Mage Tower >>> Horrific Visions

[BeepBoo]

I mean, I did it on shaman druid rogue paladin all in nh/tos gear and you could use a defensive, or just not get hit. The lines didn't kill you unless you were low.

"Use a defensive" that you could use once every 5 minutes. It wasn't physical dmg. You couldn't bop it, etc. You got one fuck up. "Just not get hit" yeah, that's how these things generally work. Easier said than done. Unless you're perfect and routinely full clear mythic. I don't usually full clear mythic, but I can undoubtedly say, even getting 2200 in arena in the distant past was easier than MTC. MTC at 894 was the hardest thing I've done in the game from a personal skill standpoint.

Either you're arguing the entire game of wow just isn't even hard (lol mythic says otherwise) or you find different things that I find easy hard and visa versa.

I linked you when my last character did it. If you're doing it as a paladin, you could 100% spec the 5hp finisher that healed with the talent that gave you a chance to get a free finisher and boom, healing. (justicar's vengeance and divine purpose)

That's exactly what I did, but I couldn't sacrifice the hopo and DPS loss during shield breaking phases. It wasn't impossible, obviously I did it, but it was...get this... hard.

All of the overlaps were predictable

This is the entirety of the game's pve content. It's all scripted dances. The difference is MTC demanded near-perfection (a'la mythic) EXCEPT it was all solo, so either you were good enough or you weren't. Or you got gear and facerolled the most hindering part (maintaining DPS while doing mechanics).

If you took 15 mins, you were doing something egregiously wrong, because in nh gear it took <10 mins.

Honestly I don't remember at this point. It was a long ass time to stay focused. Way longer than basically any other boss in the game, which are all 5 minutes.

[LuminaL]

It was gated behind shitty currency that was tied to shitty wq's.. Did you even play legion?

I got the skin on 3 characters, 2 of which I barely even played with during legion, I dont even had my artifact weapon for one of them before deciding to do the mage tower, and I had zero problem getting the currency needed for it.
its an RPG, if you dont even want to play the game to do anything, fortnite and PuBG is there for you, go in, kill/die , get out, repeat.

[Kehego]

"Use a defensive" that you could use once every 5 minutes. It wasn't physical dmg. You couldn't bop it, etc. You got one fuck up. "Just not get hit" yeah, that's how these things generally work. Easier said than done. Unless you're perfect and routinely full clear mythic. I don't usually full clear mythic, but I can undoubtedly say, even getting 2200 in arena in the distant past was easier than MTC. MTC at 894 was the hardest thing I've done in the game from a personal skill standpoint.

Either you're arguing the entire game of wow just isn't even hard (lol mythic says otherwise) or you find different things that I find easy hard and visa versa.


That's exactly what I did, but I couldn't sacrifice the hopo and DPS loss during shield breaking phases. It wasn't impossible, obviously I did it, but it was...get this... hard.


This is the entirety of the game's pve content. It's all scripted dances. The difference is MTC demanded near-perfection (a'la mythic) EXCEPT it was all solo, so either you were good enough or you weren't. Or you got gear and facerolled the most hindering part (maintaining DPS while doing mechanics).


Honestly I don't remember at this point. It was a long ass time to stay focused. Way longer than basically any other boss in the game, which are all 5 minutes.

dbm spelled out the encounter for you.
not all classes are paladins

I'm glad that you took your time and swam uphill and got it, I really am.

[Softbottom]

I got the skin on 3 characters, 2 of which I barely even played with during legion, I dont even had my artifact weapon for one of them before deciding to do the mage tower, and I had zero problem getting the currency needed for it.
its an RPG, if you dont even want to play the game to do anything, fortnite and PuBG is there for you, go in, kill/die , get out, repeat.

I've played Everquest for 20 years and wow since launch; I am not new to MMO's and grinding. I do want to play the game; I just don't want to do things that are boring as fuck and artificially time-gated before I can actually play parts of the game I enjoy.

[munkeyinorbit]

- Seven different versions which means less repetitive
- Not gated behind a crappy gated item, that you need to upgrade every week
- Unique cool skin weapon rewards

Visions have 32 different versions. If this is the metric to the degree of repetitiveness then visions win.

Gated by how often the tower is up. You can't just login and do it anytime you want. Visions win again.

Actual increase in power. Visions win again

Looks like visions >>>>>>>>mage tower by our own parameters. Thanks Schmilblick.

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I very well remember how all of my guild and friends hated that farm. Jesus, 90% of BfA was more fun than farming nethershards.

