weapon appearance trial

[Venziir]

Its really tough! I've been close, but not quite there yet.

Yeah I'm not even close to close haha... I'll give it a go after I've rounded 900+

[sebax313]

i have used weak aura for enh challenge.
https://wago.io/NkOgaunhM
most important for me was tracking valkyrs and berserk buff uptime.

[Mzaj]

I managed to do enhancement trial with an ilvl of 886, but after over 50 tries.

[Bigcountry11782]

Got mine in 5 attempts. Have to say, I'm disappointed. I was expecting green fire level, this is far from "master your class" that they said, it's way too easy.

EDIT: Talking about Sigryn for the enhanc skin.

That is what i loved about the green fire quest.The boss was super punishing if you didn't do the fight right.You had to know the class very well.These challenges are more about how much gear you have and what legendaries you have.The funny thing is you could do the warlock fire quest in terrible gear and still down him but you had to do everything perfect.That is what these are missing.

[hulkgor]

yes they do so even closer to 7.3 it should still feel hard.

I don't think they do?

[Gunwolf]

That is what i loved about the green fire quest.The boss was super punishing if you didn't do the fight right.You had to know the class very well.These challenges are more about how much gear you have and what legendaries you have.The funny thing is you could do the warlock fire quest in terrible gear and still down him but you had to do everything perfect.That is what these are missing.

Yea, but u gotta consider that designing a class quest for warlocks is a bit easier since they are all 3 DPS specs so easy to make the encounter more specific. There are 12 classes with a variety of specs.... shaman has mdps, rdps, heals which means 3 diff scenarios compared to say rogue which is just all mdps. It would be hard to design that, which is why they went the route they did with like 6 or so difference scenarios. They are a bit simple technically, like for the enhance one u need a few basic tools such as a CC, snare, stun, interrupt.... but difficulty comes from how and when to use them along with managing all 3 mobs and stuff. The gear/legendaries thing is kinda true, u don't really need legendaries (but it makes it much easier) and I dunno why they didn't use scaling tech, maybe it was just easier to balance at a certain ilvl like 900 or 915, if people get it before then its more challenging but if fully geared in ToS it may be easier, which basically guarantees everyone will get the new skin at some point.

I just hope that they will see these trials as a good thing and try and design more in the future that are more class specific. Like how certain enemies may only be weak to flame shock, or using chain lightning on this mob will stun him for few sec, and stuff like that.

[ryklin]

well also in mop spellbooks were bigger, like I used every skill in spellbook in all of these and still didn't feel like I pressed too many buttons I wouldnt use in M+ (although I didn't use hex in the healer and ele ones)
also idk what people are saying I came back to mop and did greenfire at 580 with amp trinket and stuff and found it disappointingly simple
especially back in times when every class had tons of mobility, huge cc kits, and insane defensives
I really miss small niche spells like flames of xoroth and stormlash totem or elemental blast as resto too
idk what to say, maybe they could've enabled some pvp talents or something
I've always thought pruning was a mistake, but I've still liked raiding
I think they've acknowledged pruning has gone way too far, they just need to give more stuff back, and have with some classes already

and godqueen is far from a gear-check, like some max hp helps, but if you fuck up you die fast, it's just cheesable by keeping sigryn hexed as much as possible
the healer one is similar to godqueen in that regard, although gear helps with the ghosts in the last part, but if you arrange cd's well you should be fine
agatha though is dumb, like she's a full dps check to keep up with adds in every regard, with both the kite earthgrab strat or the stun and kill adds strat (which is ironically the lower dps check of the 2). but at least she for some reason is heavily cheesable with outdoor world buffs like wildfowl omelets

edit @Gunwolf: it wasn't even designed around just warlocks, it was designed around destro

[Gunwolf]

well also in mop spellbooks were bigger, like I used every skill in spellbook in all of these and still didn't feel like I pressed too many buttons I wouldnt use in M+ (although I didn't use hex in the healer and ele ones)
also idk what people are saying I came back to mop and did greenfire at 580 with amp trinket and stuff and found it disappointingly simple
especially back in times when every class had tons of mobility, huge cc kits, and insane defensives
I really miss small niche spells like flames of xoroth and stormlash totem or elemental blast as resto too
idk what to say, maybe they could've enabled some pvp talents or something
I've always thought pruning was a mistake, but I've still liked raiding
I think they've acknowledged pruning has gone way too far, they just need to give more stuff back, and have with some classes already

and godqueen is far from a gear-check, like some max hp helps, but if you fuck up you die fast, it's just cheesable by keeping sigryn hexed as much as possible
the healer one is similar to godqueen in that regard, although gear helps with the ghosts in the last part, but if you arrange cd's well you should be fine
agatha though is dumb, like she's a full dps check to keep up with adds in every regard, with both the kite earthgrab strat or the stun and kill adds strat (which is ironically the lower dps check of the 2). but at least she for some reason is heavily cheesable with outdoor world buffs like wildfowl omelets

edit @Gunwolf: it wasn't even designed around just warlocks, it was designed around destro

