The Hardest Mage Tower Challenge is....

[Alteiry]

Prot pally is mine atm. I thought Prot warrior was hard, but prot pally just has me stopped.

This is like the easiest/hardest thing I've ever done in game, but this is also because I'm shit at paladin.

It was the opposite for me. 60 deaths on my warrior, around 25 on my Pala. Also around 25 on my druid, and zero on my DH. Goddamn DHs. Even triggered Last Resort in Phase 1 by mistake and I still took down Kruul with no problems.

[kary]

Feral now, yes. Feral when the mage towers were first added was significantly harder than it is now, although still not hard(I did it in 23 attempts, 18 of which were messing around with joke talent builds/legendaries just to see if I could do it, then it got late and I just switched to a real setup). Windwalker one is just silly with how much you can trivialize it. Every guide says to kill them at the same time, when really you can just focus down the tauren, because the worm does basically no damage if you Paralyze every cast it does(which you can, the CD lines up perfectly), although this also applies to most other classes that get the challenge(hunter can trap the cast, just not all of them, and I think lock can fear it)

You don't really even have to interrupt on warlock because drain life is a balanced spell.

WW monk was doable at ~900 il which was current gear when mage tower was out without too much struggle.

[Swalload]

...in my humble opinion.... Protection Paladin. I got Kruul on every other tank, but I just can't seem to DPS things down fast enough before I end up with like 3 Infernals and everything goes to shit. I think I'm just doing something wrong because I'm like 20 ilevels higher than when I did it on my DK, DH and Druid.

So even if you haven't tried them all, what is the hardest one so far for you?

Oh Kruul is DEFINITELY the hardest one, that place gave me nightmares. I literally took a shit on every other challenges and this one was fucking cancer even if I fucking main tank specs. Every other challenge was a pure joke next to this piece of shit. I mean almost everything you have to do in that challenge is not even things you do as a real tank in regular gameplay, why is it so off? It doesn't even feel like a tank challenge, it feels like some exotic gameplay crap made by people who clearly don't play tanks.

It was harder than every other challenged, it was not fun in any way shape or form, it was buggy as fuck (smoke not showing up to tell you you're getting kicked out of the map, velen not dying correctly and making the scenario not restart when you go back in, and a bunch of ther shits) and on top of that it was not even satisfying to finally beat it. It was not a "yay I got it" moment it was just a "FINALLY, FUCK YOU FUCKING SHITHOLE".

Not to mention it was so badly designed and balanced that they have to change the stats of mobs depending on what class you do it with.

That place. Was. Shit.

[kary]

Oh Kruul is DEFINITELY the hardest one, that place gave me nightmares. I literally took a shit on every other challenges and this one was fucking cancer even if I fucking main tank specs. Every other challenge was a pure joke next to this piece of shit. I mean almost everything you have to do in that challenge is not even things you do as a real tank in regular gameplay, why is it so off? It doesn't even feel like a tank challenge, it feels like some exotic gameplay crap made by people who clearly don't play tanks.

It was harder than every other challenged, it was not fun in any way shape or form, it was buggy as fuck (smoke not showing up to tell you you're getting kicked out of the map, velen not dying correctly and making the scenario not restart when you go back in, and a bunch of ther shits) and on top of that it was not even satisfying to finally beat it. It was not a "yay I got it" moment it was just a "FINALLY, FUCK YOU FUCKING SHITHOLE".

Not to mention it was so badly designed and balanced that they have to change the stats of mobs depending on what class you do it with.

That place. Was. Shit.

They changed the fight because different tanks have different strong points.
If it were the same challenge throughout, druids and paladins would faceroll (druids have a way larger attack range baseline and would trivialize p1, paladins did 2x the dps of other tanks at the point when the challenge hit)
It's different because toolkits are different.

[valax]

Imp mother as fury warrior . the f***ing imps that blow up and rolling stones could fuck your shit up in the blink of an eye .
Kruul wasn't that hard , took practice yes , but after i got to see phase 2 the first one was an automatic process for me.

