The Hardest Mage Tower Challenge is....

[faithbane]

For me, the biggest issue was keeping healthy during P1, even with razor ice being a full heal with chaos nova, it felt like I was always really vulnerable, even running interrupt on CD. P2 was easy once I got there, but I struggled with a lot of the damage in P1 which was surprising to me, having done 3 other Eye challenges before I tried havoc.



I can understand people hating it.

It's a challenge built for tank specs, but not necessarily a challenge about how well you can tank, though if you sucked at not dying that challenge would crush you. Burst had nothing to do with it, if you were slow in P1 you just had an extra infernal or two to deal with, but that was no issue. For most specs, I felt P1 was easier than P2.

The issue with making a challenge about how well you can tank is that there's no parity between mitigation for tanks. A challenge about staying alive as a brewmaster vs blood vs guardian would be completely different, especially with how brewmasters can burst heal themselves with T20 set bonuses. I don't think it'd be possible to tune a pure mitigation challenge in such a way that could be applied to all specs without it ending up like the Kruul challenge.

Also, a tank's 2ndary role is to do damage. If you're able to keep yourself alive, all of your extra time should be spent on doing damage which is what that fight emphasised.

I agree that it would be really hard to challenge a tank fight around different classes. Which is why I said it was stupid to have all tanks have the same challenge, I understand that it is typical blizzard laziness but it was too much. But I disagree to the extend that burst didn't play a big role in the fight, especially phase1. The amount of internals were a joke when I did it on DH but it was a big deal especially for specs like blood with low mobility. On top of it all, if you had too many internals that die and respawn at different spots, their kiting patterns were completely different and they would roll over the retarded velen in that fight and kill him which was annoying as hell.

but I also disagree that the tanks secondary role is "to do damage". This is one of those myths that came up from the player base sometime around wotlk and cata and it stuck, no matter how much blizzard tries to destroy it. I mean they completely removed vengeance and seriously tuned down tank damage but people still believe tanks are supposed to do damage for some reason. They boosted tank damage a bit for legion tank artifact leveling and it is the last tier of every expac with the usual gears inflation so that tanks are serious damage for sure but on early tiers it is not the case and not their role. End game pve is balanced around 20 man raiding and even in the current tier, the fact that the tank is doing 500k-750k dps or 1M to 1.2M really doesn't make a big different when all dps is doing +2M each. What I wish they would being back is tanks that are actively helping the raid through buffs and CDs which was their actual secondary role for some time. Blood DK talent buff in wotlk was an amazing single target buff that a tank could give to top dps for burst or Bears that could buff and give an extra buff to a player in raid as well as cata last tier set bonuses that extended the individual CDs of a tank to the group was pretty awesome.

[prudi]

I honestly don't get how people struggled with Havoc, Standard Demonic build meant you had eye beam for every razor ice healing you to full, mirror phase was easy for pretty much all specs as long as you paid attention and the dps of the spec is high enough to do this in one mirror phase thus picking netherwalk. Burst AoE is good enough that you don't have to worry about p2 adds which are the big issue for subtlety (and to a smaller extent survival). Are people trying this without the demonic build?

I dont even know what a demonic build is, that might be the reason. People walk into doing this on their alt having no clue what they are doing. That is why it takes a lot of attempts for some people. Also they might not have had any knowledge of how the fight works beforehand. If you are trying to do 36 challanges you dont really have time to learn how to play every spec, keybind everything perfectly, learn how all the talents work, have perfect legendaries or perfect gear for all of them. My main problem was not being able to kill the final guy at 927 item level as havoc. Shit stats, shit skills basicly, no legendaries, no tier sets.

[faithbane]

63 tries as a Frost DK, TWO as Unholy (had no idea one type of Imps left crap on the ground because I didn't read comments/guides on the fight, so she went down on the pull afterwards).
Haven't tried challanges on other characters, tho.

Unholy DK challenge is a little weird. The first time I tried it (also without checking the guide) I got destroyed. I came back to try it later and I crushed it easily, I found out that if the command tower is on, the zone wide buffs also applies to agatha challenge because it is inside azsuna which made the challenge a joke. I hear now there is even an argus potion that works inside there which makes it even easier.

[Vordie]

Got it down a couple of months back, on the literal 2nd try with my 930 ilvl offspec, with speed boots + craft belt legendaries and full haste gear. It took me ~100 tries on my 899 DH (pre-nerf) so I was pretty familiar with the encounter but I hadn't done it since the Broken Shore was released pretty much.