Yes, I miss many spells on my Shaman. Like when I play Resto, we have only CL for aoe... no magma totem anymore which isn't too big of a deal but they could have given us Fire Nova or something instead. For some reason they only gave us flame shock too, and took away Earth/Frost shock.... signature spells for a shaman (and sorely missed with the new explosive affix and our lack of instant damage spells). We did keep purge ofcourse, and resto still has wind shear making it the only healer with an interrupt... a ranged interrupt too, so I am thankful for that atleast. Then there is Bind Elemental.... which didn't get much use, I remember it being amazing when we first got it in Cata for stuff like Grim Batol (along with hex could CC 2 targets just on our own), plus it was fun to mess with Frost Mages and their water elem in pvp.

These challenges do make you play with a more PVP mindset.... gotta focus more on healing/defensives, CC, snares, interrupts. Most classes had to change their talents around from the typical PVE build to something more like a hybrid PVP build to take those utility talents.... like for Enhance, Rainfall which is almost never used, or Sundering which is great burst/utility and best for PVP but not PVE. So that was cool, giving you a reason to use underutilized talents.

I didn't know that about the warlock quest, but now that I think about it that makes sense since they were the only spec that used alot of the fire based spells. So I guess that meant they could make it even more specific to that spec. Did it have stuff similar to the hunter quest in vanilla where the enemy may have a buff or mechanic that is countered by a specific warlock spell? I think Blizz making a unique challenge for each spec is prob asking for too much.... but they could prob make one for each class, based off one of their dps specs. It wouldn't be ideal for everyone, esp a class like shaman who has different dps roles like melee or ranged which would leave one out if they only pick one, but better then nothing I think.

[Selah]

I had a bit of luck with the challenge, still didn't beat it but got pretty close. My biggest problem is that I'm only ilvl 880 and that's far too low I think to successfully beat it. I'll try every time the tower is up but I won't bet on beating it. I suspect that enhancement got the short straw with this one. I'll put down what I did and how I worked it, hopefully someone else will find it useful.

Legos: Roots of Shaladrassil, Eye of the Twisting Nether. Roots does so much passive healing, it's really hard to justify not taking it. I also have Spiritual Journey and Emalon's Charged Core but the survivability of Roots and the flat DPS boost of the ring are just far more beneficial than a 10% boost I might get once every 5 minutes, or the small boost to Feral Spirit CD time.

Talents: BF, Rainfall, Lightning Surge Totem, AS, Tempest, CS, and Landslide.
-BF is a flat DPS boost plus a massive maelstrom generation boost since there is a lot of disconnects during the fight and less time to spend building maelstrom.
-Rainfall has no costs and it adds more passive healing on a short CD. Saves a lot of emergency Healing Surges and mana for when you need them.
-Lightning Surge Totem helps stuns, elaboration below.
-AS gives the most DPS bang for your buck, especially when trying to burst down the absorb
-Tempest tends be most useful because of the constant disconnects and the need for a bit of burst damage regularly during the fight
-CS is great for when you have two stacked near each other, a good little DPS bump
-Landslide because it's Landslide and the other two suck.

The encounter itself isn't particularly complex. It's just a very reactionary fight and you have to stay focused and not miss a beat, the first time you do you die.
Hammer bro:
-Dodge hammers flying around
-Ghost Wolf away from whirlwind
-On enrage, immediately throw down Earthbind totem and kite whoever you're hitting on away from him. Once he escapes from Earthbind, throw down Lightning Surge and stun him. Once that breaks, if he starts to get close ghost wolf and run for the last couple seconds of his enrage.
-He can be stunned but not hexed.

