Mage Tower - All classes, all specs! Is this usual?

[rda]

Legit question here. Why can't blizzard use the scaling technology they already have to scale the mage tower to level 120 and leave the challenge up for BfA as well?

They can, they just want some rewards that go away and mobilize people to sub / resub / hurry-hurry-hurry or you are going to lose.

Same reason they removed MoP / WoD legendaries.

[Marrilaife]

I'm missing BM and Survival for hunter. I kind of like the spear but my God I don't like Survival.

If you like survival, you should definitely try it! Pick talents that would make the spec most tolerable for you, I personally felt overwhelmed with the amount of buttons it had in comparison to arms warrior or havoc dh... But survival was one of the easier Xylems for me, if not the easiest. Tricks:
- in bubble phase, use flare to reveal Xylem - this is required, but makes it faster than other classes
- use harpoon a lot when moving around, it resets when you kill anything so I felt I had better mobility even than DH
- use pet to tank Xylem to minimize damage, just keep mend pet up and save exhilaration (it heals pet to full on top of healing you a bit), you can pick some tankier pet if you have troubles
- put pet on passive before p2 starts to make the void boss move to the edge, then resume the pet activity (so the pet doesn't keep the boss in the middle)
- every time you kill something, you get "survivalist" passive that heals you a bit
- in a pinch, you can use aspect of the turtle if something would kill you
- in last phase, after you get the debuff that spawns adds and you run out with them, pre place caltrops and all the traps a couple of seconds before the adds spawn, due to "waylay" passive the traps are more powerful if they lie on the ground for a couple of seconds, so they slow for more etc.
- pick butchery, it makes survival aoe similar to feral druid's brutal slash, great for bursting adds
- you can also pick the knockback grenade as a secondary means to delay the p2 adds
- prydaz, sephuz, kjbw and bm bracers (they work for survival too) are all good options if you have no surv specific legendaries

I never played melee survival in my life, I even forgot completely about "lacerate" as a spell and it was still fine. Dunno how much gear you have, but if you did MM challenge I assume it's enough.

[Iflash]

I'm at 27/36. I don't think I have the motivation for the last 9 though...

I'm missing Blood/Frost for DK, which I think are ugly skins and I haven't really played DK since Wrath.
I'm missing both Havoc and Vengeance because I just don't like Demon Hunters. I don't even have one at 110 and for some reason you can't boost them (I've still got an unused 110 boost) so it's probably out.
I'm missing BM and Survival for hunter. I kind of like the spear but my God I don't like Survival. I hate the gun skin so I don't mind not doing BM.
The last 3 I'm missing are all the rogue specs. Just not a class I care much for, even though oddly enough I main Feral. The skins aren't super great either.

Hmm, it seems like you already did most of the hard ones. The only hard one left is probably Sub Rogue. If you have any of those specs as 110 and somewhat geared (910) I'd give it a try.

[Zaganite]

I think I'm done with the mage tower now, I got what I wanted plus some benefits but honestly in BfA I won't touch some alts until a year into the expansion. Thanks everyone again for the tips over the last few weeks!

[Ciacco75]

All this time spent worrying about the difficulty of holy priest, only to clear it in under an hour :d
Mage tower completed!

[Explicit Teemo Nudes]

Got MM hunter, boomkin, shadow priest, havoc DH, arms warrior and MW monk done, so now I'm 28/36!

----

Now I have frost mage and sub rogue left as dps challenges - and all the tank challenges.

Hopefully I can get frost mage done. I suck at kiting, so we'll see.
I've never played sub rogue(haven't even fixed action bars and talents) and the only legendaries I have are the Antorus ring and Kil'jaeden's Burning Wish.
Maybe the trinket will help on the adds in last phase :P

I never tank, so doubt any of the tank challenges will go well either.
I don't mind getting the pala and warr looks, but the look I really want is monk. DH and DK looks ugly and boring.

[TheRickyB]

36/36 finally glad its done. that tuesday deadline got me off my ass for my last 3 healing skins :c

[yetgdhfgh]

Legit question here. Why can't blizzard use the scaling technology they already have to scale the mage tower to level 120 and leave the challenge up for BfA as well?

Though i agree that blizz should leave this up with the scaling tech its the fact blizz is doing another round of ability pruning and its that pruning that could make the MT either very easy or almost impossible for some classes.

[dwightyo39]

Prot paladin is whooping my ass. There is so much I dont know about the spec. I tend to focus too much on what button I should push, and end up getting punted off the platform. I'm not always fast enough with the glider.