I dealt with infernal just by keeping moving around , probably the most annoying part were the eyes .
Having Velen though simplified a LOT the fight , basically treating his healing/stun circle like a "OH-SHIT button"

[Swalload]

They changed the fight because different tanks have different strong points.
If it were the same challenge throughout, druids and paladins would faceroll (druids have a way larger attack range baseline and would trivialize p1, paladins did 2x the dps of other tanks at the point when the challenge hit)
It's different because toolkits are different.

Yeah, the issue is it's not really a tank challenge at all, there's nothing in there that shows tank gameplay, that's why they had to change stats. That challenge literally should have felt like a dungeon where you have to pull things correctly, LoS, interrupt, and hold aggro from and NPC team including a healer. It should have felt like a tank challenge, not some bullshit dps race with dancing around, that was a retarded design entirely.

[kary]

Yeah, the issue is it's not really a tank challenge at all, there's nothing in there that shows tank gameplay, that's why they had to change stats. That challenge literally should have felt like a dungeon where you have to pull things correctly, LoS, interrupt, and hold aggro from and NPC team including a healer. It should have felt like a tank challenge, not some bullshit dps race with dancing around, that was a retarded design entirely.

Uh, you hold threat on small mobs, position yourself to avoid shit on the ground, interrupt. It's a tank challenge.
Just because you can't stand in one place and practically afk doesn't make it less of a tank challenge.

[Jester Joe]

Feral now, yes. Feral when the mage towers were first added was significantly harder than it is now, although still not hard(I did it in 23 attempts, 18 of which were messing around with joke talent builds/legendaries just to see if I could do it, then it got late and I just switched to a real setup). Windwalker one is just silly with how much you can trivialize it. Every guide says to kill them at the same time, when really you can just focus down the tauren, because the worm does basically no damage if you Paralyze every cast it does(which you can, the CD lines up perfectly), although this also applies to most other classes that get the challenge(hunter can trap the cast, just not all of them, and I think lock can fear it)

Hunters can trap the cast yeah, but 30 second CD on trap means you can't get every one, you'll have to alternate with intimidate, so a few do get through.

[Tradu]

Yeah, the issue is it's not really a tank challenge at all, there's nothing in there that shows tank gameplay, that's why they had to change stats. That challenge literally should have felt like a dungeon where you have to pull things correctly, LoS, interrupt, and hold aggro from and NPC team including a healer. It should have felt like a tank challenge, not some bullshit dps race with dancing around, that was a retarded design entirely.

Except you do every part of tanking apart from tank swaps in the challenge. You pick up adds, you position properly, you watch a debuff, you dodge stuff, you plan your CDs, you maximize your DPS while not dying, you interrupt.

[Swalload]

Uh, you hold threat on small mobs, position yourself to avoid shit on the ground, interrupt. It's a tank challenge.
Just because you can't stand in one place and practically afk doesn't make it less of a tank challenge.

Dunno why you talk about something I didn't mention at all.

[Staboteur]

For me Prot Paladin was the hardest, health pool was so high for no apparent reason was tough to reach P2 without a bunch of infernals and 1 hit and you died, other than a single glider save, no other recovery from it. Although that said you were basically unkillable apart from that as Paladin, P1 was especially easy.

(WA playing a sound when the knockback was cast helps so much though, the issue was when they're "dead" but reforming they would start the cast so you had zero time to react, after i got the WA it took a couple attempts)

All of the DPS ones are incredibly easy as soon as you hit 915+ but some are even stupidly easy at 900. Only exception was Outlaw rogue challenge, felt like RNG controlled that fight since you just sometimes lacked the dps to push through immune imps then her shield before you died, which is weird because as the other specs i've done Agatha she's actually one of the easiest.

Not done a single healing challenge though, it's the one role i've never cared for.

[Tradu]

For me Prot Paladin was the hardest, health pool was so high for no apparent reason was tough to reach P2 without a bunch of infernals and 1 hit and you died, other than a single glider save, no other recovery from it. Although that said you were basically unkillable apart from that as Paladin, P1 was especially easy.

