Mage Tower Strategy Thread

[Sunlighthell]

Yes is worth sacrificing one of your dps trinkets for devilsaur, especially if it's something like trinket from Star Augur or Fury of bruning sky. Personally I swapped my 905 methronome for it and left with whispers + devilsaur. If only I had that trinket from Tree in DHT so I could use it + devilsaur. As of effigy, I ended up running in pretty short circles so I could probably use it, but I find it more useful to use PS for 2 and 3 phases(and it could also be used twice on first phase).

[JJShadoe]

At ilvl 901, I ran with Sacrolash and Prydaz for legendaries, H Fury and H Whispers for trinkets. I have H Metronome, but the DoT power and proc of Fury trinket are both very pragmatic for the Affliction challenge.

[Baconeggcheese]

If you don't have the aff ring you just use infernal to tank the boss in p1, makes p1 a non issue.

I needed to have the boss hit me at the start of combat with UR up while spamming pet attack to get him to consistently aggro the infernal. Every time I tried other things half the time he would just ignore the infernal and chase me. So yeah, just stand on the boss on pull and have him smack you while you spam pet attack and then don't put a ton of threat into him until he gets widdled down a bit. Just full dotted him and the effigy until he got around 75% then went ham.

[Drez]

Reposting from other thread. I finished it at 891 ilvl with the ring. I can say without a doubt there's no way I could have done it without it. If I had 910+ I probably would have tried it without the ring for the challenge. I will say it took me quite a few tries and a decent amount of money in consumables.

The build I ran was WiA/AC/MC/SL/BR/GoSup/SE and I used the infernal to tank P1 (doesn't always work whether you don't hit the mob initially or you do). I completely forgot to use cripple on my final attempt but you should save it for portals to slow Mr.Oneshot and give breathing room to get the portals down. My tips are to make sure to tank him in P1 a decent distance from the inner circle with the caster and always kite him around the inner circle to avoid putting those purple slow puddles down in the middle. I found it a lot easier to handle portals and runes without having to run all the way around. Keybind your pet move so you can have your pet stand on the summoning runes. Side note, it seemed to me that the new portals spawn where you were standing when you killed the prior portal. Also, if you do have the ring I highly recommend to use absolute corruption as you can just make sure you seed the add packs and forget about them. Corruption will kill them over time. Calm down, breathe, and focus on what's important; the twins, portals, and runes. I know there will be a lot of red bars with the add packs, but try not to focus on them.

I enjoyed the challenge as I did the green fire quest when it was relevant. Grats to those that have it and good luck to those trying for it.

[Baconeggcheese]

Keybind your pet move so you can have your pet stand on the summoning runes.

Lol that works? Things I never thought to try, would've shaved off some attempts.

[Drez]

Lol that works? Things I never thought to try, would've shaved off some attempts.

Sure does. Made life a lot easier

[Ranka]

3-2-2-3-2-1-3

Completed affliction one with around 15 tries @ 900ilvl, sephuz + affring which were a HUGE help, full consumables with drums. Missed runes and bugged interrupts were my biggest enemy. At least half the wipes were to not noticing runes and or runes being in impossible places (should have used pet) I used siphon life + burning rush was up 100%, but in the end i changed SL to Soul Harvest for the needed burst which i seemed to lack because of AC. Also tone down your nameplates if you're using custom ones...

- Without ring i would focus on max ST dps with effigy. Ring + AC gives some time to think other stuff
- Watch out for pet dying to the pools and use it for impossible runes otherwise
- Portal spawning inside rock = gg
- Kiting him to run around rocks seems like a good idea, but he will glitch straight through them. Dont count on that.

[TummyBoy]

Just did the Destruction challenge. ilevel 900 equipped, Sin'Dorei and RoF ring as legendaries. I roughly followed Writhing's guide written above, although I made two changes: GrimServ rather than GrimSup, and Soul Harvest rather than Fire and Brimstone. I was able to prevent adds from spawning by just using Fear on Earthquake so FnB seemed unnecessary.