It was another rng system. You could literally do one WQ and never have to farm them again.

[Azerate]

Pretty bad comparison. Mage tower was just 1 boss, that was very unforgiving in the 'current' gear. And then it was triviliazed to the ground because it was a .2 patch content so the final patch of the expac destroyed the difficulty completely. It was a fun thing, but it's nowhere near close to the depth of visions.

PS. I guess I have to agree that Mage Tower had a lot more content for people who played their alts on a relatively decent level, but for most of us, not so much.

[Feral Druid ist Op]

It was gated behind shitty currency that was tied to shitty wq's.. Did you even play legion?

I don't know mate I did all 34, 9 of them week 1 with 900-905ilvl and never actively farmed a single nether shard

[Wondercrab]

The mage tower was much better in terms of offering content for alts. If you wanted to complete the whole collection it provided months of carrots on sticks to chase.

Visions are a way better feature to engage with on a single character, though. Most of the experience of the mage tower was gearing up, with only maybe an hour or two of gameplay in the actual tower itself. Compare that to visions, which have not only encouraged me to start gearing my character again, but have provided hours of content in and of themselves. They're also way more dynamic and replayable than the mage tower bosses, and they provide incremental rewards and scaling difficulty rather than being a one and done.

If visions rewarded something unique for each spec and didn't require weeks of cloak catch-up for your alts then they'd blow the mage tower out of the water, but as it stands I think the mage tower was a way better feature for altoholics, while visions are far superior for those who focus on a single character.

[Socialhealer]

I certainly felt more achievement from a 5mask clear than the stupid agatha scenario.

Maybe mage tower is better if you wanna play 34 alts and get carried by a hilarious weapon proc which probably more than doubled your main stat, oh and lets not forget the tank challenge was not about tanking at all, it was basically another dps challenge, you can survive but if u don't have top notch dps get fucked. oh wait visions is the same for tanks now lol.

Guess blizzard doesn't actually know what the hell tanking is.

[munkeyinorbit]

Tells me all I need to know about what you consider "harder" and also probably when you cleared MTCs. Should have done them when you couldn't brute-force mechanics and had to perform the dances perfectly.

Visions (from what I've seen) are only more difficult in that they have more damage and HP. Two of the dumbest, easiest ways to "increase" difficulty. Mechanics are the best way. Demanding more strenuous and precise control of a character while maintaining a minimum dmg output.

So you agree that visions are harder but you are angry because they are harder in a different way than what you would prefer? That seems a bit weird. I guess getting one shot might be preferred over needing more dps for some, but can you imagine the tears if mobs just one shot you because you didn't move out of the way or interupt?

No. Blizzard made the right decision here for what the content is suppose to be. The rewards are not suppose to be exclusive. You yourself have said visions are harder but they are the type of difficulty that most people can progress on week by week.

[BeepBoo]

So you agree that visions are harder

Harder how, exactly? Mechanical difficulty is the pinnacle of skill demands in wow, and the more skill an activity demands, the harder it is.

hard is something that some people might never be able to do regardless of how much time they put into an activity. Dunking is hard because most people can't and won't ever be able to jump high enough to dunk. Those are the best types of difficulties. Things that demand a certain level of skill. Visions do not do that. MTC at the end of the xpac didn't really do that, either for the most part. But man the tears before that were so sweet to taste as people bemoaned their failures.

but you are angry because they are harder in a different way than what you would prefer?

Again, hard only comes in one flavor

You yourself have said visions are harder

I did no such thing.

A boss that necessitates 20k dps to down or you die isn't hard in and of itself. It's a pass/fail of "do you have the proper gear." If your char sims at 20k and you're still missing, then yeah. L2P. But that bar is far lower than having to do actual mechanics while also needing to maintain a minimum dps.

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Guess blizzard doesn't actually know what the hell tanking is.

The prot pally tanking challenge was all about pulling and holding agro on enemies and also mitigating at proper times. Yes, DPS would allow you to get through things faster, as is the name of the game, but the important things were positioning adds, CCing properly, holding agro, and rotating defensives. Sounds like tanking to me.

[Noct]

Mage Tower was the single reason I was subscribed and playing Legion during its final patch. The skins were some of the best ever made and the challenges were fun for us who were doing them on fresh toons. The high of finishing some of those, especially the tanks ones, I haven't felt from any other PvE content in the past decade. They were wonderful trophies to earn as memorabilia of Legion.