All of the DPS ones are incredibly easy as soon as you hit 915+ but some are even stupidly easy at 900. Only exception was Outlaw rogue challenge, felt like RNG controlled that fight since you just sometimes lacked the dps to push through immune imps then her shield before you died, which is weird because as the other specs i've done Agatha she's actually one of the easiest.

Not done a single healing challenge though, it's the one role i've never cared for.

You mean other than prot paladin being by far the highest DPS tank at the time?

[kary]

Dunno why you talk about something I didn't mention at all.

You claimed it didn't show tank gameplay.
I tell you why you're wrong.

- - - Updated - - -

You mean other than prot paladin being by far the highest DPS tank at the time?

people on these forums are idiots.
You can tell them the same thing 10 times and they'll ignore it every time.

[Aggrophobic]

Both anecdotally and statistically (a few people have posted stats and chaud also news'd them once) I believe prot warrior and paladin are the hardest. The fewest people have done them of any others, and I have consistently heard many people complain about those two, even people I would consider decent players. Enough that it scared me away from even trying on my own 930 prot paladin.

I haven't done many of them to really judge myself. Most of my alts are tanks and since it's the hardest challenge I haven't really been motivated to try. I've done the healer one (not hard but obnoxiously long) / resto shaman, enhancement shaman, and all three rogue ones. Of those, the easiest was sin rogue by far. Sub rogue was probably the hardest mechanically; I only got it because I massively overgeared the thing. I tried ele shaman since it was the same encounter as outlaw rogue which I didn't find too bad, but I ended up giving up after about 20 attempts, I'm sure because of some combination of no ele gear/legendaries and my poor skill. I might give frost mage a go at some point just because my ilvl is okayish on my boosted mage now. I also have a spriest but I heard that one sucks too without overgearing and I just don't have the energy to put into gearing mine.

They really aren't that hard. The average player should be able to get them done with like 920-930 ilvl within a few attempts. It was at release when they actually were somewhat hard to do.

[Svad1287]

Some challenges are fairly binary depending on legendaries; Protadin is one of them (Tyelca essentially removes the Horrors from the game and significantly reduces infernal uptime due to splash damage).

I'd say Outlaw if you don't cheat (but why would you NOT cheat as a pirate???)

If you have the command bunker up at the same time as the mage tower, you will get all the Azsuna "buffs" that the command bunker gives you when running around in Azsuna. When I did the Imp Mothers Challenge on my fury war / Unholy DK and Outlaw rawg, about 5-6 into the fight, the arcane circle appears where your standing, and gives you that + stupid % dps a few seconds later the fireballs starts raining down and when the arcane circle went away, Imp Mother was around 52% and then its just the running back and forth stuff.

[Swalload]

You claimed it didn't show tank gameplay.
I tell you why you're wrong.

But tank gameplay is about pulling and managing the pace of a dungeon, it's not having your mitigation entirely ignored by bullshit mechanic like reduced max hp and dmg so low you could be a DPS doing it. It's also not about running around to avoide a no dmg retard knockback, in a real tank situation you position yourself to not get pushed back so you don't fuck over your dps teamates with the dancing around, pull things correctly, go in a good position and your back against the wall. There's not a lot of dungeon with ridiculous knockbacks that push you out of the map, the first one that comes to mind is the entirely random and unpredictable kick from the last boss of Vault, which is considered extremely stupid, because it is (for different reasons but still).

I would have wanted to see things that couldn't have been in a DPS challenge like real dmg mitigation and cooldown management and such, because frankly, the Kruul shit could have been a DPS challenge in terms of mechanics.

If anything, the healer challenge in BRH looking place felt more like a tank challenge than the Kruul one. Switch the npc tank and player healer and you have yourself a much better tanking challenge where you have much more meaningful dmg management and tweak things around to make the tank protect teammates instead of the healer spamming them.

