I feel like difficulty wise, the fire mage tower is in an okay place, but there are a few things that make it easier than the original Legion mage tower (in 910 gear). One big example of this is the fact that we now have arcane explosion, which trivializes some of the imp spawns that were supposed to make us be more careful about our fire blast/phoenix flames casts.
I went into it thinking it would be harder than it actually was, and used augment runes, food, potions, lust etc. But I didn’t change my gear up at all (I haven’t played at all this tier so I have trash gear, but that doesn’t matter because it scales), or use any cheese strats. I was able to clear it in a couple of hours just from brute forcing it with Shadowlands M+ talents.
It really feels like if I had brought healing potions it would have trivialized the entire encounter. I understand that they can’t make the imps/agatha do much damage at all, because on their own, mages have basically no healing utility, but I also felt like boulders should have been more punishing. You can survive getting hit by a boulder at full health, and even if you don’t, you can Cauterize/Iceblock to save yourself if you do.
I think Blizzard should do a few things to fix this, but also keep in mind that I’m pretty rusty when it comes to fire. I think they should buff Agatha’s “Imp servants” (the ones that heal/buff her or whatever), to have a little more health, and make the fel boulders an instant-kill no matter what. You should be able to survive getting hit by -one- with cauterize but that’s it. Also, increase the Agatha’s default shadowbolt cast’s damage just a -little- bit, so that we HAVE to bring potions into the encounter, and bringing them doesn’t trivialize it.
I think difficulty wise, the mage towers should allow you to make one or MAYBE two minor mistakes that are salvagable. A big mistake should make it extremely difficult to finish or just kill you, and more than that should ABSOLUTELY destroy you.
I’d also love to see people comment other ways that they could buff Firemage Agatha, or balance other challenges to bring them in line with the rest. I’m told that Fury warrior Agatha is similarly easy.