Why Sacrolash is NOT mandatory for the Mage Tower Affliction Challenge

[Inshabel]

Whereas I think it's reasonable to want/try to use the Infernal to tank for the challenge, this whole skipping purgatory by casting a mortal coil at just the right instant seems like an exploit. They obviously don't intend for you to be able to pretty much skip phase 3 and phase 4, which I would assume is what happens if you continue killing Karam instead of letting him go into purgatory and heal.

Nah you only skip P3, if you coil Karam he is no longer targetable (not sure if he still gets damage from SE) then about 15 seconds later he casts Purgatory for the second time, heals back up to 60%ish and after that he will still chase you with runes and hands, so you still have to do the hardest phase. So in the end it's actually pretty pointless to interrupt Purgatory if you're not going to zerg Raest.

Anyway, got it down last night on my second try, finally have all 3 done

Edit: I get your point on the exploit, I'll see if Blizzard feels like doing anything about it, personally I don't think it's fair that Cripple only works for the PvP duration while Frost Mages can slow him for days.

[Moggie]

Blizz knows about the Infernal tanking and didn't seem to actually care players are using it. Unsure if buying a few seconds before purgatory goes off is really a big deal vs the Infernal tanking since I'd think the Infernal tank method is a bit iffier than coiling karam to keep him from going into a coma right away, especially if not doing the burn method. Personally I got fed up with karam warping, bugs, lack of corruption ring and lack of good rng so I burned Raest down and haven't looked back. I had an easier time with the Demo and Destro challenges than I did with the Affliction, though Destro challenge made me /facepalm many a times. If Cripple wasn't the only ability pvp flagged for this challenge, a lot of people would've been done with this sooner rather than hoping for a corruption ring to drop or rng smiles upon them.

[Scathbais]

So for the burn Raest strat, are you using MC on Karam to skip p3 and then dotting up a few adds with agony and going full tilt on Raest? Are you using single target talent build? MG, Contagion, Soul Harvest , Sup, SC and then potting+drums?

Side note: Anyone else notice Raest and Karam are paying homage to Raistlin and Caramon Majere from the Dragon Lance books? (I know I'm old)

[Vaught]

So for the burn Raest strat, are you using MC on Karam to skip p3 and then dotting up a few adds with agony and going full tilt on Raest? Are you using single target talent build? MG, Contagion, Soul Harvest , Sup, SC and then potting+drums?

Side note: Anyone else notice Raest and Karam are paying homage to Raistlin and Caramon Majere from the Dragon Lance books? (I know I'm old)

Yup.

i just stood on raest with infernal next to me, then when he says "i....obey.." I pressed unending resolve and he punted me across the room and the infernal took aggro. then i just put dots up and literally stood on the left side of raest in the outer circle and started stocking shards and reap stacks.

you will need to occasionally heal your infernal, there is zero time constriction here but at around 21.3 or 21.7m health he begins starts to cast purgatory, a great indicator is Raest shouts "USELESS!" and thats when you MC to guarantee interrupting it. at that point, you cast Doomguard and fully dot Raest, stack UAs here into pot and drums and go crazy until the little guys spawn, just ignore them and smash the pressure out. you have 1 minute before Karam breaks out and starts the chase.. you have MC, cripple and gateway to delay him... i literally didnt bother to kill the little ones, just agonies to fuel UA on Raest.

I did this and got a kill on my 3rd attempt at 908 equipped with UA belt and portal legs but didnt need to portal more than once.

[Scathbais]

Yup.

i just stood on raest with infernal next to me, then when he says "i....obey.." I pressed unending resolve and he punted me across the room and the infernal took aggro. then i just put dots up and literally stood on the left side of raest in the outer circle and started stocking shards and reap stacks.

you will need to occasionally heal your infernal, there is zero time constriction here but at around 21.3 or 21.7m health he begins starts to cast purgatory, a great indicator is Raest shouts "USELESS!" and thats when you MC to guarantee interrupting it. at that point, you cast Doomguard and fully dot Raest, stack UAs here into pot and drums and go crazy until the little guys spawn, just ignore them and smash the pressure out. you have 1 minute before Karam breaks out and starts the chase.. you have MC, cripple and gateway to delay him... i literally didnt bother to kill the little ones, just agonies to fuel UA on Raest.

