid is released with releasing these challenges? Why, exactly? Because noe people who are better than you will get it done before you?

I'm speechless.

Again, you all act like this challenge is hard, when all it is is just big numbers. It takes no skill when you're someone with good selfhealing/absorption abilities. When you're playing a class that doesn't have those abilities, you're fucked until the new raid comes out. That is unless you're mythic geared.

[Deleted]

The tank challenge.... oh boy.

For everyone not a DH/druid, it's brutal. Although it's brutal for them too in the sense that the others are fighting a near impossible encounter, as of right now.

[Asrialol]

Again, you all act like this challenge is hard, when all it is is just big numbers. It takes no skill when you're someone with good selfhealing/absorption abilities. When you're playing a class that doesn't have those abilities, you're fucked until the new raid comes out. That is unless you're mythic geared.

And it's tuned for mythic geared players. The issue is?

[caervek]

Learn the fight and get better at the mechanics.

The issue is the difficulty doesn't come from the mechanics, it comes from it being solo content with tuning being aimed for an iLevel derived from doing high end group content.

That's like making an LFR boss that requires the whole raid to be mythic geared lol, no wonder everyone who cares is raging ^^ (I don't my weapon looks terrible).

[Fleckens]

The shadow priest one feels a bit unfair. Its main focus is on AoE damage, burst damage and heavy movement mainly. 3 aspects that SP's are pretty horrid at. Even then, if it was just that I wouldn't mind, but the fact that it's shared with other classes/specs that can do at least 1-2 out of those 3 per default makes me a bit salty.

It's not an aoe fight, you can dot the adds if you wish and use AS+misery but it's not really needed, and we are actually one of the best casters at movement. Not sure how it is for boomkin and mm hunter but pretty sure it's easier for us than mages and warlocks at least, maybe on par with warlock if they have the correct legendary. Obviously gear difference(908 priest vs 895 mage) but I did it on second try on priest but haven't managed to do it on mage after over 20 tries and while I'm sure I could do it if I had the gear on mage equal to my priest It would still be harder as priest with enough gear was extremely easy.

[Feral Druid ist Op]

You can cheese a lot of stuff with Prydaz and leech legendaries/gear on the DPS challenge did it on 908 Ilvl.

[Deleted]

as a 885 frost mage what can i do except give up? i dont intent to start heroic raiding just to finish this shit lol. gg blizz im pissed af. add more solo content exclusive for raiders pls lol

[Deleted]

I like the challenge difficulty (877 Assassination Rogue) as it was fun learning the mechanics over a few attempts. My only gripe with it, is their claim that it is "skill" based. If a fight is not supposed to be gear based then it should not have an enrage mechanic. Most people i have seen finish it are in the ilvl 900's which is a bit high for a supposedly -solo- artifact appearance given no solo content really gives that high gear. Only thing i would change is get rid of the 10 minute enrage and leave the difficulty.

This is a really good point.

To be clear, i am nto among the ones who want this skin the first day it's out, wuold be idiotic.

But this post points out something important. As a "solo challange", this shuold be doable by someone who only do "solo" actvities. And it's pretty clear that having Myt raid gear, the epitome of gruop activity, makes this fights very very smooth. Now, since the "solo" activities are essentially World Quest, unless you are a lucky ass it's almost impossible to have a 900 ilvl gear, or even 890.

Probably Blizzard shuold have tuned this more like a skill check fights, more like the green fire quest in MoP. Now, before you jump at me, it's true that having better gear made the MoP quest easier, but not at this level (i did it when it was current). In that fight, executing strategy was the 90% of success (remember portals, pillars, enslave demon and so on).

Now, before the other half of the MMO-champion crowd jumps at me, it's true that we can call Raid Finder a "solo activities", and maybe Blizzard tuned this fight for a ToS LFR level, with ToS trinkets and ToS tier set.

TLDR: it's not a real solo challenge, becasue you can't do it by "pure" skill and with pure "solo activities gear" AT MOMENT. This doesn't mean everyone and their dog shuold get this the first day is out.

- - - Updated - - -

And it's tuned for mythic geared players. The issue is?

Read what i wrote, and it's a solo challenge, not a "solo mythic raiders challenge". Again, this doesn't mean everyone must get it the first day it's out.

Oh and i am not against mythic raiders getting this soon. They have all the rights to have them, they deserve it since they put more time in game that's for sure. But it shuold be more like this to be optimal:

A)mythic raider: finish the fight in 6 minute, after 6 attempt;

B)casual Joe n. 198 ilvl 876: finish the fight in 20 minute, in 100 attempt, almost getting an heart attack.

[Deadite]

And it's tuned for mythic geared players. The issue is?

They could have scaled it with gear and everyone could have participated? I have no interest in the content anyways but i think that is what people who are aggrieved by this are complaining about mainly.

[dirtlits]

Overall, I am actually fine with the difficulty since its mainly about almost playing perfect. It does seem like 898 is the ideal minimum item level (some have done it with less depending on the class) but once you hit about 905+ its a bit more doable, but still a challenge.

