Mage Tower Strat/Help Thread

[Deleted]

Yet Guardian druids are the most played tank spec in Legion.

Seems fishy to be honest.

Even prot warriors are getting hit like trucks, and we SUCK against magic damage.

Because their migitation is great when comboed WITH healers

[Deleted]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned Unholy yet, but it took me 2 attempts to get it. You only need to know one thing, take advantage of the many imps and kill them to proc Dark Succor and heal yourself to full over and over.

Gratz m8
You went with SR or Defile build ?

[Svisalith]

Having to pay 100 nethershards to re-attempt it is bogus.

100 isn't many, some people have farmed enough to attempt it thousands of times by now

[Volardelis]

Doing DPS has always been important part of tanking

But having to do dps levels of actual dps though?

Look at the tank gold / endless proving grounds, most of the things we have to do is protect the npc that actually does the damage / heals us.

This artifact challenge should act the same, however it doesn't.

[Cyrako]

As 870 fury warrior I kinda wish I could LOS the imps etc to at least stack them up but oh well will get there maybe :P

[Deleted]

Just finished the healer challenge as a resto druid. I died on the final enemy but hero NPCs finished him off. I thought it was super fun! Very challenging.

Ilvl and spec?

[Nitros14]

Here's a video/guide to the arcane mage challenge. 909 equipped. Didn't use prydaz or belovirs, I don't have them.

Don't know how other players did it, but here's the gist of how I killed this, I was 909 equipped. Even bad players like me can get their challenge appearance as arcane mage!

Talents: Amplification, Mana Shield, Incanters' Flow, Resonance, Chrono Shift, Erosion, Overpowered

Mana shield lets you spam your barrier and avoid being whittled down by attrition. Chrono Shift lets you get sprints when you need it. Resonance is just for cleaving damage. I swapped to Gravity Spiral to give me more evocates for mana shield, cord of infinity for burst on the runeseer.

This is NOT a dps race, except during the soft enrage at the end when the Runeseer spams his shield.

You get a special debuff in this encounter giving Polymorph a 20 second cooldown, but it no longer heals its target. Only Sigryn is vulnerable to polymorph, the others are immune.

Three things will happen in this encounter at all times.
1:Every so often a Val'kyr will come down and drop a yellow health globe to heal you if you run over it. Only lasts a few seconds.
2: A wall of Val'kyrs will charge through the arena, there's a clear gap, hits for about 3 million. This can happen during other abilities and it sucks.
3: Runes will spawn in the middle. Some will be smaller than others, they shrink over time and do 3 million damage if they shrink to nothing. This is a great time to use chrono shift and arcane barrage for a sprint. You can also use displacement to get extra blinks to get these.

The three bosses take shared damage, but the Jarl will die first due to his lower health pool. The bosses will become empowered one at a time and do an emote yell indicating they're empowered. The empowered boss will use something deadly you need to pay attention to.

Sigryn: She'll cast Blood of Her Father. This lasts 20 seconds and does 700k a second to you. You need to counter this by polymorphing Sigryn. You can't spam polymorph when it comes up or she'll go on DRs and go immune. Save polymorph for this. I suggest using a /cast [@focus] Polymorph macro and making Sigryn your focus. She also puts green shit on the ground when not empowered.

Jarl Velbrand: Either goes berserk increasing melee damage done by 500% or something stupid, or does a whirlwind that pulls you in and makes you dead if you go too close. Countered by kiting or running. Suggest making a /tar Jarl /cast Slow macro for him. Also throws annoying axes around when not empowered.

Runeseer Faljar: Gives himself a damage shield for ~6 million damage and does a 20 second cast that kills you at the end unless you break the shield and interrupt. Advise having frost nova up to give yourself room to dps him during it. You can't really save cooldowns though since he'll cast it more often than your arcane power and mark of aluneth cooldowns come up. Also he spams a meaningless nuke on you easily absorbed by prismatic barrier with mana shield.

Basic strategy: On the pull you can safely polymorph Sigryn and do your opener. After this you're just dealing with the abilities as they come and focusing on not taking damage.

This is not a dps race. You'll get all the damage you need from occasional arcane blasts and missiles when you have distance, and arcane explosion and barrage while kiting.

Keep slow or chrono shift up on Sigryn and Jarl when they're chasing you and remember displacement and frost nova to keep distance as needed. When runes come up make sure to barrage to get a sprint to grab them all.

When the council gets low on health Sigryn will emote about empowering all her advisors, which actually means a soft enrage in which Val'kyr healy bubbles will not spawn and Runeseer Faljar will spam his shield over and over again, which is a challenge to dps down repeatedly. Try to save frost nova to create distance to cast, and space your cooldowns out to deal with it. Val'kyrs will come during it and it will suck. You can polymorph Sigryn freely now, but she'll go immune eventually. If you aren't going to get a shield down, ice block can save you once.

Final tip: Leaving the circle resets the encounter, but the bosses won't respawn and you'll need to exit and re-enter to try again.

When Sigryn hits 19% you win.

[Deleted]

i'm excited to see if my elemental 'fun rng spec' will allow me to defeat this with procs

[Deleted]

Anyone did fire challenge?

[Deleted]

Look at the tank gold / endless proving grounds, most of the things we have to do is protect the npc that actually does the damage / heals us.

