Guide: Challenges by Specialization

[Jester Joe]

Um...wat?

Until pre-patch (when the mage tower is no longer available), pets can have their specs swapped any time you want out of combat. Any pet a hunter can tame can be tenacity right now. And even once pre-patch hits and you can't change pet specs anymore, Spirit Beast are going to be tenacity anyway!

Certain pets are still better as tenacity.

Quilens for example have a tanking CD.

[rogueMatthias]

Finally got around to completing outlaw challenge.
Now I just need to learn how to play bear and complete the challenge in a week

[Explicit Teemo Nudes]

I did the outlaw challenge today, with a really badly geared character.

With an itemlevel of ~915, lots of assa gear (almost no haste at all, maybe like 12%), no tier set at all and only the craftable boots legendary and the argus legendary ring at hand, I found it very very easy to go with following talents:

3/2/3/3/3/2/1

With the increased energy regeneration and increased energy cap, I could basically keep up Blade Flurry for the entire encounter (and still have a lot of energy regen left for the rotation) and be basically be tunneling Agatha 24/7 while only kicking the imps (or killing them before they start) healing her.
Took me 4 attempts to kill her, but that was because I didn't realise that I need to kick her, after she shields herself.

You just ignored the imps that spawns in 3 and teleports when you start hitting them? How? They kill me, and the talent that gives range doesn't seem to hit them.
I'm gonna try it though to see how it goes.

[ohgasauraus]

Additional pointers for BM hunters challenge:
- artifact trait that heals you for 15% of the damage of your Kill Command.
- using spirit beast, you can still spec it to tenacity pet (this is no longer the case for BfA but when BfA comes this challenge is no more either)
- misdirection on pets reduce their damage taken (artifact trait)
- if pet dies dun give up, you had 2nd chance where you revive your pet and continue as your pet will eventually out threat you.

[rogueMatthias]

You just ignored the imps that spawns in 3 and teleports when you start hitting them? How? They kill me, and the talent that gives range doesn't seem to hit them.
I'm gonna try it though to see how it goes.

I found tunneling Agatha with Flurry up a challenge too. Umbral imps and Fuming just don't seem to die quick enough without luck from CC buffs.

I ended up using MFD and adding an Umbral imp target macro so I could find them in the crowd of imps. It was really useful in the end phase when I just wanted to burn down the last of her hp and those fuckers were shielding her.

[gutnbrg]

I've found that Mirror Images can also be used to taunt Karam during the frost mage challenge, at least during the first phase. You get around 30s of uninterrupted damage on him if you use this strategy. You don't even need to let Karam hit you first; pop Mirrors before Karam walks through your Blizzard on the pull.

A caveat; be careful with Mirror placement; if Karam knocks them off the 'island' with his attack he can bug and reset the scenario.

anytime i used mirror images karam just 1shots them

[Glowbear]

Thanks for putting this together I still have a few more I want to try and this looks really useful.

Bear form saved my ass from double-fixating scouts in wave 4 of the Resto druid challenge but that's about all I have to contribute.

[Deleted]

If they put another single player challenge into this MMO I will focking uninstall the game. I hate everything about this mage tower. The brawlers are fine because you can overpower those ones. But this... my main is in 917 I do only LFR because I cannot raid at night. Pug raids wont invite you if your ilvl is under the raid's drops...
I am not a Kungen or Swifty to have the skills. The worst is the only good looking skins are these ones...

[RamGuy]

These kinds of challenges just goes to show how bad I am at the game.. I'm really struggling with Havoc Demon Hunter with ilevel 931 with what is supposedly the best legendaries for phase 1 and phase 2. I don't have the best one for phase 3 but my two active legendaries are still supposedly the second and third best.

I was a fool so I hadn't finished the "sacrifice artefact weapon" quest-line before I started so that sure helped out but I'm still not able to do it. Phase 1 provides no challenge other than me be stupid enough to not fully double-jump before fel rushing out of the ice. The second phase is horrible. My best bet is to cheese it by doing a double fel rush so I have to pay attention before he uses mirror image as I get to the middle of the room and then I try to double fel rush in the right direction but unless I do it almost perfectly I will die like 1 step away from him.. Rather annoying, I seriously hate that phase.