The difficulty feels right and I can see where there are little changes I can do that will help. Most mechanics are very punishing, but can worked around. I do think for the item level requirement; however, it may have been helpful for some players to know the minimum item level suggested. At least that would give some an idea that this is the minimum we recommend, but it will still be hard. Too many people are used to things being easy that are accessed by everyone. So its more of a shock that its this hard and requires some specific legendaries to be able to survive/dps it.

I have the worst experience with drops and very rarely have my items upgraded, so I am sitting at 887 on my Demon Hunter and 886 on my DK.

That been said, I did mess with the following several times:

Closing the Eye - Frost DK and Demon Hunter and getting into the 35% range before having issues.

As a frost DK, its not as bad because you only have to burst out a section, move forward and grip Xylem into place. What I found buggy sometimes was Xylem might move back into his razor ice piles. The fact I can IBF DS to heal within 2-3 DS is great, but you can always use DS just to help healing. So far as been great. Just use blinding sleet as an interrupt if needed. Using the legendary cloak and AMSing thru stuff really helps out of the healing for sure.

As a Demon Hunter, its way easier in ways than the frost dk as you can double jump rush out of the razor ice and over the beams. Just interrupt him and pull him back a bit more to the center so on the next round its easier to jump and CC him. I can say you have to have the legendary chest to survive using blur and the leech it provides and run a hybrid demonic build. (at least until last phase where you would swap to the other single target spec). I think with a bit more tries I should be able to get to the last phase, but question if I have the dps to kill the 3 adds in time.

An Impossible Foe - Unholy seems fine, but have to stun with the pet and asphyxiate the imps to stop the channel. I feel a bit more gear might be needed for me as I get to about 45%. I almost get overwhelmed with adds, or the don't setup my timing well enough to compensate for the lack of gear. I think with a bit more play I might be able to improve though.

[Snackpack]

They could have scaled it with gear and everyone could have participated? I have no interest in the content anyways but i think that is what people who are aggrieved by this are complaining about mainly.

Kinda baffled why they didn't make it scale with gear or put everyone at the same ilvl inside the scenario. And then to claim it is as purely skilled based, when in reality it is only skilled based once you have the gear for it to be physically possible.

[Braedan]

My gear is good enough for the frost mage challenge, but until I get 41 traits in my weapon it's impossible to keep the guy snared indefinitely. No fun

[Rioo]

I like the challenge difficulty (877 Assassination Rogue) as it was fun learning the mechanics over a few attempts. My only gripe with it, is their claim that it is "skill" based. If a fight is not supposed to be gear based then it should not have an enrage mechanic. Most people i have seen finish it are in the ilvl 900's which is a bit high for a supposedly -solo- artifact appearance given no solo content really gives that high gear. Only thing i would change is get rid of the 10 minute enrage and leave the difficulty.

If they would downscale everyones gear to a fixed ilvl the challenge would become either:
1. Too easy, as they always undertune content to appease scrubs.
2. Too hard for certain specs that scale bad with low ilvl. We saw it with Proving Grounds and druid in Mist where 20 druids in the world had completed 30 waves while like 2000 DKs had done the same at one point.

By just tuning it for a mediocre player in ToS gear it allows the really good players to complete it now, and eventually everyone else will get the skin too and Blizzard won't have to nerf it. Since buffs and nerfs are made to balance us around the current ilvl it should be less difference between specs this way than if everyone got downscaled to say 830.

[Marrilaife]

That's the thing isn't it? One guy points out the gear in scaling, the other would prefer it anyhow. That is why we have endless topics on everything. Didn't I QQed.

I didn't mean you in particular, just the general atmosphere of "omg this content is for mythic raiders only" and "why do I have to gear up in an MMO it should be all skill based gear should be irrelevant". I mean, literally they'd have to give you a stat template to prevent cheesing, and then it would mean some people would never be able to get this appearance if the tuning was tight - now at least they can say "I can't do it now but in a few weeks or months I will".

But yeah, you mentioned this "the concept is that you should have shown dedication to your class by maining it and raiding on it for this skin", thing is raiding as the only source of gear is not the case anymore. But in the general concept, I don't understand why people are so surprised / baffled / outraged (maybe not you in particular, but several posts on the subject) that stuff is gear-based, wasn't it like that since the dawn of WOW and MMOs in general?

Things like CMs and Timewalking showed in the past someone will always figure out a "BIS gear setup" and then you still have to "gear up" but in a different manner, which is more tedious as you need a second tweaked set of gear. Things like proving ground endless in WOD proved that unequipping your ring makes the difference between smooth sail and tough as nails.

And a template again has strong opponents of it, see in pvp - people complaining "why can't I customize which secondary stats I want to focus on?" and generally there was a lot of confusion with the system, why stuff in pvp works differently than "normal".

[RyanEX]

How could they? The challenges weren't tested on the PTR and as we know Blizzard's "internal testing" isn't as top knotch as it tries to make itself out to be.

Yet, people completed it.

Don't worry nerfs are already coming out so keep up the whine and they'll eventually make it as faceroll as lfr.

[Raiju]

Completed after 14 tries. Learn the fight and get better at the mechanics. It isn't a DPS race. Spec into the right talents. It's rinse and repeat.

grats on having an easy fight?