Guardian druid mage tower

Community General Discussion
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I have never been more frustrated with a piece of content than the guardian mage tower in Shadowlands.

I’m 214 attempts in, thousands of gold, Chromie gear and all. I’ve spent every evening after work since it came out trying and trying. The best I got to was 2%. But it’s the end of the year and I’ve run out of time for attempts.

  1. It was overtuned. It is far harder than back in Legion. Even if that were wrong, I don’t think content should be this hard. I understand it comes down to mastering your class. I’ve been playing a bear druid since 2008. I know the fight inside and out, but damn if you blink you die. I don’t see how that’s fun and I think it’s putting the rewards out of reach for too many people.

  2. Why is it time limited? The next time we can try is July. It was released just before Christmas. Sure, it was extended, but over the NY period. The single busiest time of the year when most people are away from their homes and computers.

These two factors together made for a stressful and enjoyable experience. In 13 years of playing WoW nothing in the game has made me feel this disappointed in it.

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Unfortunately, while being good at the class/spec does help, it’s not the biggest factor.

I managed to get the druid bear challenge done yesterday, after a lot of attempts over the period of this event. I had so many 5% wipes. a 0.3% wipe. a 0.6% wipe. And every time I was that close, I’d look at Details. Oh, my trinket barely proc’d. Oh, Unbridled Fury only did 4% that attempt. Some attempts were kinda doomed from the start of P2 since Velen would stack orbs right on top of each other.

The attempt I finally managed to kill it, I again looked at Details. Iskar’s trinket from HFC did like 18% of my damage. Potion of Unbridled Fury did almost 10%, Ravaged Seed Pod was 6%, double Shadowcore Oil was 3%. Literally like 35% of my damage for the entire encounter was from RNG procs. Arguably people have done it without those trinkets, but it’s really hard unless the stars align due to how strict the DPS requirement is.

If you’ve got him to 2%, you are basically there though. I assume you’ve been using the Potion of Unbridled Fury? If so, may be worth taking a trip to HFC to try and get Iskars caster trinket. Even on pulls where it doesn’t proc a lot, it can still easily be 10% or more of your damage. And if you haven’t been using the Potion, you should.

For what it’s worth, I definitely agree that it is frustrating. During Legion the Mage Tower was mostly about doing the mechanics, with the occasional burst dps tidbit(Agatha’s Shield, Ice wall in Xylem, the dudes shield in the Sigryn fight). Kruul leaned a bit heavier on needing DPS but back then it was also much easier to survive 5 Annihilates which gave a bit more leeway in the damage needed to beat him.

I agree with this too. Though some people will say “nah you just suck, get gud”. But the simple fact is, this iteration of the tower is tuned to Nighthold levels of difficulty, with some exceeding that. When the original tower was balanced around Tomb of Sargeras gear(with two legendary items and the artifact). That said, Kruul is one of the more balanced challenges, but he still could use another health reduction to ease the insane DPS needed.

All that said, if you are truly out of time for attempts, I’m sorry. I know this time of year is hectic for a lot of people. You are super close though, hopefully you find some time to squeeze in some more attempts, if not…Hopefully Blizzard will wake up and make the adjustments needed so more people, yourself included, can actually enjoy this content opposed to growing frustrated and disheartened.

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The limited time window is presumably so people will do it.

If it was available year-round? Nobody would bother. (I’m serious about that.)

I think they should make it year-round. Then the complaints will immediately stop and all the people slamming their faces into this will just… stop.

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If you can get to 2%, you can get to 0%. Keep at it and you’ll nail it.

It’s tightly tuned, but not overly so. Harder than Legion sure, but that’s to be expected after being normalized against class kits and borrowed power.

Welp. Don’t do it I guess? It’s not like it isn’t possible, you’ve already gotten him down to 2%.

Mostly on Kruul, but that’s where orb and annihilate management and your physical positioning always mattered the most.

Yeah… it really shouldn’t be. I hope they change their minds, but I doubt it.

This happened to me too. It felt bad for a few moments but it made me realize I basically already beat it, just had to tighten up a couple things.

I haven’t gotten this to drop on any of my characters. Feels bad man.

Couldn’t get that one to drop on my druid either. Feels super bad man.

He doesn’t suck and he’s already gotten good. But a lot of people complaining can’t even get the first phase down 10% and want to act like that’s not their own fault.

I’m actually pretty sure it’s tuned to ToS. I’ve heard people say the devs said this somewhere along the way but I haven’t been able to confirm.

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That may have been the goal, but the current tuning definitely isn’t ToS’s level. Kruul is the closest to that tuning but hes still Nighthold levels(when the original Kruul challenge had to be nerfed like 4-5 times before it became reasonable). I still feel adamant that this iteration should be tuned slightly easier than what the original was balanced around given all our loss of power, doubly so when adding the time limited factor.

