The challenge in its current state is doable literally without entering bear form. It ain’t exactly tightly tuned. Given that you can comfortably survive 5 annihilates as long as you bring a defensive trinket and budget CDs accordingly, and can pretty easily keep to 2 infernals thanks to the improved off-role capabilities of the spec nowadays (and the aforementioned length you can extend P2 to, allowing you to use CDs for p1), it really shouldn’t be a surprise that people can do it without consumable investment.
Just don’t mess up the 1-shot mechanics (nether storm/knockbacks) and have a plan for annihilates 1-5, and it should fall over. You’ll certainly wipe a bit to the 1-shot mechanics as their windows are tight and the knockbacks in particular are awful design, but numerically it is not a difficult challenge.
I don’t speak for anyone other than myself, but I am not being ridiculous.
I am stressing a concern over something I think isn’t right.
I think the fight is off, to an unfair point that specific items are ALMOST needed.
When those items are locked behind a raid lock-out, reputation, or expensive to buy that takes away from the challenge point of it.
Do you NEED them, no of course not, but there is a clear difference and distinction with how the fight goes with and without them.
Also, when the other druid comes on here and says they’re not needed but contradicts himself via his post by stating he used some of that stuff and it matters.
I acknowledge you got the skin, you have it… how you did it is what is in question since it seems to be the exception, not the rule.
And, since that is the case, I personally would like to see the way it was done, that way, in order to learn from. If you don’t have that…cool. You don’t need to justify your kill just like you don’t need to say, indiscreetly, 'I did it this way why can’t everyone '.
I was also excited when MT was being released because I am a much, much better player now than in Legion, and I didn’t expect to steam roll this by any means. But when its a large enough issue than I, and others, and voicing our opinions in disapproval there is clearly an issue.
If they would have addressed the Mage Tower has a mythic type world first race thing, I would totally get it. And I would uphold the challenge.
But this again, is rehashed content, for a rehashed skin.
The time//effort vs reward doesn’t feel there for a good portion of players.
If I don’t get it, fine…not everyone deserves everything. I’ll just be an OG hulk bear.
I just think its poorly done and poorly represented.
Thats amazing and thank you for the information.
But showing you don’t even need to be in bear form, to do a tank challenge, shows how broken the fight is.
It is a pretty bad look for the challenge, isn’t it?
I’d argue the problem is that nothing does damage in the tank challenge. The biggest offender is mind rend, doing less than half as much to us as it does to the other tanks I’ve tried (dk/war), as well as annihilate (seriously, who decided that annihilate should have higher base damage against blood dk than against a bear?)
I sort of wonder if a reshape of the challenge would help. Make the circle smaller (since it was designed against a 5yd balance aff, and while I’d argue FoN was the better legendary for the fight most did use eko/luffa since no one had FoN when it came out), make the health debuff 8% a stack instead of 12% (again, to match other tanks), so that actually meleeing Variss for extended periods is acceptable. Remove or tone down nether storm and up the damage of other abilities, to make it more of a long-term survival fight instead of “just don’t get 1-shot lol.” Like, I think the design of the challenge isn’t that hard right now if you can do the mechanics, but almost every wipe is going to be a 1-shot and it’s just asking for frustration, and the fight design really encourages you to be in moonkin form for a lot of p1 (skipping out on bear form in p1 is very easy).
Doubt any of it would happen, because it’s already released and people already have their forms, but I do wonder if it would have helped.
I’m cool with leaving netherstomp nerfed though, because that pool 4-shotting you in the original mage tower was such trash.
And thats part of the point I’m trying to make.
I don’t mind needing to Owlweave (I’d prefer cat) since its part of our toolset, but my issue is when its mostly needed; are as in the video just all the time, lol.
Mechanically the fight is OK, could be adjusted to feel more ‘tanky’ but meh.
The issue is the numbers seem off (again, going back to the being in dps form).
A few % increase in dps over all, or a few % decrease in over all boss abilities, or even make the puddle smaller to where you can maintain Thrash stacks and not need to be knee-deep in it.
Not asking for the world, just bring a little bit of leniency to it.
An AotC raider, KSM, and/or pvp ranked player shouldn’t be able to accomplish this 3 pulls, but it also shouldn’t take 300.
I spent all of my years playing as a tank/cat/resto. Ihave an unexplained hatred for balance. So it burns my butt a little bit that in order to succeed I have to I spend the better part of my attempts basically learning balance and adjusting keybinds ect.
I made it smoother through p1 as a bear, but it took forever and ill have 4 infernals up.
Adjusting to balance has me into p2 just as im getting the second, but its been a long bumpy ride!