I think I've managed to make phase two 3 times, but end up taking an annihilate to the face without using a CD.

[Arakakao]

I'm at 14/36, I'll try to get 3 more and call it a day. This race to obtain all appearances, leveling characters, doing WQs and daily heroics with all of them in orther to obtain gear, all this stress.... it has affected negatively my health. Maybe if I had started Legion with all classes at 100 it would have been different.

This is why I hate limited time content.

[Nathanyel]

I'm at 14/36, I'll try to get 3 more and call it a day. This race to obtain all appearances, leveling characters, [...]

Yeah, unless you already had the characters at 110 with some base gear I wouldn't even bother to start, you're too likely to have bad drop luck etc. and doing the challenges on an undergeared, unplayed char, up to three (four) times...

I have to say, the class mount questline was what got me to level all classes then already, and the "free gear" from Greater Invasions, as well as playing one or two specs for that and WQs quite helped prepare.

[Deleted]

I'm at 14/36, I'll try to get 3 more and call it a day. This race to obtain all appearances, leveling characters, doing WQs and daily heroics with all of them in orther to obtain gear, all this stress.... it has affected negatively my health. Maybe if I had started Legion with all classes at 100 it would have been different.

This is why I hate limited time content.

If only you had over a year to do it... They also gave us plenty of warning the appearances would be removed.

[Coconut]

If only you had over a year to do it... They also gave us plenty of warning the appearances would be removed.

That's true, but he might have a fairer point than you think. Looking back, it took me 5 months to finish all 36 challenges (minus one I had done early), and most of my characters were already high enough level from previous expansions. I had 5 of them at 110 already, and most of the others were 100. The lowest I had to level from were a lvl 70 DK and a lvl 90 Priest. The last class I needed, a Warrior, I boosted with the BFA pre-purchase. I don't know how I would have handled leveling multiple characters from lvl 1 or from lvl 20 with the xp changes.

[Explicit Teemo Nudes]

That's true, but he might have a fairer point than you think. Looking back, it took me 5 months to finish all 36 challenges (minus one I had done early), and most of my characters were already high enough level from previous expansions. I had 5 of them at 110 already, and most of the others were 100. The lowest I had to level from were a lvl 70 DK and a lvl 90 Priest. The last class I needed, a Warrior, I boosted with the BFA pre-purchase. I don't know how I would have handled leveling multiple characters from lvl 1 or from lvl 20 with the xp changes.

On the other hand; the classes you had at level 1 - maybe you don't really care that much about them anyway since they were just level 1, so these appearances shouldn't be that much of a deal anyway?

[Coconut]

On the other hand; the classes you had at level 1 - maybe you don't really care that much about them anyway since they were just level 1, so these appearances shouldn't be that much of a deal anyway?

It depends, really. Some of the weapons are very unique and cool, such as aff/demo and feral/guardian. It's definitely a case of "if you think you'll ever want to play this class in the future, it would be a very good idea to start now". I wasn't particularly interested in playing a Warrior or a DK for example, but I did for the tower. I ended up enjoying them, but the effort was greatly reduced in both cases. I also plan to make a Zandalari priest, so taking my old one from 90 to 110 was a bit gratuitous (though again, not a big deal in my case).

With new allied races on the horizon, I suspect many others were in a similar boat. If you're missing a class, it's going to be very tempting to roll it in the future with one of these fresh races, with the catch being that you'll probably regret not having the tower weapons for them, so you'll end up leveling twice.

As an older player with lots of time already invested in my account, I didn't feel the strain of leveling too much, but I can empathize with people who were missing several classes. It's one of the reasons I'm not a fan of removing content.

[Trollokdamus]

Legit question here. Why can't blizzard use the scaling technology they already have to scale the mage tower to level 120 and leave the challenge up for BfA as well?

Same reason they removed MoP challenge modes. Mage Tower challenges are tuned for the Legion iteration of classes and their specific toolkits.

[Kokolums]

Windwalker was stupid easy. Tugar can cast Fel Burst every 12 seconds, but you have a silence (Spear hand Strike) and a stun (Paralysis), each of them having a 15 second cooldown. So he should never cast Fel Burst. And that makes him trivial.

I made 2 macros to make it even easier

#showtooltip
/tar Tugar
/cast Spear hand Strike

and

#showtooltip
/tar Tugar
/tar [dead] Jormog
/cast Paralysis

Once Tugar goes down, hit the Paralysis macro to stop Jormog from casting Sonic Scream.

I won't even bother uploading the video of that.