I don't know how you can struggle with DPS when paladins are considered the best DPS tank out there.

[Ausr]

My main annoyance with the tank ones is that you basically had to spec for max dps, max tankage, and max healing. Fuck you if you weren't. Granted I did my first tank challenge as a bear pre-ToS. Paladin was done pretty easily but I did that in mostly Antorus gear since I only started replaying him near the end of the ToS cycle.

[xcitng]

when it was actually relevant, prot paladin was the hardest by a mile

[Gungnir]

The only ones I had issues with were Guardian, Prot paladin and frost mage for some reason.
The rest fell down within 2 or 3 tries.

I'd say prot paladin was the hardest for sure, especially since I had no good legendaries and about 908 ilvl.

[Isadora]

I did the tank challenge on my blood dk, the dps (twins) on the affliction warlock, the dps (sigryn) on demonology warlock and the bloodtotem worm on disc priest and destruction warlock.

Out of those, the tank challenge was definitely the hardest. There's just so much you can fuck up. Also, while I usually prided myself on doing quite some dps while tanking, the dps check was pretty brutal. After that, the affliction challenge with the twins was really hard too. The constant movement on top of making sure you do enough ST and aoe dps was pretty nasty. But what probably killed me the most was my stupid pet not using his interrupt when he was out of range of the hands. So on top of moving and dpsing you had to order your pet in range of the hands so it could interrupt properly. Pretty mean.

The other challenges really weren't much of a challenge at all, took me 3-5 tries on those.

[Marrilaife]

I don't know how you can struggle with DPS when paladins are considered the best DPS tank out there.

I find it hilarious when people perpetrate this myth.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...gregate=amount

Let's pick a pure aoe fight. Paladins aren't winning at all.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...ount&boss=2075

Or let's take m+15 which is mostly aoe:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...nks&bracket=15
Top dps are demon hunters, with some paladins and monks, warriors and druids appear as well. But it's not "paladin all over the place".

So generally there isn't a clear "paladin is a winner in dps as tanks". That's long gone, a thing of the past. People are repeating outdated info from the times when DH's spirit bomb sucked instead of being amazing, monks didn't have +25% keg smash shoulders and keg smash extra procs from artifact traits, and few other things. Somewhere around 7.2.5 prot paladin dps was so shit Blizzard had to actually buff it because it was bottom of the tanks in all scenarios. But even before 7.2 and all the goodies other tanks got, prot paladin was at best 20% ahead while people believe some myths "it was double damage of other tanks so the boss rightfully had double hp".

[ro9ue]

Experiences in here are very different, and I find that a bit strange.

I haven't tried any myself, but I spoke to a prot warrior the other day, and he said he needed 65 tries on ilvl935.
So, does that mean he never bothered to prepare himself? Can he really just be "bad" ? It just seems a little lazy and dismissive to make that claim.
Or didn't he have any useful legendaries? Or was his gear all useless stats?
When people say "everything is easy after 9xx ilvl", do they mean with 4 set bonus, or just in general?
What do people mean by easy? Should be just a few attempts or less? Or less than 40? A lot of people have a binary view on things. Either things rock or suck, and challenges are either easy or impossible. Does this apply here?

If the explanation is that you need extensive experience playing with the spec, so you can't just outgear it, I suppose Blizzard have tuned the challenge perfectly.

I think the differences in experience are to be expected. There are a ton of variables besides personal skill involved. Familiarity with the class, ilevel, tier bonuses, what legendaries they have, if they used consumables or not. I don't even gem or enchant my gear - but I hardly think that would make much of a difference except on the 1% wipes.

For example my main is rogue and I did all 3 specs in less than 5 attempts around 900 ilevel, no tier, no consumables, no enchants/gems. For prot paladin, I'm at 930 ilevel and I'm nearing 20 attempts, even having tried to enchant/gem and get consumables. I haven't had a chance to try again since I got some advice in this thread but hoping I get it done today.

On your last point, the only posts I'm a little weary of are the folks that just say it's all easy. That's not really the question, the question is what challenge you found the hardest. But it seems a lot of people don't want to admit they found any hard, even when just putting them on a spectrum from easy to hard.... "It was all easy". Well great, but clearly if you had to rank them some would be near the bottom and top of your easy to hard chart. So what was the hardest?

[Zantos]

...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?

