Guide: Challenges by Specialization

[Chromell]

Fire Mage
Strengths: Incredibly strong burst AoE on demand

Weaknesses: No self-healing at all and must rely on absorbs for chip damage

Just one thing, Fire Mage is actually the only Mage spec with self-heal (Cauterizing Blink), so picking Shimmer as a talent when doing this with low ilv is a must (when you're not using Prydaz and/or Belovir's).

[Bigbazz]

A lot of stuff is off in this guide, but good effort all the same.

Prot Warrior - Impending Victory + Victory Rush ensures that healing is actually very decent since there are lots of low health targets with which to proc Victory Rush on. Additionally Shockwave is superior since you can do it to massively reduce add damage, it's effectively a survival cooldown and can still be used to interrupt casts from either bosses. Heavy repercussions isn't worthwhile due to most damage in P1 being spell based, Anger Management offers a significant boost in dps and overall survival.

BM Hunter - Kill Command heals, if you don't have healing legendaries then spec Killer Cobra and spam Kill Commands to heal back up to full. This was literally make or break for my hunter, Killer Cobra made a nearly impossible task into an trivial one.

Survival Hunter - Healing is fine because Exhileration resets every time you kill a target, meaning every frost shard and the adds in the final phase. Void phase (Arcane phase) is made easier by the fact that you need to use the flare since you can stand in safety and pull the boss out at range, hardly a weakness.

Sub Rogue - The artifact ability "Goremaw's Bite" applies an 8s slow, so you can pre build points on the boss to simply Nightblade, then Goremaw's Bite and then Nightblade again, making this trivial.

Arms Warrior - You can use the ice to proc victory rush, Arms also heals both via Mortal Strike damage and through rage spent. For the Arcane phase it's better to turn your camera around so you can see where he teleports to and instantly leap to that location, using the shields is more risky because if you do not have CS available you may fail to kill the add before he finishes his cast.

Fury Warrior - Wrecking ball is more usable than Avatar on this fight, it adds considerable damage throughout the fight which is ultimately about sustained cleave/aoe with occasional burst needed (burst that the spec already has in buckets with Odyn's Fury + Battle Cry). This way you're not increasing the risk/strain by piling up imps and needing to wipe them out, they will die throughout the fight with wrecking ball. Your version works largely because you're overgearing, Wrecking Ball and consistently killing imps throughout is much much safer.

Outlaw Rogue - Contrary to your guide Blade Flurry deals a lot of damage on this fight, it can be turned on/off as needed so there is no need to simply "leave it off" unless using it is proving too difficult or too much of a distraction that it's affecting how you play, otherwise it's definitely worth using.

Marksmanship Hunter - If you do fail to soak a rune you can freeze trap the add for quite a decent period, it can/will save a wipe in a lot of cases.

[Daws001]

Thank you for this! Figured I was done with the tower, got the two appearances I wanted, but now I may go after Fury and Fire's appearances.

[Explicit Teemo Nudes]

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.

What abilities are you using for the adds in the last phase? Save your aoe stun, artifact ability and eye beam for when they spawn. You could also use your Potion of Prolonged Power + drums right before the first set spawns. That way you get increased damage on the first set atleast and also the boss to burn it down quicker.

[Kelaan]

For Guardian Druid, if you don't have any of the range-extending legendaries (Luffas, etc), I found that using Galactic Guardian, combined with Moonfire spam and the Prototype Personnel Decimator trinket (normally for boomkin) helped tremendously. That trinket ended up doing about the same amount of damage as Moonfire and Thrash did, and made both phases easier.

[Deiae]

If you have limited legendaries for the Guardian Challenge: Lady and the Child from Balance may be an alternative. I just spammed moonfire and thrash to get it (also Galactic Guardian obviously). Eliminates the eyeballs completely.

[Kaedis]

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.

