To those struggling with or intimidated by the Mage Tower challenge.

[Darktbs]

All the hunter ones are really easy, can do it with quite low ilv especially if you use some survivability leggos (but don't use helm or it bugs them)

Actually it only bugs if the worm is underground.

It bugged for me a few times and all of them matched the condition.

On topic:
You can see my progress on my Signature and if anyone reading needs help you can ask.

The mage tower is a wonderfull thing, i would've never played my alts like i've been doing for the last 3-4 months and i don't even touch Mythic+ or Normal Antorus(personal traumas) and many of them i didn't even had the correct legendaries for some of them.

The most important part is learning the fight, if you do, the gear you get over time will only make it easier and i wish more would try the challenges.

Also to the OP:I did one shot the Enha Shaman challenge, as a 929 shammy, after doing every other Sigryd challenge.Does this count?

[Aucald]

They key for me defeating the Mage Tower challenge was realizing how to use the mirror images and their damage reduction bubbles effectively to get to the shimmer without taking too much damage or dying first. Death Grip is also your friend - never forget the power of what is truly the Death Knight's most versatile ability to control positioning on the battlefield (and that it also functions as a partial interrupt as it resets most casts).

If you can get to phase 2 of the fight it's mostly a win - phase 2 is a pure DPS check with the only strategy being to avoid the ever-expanding void zone and interrupting the mob's cast that summons the three healing adds.

[Kalcheus]

What about toon locked? If I have a second Pally will I be able to use the challenge skin on my second one, or would it have to be earned on that toon?

Not toon locked as of last word on the matter.

[Darktbs]

I did the Veng. DH one, not really bothering with Havoc cause it's not my spec or playstyle, unfortunately. I had issues with Veng until I got around 920 Ilvl, because of particular mechanics I felt were stupid.

Now i'm having issues with Aff. Lock, because I get to the last phase and since the toon doesn't have any decent legendaries for the trial, I get shredded either by the Melee-Twin or the stupid hand, who I can't kill/interrupt fast enough.

What is the Ilvl of your Warlock?

There is a easy way to do the challenge where you don't need to run and you skip 2 phases of running.

Step1:With your infernal stand near him(the guy that chases you) when the challenge begins,Use Defensive Cd and he will send you away and your Infernal will get aggro.

Step2:Let the infernal tank, Health funnel and re-apply dots, don't overdue or you will need to start running.

Step3:On 35-33% before he becomes Immune he will cast a spell to do so, you must stop it, MOrtal coil and he will resume attack your infernal, now focus the main guy and you will skip phase 3 eventually.

Step4:Summon the Doomguard and proceed to kill the boss and get your skin.

[MatadorMedia]

I completed the guardian druid boss at 930 ilvl. Took me around 45 attempts. Fully enchanting my gear is finally what tipped the scale to victory. I will probably start training my feral skills to go after the new cat form next. The weapons on all my alts are not nearly as appealing as a new bear/cat form so I'm not all that interested in any other mage tower bosses lol. The weapons are cool but not worth my extra effort at this time.

[EternalBany]

Did the mistweaver one last night, took alot of effort, but in the end it felt great. Great post and I do hope other people will be able to get it!

can you give some tips?
i did it on a holy pala

but dont even know how to begin on healing and dpsing on a monk, most i done was mythic+8

[Izalla]

I heard that overgearing makes them so easy you can "skip the mechanics and just burst it all down" and so I went in on my 915/920 (forget which, think closer to 915) boomkin, no gems or enchants at the time, no flasks or food, only have healing legendaries, and got my ass whooped hard. I still don't have any boomkin legendaries but finally bothered to gem and enchant (I don't raid these days so I don't care about dropping gold on that shit anymore >.>) and I did at least get to the final phase once. Haven't really tried since. Was about 10 or 15 attempts.

I did the MoP lock challenge so I'm sure I'll eventually get this down but man is it ever a pain in the butt to wipe over and over to stupid stuff (STOP GLITCHING INTO THE FLOOR PLEASE DUDE)

[Soeroah]

"Skipping the mechanics and bursting them down" by overgearing sounds like generic elitist talk for "I found this easy then so it's stupidly easy now". It MIGHT be the case for certain spec fights, but the ones I've tried still have instant-kill level mechanics you need to watch out for, or adds you need to keep a handle on. Overgearing it makes it a lot easier, sure, and gives you more room for error, but you aren't gonna be able to stand in one spot and just wail on the boss without dying for an expansion or two yet.