In phase 3 I keep having issues with the spawn adds. I just don't manage to kill them fast enough, it goes okay on the first three adds but afterwards there is always one reaching into the creep forcing me to enter it in order to kill the last one but that results in me taking a bunch of damage ensuring I'm dead a few seconds later...


EDIT:

Even though I'm struggling I love doing it.

[Deleted]

i'm really not sure how you ranked these, cause paladin is one of the easiest tank challenge,while guardian only ranked in the easy ones with Mark of Ursol. as a "tips before prepatch", it's way out of date.
guardians needs a specific build to handle eyes (gg) and a 30 sec cd to not waste their defensives on ghosts, with no means beyond heavy defensives of handlind magical damage (so 100% of inc damage in phase1), but thats the only difficulty they face. guardian damage is nowhere near problematic, even without specific legendaries. either Luffa or chest, with affinity are enough to cleave boss, gg with back does insane damage and with charge + SB + roar, bears have top tier mobility.

Paladins lacks a bit of mobility, granted, but you can burst the inquisitor without ever getting the stacks, that's how small the aura is, and your grand crusader procs will just stomp on everything. you cant get bumped by an eye, you can oneshot them the moment they spawn with any holy dmg dealing ability in your arsenal.add to that the insane self heal paladins have from LoP, and you have an easy time.

as for balance druid, with talent, starfall covers most of the room, i still dont get where you got the "trouble to position starfall" from, and you definitely want it talented to be able to cast while moving inside it.

all the overall tips are good, and will definitely be useful for people who still dont have their mage tower appearances, but the class analysis on tank challenges is way off.

[Deleted]

I didn't even know about the cheese as affliction warlock when doing it and I didn't see this mentioned so I'll say if you're sitting on the legendary ring that makes corruption slow its target that makes the whole thing very simple. Just pick the talent that makes corruption last forever, when adds come out put one seed on them and it's done.

It's also nice because the twin that chases you will be instantly slowed every time he activates so he won't catch up to you so fast if you miss the switch or struggle with targeting.

That ring, prydaz and 930 ilvl this was a breeze.

[Deleted]

i'm really not sure how you ranked these, cause paladin is one of the easiest tank challenge,while guardian only ranked in the easy ones with Mark of Ursol. as a "tips before prepatch", it's way out of date.
guardians needs a specific build to handle eyes (gg) and a 30 sec cd to not waste their defensives on ghosts, with no means beyond heavy defensives of handlind magical damage (so 100% of inc damage in phase1), but thats the only difficulty they face. guardian damage is nowhere near problematic, even without specific legendaries. either Luffa or chest, with affinity are enough to cleave boss, gg with back does insane damage and with charge + SB + roar, bears have top tier mobility.

Paladins lacks a bit of mobility, granted, but you can burst the inquisitor without ever getting the stacks, that's how small the aura is, and your grand crusader procs will just stomp on everything. you cant get bumped by an eye, you can oneshot them the moment they spawn with any holy dmg dealing ability in your arsenal.add to that the insane self heal paladins have from LoP, and you have an easy time.

as for balance druid, with talent, starfall covers most of the room, i still dont get where you got the "trouble to position starfall" from, and you definitely want it talented to be able to cast while moving inside it.

all the overall tips are good, and will definitely be useful for people who still dont have their mage tower appearances, but the class analysis on tank challenges is way off.

Well, Paladin is only the easiest tank challenge with Tyelca & Sephuz. Doing the challenge on my alt from the 2nd account, which had none of these legendaries, I needed Seraphim to barely manage killing Inquisitor boss before the 3rd Infernal add spawns, this with item level of about 920 and artifact weapon boost. But you are right about Guardian, it's only easy when you have either Luffa or Ekowraith.

Beside that, when playing BM challenge you can spec into a stun performed by your pet, so you can comfortably alternate interrupt, stun, and misdirect+shell ability from your turtle pet (or something similar). Though I was still grateful about having Roots on my 2nd account alt.