Roaring Blaze is only a small single-target DPS increase over Backdraft, and requires both rotational changes and a lot more concentration to use properly (since you need to pool Conflag charges and make sure every other Immolate gets 3 Conflag hits). Backdraft is a much better option. I would also recommend Reverse Entropy for the same reason, less rotational things to focus on means more focus on the fight itself, and to be perfectly honest, Reverse Entropy isn't even that far behind Eradication. I would definitely recommend both of those over your selections.

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.

A Demonic build should be using Demonic Appetite and Blind Fury, not Demon Blades and Felblade. There aren't really enough points where you need a spare mid-range charge for Felblade to win (and Blind Fury is categorically higher DPS). Same with Demonic Appetite, especially since you're getting insane numbers of Soul Fragments during the frost phase.

On the note of Soul Fragments, you can Chaos Nova the icicles before you jump out of them for free Soul spawns. Having Unleashed Power for that phase helps with this, since it makes Chaos Nova free (and thus you can't oopsie and not have enough Fury to cast it). If you then immediately interrupt the boss and drag him right next to the Focusing Iris in the center, Eye Beam can hit both him and the icicles (regardless of whether they were in a quadrant adjacent or opposite you), which you can then pick up while moving between zones for free Eye Beam refreshes.

Also, for the void phase, you can also use Metamorphosis to jump immediately to the boss's position. If you use it on the first void phase, it's likely to be back up for the final burn phase, unless you really overgear the fight. It's also probably worth noting somewhere for that fight that the final phase boss's channeled ability can be interrupted, but it DEFINITELY SHOULD NOT BE, as it doesn't prevent the voidwalkers from spawning, but does cause the boss to run back into melee range of you and thus the voidwalkers to instantly heal him.

One other suggestion for Frost DKs: during void phase, you can kill an add, then stand on the edge of its bubble and be within the 13yd Frost Strike range of the add in the next bubble. Makes daisy-chaining bubbles super easy.

[quellious]

I will say that Unholy is NOT the easiest Agatha challenge. It's probably tied between druid/mage, since you can aoe down the adds without ever breaking ST dps. The DK has to do ad control, or he can be overwhelmed. Kinda sad, since DK is supposed to be the AOE spec, but they really lack what the other two have: BURST aoe.

[Deleted]

A lot of stuff is off in this guide, but good effort all the same.

Prot Warrior - Impending Victory + Victory Rush ensures that healing is actually very decent since there are lots of low health targets with which to proc Victory Rush on. Additionally Shockwave is superior since you can do it to massively reduce add damage, it's effectively a survival cooldown and can still be used to interrupt casts from either bosses. Heavy repercussions isn't worthwhile due to most damage in P1 being spell based, Anger Management offers a significant boost in dps and overall survival.

BM Hunter - Kill Command heals, if you don't have healing legendaries then spec Killer Cobra and spam Kill Commands to heal back up to full. This was literally make or break for my hunter, Killer Cobra made a nearly impossible task into an trivial one.

Survival Hunter - Healing is fine because Exhileration resets every time you kill a target, meaning every frost shard and the adds in the final phase. Void phase (Arcane phase) is made easier by the fact that you need to use the flare since you can stand in safety and pull the boss out at range, hardly a weakness.

Sub Rogue - The artifact ability "Goremaw's Bite" applies an 8s slow, so you can pre build points on the boss to simply Nightblade, then Goremaw's Bite and then Nightblade again, making this trivial.

Arms Warrior - You can use the ice to proc victory rush, Arms also heals both via Mortal Strike damage and through rage spent. For the Arcane phase it's better to turn your camera around so you can see where he teleports to and instantly leap to that location, using the shields is more risky because if you do not have CS available you may fail to kill the add before he finishes his cast.

Fury Warrior - Wrecking ball is more usable than Avatar on this fight, it adds considerable damage throughout the fight which is ultimately about sustained cleave/aoe with occasional burst needed (burst that the spec already has in buckets with Odyn's Fury + Battle Cry). This way you're not increasing the risk/strain by piling up imps and needing to wipe them out, they will die throughout the fight with wrecking ball. Your version works largely because you're overgearing, Wrecking Ball and consistently killing imps throughout is much much safer.