[Shelly]

I heard that overgearing makes them so easy you can "skip the mechanics and just burst it all down" and so I went in on my 915/920 (forget which, think closer to 915) boomkin, no gems or enchants at the time, no flasks or food, only have healing legendaries, and got my ass whooped hard. I still don't have any boomkin legendaries but finally bothered to gem and enchant (I don't raid these days so I don't care about dropping gold on that shit anymore >.>) and I did at least get to the final phase once. Haven't really tried since. Was about 10 or 15 attempts.

I did the MoP lock challenge so I'm sure I'll eventually get this down but man is it ever a pain in the butt to wipe over and over to stupid stuff (STOP GLITCHING INTO THE FLOOR PLEASE DUDE)

OK, 915 is just barely overgearing one of the encounters. 920 is better but you really don't count as overgeared until 930 - which is possible with just getting lucky from Argus world boss drops.

Also while you can compensate for lack of enchants with gear I'd advise you not to and enchant your stuff. It's not that expensive and it'll only help in the long run. Buy a few flasks as well but if you are exalted with the Argus factions make sure you're using your rune - although most of my alts have stacks of about 60+ runes anyway.

Mostly though the encounters come down to practice.

Even with excellent 940+ gear every encounter has phases that will either grind you or instantly kill you - with I think the exception of the Feltotem worm. If you're not prepared for those you'll wipe. Many times it'll also feel like arbitrary BS - especially true for the tank challenge and doubly so for Prot Paladin with the amount of eyes you'll get.

- - - Updated - - -

I tried this on my druid yesterday. Lasted about 30 seconds. Something (I don't know what, maybe the eyes?) ate huge chunks of my health which I finally got overcome by.

I'm not sure all of the active mitigation available to druids or if they have one still that can either block magic or raise your health, but it sounds like what was happening was you were in the pool of black tar beneath the inquisitor. It gives a stacking debuff that will lower your maximum health until eventually he can one-shot you with his direct cast.

The reason so many people claim "Luffas are required" for the encounter is that they'll let you stand outside that circle and hit the inquisitor with thrash while avoiding the debuff. So it's not so much required as they remove the main mechanic that makes the first phase hard to burst through.

You can do it, just keep practicing but I suggest you watch a few videos and read a guide. :-)

[Izalla]

OK, 915 is just barely overgearing one of the encounters. 920 is better but you really don't count as overgeared until 930 - which is possible with just getting lucky from Argus world boss drops.

Also while you can compensate for lack of enchants with gear I'd advise you not to and enchant your stuff. It's not that expensive and it'll only help in the long run. Buy a few flasks as well but if you are exalted with the Argus factions make sure you're using your rune - although most of my alts have stacks of about 60+ runes anyway.

Mostly though the encounters come down to practice.

Even with excellent 940+ gear every encounter has phases that will either grind you or instantly kill you - with I think the exception of the Feltotem worm. If you're not prepared for those you'll wipe. Many times it'll also feel like arbitrary BS - especially true for the tank challenge and doubly so for Prot Paladin with the amount of eyes you'll get.

I did enchant and all that afterwards, I was just talking about the first few times. The wowhead guide I looked at first to get the basics from said this: "For this scenario I would recommend having around an item level of 905, you can do it with less but may run into more difficulty. If you have an item level of 915 or higher, this encounter will be very easy." Somewhere else it said: "Higher gear levels (910+) should be able to burn Raesh without any issues. Lower gear levels will still be forced to deal with mechanics". So that's what I was going off of. It lied to me!

- - - Updated - - -

"Skipping the mechanics and bursting them down" by overgearing sounds like generic elitist talk for "I found this easy then so it's stupidly easy now". It MIGHT be the case for certain spec fights, but the ones I've tried still have instant-kill level mechanics you need to watch out for, or adds you need to keep a handle on. Overgearing it makes it a lot easier, sure, and gives you more room for error, but you aren't gonna be able to stand in one spot and just wail on the boss without dying for an expansion or two yet.

I noticed that pretty quickly =P

[Locas]

As a frost mage at a high gear level this is still frustrating jumping the dps, to slows to interrupts drives me insane...well more insane

[Mad_Murdock]

At ilvl 928 ish, decent leggies, but no tier. I tried 7 times, closest I got was 19%. In total disgust with myself, I unsubbed and probably won't resub before it's gone.

[xindralol]

Did the mistweaver one last night, took alot of effort, but in the end it felt great. Great post and I do hope other people will be able to get it!

I don't like the healer challenge. ugh.
The others I've done so far are pretty fun though.

good luck guys!

[MrKnubbles]

Do you remember what your ilvl was?

[anveena]

I managed to do the frost mage one yesterday in like 14 attempts. It's pretty easy once you get the positioning of the adds down. After that all you have to do is get good rune placement.