I noticed that if you cycle your interrupts perfectly, with average DPS there are likely going to be two points that you have to interrupt the cast with a Fear (as everything else will be on CD). If you get silenced or stunned before or during your Fear cast it's an instant wipe and that caused 2 deaths for me. Using Fear on Earthquake also prevents a lot of headaches because not having to deal with adds at all is always welcome.

Drain Life was a huge lifesaver for me as well. There were times when I was just low on health and had to Drain to save myself. I would suggest taking health potions rather than relying on candies.

It took me about 10 tries. Not great, and a few times I died to the dumbest stuff imaginable (funking up keybindings I never use for example). 3 of those wipes were sub-10%.

[PowerOfTwo]

Ok , so after bashing my brains against the challange (for there is only one challange) for ~20 more tries yday i'm close to killing it. A few things:

Talents attempted: WiA, ELT (yes ELT because of low contagion uptime and 1 more reason i'll get into), MC, SH, BR, Sup, PS

Just use the damn pet to skip Chase 1, you CAN do it "normaly" even without the ring but it's soooo not worth, especialy not worth for me since i don't have any aff legendaries as its my OS. If i had Reap and Sow / Hood, phase 1 would be much easier, but as it stands if i kite him i'm just starved of resources.

Transition 1: You can do one Seed into each pack and dot up as many adds as you can _DON'T_ kill them yet. When karam becomes active again, Reap, PS, Cripple when he's Near the voidling packs you were saving, Seed. With proper timing yu can get ALL the ~15 voidlings to Soul Flame him allmost instantly knocking him back down. (Note: this is where the ELT comes in as oposed to contagion, also, if you use SH here, you are allmost guaranteed to knock back to transition but it you won't have it for the last transition, obviously)

Chase 2: This is the anoying part and i swear, with ~20% crit 105% mastery the hands are ... painfull, Agony, Corr and 2 UA will JUST kill them in time before the next grasp, but sometimes it's not easy standing still for the 2 UAs, depends how low i manged to get Karam with SF

Transition 2: Same as obove, kite doted voidlings on top of Karam and explode his face, if you've managed to hold onto 2nd pot, drums, and especialy SH untill this point, the fight is pretty much OVER as long as you line up SF's properly, but personaly what's been happening to me is that either i blow my CD's on transition 1 and have a bad transition two, No CD's and / or even having a Hand up, or, if i don't blow my CDs it's rather hard to get him back to transition 2, Or even with a smooth transition two and using CDs in Transition 1 well.... now i have the runes hands and Karam to deal with, with no CDs

Chase 3: What chase three? If all goes according to plan (blowing up voidlings on Karams face) the last Chase / Phase should be a target dumy fight with Raest.

At this point i'm fairly close to going full yolo build and using the standart raid setup (MG , Cont, Sow and SC) and just blowing him up in Chase 2 (Banish hand Nr. 1) and Chase 3. It Could work, SF itsself allreay goes a looooong way into transitioning him, the extra damage from SoW could mean that a single Drain cycle is enough to knock him down both times.

[Deleted]

can we do challenge now with tower destroyed? if yes, how?

[Deleted]

can we do challenge now with tower destroyed? if yes, how?

No, you must wait until enough players have rebuilt it.

[Count Zero]

Looks like the strats people are coming up with are helping shave down the necessary ilvl quite a bit, good stuff.

[Amonthar]

Edit:

I got it down with 891 ilvl. I used this macro from the start of the fight when the worm was up:

#showtooltip Havoc
/target jormog
/cast Havoc
/targetlasttarget

[Redsoldier06]

My lock is 886 with the lfr 4 set, normal whispers and an 860 arcanocrystal with socket. I do have the slow legendary ring but it's still extremely difficult to do this overall.

I've put in around 10 attempts and each one either I kill too slow or I have terrible ass RNG (little shadow adds spawning on top of me, killing me instantly) or the portal spawning way over in Africa.

My lock is 891 now, not too sure if I'll attempt it again until a higher ilvl, when I watched a video of somebody doing it, they were able to kill it 100x faster than I was able to.

[Baconeggcheese]

@Redsoldier06 The little shadow adds have a precursor swirly, so you can know when they're about to show up before they happen.

Really the only dps check of the encounter is killing the hands before they get off a 2nd cast which should be substantially easier with the ring since you'll have significantly more time to load it up with UA's.