Outlaw Rogue - Contrary to your guide Blade Flurry deals a lot of damage on this fight, it can be turned on/off as needed so there is no need to simply "leave it off" unless using it is proving too difficult or too much of a distraction that it's affecting how you play, otherwise it's definitely worth using.

Marksmanship Hunter - If you do fail to soak a rune you can freeze trap the add for quite a decent period, it can/will save a wipe in a lot of cases.

I did another Outlaw challenge yesterday with all cheese buffs including Command Center, and I found Blade Flurry to be rather useful. I usually turned it on to handle imp groups and off when they were down.

[Deleted]

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.

It's basically a dungeon, 4 ppl vs 5. We get a lot of questions about the challenge on our MW discord, and trust me no one ever tells them not to use vivify. You're right about essence font, usually in a dungeon we can use it to blanket people in the HoT for double mastery but that's when mana doesn't matter, so I won't advise it here. Thanks for going back and correcting the post

[Dastreus]

Dafuq you mean kill Karam in the inbetween phase? the explosions just aren't doing it!!!!!!

Edit: I was quite pissed. Then I realized Karam was chasing my Infernal and Moving the infernal meant moving Karam. Theeeenn I was able to splash damage him down. Please add this to your guide! Move the infernal to move Karam near the exploding ones!

[Simca]

Just one thing, Fire Mage is actually the only Mage spec with self-heal (Cauterizing Blink), so picking Shimmer as a talent when doing this with low ilv is a must (when you're not using Prydaz and/or Belovir's).

Very good point. I hadn't noticed that Artifact trait at all when I did my brief stint as Fire. Definitely added to the guide.

A lot of stuff is off in this guide, but good effort all the same.

Prot Warrior - Impending Victory + Victory Rush ensures that healing is actually very decent since there are lots of low health targets with which to proc Victory Rush on. Additionally Shockwave is superior since you can do it to massively reduce add damage, it's effectively a survival cooldown and can still be used to interrupt casts from either bosses. Heavy repercussions isn't worthwhile due to most damage in P1 being spell based, Anger Management offers a significant boost in dps and overall survival.

BM Hunter - Kill Command heals, if you don't have healing legendaries then spec Killer Cobra and spam Kill Commands to heal back up to full. This was literally make or break for my hunter, Killer Cobra made a nearly impossible task into an trivial one.

Survival Hunter - Healing is fine because Exhileration resets every time you kill a target, meaning every frost shard and the adds in the final phase. Void phase (Arcane phase) is made easier by the fact that you need to use the flare since you can stand in safety and pull the boss out at range, hardly a weakness.

Sub Rogue - The artifact ability "Goremaw's Bite" applies an 8s slow, so you can pre build points on the boss to simply Nightblade, then Goremaw's Bite and then Nightblade again, making this trivial.

Arms Warrior - You can use the ice to proc victory rush, Arms also heals both via Mortal Strike damage and through rage spent. For the Arcane phase it's better to turn your camera around so you can see where he teleports to and instantly leap to that location, using the shields is more risky because if you do not have CS available you may fail to kill the add before he finishes his cast.

Fury Warrior - Wrecking ball is more usable than Avatar on this fight, it adds considerable damage throughout the fight which is ultimately about sustained cleave/aoe with occasional burst needed (burst that the spec already has in buckets with Odyn's Fury + Battle Cry). This way you're not increasing the risk/strain by piling up imps and needing to wipe them out, they will die throughout the fight with wrecking ball. Your version works largely because you're overgearing, Wrecking Ball and consistently killing imps throughout is much much safer.

Outlaw Rogue - Contrary to your guide Blade Flurry deals a lot of damage on this fight, it can be turned on/off as needed so there is no need to simply "leave it off" unless using it is proving too difficult or too much of a distraction that it's affecting how you play, otherwise it's definitely worth using.

Marksmanship Hunter - If you do fail to soak a rune you can freeze trap the add for quite a decent period, it can/will save a wipe in a lot of cases.