That’s your right to voice an opinionated concern, sure. But I wouldn’t go basically insinuating that he likely used items he’s claiming not to. Also you and Tical keep saying hypocrisy but he literally just meant you don’t need to get special gems or enchants or gear. Consumables was kind of a given since *every single person who tries new content uses them for absolutely everything. *. If your gripe is that you need consumables then… I mean I don’t know. I’m certain it can be done without but it’d be harder, sure. When I beat it, I crushed it. 4th annihilate just went off. I was half health and climbing, mobs were dead, I mean I decisively beat it. I’m sure if I had to do a couple thousand or even a few thousand more damage it would have been fine. That’s only like 7-10s.
I mean… obviously though right? Better gear makes content easier. That’s kind of the premise. Now if anything, the gear shouldn’t have scaling exploits. Templates would be better but in no way is that gear needed.
I think it’s better to agree that you’re saying it’s just too difficult right? And that’s okay. I mean for instance, do you consider yourself a myth sylv tier player? Or just current tier last boss mythic raider in general? What about the same but, world first timing on it? Probably not I’d assume. They of course during WF races use everything at their disposal. As they get more gear, it’s not as necessary. Fast forward an expansion, and it’s trivial. This challenge is currently tuned to be difficult. Surely. So if people’s gripes are that it’s too hard, okay. I can live with that. My issues come when people claim other things are needed. Exploits NEEDED, special gear NEEDED, that it wasn’t “supposed to be this hard” or anything else they say as fact when they have no idea. It’s okay to just say “this is just too hard.” That acknowledges that it’s doable, just not by that individual at that time. And as much as it may suck to admit, that’s okay. At this point I’m not really focusing on you when I say these things, but people are just making excuses to put the blame on anyone but them. That’s what bugs me.
If anything doesn’t that kind of show how easy it is defensively?bi understand that the metric may be off to you but if it can be done in boomy only, surely using bear would make it much easier yeah?
It wasn’t hypocrisy is my thing though man, obviously consumables aren’t what people mean when they bring up special gear and stuff. Consumables are something people do even in basic m+ when it’s not even hard content. It just was not intended to be included. You of course, being you, just saw an opportunity to argue about it lol. I mean if you pot EVERY attempt instead of practicing without and need a thousand attempts then… okay. Yeah it adds up. But you don’t need to do that.
Everyone’s time is money on this planet dude, assuming they work. Please, I know these arguments are like what you do for fun but, let this one go. You don’t need tokens to get gold. You don’t need money to farm gold. You don’t need money to craft pots or even make gold to buy them. Inb4 “you need to pay for a subscription! Got him!”
Ya know what I mean man? Like c’mon. This isn’t a p2w situation. It’s a use your in game currency to make your life easier if you so desire situation.
But yeah… miss you too
I feel you there. I haven’t been on in weeks prior to the MT release. I decided to get attempts in during my son’s nap one day and managed. Haven’t been on since. I’m at work as we speak.
This is what I mean. You don’t HAVE to. I’d argue he did that for bragging rights. I didn’t use boomy at all in P2 except when he first spawned. I starsurges and sunfired him. I’ve also seen people do this with only bear even in P1. You have options. Of course as a boomy main I had less of an issue :P. But to be fair I hadn’t played bear since legion so…
And you didn’t call out any hypocrisy. The challenges are not p2w because they’re still predicated on skill. Saying there is a floor cost for consumables =/= p2w. P2W implies that with enough gold/resource etc that you can beat something regardless of skills. You can spend billions of gold and not necessarily complete these challenges, so they are not P2W. You can do them w/out consumables, so they are not p2w. Saying that consumables are p2w is the height of absurdity because that’s like saying RWF is p2w because whoever spends more gold should automatically win. It’s absurd at best, and you’re doing nothing more than nitpicking fractions of what I was saying to be directly contrarian.
If you want to extend that to time as well, like you were doing, then putting time into something is p2w because it takes time??? That’s ridiculous, for the same comment as above.
Doing the fight normally I’m never out of bear form in p2. That was just for fun (I originally did p1 only, inspired by the various complaints about having to use moonkin form, but once I thought about it I realized p2 might be possible so I had to try it). It’s a terrible idea people shouldn’t do, I just had fun with it and love that it’s possible.
Normally you should be using bear form near exclusively for p2, and p2 is in most ways a reasonable tanking challenge (with threat management for adds and the CD rotation which all tanks should be accustomed to, and a minor DPS check to keep you working for it). P1 is the rough design part, where you are too heavily incentivized to not be a bear.
Ranting about how hard it is
Doing p2 without bear form is HARD, btw.
The transition has to be set up so the horrors are all dead, both infernals are dotted up and will die so I can deal with them as little as possible in p2, and my mana bar is high.
The path I take is specific to avoid having to deal with the beams.
Wild Charge CD lines up with netherstomp, and must be used to get out of it. 1k damage a tick is not something I can really afford to sit in.