Caster Bro:
-Watch for runes, Ghost Wolf to make sure you get to them before they pop. A lot of golden orbs pop around the rune spawn time, try to grab it if you need it. Also Ghost Wolf will generate a decent amount of Maelstrom while you run around.
-Save Doom Winds for his absorb, immediately pop it and hope you get some Tempest procs. Windshear the second his bubble pops
-Immune to stuns and hexes.
-Use Spirit Walk as needed if you missed the initial pop of the runes.
-If you're going to miss a rune and it's going to burst, Astral Shift will make it hurt a lot less. CD is long, make sure you use it only in dire circumstances.

Sig Bro:
-Can be hexed and stunned, however save hex for her nasty AoE. She yells something about her father's blood flowing through her. I'm seeing people saying keep her hexed for as long as possible. My only problem there is that she became immune to hex for a period of time and started to channel her AoE. Lightning Surge Totem will stop this but only for a few seconds, the second she's out of her stun she'll start tearing you apart again. This does mean you're taking more melee damage during the fight but Rainfall and Roots of Shaldrassil will negate the incoming damage.
-Valkyr you can't do anything about, hexed or stunned she'll still summon them. Not a particularly difficult skill by itself, can be a problem if there are runes and an enrage going. The second she summons them you have about 7 seconds to position yourself.

There is a bit of luck that goes into this fight right now. If you get runes, enrage, absorb, valkyr, and aoe, you will die. I got that combination a few times. I've been seeing the Rogues are having an easier time of it, which makes me think that this fight isn't very Shaman friendly. One other big note is that these three share damage, so the more cleave you can get going the better. Bloodlust/Heroism I haven't landed on a solid part to pop on, it seems like I got the most use out of it right in the beginning when sig stands between the two and I can pop hero and feral spirit and then crash lightning to cleave. Doesn't last long though because hammer bro enrages pretty early in the fight. Also, keep Healing Rain on CD. So much more healing you don't have to worry about, easily made it to 70% without worrying about my health.

[reauxmont]

Holy shit, all you guys finishing this in les than 10 attempts and call it 'pretty easy' must be gods. I've been playing WoW on and off since beta, and invested a solid amount of time in it, so I generelly don't consider myself a bad player, but this thing cost me a whole day. I think I finally got it in somewhere between 80-100 tries (as ~904 enh w/ chest/KJBW). There is no content in this game that is as unforgiving as the appearance challenge, where you need to stay focused for 7-9 minutes without having bossmods yell at you when something important happens.

[bloodhaven]

Holy shit, all you guys finishing this in les than 10 attempts and call it 'pretty easy' must be gods. I've been playing WoW on and off since beta, and invested a solid amount of time in it, so I generelly don't consider myself a bad player, but this thing cost me a whole day. I think I finally got it in somewhere between 80-100 tries (as ~904 enh w/ chest/KJBW). There is no content in this game that is as unforgiving as the appearance challenge, where you need to stay focused for 7-9 minutes without having bossmods yell at you when something important happens.

Preach, man. I got my ass handed to me like 50+ times before i got this shit down with 892ilevel, Prydaz+Emalons.

I found that they key to beating it was minimizing her time outside of a hex. Until my last few attempts, i waited for her to pop into demon form before using hex a third time, but invariably got rekt by the felfire pools and other mechanics. After that, i decided to wait 20 secs after the second hex (using capacitor in between to give me breathing room for the valk wall), and the proactively hexed her. At that point, both runebro and axebro were pretty low, and I managed to cleave them down relatively easily - even with runebro bubbling himself incessantly (and without CDs).

That proactive hex is key though.

[ryklin]

no, it's that we made it easy, like bloodhaven said, you minimize her time outside hex, and you essentially get a fight with no mechanics
and then there's still some luck to it like not getting a buggy rune or having her leave hex at a bad time
if you only hex her when she goes demon form or not as often, you hit this absolutely insane point where she does runes, wall, whirlwind or the super auto atttack damage thing, and demon form all at the same time and wipe

I hit that 3 times and died (died to not understnading runes, demon form on my 2nd), then my 6th try, I thought I'll just hex her 2-3 times, then give her 30s to DR out of it
and that attempt I got it after basically target dummy'ing for 6-7 minutes while occasionally moving to get runes or to get away from the axe guy
also lust early, once she gets to around 50% (axe add around 15, caster at 30) she reaches a point where mechanics stop and the caster just spams shields

[Barky]

899 here, did it after about 10 proper tries, watching the mechanics and learning a sort of pattern + safe spots to stand.