Horrific visions are cool but in no way fills the void of Mage Tower for me, like Ion suggested it would. Mage Tower was a 100% aesthetic reward for a difficult solo experience (I know some of you who play this game too much and overgeared it think differently). The rewards from Horrific visions pack far less flair than say the Guardian form, and as far as I know, aren't even timegated to BfA? Even so, I feel very little pull to grind for them.

Additionally, "grinding" nethershards was ez pz so long as you had flying. Not sure how many times folks must've failed if that's what they remember most from it.

Finally, some of you seem to completely disagree with this sentiment, but I liked finishing mage tower.

I hope we see more entirely solo challenges for aesthetic rewards again in the future!

[Ielenia]

- Seven different versions which means less repetitive

Of which you'd only see three, at best, unless you leveled specific alts to do them. And unlike the visions, which changed every week, not just the location, but the corruption powers and location of potions and special NPCs, you'd just constantly see the exact same version, with zero variations, until you beat it.

- Not gated behind a crappy gated item, that you need to upgrade every week

No, but you had to farm a "special currency" to buy new attempts and, if memory doesn't fail me, the cost went up with each successful attempt, but I could be wrong on this. Also, the mage tower was gated, as it would only stay up for a few days, then be destroyed and you'd have to rebuild it, which would usually take twice as long than the time it stayed up.

- Unique cool skin weapon rewards

Which you would only have to beat it once and you were done, never having to see it again. Whereas Visions have mounts, pets, toys, enchant illusions, transmogs, and hardmodes.

[Whitedragon]

I mean to be fair you could oneshot unholy dk going in blind.
Same with bm if you had the healing pants.

any of the classes that had the imp mother with rolling rocks was stupid easy as well.

[Whitedragon]

ya some of them where pretty fun, though I have to say I hated the healing one... every time you buggered up the last room you had to do the whole thing again lol, drove me insane...

[LuminaL]

There were no oneshots in any mage tower, save the healer challenge when a character (you had to heal) died.
4 months is pretty fine for a random alt, I'd think.

Overlaps in mechanics? lol wait till you got leaden foot+ split personality on magister umbric. that's far more difficult than anything any of the dps challenges threw at you.

no oneshot in mage tower? did you play the same game me and others played ? because even its tank challenge had one shots in it. if you dont remember any, then either you did it with full antorus myt set or your memory needs some working on.

[Kehego]

no oneshot in mage tower? did you play the same game me and others played ? because even its tank challenge had one shots in it. if you dont remember any, then either you did it with full antorus myt set or your memory needs some working on.

You only got one-shot on the tank challenge if you both 1) didn't use a cooldown and 2) let kruul cast 4+ times.

and it's not like it's an instant kill mechanic, it was just a big burst that you survived several times, and you ran out of cds. It's not an instant kill, you were able to CD through his big burst.

It's like saying "I didn't play well and the boss overkilled me for 2k" that's not a oneshot. A oneshot is a mechanic that will kill you no matter what, none of which existed in the mage tower in any form.

[BabyCatjuh]

You only got one-shot on the tank challenge if you both 1) didn't use a cooldown and 2) let kruul cast 4+ times.

and it's not like it's an instant kill mechanic, it was just a big burst that you survived several times, and you ran out of cds. It's not an instant kill, you were able to CD through his big burst.

It's like saying "I didn't play well and the boss overkilled me for 2k" that's not a oneshot. A oneshot is a mechanic that will kill you no matter what, none of which existed in the mage tower in any form.

Bullshit. One of the mobs threw you off the platform. Can't remember if it were the eyes or the infernals, but it wiped me many many times on some classes.

[Sofo1]

Go with Mage tower being superior than visions. For MT you had to dodge, know your class, and use some spells you may not use that often. Visions is a cake walk after getting Gift of the Titans. Granted MT was a cake walk for some classes since it required range classes to kite and some got them on day one but not all were that easy.

Magetowers were also a cake walk.

[LuminaL]

You only got one-shot on the tank challenge if you both 1) didn't use a cooldown and 2) let kruul cast 4+ times.

and it's not like it's an instant kill mechanic, it was just a big burst that you survived several times, and you ran out of cds. It's not an instant kill, you were able to CD through his big burst.

It's like saying "I didn't play well and the boss overkilled me for 2k" that's not a oneshot. A oneshot is a mechanic that will kill you no matter what, none of which existed in the mage tower in any form.

by your definition of oneshot then only lich king fight had one shots where you couldnt do anything about it. no raid or dungeon has what you just described as oneshot.