Bear tartare is really helpful since you're almost always killing those adds.

[Isilrien]

I tried this on my druid yesterday. Lasted about 30 seconds. Something (I don't know what, maybe the eyes?) ate huge chunks of my health which I finally got overcome by.

I'm not sure what spec, but if it was resto, then it was the warrior(s) who took you down. When they start attacking, go bear and hit frenzied regeneration (take guardian affinity), or use Ursol's vortex on them, or displacer beast and kite them (or some combination).

Also: what a refreshing post to see on MMO Champion--positive and helpful. Very nice.

[JamesMartigo]

Ilvl 933, 200+ wipes. Got it last night. Dont care it took me this long.

Congrats man. I still haven't gotten prot warrior down. The big adds keep knocking me off the platform, there's just too much going on at once for my brain to process.

[EyelessCrow]

Unholy was stupid easy at 930 Tried it at 900 and struggled to get past 20% so I didn't bother with any of them till 930...1 shot, I hear feral is as well

[Sylvaeres]

I'm not sure how many this will reach, by the very nature of this website anyone posting on it is most definitely NOT a casual player, but here goes.

Hi, so I'm a casually serious player. I put in a lot of hours but I don't belong to an established raiding guild, the highest M+ I've pushed was 9 and that was on the week of writing this when doing 4 mythic dungeons rewards a cache of Heroic Antorus raid loot. I mostly log in to maintain high levels of order resources to keep my order hall gold-farm running, collect transmog gear and to do LFR.

I like to think that I show that casual =/= bad. I don't really sim things out but I take my performance pretty seriously. I know from some PuGs that I can keep up with heroic level geared raiders even in LFR gear by playing smart (and in all likelihood those raiders not being very good.)

At this point I've completed the Mage Tower challenge for:
Blood DK
Unholy DK
Fury Warrior
Prot Warrior
Ret Paladin
Prot Paladin
Havoc DH
Veng DH
BrM Monk
Enhance Shaman

That's the main spec of 6 of my 8 level 110 alts.

Last night while trying to help someone get their quest started to unlock the mage tower challenges (You'll want to do the broken shore unlock, then kill mobs until you get a random quest item and that'll unlock the mage tower challenge quests for any spec with over 35 traits in a weapon.) I came across a thread on the official forums talking about how Blizz was once again catering to elitists and no-lifers.

It was pretty clear a lot of the posters were dejected. It was a recent post as well.

So a lot of folks are maybe looking around and seeing the mage tower skins and feeling like they'll never have them, that they are out of reach and that they can't even come back later when overgeared next expansion to come pick them up.

Don't think that way. You can do it!

We have all sorts of guides and tips up - and I'd encourage anyone that has completed the challenges to share them as well here - but I thought I'd give folks some practical advice.

You're not going to 1-shot it. I don't know of anyone that's one-shot the challenge, I'm sure someone will comment below and I'm happy for them, but these challenges are not easy and even if you overgear them (which is pretty simple in just LFR gear) they can still beat you.

When you first go in you'll probably be nervous, even if you watched a guide or read on the fight you'll discover that the timing is all over the damn place on these things. Mobs have cast priorities based on timers, life left and even random rolls of what ability they'll do when. You'll find weird BS and randomness in ever encounter.

They are all meant to get you to play with all the abilities of your spec including your "oh shit" buttons. So don't get intimidated, look for a solution or talk in your guild or post here about what happened and while I'm sure you'll find a bunch of e-peens ready to tell you how terrible you are you'll also find helpful folks willing to go over things that are happening in the fight and how best to counter them.

Mostly though don't be afraid to practice and fail. Until you're comfortable with the fight you'll make all sorts of mistakes - some will be buffered by gear and not be that big a deal, others are damn stupid instant death that make you want to throw your keyboard through your monitor.

Last night I got the Enhancement Shaman quest done. It took roughly 50-minutes of wiping to get it down, many times running into a problem of overlapping mechanics that were complete bullshit, but I worked through them and you can too.

So please, don't be intimidated or discouraged. I know a lot of you have lives outside that require a lot of attention - we all do and one of the reasons the Mage Tower isn't up 100% of the time is so that we don't spend all day every day grinding on it.

Get into LFR, pick up your tier, you'll be overgearing the challenges and you can do them.

But they won't be easy, you won't get them down right away. You're going to have to work for these appearances and earn them, but you can do it. We're all rooting for you.

Honestly, if a player who's casual like yourself can get the prot paladin mage tower down, then these other players can put in the effort and do so as well. That prot paladin tower was no joke, one mistep and it's over

[Noram54]

Any HPriests done ours recently and have some advice?