Some of the challenges don’t even need major changes. Twins? Reduce Raest’s health a bit to bring it more inline with Legion’s. God Queen’s Fury? Reduce the health slightly and fix the phasing madness causing multiple severe mechanic overlaps(which almost never happened during Legion). Risen Threat? Decrease the damage everything does by a further 5-10% and reduce the last bosses health by 10% or so.(You would NEVER fill the entire room up during Legion, most times you wouldn’t even fill the outer edge up, the fact that now most kills have the entire room full of goop shows its tuned harder than Legion). Xylem is semi okay, but his Frostbolts need to be toned down further and the boss in P2 needs a solid 10% health reduction.

Feltotem is mostly fine, though I feel like Fel Blast could use a 5-10% damage reduction, Sonic Scream from the worm could use probably a 10-15% reduction and the eggs could use probably a 15% health reduction. Agatha is mostly fine, though I feel like everything in that challenge could use a 5-10% health reduction. Or at the very least, the boss herself just to make it less of a slog.

Just my opinions of course. :slight_smile:

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2% is home stretch, you already have it beat you just need that one good run to get it in.

What are you struggling most in your runs OP? I kept dying at those low percentages but realistically I wasn’t mitigating well. Once I mentally set up my mitigation routine for annihilates and survive third and fourth annihilates I had the breathing room to kill him. With two orbs to spare too.

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Tank spec shouldn’t need to crank out stupid DPS. You wouldn’t expect a DPS class to “tank”…

Stupid challenge from the start.

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Yeah but my (speaking for me) problems exactly was that I didn’t do the tank mechanics. I didn’t know how to set up my mitigations properly. It’d reckon if you’re dying between 2nd or 3rd annihilate you’re not doing the tank challenge exactly.

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You make a valid point. But with each increasingly harder hitting annihilate you have to crank that DPS out. Because you can barely survive the fourth annihilate but the fifth one is an absolute wipe. So it is 20% tank mechanics and 80% DPS check

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That’s how all the solo tank content in the game works, though. Brawler’s Guild is the same way. You aren’t going to die to the damage or mechanics, you’re going to die to the timer unless you crank out enough damage.

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Idk. I think people are just scared of using their whole kit. You’re taunting adds (nether horrors), you mass interrupt (incap), you use mitigations to survive hard hitting damage, you kite infernals, and you’re doing damage meanwhile. Those eye orbs can be comparable to explosive affix in m+. Tanks are still expected to do damage and you’re just forced to use your whole kit. And what should the challenge be if not cranking out dps? Survive five annihilates before you win?

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Hey, sorry to hear that.
I myself did around 50 attempts (I know, not that many, but I just can’t stress myself repeatedly so I did average 5 attempts per day) and my closest was 14% Kruul. I agree with you that this content shouldn’t be time limited. I know it’s timewalking, but if it is going to be this hard for many players, I think it shouldn’t be time limited. That being said, just like many have said in this forum, 2% is pretty much close to 0%. You are almost there. Good luck!

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Blizzard probably look at their charts and seeing it nobody was completing it and very very very few would have completed it within the time frame originally given. That’s why they extended it that way people have more of an opportunity to read it. But it’s so stupidly difficult that not many more people has completed it than when it was first released. Because it’s still broken and stupid.

Considering that’s been the most anticipated content since it was announced and it flopped… That says a lot about this development team.

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I think it says more about the playerbase.

The extent to which people have completely lost their minds over this is extraordinary.

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What’s extraordinary is that players are more hyped about old content returning than current content… Which says a lot about the development team.

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People are only doing it because of the limited time window, though. If it was available permanently, nobody would bother.

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How has your tower been going, Noodosha? How far have you gotten on Kruul?

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your Ghost iron dragonling is the wrong ilvl. (less there is some sort of bug in the site.)
embalmers oil isn’t doing you any favors. use shadow core.

IMO, the over tuning has been addressed its doable with Shadowlands gear and even easier with a few other items. dps trinkets (which you have one at the right ilvl), claws of Ursoc (which you have) and consumables.

the difficulty being what it is. Hard but doable. is what is fun. its why end game boss fights in single player games are fun. it will frustrate you. it will make you angry. it will make you learn the fight.

the biggest frustration is the price scalping of consumables.
and frustrating that i didn’t think of it sooner.

i agree that it shouldn’t be time limited to the extent that it is. it should be up all the time or the very least, up every time there is any time walking event. its actually more compelling content than shadowlands has provided in the past year.

This is the kind of content the game has been lacking

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I highly disagree with this my friend.

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Got him down to 13k HP give or take.