I think I did 85 waves of tank endless. It was mostly about kiting mobs to fire as I recall.

[Volardelis]

I think I did 85 waves of tank endless. It was mostly about kiting mobs to fire as I recall.

The fire does do a stacking damage debuff on them, so again, that dps doesn't come from you technically, as it comes from the environment.

The point is, tank challenges shouldn't have high dps and high healing requirements. We are not dps or healers.

[Deleted]

The fire does do a stacking damage debuff on them, so again, that dps doesn't come from you technically, but it comes from the environment.

The point is, tank challenges shouldn't have high dps and high healing requirements. We are not dps or healers.

Being on EU I cannot confirm all of what i'm going to say, but from what Blizzard have said it's bleeding edge content that requires you to push your class/spec currently due to it being tuned for tomb gear/traits etc. On some fights on cutting edge progression tanks do have to push their dps pretty high, same as healers, and you will be unable to kill certain bosses unless tanks min/max their damage too.

[Peachpies]

Can you elaborate a bit more? I'm MW, so I'm wondering the tips and tricks to this.

I uploaded the run and made some notes on how I did it.

[Volardelis]

Being on EU I cannot confirm all of what i'm going to say, but from what Blizzard have said it's bleeding edge content that requires you to push your class/spec currently due to it being tuned for tomb gear/traits etc. On some fights on cutting edge progression tanks do have to push their dps pretty high, same as healers, and you will be unable to kill certain bosses unless tanks min/max their damage too.

I understand that, but tanks WILL always pull less than pure dps (most of the time). So having a 'pure tank' encounter where we are required to dps as if we are a full on dps and heal as if we are a full on healer is problematic and poor design.

[Deleted]

The fire does do a stacking damage debuff on them, so again, that dps doesn't come from you technically, as it comes from the environment.

The point is, tank challenges shouldn't have high dps and high healing requirements. We are not dps or healers.

The point is, Proving Grounds didn't have anything to do with your normal tanking role in raids either. You didn't kite or trick things to stand in fire.

It's a "fun" challenge. It doesn't have to be a truthful simulation of gameplay at raidboss x or y.
Use some new skills. Have fun. Deal with it. Who knows, maybe learning to DPS is good for tanks.

[Usagi Senshi]

Got the WW monk one down to 30% and lower before I miss a totem or interrupt and get splattered. Gotta keep trying!

[Hctaz]

I wish it'd scale like proving grounds so that it stayed hard rather than "throw gear at it until it drops" which isn't a challenge, it's a time sink.

I agree. This should be easier for players like myself who have been using the entire DK toolkit since Wrath and know basically every nook and cranny of my class' (now limited) utility. They went with this route of "It'll be doable in ToS gear and get easier for players who suck" but they really should have just made it start at NH gear and scale upwards to remain a challenge but not a wall for people who are currently like 20 item levels lower. I can do it but it's kinda RNG on whether or not things spawn close enough to me or what procs I get in order to deal with the mechanics faster than they can gloabl me in some cases.

Also, unfortunately instead of making this like the warlock green fire quest and tailoring it to each class, they made a few encounters and stuck different specs on them. I have absolutely no idea why my frost DK is fighting against some Archmage. Why am I not doing cool death knight stuff? Arcane magic isn't my thing. You can't even use control undead for anything which is like... what? It doesn't feel good at all. I will enjoy getting up to 910 and beating this damn thing (closest I got was 28% on the second guy) but it just shouldn't be that way.

[Dystemper]

Well if you can beat these class challenge boss now, you better do it because after the cluster fuck of the mage tower today, I seriously doubt that people will put the resources back into mage tower again just so a small percentage of the elite player base can benefit.

[Well]

Has the mage tower gone up in EU as well?

[Stormdash]

Well if you can beat these class challenge boss now, you better do it because after the cluster fuck of the mage tower today, I seriously doubt that people will put the resources back into mage tower again just so a small percentage of the elite player base can benefit.

That's a legit concern. I was thinking about this after my Silgryn fail, Blizzard compared it to Black Harvest. Well, I have Black Harvest -- got it about 2 months before it was removed and was like 525-ish ilevel when I did. It was a hard pain in the ass, and I'm amazed that people got it in the 495-500 ilevel range when he came out, but I could also understand how with perfect play and a mastery of the class someone could. I'm really not seeing how I'm gonna get Silgryn done on my Paladin with or without perfectly play after that first sample if her tank damage alone blows through all cooldowns before I get 5% health off the fight, at about 890 ilevel. And if you need to be 910-ish or better to realistically have a shot at this, it's going to be pretty gear exclusive until well into the tail end of Tomb of Sargeras and really the last third of the expansion.

And I would be okay with, that except for this -- I still get to use my green fire. If they have these challenged tuned up so much they will be gear-exclusive until you're at the tail end of the expansion, there will be no accomplishment worth having unless artifact mogability will come with us into 8.x or beyond.

Maybe I'm over-reacting to one attempt, but if the most this has mechanically to decode is "interrupt this one guy's thing and continue DPSing", it's not going to be something most people are able to do until they've outgeared it's release considerably, and at that point, it's not the exclusivity of the reward that's going to be a problem as much as the duration of it.