Updating Torghast this Week

Since the launch of Shadowlands, we’ve been constantly evaluating and reacting to the player experience in Torghast, Tower of the Damned. In previous weeks, we’ve made surgical changes to address pain points. This week, with the opening of a much more difficult section of the tower, we’ve seen a great deal of feedback from players that we feel is best addressed with a whole slate of updates. Some of these changes have already gone live with hotfixes over the last 24 hours, and the rest will be applied to the game today (and possibly tomorrow).

In summary, we want to reduce the length of a Torghast run, increase players’ success rates for a few specializations that are struggling more than the others, and give players more options in dealing with the challenges that Torghast presents. Here are the changes we’re making:

Torghast, Tower of the Damned

  • Health and damage of all creatures in Torghast reduced by 6% at Layer 1, increasing to 26% at Layer 8.
    • Developers’ note: The net effect should be that Layer 8 is now roughly as difficult as Layer 6 was prior to this change, with other Layers’ difficulty is reduced proportionally.
  • Health of all creatures reduced for players in groups by up to 25%.
  • Damage of all creatures reduced for 4- and 5-player groups by up to 20%.
  • When the Empowered enemy at the end of a floor is a spellcaster, they should now have a longer delay between their basic magic damage spells.
    • Developers’ note: The goal of this change is to make powerful spellcasters less punishing for specializations that lack a frequent interrupt.
  • For all classes, major cooldowns will now reset when you transition to a new floor.
    • Developers’ note: This functionality should mirror the way cooldowns reset at the end of a raid encounter, or when starting a Mythic Keystone dungeon, affecting most abilities with a cooldown of 3 minutes or longer.
  • Anima Powers/Cells
    • The starting Anima Cell in Torghast now offers a stronger selection of Anima powers.
    • Anima Cells dropped by rare creatures within Torghast now always have at least 3 choices to choose from.
    • The chance for an Anima Cell to drop from a creature on any given floor has been increased.
    • Unnatural Power no longer provides immunity to crowd controlling effects at 10 stacks.
  • Enemies
    • Massive Crusher’s Armor Plating cast time increased to 3 seconds (was 1 second) and can be interrupted and/or dispelled. Recast time increased to 16 seconds (was 8 seconds).
    • Tower Sentinel’s Oppressive Aura haste reduction and slow now scales up to 10% (was 25%).
    • Deadsoul Chorus’s Death Blast now reduces healing received by 15% and stacks 5 times (was 25% and stacks 4 times).
    • Skeletal Remains and Lumbering Creation’s Bone Shrapnel now marks the ground and then explodes after 2 seconds, giving players time to move away (was instant).
    • Deadsoul Stalker now fades away after 15 melee attacks (was 7) and remains hidden for 15 seconds (was 30 seconds).
    • Deadsoul Devil now reincarnates with 15% health remaining (was at 40% health).
  • Bosses
    • Elder Longbranch’s Bounty of the Forest cast time increased to 4 seconds (was 2 seconds), time between casts increased to 45 seconds (was 30 seconds), and Hardened Shell now only requires 6 attacks or skills to remove (was 9 attacks).
    • Decayspeaker’s Hardened Shell now only requires 6 attacks or skills to remove (was 9 attacks).
    • Goxul the Devourer’s Health and damage decreased by 10%, and time between casts of Mass Devour increased to 36 seconds (was 18 seconds).
  • Torments and Upper Reaches
    • Fracturing Forces and Eye of Skoldus enemies’ health and damage reduced by 50%, now increase assassin health by 5% per stack (was 10%).
    • Fracturing Forces and Eye of Skoldus enemies will no longer ambush players who have recently been in combat.
    • The Jailer’s Directive now increases health by 10% (was 50%).

You’ll find all of the changes above noted in our ongoing Hotfixes Update post soon after they go live.

305 Likes

Interesting! Can’t wait to run with the new rules.

23 Likes

@Tupacshekar

Preach! :clap: Mods, please pin this!

168 Likes

Nice I can’t wait to hear the wails of the naysayers

31 Likes

Quick glance appears to look alright. Still need to catchup on new main. Please hurry up with account-wide level unlock for all wings besides twisting corridors (I know about Ion interview already but please change y’alls minds).

12 Likes

So it was intended to waste 1.5 hours to run this moronic thing that gives you nothing but currency and infrequent followers , who once received, ensure nothing else will be dropping for you.

70 Likes

it’s a good start, but still needs some more rewards that apply to the rest of the game and not just while in there.

60 Likes

I’m glad Ion and the Dev team are making these changes! I’ve said time and time again how they are carefully taking in player feedback, and I am extremely proud to be a WoW Supporter during this expansion cycle! Thank you for working through the pandemic to provide us such a great expansion, folks!

43 Likes

cringe i liked it being hard i felt so rewarded clearing layer 8 today as a 185

after 3 days of pounding my head against the wall

BLEH

23 Likes

Good. It needs to feel like a game and not a job.

Might want to look at ilevel scaling too, I’m pretty sure the maw gets harder as you go up in ilevel which is insane.

87 Likes

Great changes! Now engagement with the community and updates on legacy scaling?

14 Likes

I thought you were happy with the difficulty of Torghast? You said “it’s a player problem, not a system problem”.

Source

120 Likes

Don’t worry twisting corridors serves to fill that void. And a possible infinite mode later on.

9 Likes

Thank you for listening to the player base…we want fun, rewarding gameplay to jump into, not a 2nd job. We all aren’t streamers who get paid millions of dollars to play at the highest levels.

62 Likes

lol well that didn’t take long for him to show up.

8 Likes

Very welcome start to Torghast changes, thank you. :raised_hands:t2:

5 Likes

This is the gamechanger imo.

Torghast might now be fun again.

39 Likes

Ok. It’s a start.

3 Likes

Not gonna lie, I dig the CD reset and Early anima choice being better.

Everything else is meh, wasn’t needed, but I guess I’ll just steamroll everything even harder now.

8 Likes

Recently cleared layer 6 of Fracturing Halls solo on this toon as Arms, was challenging but not impossible.

More incentives/rewards for Torghast would be awesome as well.

Looking forward to the continued tuning.

4 Likes