So I like the idea of the Awakening the Machine activity, but it has some design flaws that make it less fun than it could be.
The main problem is that some waves allow you to stall indefinitely, and get back up to full health and mana. Right now I’m on wave 11, and there’s a Medbot standing on one side of the room, continually casting Routine Maintenance… on nothing, because I killed all the other mobs. This means that every wave with a Medbot, I can kill everything else, and then sit and wait for my mana to regen so that I can heal Speaker Kuldas and myself, and be at full power for the next wave. This is boring, but it makes it more likely I can get through to the end, so it encourages degenerate gameplay.
A related problem is that the breaks after every 5th wave allow you to do the same thing, but also reward you for just sitting there waiting for mana and health to go up (you can use items to speed this up, obviously, but that doesn’t feel great). It would be better if talking to the Speaker to start the next wave instantly filled up your health and mana.
I’ve also noticed that the early-to-mid waves seem to be harder than the later waves, probably because of the aforementioned Medbot thing. Having the channelers who are killed by interrupt, and the machines that zap the Speaker, up at the same time is a lot harder to manage than later on when you can just aggro everything to yourself and keep them away from Speaker Kuldas. So I feel like the event needs to be rebalanced so that the later waves are actually harder than the earlier ones.
Also, I managed to beat the entire event (through wave 20) on my first attempt, without having done any research, as a ret pally. It’s possible I got lucky, but it does seem like it should have been calibrated so that it wouldn’t be so easy to defeat right at the beginning of TWW. Maybe that was the intent, but I dunno.
did it on my warrior was both fun and nerve racking
heroic leaping or charge into the channelers and using a stun heroic leaping to the zapy thing while getting the bots lol
I did it and it was overly easy, the breaks don’t feel needed, namely if they are going to drop you heals. Most of the mobs pose zero threat and in some cases make the waves easier. The waves are also inconsistent, some waves have a ton of tanky mobs, then the next is a lightning tower, a heal bot and two bombers.
My only issue with it so far was it let me enter at 74 but everything was level 80. I was a guardian druid, so I was fine until the lightning towers. I couldn’t kill them fast enough or keep enough heals on the guy, so he died, and I only cleared five waves.
what class/spec did you do it on? and gear ilvl because you are the second person saying the mobs aren’t a threat and I was having to constantly heal my druid
I did it as monk at lik 550, I started as MW but it was so boring I swapped to WW just to make it a little faster because I didn’t want to spend 30 mins in there.
I only ran into issues as a mage when I mistimed my counterspell. Why does Counterspell have a 30 second cooldown when other spell interrupts are available quicker? As a tailor, I used the new weavercloth bandages to keep the speaker alive. I beat it on my second try because I gave up on the first attempt after mistiming a counterspell, leaving the speaker at very low health with 10 waves remaining.
well I have a monk that ilvl but I suspect you play yours better than me because I don’t think I could to it on that - I always forgot to use those orbs
You found a loophole and you are abusing it. Just avoid abusing it. Kill the Medbots as they appear then check if you are good enough or cheat indefinitely by abusing the loophole.
Yup let Blizzard fix this so there would be no room for abuse.
Btw, I destroy the 20 waves without knowing your abuse strat. I have no mana either.
You found a loophole and you are abusing it. Just avoid abusing it. Kill the Medbots as they appear then check if you are good enough or cheat indefinitely by abusing the loophole.
Yup let Blizzard fix this so there would be no room for abuse.
Btw, I destroy the 20 waves without knowing your abuse strat. I have no mana either.
Let me clarify: I didn’t actually need to sit there waiting for mana and health, just that the medbots allow a player to do so. I actually did write the original post while sitting on wave 11 with the medbot still standing there, not because I needed to do so in order to survive, but because being able to literally ignore the event and go write a forum post for a few minutes nicely illustrates the broken design of this event.