I did this and got a kill on my 3rd attempt at 908 equipped with UA belt and portal legs but didnt need to portal more than once.

Sweet, thanks! Very helpful. Will hopefully get it down when mage tower pops tomorrow.

[Deleted]

i cleared this without Ring, i had Prydaz en boots leggy 903 equipped.
the P1 infernal Tanking with soul effigy is best way to do it.
just make sure you never let your agony drop off, so that you can dps him down quickly in P2 to avoid as much hands as possible.
i also dotted up the small adds, and some agony for extra shard procs.
took me around 10 tries.
character Darkteille on Draenor.

[Stingling]

Im Having problem with 2phase, cant kill the hands fast cause i cant cast...
even using cripple on the boss
899ilvl, should i wait for the RNG god to help me?

[Inshabel]

Im Having problem with 2phase, cant kill the hands fast cause i cant cast...
even using cripple on the boss
899ilvl, should i wait for the RNG god to help me?

Cripple should give you plenty of time to get 2-3 UA's off on the Hand, interrupt the first cast and it should die before getting off the second.

[Azarak]

Also did it today without ring, sephuz, portal pants, or any legendaries for aff for that matter haha (main destro/off demo). Just want to throw this out there for people struggling, use the infernal or voidwalker in P1, he can tank entirely without even needing health funnel, effectively removing the hardest dps check in this challenge. Still need doomguard/felhunter for silence in P2 and P3 though, but it makes P1 literally tank and spank.

[Voshon]

So I just did this and I think I found a major bug. Just for ref my talents were 2 2 2 3 2 1 1

I tanked him with infernal for all of P1. As soon as I heard the other dudes voice I used mortal coil. Then I immediately popped a DPS burst macro I made for this and put everything I had onto the soul effigy. I killed the knight through his effigy and proceeded to skip P2 P3 and go right to P4. I then killed the mage and completed the quest. Also what made this even easier was having Sephuz procing off that coil making the DPS macro even more powerful.

Macro:
/use Potion of Prolonged Power
/use Drums of Fury
#showtooltip
/cast Soul Harvest
#showtooltip
/cast Blood Fury

[Inshabel]

So I just did this and I think I found a major bug. Just for ref my talents were 2 2 2 3 2 1 1

I tanked him with infernal for all of P1. As soon as I heard the other dudes voice I used mortal coil. Then I immediately popped a DPS burst macro I made for this and put everything I had onto the soul effigy. I killed the knight through his effigy and proceeded to skip P2 P3 and go right to P4. I then killed the mage and completed the quest. Also what made this even easier was having Sephuz procing off that coil making the DPS macro even more powerful.

Macro:
/use Potion of Prolonged Power
/use Drums of Fury
#showtooltip
/cast Soul Harvest
#showtooltip
/cast Blood Fury

Wew, I knew killing Karam through SE would be possible, but I bet that took a lot of DPS, did you drain SE as well?

[Voshon]

Wew, I knew killing Karam through SE would be possible, but I bet that took a lot of DPS, did you drain SE as well?

I did this at 906 ilvl with plenty of time to spare since I killed him right after the 2 adds spawned. I did it with next to no draining actually. I just dumped UA after UA and only drained when I had enough buffer. I main demo so this is a WAY off spec for me and i have no legendaries for aff. My friend tried it after I did it and he did it JUST in time with ilvl 892. He has the helm and cape though.