Tanking is not playing alone, Velen is not a teammate, he's literally just another reason to fail the challenge because apparently he has no legs, your synergy with him is nothing like playing a tank in a group.

You didn't tell me why you're wrong, you talked about standing afk or some shit, which I obviously did not talk about. Standing afk is a healer's job.

[kary]

But tank gameplay is about pulling and managing the pace of a dungeon, it's not having your mitigation entirely ignored by bullshit mechanic like reduced max hp and dmg so low you could be a DPS doing it. It's also not about running around to avoide a no dmg retard knockback, in a real tank situation you position yourself to not get pushed back so you don't fuck over your dps teamates with the dancing around, pull things correctly, go in a good position and your back against the wall. There's not a lot of dungeon with ridiculous knockbacks that push you out of the map, the first one that comes to mind is the entirely random and unpredictable kick from the last boss of Vault, which is considered extremely stupid, because it is (for different reasons but still).

I would have wanted to see things that couldn't have been in a DPS challenge like real dmg mitigation and cooldown management and such, because frankly, the Kruul shit could have been a DPS challenge in terms of mechanics.

If anything, the healer challenge in BRH looking place felt more like a tank challenge than the Kruul one. Switch the npc tank and player healer and you have yourself a much better tanking challenge where you have much more meaningful dmg management and tweak things around to make the tank protect teammates instead of the healer spamming them.

Tanking is not playing alone, Velen is not a teammate, he's literally just another reason to fail the challenge because apparently he has no legs, your synergy with him is nothing like playing a tank in a group.

You didn't tell me why you're wrong, you talked about standing afk or some shit, which I obviously did not talk about. Standing afk is a healer's job.

So you basically have your tank mindset stuck in vanilla with pulling scholomance, gotcha.
No wonder the challenge is hard.

the first one that comes to mind is the entirely random and unpredictable kick from the last boss of Vault

lol.

[Swalload]

So you basically have your tank mindset stuck in vanilla with pulling scholomance, gotcha.
No wonder the challenge is hard.


lol.

I lost a lot of time in this discussion. Should have told me you never played tank.

[kary]

I lost a lot of time in this discussion. Should have told me you never played tank.

I mean, I did the tank challenge I want to say 7 months ago, and tanked every raid @ heroic and nearly every M+ dungeon at 15+ but sure.
I have 3/3 on my monk and 4/4 on my druid.

Tanking is about interrupting, positioning and doing damage, as much as it is about holding threat. Holding threat at this point is secondary, probably even tertiary as far as your jobs go.

[ro9ue]

Oh Kruul is DEFINITELY the hardest one, that place gave me nightmares. I literally took a shit on every other challenges and this one was fucking cancer even if I fucking main tank specs. Every other challenge was a pure joke next to this piece of shit. I mean almost everything you have to do in that challenge is not even things you do as a real tank in regular gameplay, why is it so off? It doesn't even feel like a tank challenge, it feels like some exotic gameplay crap made by people who clearly don't play tanks.

It was harder than every other challenged, it was not fun in any way shape or form, it was buggy as fuck (smoke not showing up to tell you you're getting kicked out of the map, velen not dying correctly and making the scenario not restart when you go back in, and a bunch of ther shits) and on top of that it was not even satisfying to finally beat it. It was not a "yay I got it" moment it was just a "FINALLY, FUCK YOU FUCKING SHITHOLE".

Not to mention it was so badly designed and balanced that they have to change the stats of mobs depending on what class you do it with.

That place. Was. Shit.

Let's talk about the infernal ground slam because in my view it's the one mechanic that's absolutely horseshit.

For ANY other challenge mechanic, valkyrs on sigryn, eggs and totems on feltotem, runes on brothers, etc. There's usually reaction time for the player to do something, and they usually seem to occur around the same time. The infernal ground smash is 1) hard to see 2) casted totally random and most importantly 3) has a 1 second or less reaction time window. The reaction window is so small, that the strategy ends up being just run in a circle to avoid.

Another huge issue I have with it is the infernal that just suddenly resurrect and instant casts it out of nowhere.