Prot Warrior: Healing is very iffy. I really did try to take every chance to heal, but the problem is that most of your damage splashes, so it is a little hard to kill the adsd one by one for maximum health gain (if you kill them all at once, you can only Victory Rush once). I don't really agree about Shockwave vs Storm Bolt. Shockwave is viable but it's worse in every way compared to Storm Bolt against the bosses, and the adds do zero damage since they don't have the channeling ability here. Heavy Repercussions isn't about the damage reduction, it's about the damage. This said, Anger Management may allow you to get a second Battle Cry out of Phase 1 after thinking about it some more. I think I'll swap it out in the default build.

BM Hunter: Killer Cobra is helpful, for sure. I used for my initial attempts, but I found that pet deaths were a real issue when missing Fel Bursts and that Aspect of the Beast made the difference for me there. I'll make a note about it in the guide.

Survival: Yeah I mentioned how to handle self-healing using the ice in the guide. I should probably clarify that in the Weaknesses list. As for the Flare thing, you're right that it's not a strong weakness, but it does slightly complicate the cheese strategy that you can execute with Disengage -> Aspect of the Cheetah -> Aspect of the Turtle, since you have to throw a Flare in at the end. Also, putting it in the Weaknesses list helps remind people about it, which is nice.

Sub Rogue: Goremaw's Bite is useful (and I will mention it more explicitly) but it does not trivialize the add handling by any means. All three slows are only 8 seconds, and you can only barely maintain them all. Once the first round of slows drops, you will either only have 0 or 1 adds dead, at which point the other 2 will be back at full speed.

Arms Warrior: Yeah, I should mention you can use the ice to heal, but honestly I never needed it so I preferred skipping over the ice with Heroic Leap. I mentioned the cheese strategy for Arms, but I can be more explicit about it.

Fury Warrior: Interesting point on Wrecking Ball. I tried it for an attempt or two but it didn't seem as useful as Avatar to me. I'll suggest it strongly as an alternative though because you are very right that it is a good talent for it. I think I'm going to do this for Elemental Shaman too.

Outlaw Rogue: Yeah, this is like the third comment I've had about Blade Flurry. I'll change that.

For Guardian Druid, if you don't have any of the range-extending legendaries (Luffas, etc), I found that using Galactic Guardian, combined with Moonfire spam and the Prototype Personnel Decimator trinket (normally for boomkin) helped tremendously. That trinket ended up doing about the same amount of damage as Moonfire and Thrash did, and made both phases easier.

Hmm, I'll mention it.

If you have limited legendaries for the Guardian Challenge: Lady and the Child from Balance may be an alternative. I just spammed moonfire and thrash to get it (also Galactic Guardian obviously). Eliminates the eyeballs completely.

Yeah, I mentioned the power of this legendary in the guide, but I didn't refer to it by name and I should have.

Roaring Blaze is only a small single-target DPS increase over Backdraft, and requires both rotational changes and a lot more concentration to use properly (since you need to pool Conflag charges and make sure every other Immolate gets 3 Conflag hits). Backdraft is a much better option. I would also recommend Reverse Entropy for the same reason, less rotational things to focus on means more focus on the fight itself, and to be perfectly honest, Reverse Entropy isn't even that far behind Eradication. I would definitely recommend both of those over your selections.



A Demonic build should be using Demonic Appetite and Blind Fury, not Demon Blades and Felblade. There aren't really enough points where you need a spare mid-range charge for Felblade to win (and Blind Fury is categorically higher DPS). Same with Demonic Appetite, especially since you're getting insane numbers of Soul Fragments during the frost phase.

On the note of Soul Fragments, you can Chaos Nova the icicles before you jump out of them for free Soul spawns. Having Unleashed Power for that phase helps with this, since it makes Chaos Nova free (and thus you can't oopsie and not have enough Fury to cast it). If you then immediately interrupt the boss and drag him right next to the Focusing Iris in the center, Eye Beam can hit both him and the icicles (regardless of whether they were in a quadrant adjacent or opposite you), which you can then pick up while moving between zones for free Eye Beam refreshes.

