I like the difficulty of the mage tower. I hope people can appreciate it once they complete it.
I do have some feedback though:
1 - As close as many guides have been to completing it (in almost all cases, they’ve died while completing it), they’ve done some fairly “odd”/degenerate prep work. Not only are they using gear/trinkets from old expansions, but they’re also using consumables, gems, and other items that are drastically inflated in price because of the limited time of the mage tower.
Possible solution - make drums/potions/sockets/etc. not work in the mage tower like all the other things that have been disabled. Make it difficult, but make it fair and even across the board regardless of how much cash you’re willing to spend to upgrade your character.
2 - The pulsing adds - the key here is to use incap roar right as they start their channel, but if there’s any bit of lag or if you have variable MS, you can miss the timing and you’ll get almost “1 shot” from all 4 pulsing at once.
Possible solution - Keep the damage as is, but give a slightly longer buffer (like 0.5 seconds) before the damage starts to go out. RNG and variability in internet connection isn’t tied to skill and shouldn’t be part of the difficulty of timing things.
3 - The orbs that despawn. Not sure if this is intended or not, but tracking the orbs spawn order seems a bit over the top, not to mention tracking them without extra keybinds and especially for new players that don’t know how to use them.
Between everything you already need to account for, the RNG involved in the fight, and having to position yourself relative to the orbs so you don’t get knocked into one (or the wrong one), there’s plenty of difficulty in the fight.
Possible solutions - (1) make it so that only 3 can be up at any time, and remove the individual despawn timer. (2) Instead, give them a small “cast bar” that a player can visually see and track to see which will despawn next.
4 - Re-evaluate the damage involved with the annihilates or the boss hp. This circles back to point #1 and the dps check seems to tight without all of the BiS gems, gear, enchants, potions, drums, etc.
5 - The overall RNG feeling to the fight. After watching people complete it, it seems like no matter the amount of skill a player has - they wouldn’t be able to consistently complete the challenge. That seems off to me; but addressing the points above could likely help.
Thanks
already.