I took 2 ticks of the first netherstomp, so had to reactively barkskin the first annihilate or I’d have died. That then meant BS was not up for annihilate 2, so the potion after it hits becomes mandatory because I’ll be just about dead.
The first wave of horrors almost has to get aggroed by regrowth (inconsistent), since having them run to velen is at best a DPS loss (as I need to at least peel 1-2 off with threat or typhoon so velen doesn’t die), and at worst just a wipe.
Sunfire is ~1/8th of your mana and is too important to ignore for DPS. Regrowths are ~1/4th each. Mana management is a thing, and limits how much avoidable damage you can take.
The scale for annihilate 3 should hit multiple targets for a larger absorb.
I wiped 3 times to dying, having the NPCs kill the boss, then having horrors spawn and kill them during the AoE. I lucked out on the kill that I was far enough ahead not to need to kill that wave of horrors, since I had to waste the orb to cleanse (since I messed up the interrupt).
Basically almost everything has to go perfectly for this to work. Take it as a proof of concept, not an ideal or smart way to do it.
I never contradicted myself. I said they weren’t needed. Just because I used consumables for an extra 1-2% and killed well before annihilate 5 with 3 orbs available, I knew that they weren’t needed. That’s not contradictory at all. Not even a little bit. I also know I didn’t play anywhere close to perfectly, and had a TON of optimization for damage I could still do, but was STILL able to beat the challenge because I just avoided the “one-shot” checks.
Its hypocrisy because he said he used them, but saying you don’t need to.
Sure you don’t NEED them, but coaxing others to not use them when he himself did…see the issue?
It was in the presentation of how it was presented. If it was meant to be this difficult to where only a small population of the player base could do this, then working as intended. Not everyone needs a trophy.
My take, it was a chance to be a challenge and for players to experience mage tower and get items they missed.
I consider myself a player.
They also pay for x-fers, spend millions of gold getting mats, ect so goes back to a previous context of ‘pay-to-win’. So if they’re going to those lengths, then its needed.
This only furthers my point that the fight is broken and there is a dps check.
Outside of the Annih’s there isn’t much to mitigate that a regrowth can’t handle.
The issue is infernal spawns if you’re to slow, or not killing the horrors in a timely manner even after interrupt.
Longer you’re in a phase, the higher the chance of a screw up.
You also HAVE to dps ph2 down before 5 stacks…thats a solid dps check.
From personal experience and what I’ve seen in the vast majority, its a numbers issue.
But, hey, if its to hard and I can’t do it I have no issue admitting that.
People are more skilled than me, props to them, no issues.
Just like I’m more skilled than some other people; no disrespect to them.
But I feel like I have enough gaming experience and real world experience to believe when I say something is off, its off.
5 stacks is survivable pretty easily.
IF covers 1/2, BS+IF for 3, SI+IF for 4, SI+BS+IF for 5. Berserk lets you stack IF higher for one. Defensive trinkets like scale trivialize a cast. The main thing to remember is you have an orb for every cast. Typically you want to use it while killing the horrors at some point, and then Kruul will annihilate shortly after the stun wears off: you’ll be at or near full health and have had ample time to generate the rage you need (also remember that his melee damage is very light, you do not need to use IF outside of annihilates).
My first kill was done with 5 survived annihilates (logs in my original post here). It’s really not all that difficult to do. The main problem is keeping it all in mind while dealing with the horrors and not getting knocked off or pushed around by the beams.
Having 2:40 to kill Kruul is not that high of a DPS check, and can be done comfortably in SL gear without even flask/food/etc, let alone unbridled fury+drums.
That is not hypocrisy. If you run up your driveway when you know you can walk, and say it’s possible to walk up your driveway, that doesn’t mean that just because you ran, you cannot walk also. You can tell, based off of your own actions and interpretations of what you did, that walking is also a possible way of accomplishing it. You also could’ve had the resources to ride a bike too, but can still say that you dont NEED the bike and you dont NEED to run. In NO way is that hypocrisy.
I have never EVER “Coaxed” others not to use them. I have ONLY indicated that they are NOT NECESSARY. Look at the dozens upon dozens of posts. This has nothing to do with the notion that they’re helpful or make things easier, but simply that they are not REQUIRED FOR COMPLETION, like such a large portion of the forum community is complaining.
YOU misinterpreted my statements and accused me of being a hypocrite when you’re not even using the word correctly.
It was flatout said that it was intended to be a solo challenge comparable to mage tower on release in the dev interviews. I think it’s pretty close to that
I had yet to see anyone mention surviving past 5 stacks.
But it goes back to the couple of you guys here, who seem extremely skilled, are the exception, not the rule
Which again I’ll go back to the presentation of the mage tower.
If I misunderstood, then I am totally off base and this is wrong by me on all accounts, but it seems a good portion of the community feels the same way.