Also, for the void phase, you can also use Metamorphosis to jump immediately to the boss's position. If you use it on the first void phase, it's likely to be back up for the final burn phase, unless you really overgear the fight. It's also probably worth noting somewhere for that fight that the final phase boss's channeled ability can be interrupted, but it DEFINITELY SHOULD NOT BE, as it doesn't prevent the voidwalkers from spawning, but does cause the boss to run back into melee range of you and thus the voidwalkers to instantly heal him.

One other suggestion for Frost DKs: during void phase, you can kill an add, then stand on the edge of its bubble and be within the 13yd Frost Strike range of the add in the next bubble. Makes daisy-chaining bubbles super easy.

Lots of good advice here, going to add most of it to the guide (maybe not the complicated bit about moving Xylem to the ice to get more orbs; not sure that's really worth it when the Frost phase should never be a large issue). Not interrupting the boss is sort of a general-strategy which I haven't covered super in-depth, but I will still add it under the Xylem header.

[Deleted]

Thank you for this awesome recap, just what i needed to get mage tower appearances that i haven't done yet since didn't care or didn't even play the spec (enha shammy, looking at you!). Also i only got 3 more days playtime before my summer break pre-BfA, but your guide will help a lot.

Also kudos on you moderating your post, carefully listening to other and incorporating their pro-tips where suited and also explaining stuff to newbies, much appreciated!

- - - Updated - - -

Edit:
After rereading your demoguide, one trick i used there: get in melee range of the caster mob, you can then bodypull him towards the others. Means only one HoG when they are stacked reapplies Doom easily AND you get the benefit of HoGs aoe splash for some extra damage.
Did mine back at ilvl900ish, doing mechanics properly to stay alive mattered a lot, guess with current gear mistakes won't get punished that hard...

[Theoris]

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

Yeah, I figured once I learned that EM increases healing. Thank you very much for the guide! Helped a lot!

[maeds]

Its a hard one but, for the frost mage you can do kinda the same as affli warlock.
If you polymorph him right before he goes immune (You have to be ready with blizzard or frozen orb to remove the poly), the same thing as affli happens. With splitting ice you can do some damage to him and as soon as he comes back, polymorph fast again, if you do it right he should be pretty low after second poly. Then just kill him fast and the rest is easy.
This works as shadow priest with psychic scream as well

[Jakegeee]

I just finished the sub rouge mt and you can actually cheese both the ice shards and the intermission with Death from Above. It requires pretty tight timing but can be done if you're familiar enough with the challenge. I felt it was worth mentioning as it trivializes the ice shards which are the hardest part for sub. You basically just have to use it right before he teleports and you'll be sent right to him.

[RoKPaNda]

Out of all of the tank challenges I found Prot Pally to be the easiest, not the hardest. Their self healing is fantastic, the elementals don't do shit, the eyes you can 1-shot, and if you mess up on Kruul with twisted reflection you can just bubble it. I personally found Blood DK and Guardian druid to be much harder than the others. Havoc and Prot warrior being almost as easy as prot paladin.

[Explicit Teemo Nudes]

I just finished the sub rouge mt and you can actually cheese both the ice shards and the intermission with Death from Above. It requires pretty tight timing but can be done if you're familiar enough with the challenge. I felt it was worth mentioning as it trivializes the ice shards which are the hardest part for sub. You basically just have to use it right before he teleports and you'll be sent right to him.

I've seen a video of someone using shadowstep to step out of the ice shards. It didn't work all the time, but most of the time :P

[Toore]

For plate tanks a trick that i used when i was quite low ilvl (should apply here too) was to use the heirloom str trinket (the dps one gronntooth-war-horn): everything in the scenario is the mob type that prolongs the procc so you have like >80% uptime on it which makes it better then most other trinkets (not 100% sure now with Antorus gear but if you want to do towers quick you might not have time to farm gear)

[Dascha]

on Arc-mage Xylem you can use arcane torrent to stop him from entering the arcane phase, so he cant blink out across the room. just intrupt the last frost bolt he casts while DBM announces "arcane phase soon"