[Ysgarthiad]

I did this at 906 ilvl with plenty of time to spare since I killed him right after the 2 adds spawned. I did it with next to no draining actually. I just dumped UA after UA and only drained when I had enough buffer. I main demo so this is a WAY off spec for me and i have no legendaries for aff. My friend tried it after I did it and he did it JUST in time with ilvl 892. He has the helm and cape though.

Seriously, I dont know how you did it with just some UA dumping

I had to build completely around this strat, service and tank with voidwalker(fucking bad btw) and use demo bracers.

What helped me the most was to completely fill him with UA's when he's about to hit purgatory for that true dmg, then just pop service and doomguard on effigy.


This is by far the easiest strat if you got the dps. It was just tank and spank after that

904 prydaz and cloak/

[Voshon]

In Aff I do have 30% crit and 114% mastery and I did crit nearly every hit. Took me about 5 tries this way.

[Lucrece]

Cripple should give you plenty of time to get 2-3 UA's off on the Hand, interrupt the first cast and it should die before getting off the second.

And always wait till the cast is nearly done to interrupt. Since it's via pet you can actuallly start dotting up the hand and dumping 2-3 UA's on it before the cast is close to done and THEN interrupt it, which delays its second cast substantially and gives your dots time to ramp up.

It's also important to burn Karam hard after every purgatory as that is when he's at his slowest and you can dump 3-4 UA's on him as well as some drains here and there since if you wait to do so after doing hands he's much faster with higher stacks and the dps check will be harder to meet in order to transition.

[Scathbais]

So I just did this and I think I found a major bug. Just for ref my talents were 2 2 2 3 2 1 1

I tanked him with infernal for all of P1. As soon as I heard the other dudes voice I used mortal coil. Then I immediately popped a DPS burst macro I made for this and put everything I had onto the soul effigy. I killed the knight through his effigy and proceeded to skip P2 P3 and go right to P4. I then killed the mage and completed the quest. Also what made this even easier was having Sephuz procing off that coil making the DPS macro even more powerful.

Macro:
/use Potion of Prolonged Power
/use Drums of Fury
#showtooltip
/cast Soul Harvest
#showtooltip
/cast Blood Fury

Well Voshon, tried your method and it worked beautifully. Thank you again for posting this strategy!! 904 ilvl, leggo hood and cloak, potion of pp, drums, augment rune, 116 mastery, 20% crit, 14% haste, trinkets: whispers and metronome.

My lock: Scathbais@mal'ganis

[Scathbais]

Yep, did it at 892 with some coaching from Voshon, hood and cloak. took 7 tries to get it down. I have a feeling this will be patched asap so get it done while you can.

Definitely going to be patched away, because Soul Effigy will be removed in 7.2.5. Wonder if the encounter will be changed at all to reflect the fact that kiting Karam while killing with a WiA/SE build won't be a thing any longer.

[Inshabel]

Definitely going to be patched away, because Soul Effigy will be removed in 7.2.5. Wonder if the encounter will be changed at all to reflect the fact that kiting Karam while killing with a WiA/SE build won't be a thing any longer.

Well, your dots are getting a big ass blanket buff, might be big enough to cover the loss of SE, especially when you calculate in the globals you get back

[Lucrece]

Well, your dots are getting a big ass blanket buff, might be big enough to cover the loss of SE, especially when you calculate in the globals you get back

Blanket dot buffs plus the additional burst from the new haunt and having phantom singularity plus the buffed siphon life. You'll be able to frontload more damage on the move.

[Irian]

Can confirm, I completed it on a 898 ilvl affliction warlock with Hood of Eternal Disdain and Prydaz. Artifact level was only 39 and the Ulthalesh itself was only 913. I used the infernal tanking strat, 275 haste food, rune, flask and drums.

It was probably one of the most brutal things to complete but it is completely possible. Doomguard micromanagement for runes as you're running and also slipping in as many MG windows as you can is crucial to beat the "enrage". If you don't cheese it with Sacrolash or outgear it, it is absolutely brutal and extremely tight on DPS but 100% possible.