The portal generally spawns in the same~ish area in my experience, I was told you can move your pet into it to soak it as well after I had already done it so I didn't get a chance to try it.

You can definitely do it with your gear, its all just being on top of mechanics and knowing what's coming next. 10 times isn't that many, don't get discouraged.

[Moggie]

If only the damn hands would stop spawning on the other end of the island right on the very edge then I could get it done. Quit after 7 attempts with hands randomly spawning across the map and fun time, two attempts with them underneath the island... Never went near those spots so I dunno what more is needed to get them to stop being so fickle about spawn points. Even suckier since I lack the corruption ring.

[Kozilik]

Has any one got any WA for the pool you have to soak to prevent the add from spawning during the affliction challenge? I'm having a really hard time noticing it!

[Unlockmyhrt]

I just completed the affliction scenario, used infernal to tank him in phase one like bacon said.
1. I used infernal stun to stun Karam before he casted purgatory, blew everything and tunneled him as much as i could during the stun. ( When he comes back I noticed his health was lower for p2 allowing me to transition him very fast)
2. After P1 I tunneled Raest, once adds spawned I dotted them and nuked a few down to get consumption stacks rolling and went back on
3. Once Karim spawned I nukes him down amd sice he had lower health went very fast with minimal kiting.
4. Last karam rez I ignored him and Tunneled Raest and killed him killing one hand and banishing lobster due to far rune spawn.

Ran bracer and sephuz, mael, contag, sl, coil, sup, sc took me about 5 tries @ 909 Ilvl. May be a little slower xsition on karam with lower ilvl but totally doable!

[Aizek]

Just completed the affliction one, too. Took me a shit-ton of tries since I'm only ilvl 898 and don't have Sacrolash.
Ran 2122211 with Hood and Sephuz as legendaries.
I let my infernal tank in P1 and made sure to get 12 reap stacks at the end of it.
In the other phases, I didn't do anything extraordinary.

One thing which helped me a lot were boss frames, especially for the hands.

[Nhiosis]

Completed tonight, 882 Destruction warlock
Gear: Mostly LFR / WQ stuff, 4 piece tier set, Lessons of space-time and Alythess’s Pyrogenics

Talents were 1,1,2,3,1,2,3

Flask, haste food, Defiled augmentation, Deadly grace pot, Drum of fury

The biggest threat obviously during the entire fight was the fel burst. Spell lock / deathcoil / grimoire: felhunter was the primary for this. I rearranged my bars so that all relevant cooldowns were next to each other so that my eyes only had to go one spot. It even helped me while learning to say out loud what was off cooldown in preparation for the next cast.

I always tried to keep myself >80% health as well with drain life, especially since its not a DPS race. Fear the earthquakes ASAP, and I would always keep a charge of conflag waiting for when he dropped his totem. If you're unable to prevent an earthquake its ok, just havoc one egg and burst the other. KEEP ATTENTION ON THE BOSS during this. He's bound to cast a fel burst during this time, and you absolutely need to swap away from the eggs to take care of it. Once or twice I found myself without an interrupt and I knew a fel burst was coming, so I literally just face tanked him and feared him as soon as he began casting. Watch the ground constantly too so that you don’t get stunned by the worm.

Name plates helped me considerably too during this fight. Always keep the worm in the corner of your eye and watch for his sonic blast. Getting interrupted during a chaos bolt cost me the fight several times, since I would get locked out of deathcoil for casts.

Once he’s dead and it’s just the worm, I popped drums and lord of flames. I also summoned a voidwalker to tank the boss, though I’m not entirely sure how much difference this made.The worms sonic blast will take a considerable chunk of health each time, so mitigate with unending resolve, and heal immediately back to 100% with drain life after he uses it. DPS when able, but always prioritize health. I wiped at ~20% a couple times because I was not keeping myself topped off, and the blast killed me.

Most importantly, keep trying! I went through around 3 stacks of haste food while attempting to get this. For me personally it was just learning the fight, being efficient with interrupts, and always being prepared for what was coming next.
Definitely the most satisfying accomplishment for myself since green fire. It’s amazing to me that this isn’t a feat of strength or something. Good luck to everyone!