####################

Affliction was easy as advertised, but it does require more subtle knowledge of class mechanics. I used the strat Simca posted

1. Stand on top of Karam before the fight starts and summon your infernal.
2. Put the infernal on defensive.
3. Karam will punt you to start the encounter and then the infernal will take aggro.
4. I get up within 10 yards of Karam do nothing while the infernal builds up aggro for 15 seconds.
5. Now go into your normal dps rotation
6. At 33%, Karam does some rp and then start casting Purgatory.
7. I interrupted Purgatory with Howl of Terror (Fear did not interrupt it for me for some reason, maybe I did it wrong, dunno)
8. Order your infernal to move to Raest.
9. DPS Raest, making sure to kite the adds so they surround Raest & Karam and drop Seed of Corruption on Raest a couple of times while DPSing Raest.
10. Karam dies quickly.
11. Kill Raest

Here is a video of the Affliction kill (bonus Unshackled Ur'zul cameo!)

https://streamable.com/vqv5n

17/36 and still need those rogue rapiers!

[yetgdhfgh]

Well thats Arms done

which gives me now a total of 21 done for me and tbh before blizz said they was gonna leave the MT up till prepatch i honestly thought i would get half that total so iam pleased with my total.

I really, REALLY wanna get Frost Mage and Prot Pally and DK done but i just dont have the skills to do it and i think time has almost run out for me.

[Coconut]

Well thats Arms done

which gives me now a total of 21 done for me and tbh before blizz said they was gonna leave the MT up till prepatch i honestly thought i would get half that total so iam pleased with my total.

I really, REALLY wanna get Frost Mage and Prot Pally and DK done but i just dont have the skills to do it and i think time has almost run out for me.

It's worth a try at least, if you have the gear. Frost mage isn't all that hard once you get used to kiting and learn how to use Blizzard (even hard-cast it) to shorten the cooldown on Frozen Orb. My advice it take it slow in the first phase to get yourself used to kiting Karam. Put a Skull marker on him to easily keep track of where he is. Kite him around the outer edge of the platform initially (to avoid leaving void zones around Raest), and try to get him back towards the center as he's reaching 34%.

Use a simple macro for interrupting hands, like so:

/target Hand
/cast Counterspell

Replace your Counterspell key with that. It's also going to help you switch to it to dps it. Always make sure you have a Blizzard or Frozen Orb up during this phase to kite Karam through it, because you won't be able to frost bolt him and dps the hands easily. Even if you're out of adds, hard cast Blizzard; if you can catch both the Hand and Karam with it, it's even better. The more targets, the more it reduces your Frozen Orb cooldown, and it does some damage to them too. Make sure you move around to drag Karam through the patch as much as you can. You can cast a few Blizzards in the first phase to get used to kiting through it and its duration.

Don't attempt to kill the adds to quikly. If you can cast your Blizzard such that it doesn't cover all of them at the same time, it's better; having some up means your Frozen Orb will refresh faster. Preferably don't use the Splitting Ice talent, it will only kill them faster.

Keep in mind that instant cast Flurry applies Winter's Chill to the target, so you should follow it up immediately with two Ice Lances which will deal damage as if the target was frozen. I ignored to do that initially, and it was one of the things that was holding me back dps-wise.

I believe once you learn how to use Blizzard to your advantage (which is easier than it sounds with a bit of practice, I repeat, fool around with it in phase one to get use to hard casting it when needed), you'll have it in the bag.

Edit: Alternatively, I believe someone said you can use Polymorph on Karam to interrupt Purgatory, much like Warlocks, Priests and Druids can interrupt it. I did NOT try this, so I can't confirm if it actually does, but if it does you could go with interrupting Purgatory into an immediate AoE to break the Poly, and attempt to kill Karam off with Blizzard, Frozen Orb and cleaves within the first Raest phase. In that case you would be keeping Splitting Ice.

Not sure how feasible it would be, it depends on how fast Karam is in his untargetable window, and you'd still need to master Blizzard placement a bit, but it could make things a lot easier, so it's worth trying out.

Also, don't forget about the runes when they start popping up, although you can kite the add a little bit with Blizard/Frozen Orb/Cone of cold if Raest is really low.

Good luck!

[Destructus]

For frost mage challenge, save cone of cold for when karam gets a little too close. Move toward the adds further ahead of the pack right before and hit them + karam with it to give yourself some more time to refresh blizzard, give a better kiting angle, and group all the adds closer together. With the increase slowing talent cone of cold is your strongest snare so it works great to give yourself plenty of space and time to finish off a hand.