For affliction warlock cheese strategy, I found it helpful to wait for the announcement of the 2nd phase, and standing near Karam. Then I started casting fear right when Karam started his Purgatory cast, and this was my successful attempt at killing that challenge without Sacrolash on my 2nd warlock.

- - - Updated - - -

Fire mage does not have an ability "Dragon's Fury" - its called "Dragon's Breath". Just wanted to point it out.

What helped me is legendary robe, it absorbed 25% HP for 15 sec every blink. Don't see how its doable otherwise, unless you have crazy gear from mythics then i think you can honestly just burst it down.

There are these healing consumables from Argus emissary chests, which heal you for insane amounts. Combine these with Lightblood Elixir and Falcosaur Omelette, and Agatha melts even without Command Center buffs, while you can even recover from a hit by a boulder.

[sebas001]

Fire mage has a self heal called Cauterizing Blink. It heals you for up to 20% of your max hp over 6 seconds. In combination with shimmer, it is very useful.

[rda]

No disrespect to other guides, but quite honestly, I think this guide is more useful than them for the last week (or two?) before the pre-patch. What it omits is not that important and unless you are stuck on a particular spec, you'd be happy you didn't have to separate what's vital (which this guide has) vs what isn't (which this guide omits) by yourself.

Seriously, good job!

[Zhira]

It sure is. See sixth paragraph for more details, but basically I decided I was better off finishing it now rather than never.

Thank you for taking the time to do this. Much appreciated

Z.

[ceall]

You just ignored the imps that spawns in 3 and teleports when you start hitting them? How? They kill me, and the talent that gives range doesn't seem to hit them.
I'm gonna try it though to see how it goes.

Quite simple: they don't teleport far. I run around Agatha to be standing near them.

[Aerr]

Perhaps a stupid question;

How do I get or unlock the Mage Tower? I came back to WoW last week and still trying to get up-to-date with all the info

edit: found it

[Deleted]

I get that there's a lot to cover and it's subjective + different things might work for you than for someone else. But I had to comment on MW. First of all, it's called enveloping mist, not energizing mist. 2nd telling people to not use vivify is only making it harder for them. Either be it raids or dungeons, vivify is your "spammable" healing spell, not effuse..effuse is shit. Same probably applies to the other healing classes where you tell them not to use aoe healing..oof.

Also not to be rude about this but there was 1 person saying he hated this challenge because he was 915ilvl or something and unable to do these. I geared every class for these only using LFR and relinquished gear and did them at 920-930 ilvl. It's not exactly very hard to do so, and the challenges were first done at 900 ilvl, so with all the bonus artifact traits you have now it should be even easier. I think this one is more on you than blizzard. If you're only trying to do it on your main you can also do lower mythic+ keys until you get better gear. Don't expect rewards if you don't put in the effort

[Deadsol]

great effort was put into this...well done and thanks.

[Simca]

I've found that Mirror Images can also be used to taunt Karam during the frost mage challenge, at least during the first phase. You get around 30s of uninterrupted damage on him if you use this strategy. You don't even need to let Karam hit you first; pop Mirrors before Karam walks through your Blizzard on the pull.

A caveat; be careful with Mirror placement; if Karam knocks them off the 'island' with his attack he can bug and reset the scenario.

This is a good suggestion. Phase 1 is not particularly difficult, but it's still an interesting tactic. I'll add a line suggesting it.

What is Energizing Mist? Can't find it in my spellbook

Ability names are very hard; I meant Enveloping Mist. I've fixed that now.

I wouldn't go lonely winter for the Frost Mage challenge. You can use a pet move macro to move your pet onto the summoning circles so you don't have to stomp them yourself. Pet freeze is also procs on command for hands.

Yeah, I changed it out to be the default build. I had it in the notes as a suggestion, but it should have been the default build example. I used Lonely Winter because I really don't like the elemental, but I probably made things harder for myself than I needed to.

Um...wat?

Until pre-patch (when the mage tower is no longer available), pets can have their specs swapped any time you want out of combat. Any pet a hunter can tame can be tenacity right now. And even once pre-patch hits and you can't change pet specs anymore, Spirit Beast are going to be tenacity anyway!

My Lone Wolf Marksmanship main spec is showing; I've fixed those lines.