How did you manage? I cant manage to get out of the green spots before they just nuke my hp in time. Im on my druid

[SoulSoBreezy]

I can't say I've done the others, but after 400 attempts and completing the Protection Paladin challenge within a few weeks of launch, I'm STILL turned off from trying the rest of the challenges.

[Zantos]

Wild charge a mob outside the green circle works well.

Only problem with that is a mob may not be up or im keeping it to get to the adds to save velens butt

[Vordie]

I find it hilarious when people perpetrate this myth.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...gregate=amount

Let's pick a pure aoe fight. Paladins aren't winning at all.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...ount&boss=2075

Or let's take m+15 which is mostly aoe:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...nks&bracket=15
Top dps are demon hunters, with some paladins and monks, warriors and druids appear as well. But it's not "paladin all over the place".

So generally there isn't a clear "paladin is a winner in dps as tanks". That's long gone, a thing of the past. People are repeating outdated info from the times when DH's spirit bomb sucked instead of being amazing, monks didn't have +25% keg smash shoulders and keg smash extra procs from artifact traits, and few other things. Somewhere around 7.2.5 prot paladin dps was so shit Blizzard had to actually buff it because it was bottom of the tanks in all scenarios. But even before 7.2 and all the goodies other tanks got, prot paladin was at best 20% ahead while people believe some myths "it was double damage of other tanks so the boss rightfully had double hp".

Sorry, I should've been more specific. I mean paladins are considered the best DPS class for THIS specific challenge.

There's nothing the logs you linked can show you that would be in any way useful to this challenge specifically.

Mythic raiders take different talents (and leggies/gear in general) and M+ logs include AoE (plus different leggies/gear), which in this challenge simply doesn't matter.

[ro9ue]

How did you manage? I cant manage to get out of the green spots before they just nuke my hp in time. Im on my druid

Assuming you mean in Kruul phase. The slowing green puddles. Those are hard, I just had to keep moving. I used the stampeding roar talent (the one that lowers CD), and it helped. Trying to keep track of getting out of those, while watching for a twisted reflection/annihilate, then also keeping track of infernals/other adds AND the beams... yeah it's by far the hardest part.

I just feel like the 10 or so attempts I had on my bear were just me practicing the choreography until I didn't fuck up.

[rebecca191]

I only did the priest ones.

Holy - annoying, I did it like 50 ilvls lower than I am now though, so may become a joke with gear, I don't know
Disc - total joke
Shadow - total joke if you have gear to skip the phase

[Zantos]

Assuming you mean in Kruul phase. The slowing green puddles. Those are hard, I just had to keep moving. I used the stampeding roar talent (the one that lowers CD), and it helped. Trying to keep track of getting out of those, while watching for a twisted reflection/annihilate, then also keeping track of infernals/other adds AND the beams... yeah it's by far the hardest part.

I just feel like the 10 or so attempts I had on my bear were just me practicing the choreography until I didn't fuck up.

10 attempts? Sheesh. You beat me. It took me about 56 attempts. The game changer for me was figuring out I could jump over the beams. The Kil'jaeden trinket was amazing for just obliterating the adds.

[Corroc]

For some reason I have always hard time believing when people come here "Hey I never played spec X or class Y and I only downed it after 2 tries with no legendaries at all". I mean I did this with all 36 specs and it was actually required to learn to play those specs to atleast some extend because there is a dps requirement. There was only one spec for me that I had not played at all and it was survival hunter. After doing the achievement with SV I actually had learned the basics of that spec so much that I thought the spec isn't as bad as people make it out to be. I actually enjoyed playing it and regretted the fact that I had not played it before in the expansion.

[Dald]

I've completed:

Warrior: All specs (All around 920)
Paladin: Ret, Prot (917)
Hunter: All specs (915)
DK: All specs (915)
DH: All specs (918)
Warlock: Aff (892)
Rogue: As, Sub (911)

Hardest of all of them for me was Prot Warrior (921 ilvl). Mostly not paying attention to be honest. Didn't have any prot legendaries or the healing bracers.

Easiest for me was Unholy DK (915). One shot it, prydaz never broke.

[Darktbs]

Outlaw Rogue tip:
Use Deeper Stratagem,Alacrity and Marked for Death.

Don't use MfD on Agatha, target the imps instead and one/two shot each one, this will reset Mark's CD, give you stacks of Alacrity and reduce CD of Adrenaline, plus killing the imps much faster.

Also use Roll of bone and try to get the Grand Melee buff wich grants 25% leech.