Mostly checked talents, so not judging the whole guide, but CORRECT TALENTS are the most important for Mage Tower imo!

They're really not. Some talents are nearly mandatory, sure, but none of the ones you mentioned are even close to mandatory.

Stopped reading after i saw Destro (5 out of 7 talents wrong) no First Avenger and Knight Templar for Prot Pala, and no Demonic + Soul Rending for Havoc DH ;/

???????????????

Front Page (?!) No offense :P

In general, these are example builds. There a -lot- of different choices to be made in talent builds, and these are generally the ones I found worked best for me. I try to note choices where they are important. That said, I'm totally willing to change the listed example build talents, and I'm not an expert by any means in like 75% of the game's specs.

I can admit a lack of expertise in Destruction. I much prefer Affliction in general. This said, I really don't know which talents you're referring to since it is a single target burst fight with basically zero cleave and no adds except the egg-hatched worms that you can skip or kill with one Rain of Fire. Mortal Coil, Soul Harvest, and Grimoire of Supremacy are obviously correct (well, Supremacy or Service is arguable there, but I talk about that a lot in the guide so I'm guessing you are talking about something else). My best guess is that you want to suggest Backdraft, Reverse Entropy, Demon Skin, and Channel Demonfire. Channel Demonfire is actually probably a good suggestion. I'll make that change. Demon Skin is also reasonable. It's just up against a talent that is so new-player-friendly that I don't want to swap it out. I have no idea why you'd recommend changing the other two those. My understanding is that Roaring Blaze and Eradication are the preferable single-target talents at the moment, but like I said, I'm not an expert on Destruction.

I'm going to change things as you suggest for Havoc. I found it easier with Chaos Blades than Demonic because the burst DPS stacks so nicely to obliterate the shadow boss at the beginning of Phase 2, but both you and another user suggested Demonic there and I think you may be right as a general case.

Lack of First Avenger was a mistake (I accidentally copied my live build over instead of my challenge build), fixed in an earlier version of the guide. Must have came undone (I do my edits in Notepad++ and copy them over so I must have done that one on the forum's version only), so I just re-fixed that. Knight Templar is not bad; it's certainly viable. I just feel that Hand of the Protector is too good to pass up for a minor conditional damage reduction talent in a specialization that already has more damage reduction than virtually any other specialization in the game. I would much rather have the added self-healing in order to save every orb for Phase 2 more easily.

Like I mention in the guide, I'm not an expert for most specs, so I would appreciate any further suggestions. That said, if you got to Destruction Warlock before you stopped reading, you were almost done with the guide anyway.

PS: Don't hate plz, im a trihard 36/36 done months ago, used flasks/food/drums/prolonged on each try for each spec (so i am not trolling)

I am in a pretty similar boat (maybe less trihard but still fairly so). My last one was done in May, and I used consumables for every attempt on every specialization. Didn't have every character enchanted properly though, just the tanks and healers.

I get that there's a lot to cover and it's subjective + different things might work for you than for someone else. But I had to comment on MW. First of all, it's called enveloping mist, not energizing mist. 2nd telling people to not use vivify is only making it harder for them. Either be it raids or dungeons, vivify is your "spammable" healing spell, not effuse..effuse is shit. Same probably applies to the other healing classes where you tell them not to use aoe healing..oof.

To be fair, this isn't a raid or a dungeon; it's a 4-man scenario. In this challenge, only one person is usually taking damage at a time except during Scouts' knives attack (or Stage 7, I suppose; Vivify would be good there). The #1 issue I see people complain about in Phase 1 is mana issues, and the #1 reason why is because are using AoE spells in a 4-man scenario with very specific damage intake.

Still, you have a point. I went through and reworded my warnings for every spec to be more detailed. I tended to group together abilities never worth using (Efflorescence) with abilities that have some use but should be used sparingly (Wild Growth). I also removed Vivify from the list of abilities I recommended against in general after looking into its healing per mana vs other spells suggested. In a 4-man scenario, a 3-target ability like Vivify is probably still a good idea, and its mana cost, while higher than anything else I recommended, is still not crazy.

I think the warnings are much clearer now; let me know if you disagree.