They can.
Sockets were disabled in WoD CMs.
What exactly needs to be tuned? Do you have specifics?
disable all old gear socket , and raise the base ilvl to 55 - 60
Kruul’s health for bears still needs a nerf.
I’m not the best at druid (literally never play it and leveled it just for this) and with all optimization and a hundred+ pulls in, I finally just managed to kill him as he killed me with annihilate 4.
That’s with using Phantom Fire, Claws of Ursoc for double Shadowcore oil and Gaze of Sethe (which ended up being 20% of my total fight damage!).
I’d shave a bit off Horrors too, though now that you can just willy-nilly interrupt them, it’s less of an issue.
Once again, I will link a screen shot of me completing it.
https://puu.sh/Iw7Tf/d31902bb60.jpg
There are no BoE’s and the 3 non-SL slots I have, all are obtainable within minutes.
Also my gear is horribly optimized for Bear, since my tank set is just Boomkin gear with tank trinkets.
literal god checking in
AMA
That +Intellect trinket is a tank trinket ? 
Yes, it’s insane damage for Bear on this fight.
Was more talking about my gear in general. Lots of Haste and Mastery and not a whole lot of vers.
Sethe is busted, but there’d be no point to TW if old gear was literally worthless.
I actually don’t mind old socket gear. I think it creates a nice system – you either play really well or you do a lot of prep work.
I think therein lies your problem. The mage tower isn’t really supposed to be something you can conquer with little familiarity of your class.
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I used Mastery all over to push up my health/healing. Vers gems just weren’t there at all for sub-50 gear and prohibitive for 50+ gear. This was my setup :
After multiple hours of playing the Mage Tower, I’m fairly certain I make a competent Bear. I set up all the weak auras for it now (tracking all my CDs and DoTs).
WoW classes aren’t hard to pick up.
Plus I had done Mage Tower on it before. I just never really play it, I think I played it a few weeks in WoD as Resto for kicks in the draught. It was leveled in Legion for Mage Tower and again now for Mage Tower.
Lets reexamine this statement though.
He’s not the best at bear, and yet this challenge was still very much possible for him to complete. Granted with solid optimization from his gear, but that’s always been a part of WoW.
Now my gear was SIGNIFICANTLY less optimized than OP’s, but I completely clapped his kill time, not even getting 4th annihilate.
So we’ve established:
- You can be competent at bear (I’m not a HoF level bear or anything, I mostly just do it for M+) and not need much optimization.
- You can be pretty new to bear and with significant optimization, pick up the spec enough that the fight is still possible and the werebear obtainable.
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I spent 3 nights of attempts though AFTER having done the Prot Paladin one (meaning I was already back into it for the mechanics… well mostly, since the Paladin horrors don’t cast).
I think the Iskar trinket honestly breaks this fight in ridiculous fashion. Night and day after getting it, made Horrors much easier to deal with and upped P2 damage significantly.
You still beat it though, which is my point.
It’s not some unobtainable achievement that only the 1% can get. By your admission, you’re a new bear but you picked up the spec (and the fight) enough to beat it.
Not easily mind you, but that’s why it’s a mage tower challenge and not the mage tower free xmog.
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Yeah, but I’m not some LFR hero either. I still think it could use a bit of tuning. Another 5%-10% off Kruul, another 10% off Horrors’ health.
The mechanics and damage input are fair. It’s just everything seems horridly slow to kill for a Bear. Made it harder to save orbs to delay annihilates like I did on my Prot Paladin (just always had 3 orbs up at all times, till I chained them for the last 10 percent and Bubbled the last Annihilate).
Which probably comes down to your unfamiliarity with the spec.
My kill time was 5 minutes on the dot, which isn’t like world record speed, but allowed me to beat significant breakpoints in difficulty like 3rd infernal and 4th annihilate.
Giga-optimization isn’t necessary, but like how gear has always worked in WoW, the more gear you have, the more mistakes you’re allowed to make. The fight itself is fine, 5-10% off Kruul (again) wouldn’t help the people on here complaining because 90% of them can’t be helped.
True that doesn’t help if you keep wiping to knock offs or getting chunked to 2nd annihilate because you don’t double IronFur + Survival instincts it.
But it helps those guys who are doing everything right and keep dying to 4th annihilate while he has 2-3% health left, just because HFC isn’t dropping Gaze.
I don’t think Mage Tower should be late Mythic boss pull counts honestly.
Also something I noticed in my later attempts, when you push Variss has a huge impact on the 2nd phase. I got it to where I stopped DPS for a horror spawn, killed those and then pushed Variss in 1-2 Globals. That gave me maximum Kruul uptime, especially if both Infernals where in “regenerate” mode, where Phantom Fire just cranked into him. That would get me to 22% before even the first annihilate.
After figuring that out, I got the kill on one of those pulls.
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arguing about challenge when gear makes such a huge difference is missing the point. Is it tuned to have 1% of players finish it in their base SL gear? or is it tuned to require you to farm old content (engagement metrics!) for a few days and then 1% of players finish it?
If it were really about challenge you would get a template character and it would be tuned specifically to a level of performance you had to maintain. Then the only thing that counted would be skill, and complaints about tuning would really be irrelevant. Farming out an appropriate set makes a huge difference, therefore it isn’t about challenge. it’s about keeping those sub numbers up going into the holidays when other games are coming out.
People complaining that it isn’t tuned right aren’t complaining that it’s too hard. They’re complaining that they have to do so much ancillary work to “have skill”. Too many people in all these threads just keep misunderstanding the objection
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Honestly, I disagree. I think WoW has a severe lack of meaty challenges that are available to the “casual but good at the game” crowd.
If I want to be challenged at WoW, my current solutions are “do +20s or higher, find a guild and start mythic progging again or get into PvP”. If I want to do easy content there’s literally everything else in the game.
I think the complaint that people should easily be able to get the MT for bear because its a different model isn’t one that should be aimed at the MT. There just aren’t enough skins for Druids that actually change what their form looks like.
I think there should also be more flail models too, but I’m perfectly fine with never bringing back the Paladin/Warrior MT skins.
Again, I’ll point to your unfamiliarity with the spec. Having Kruul and Horrors up posed no issue since I was just hitting Incarn+Drums and thrashing them all to death quickly anyway. Infernals cause minimal downtime when you’re familiar with the spec cause you don’t have to think about rotation AND moving at the same time.
People complaining about farming TW gear would just go back to complaining it’s overtuned when they still can’t get the skin.
Adding a template would massively nerf lower skilled players who attempt MT because right now they can make up for their skill by overgearing it.
The 1 shot mechs are fine but the damage we gotta do is really over the board.
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Sure, but when using Phantom Fire, if other adds are up, you lose main target damage as some ticks go to the adds instead of the boss. Same for Unbridled Fury really. If I had used Agi or Prolonged Power, you’d be right that the phasing wouldn’t have mattered.
Sure, but there’s no ramp, it goes from Netflix half-AFK World Quests and Rares to this. And no consistency. Fury is a 4 puller, Prot Paladin a 20 puller now (since 10% health nerf), Guardian is a mongo hill to climb, Twins is just insane all around now that the slow burn is nerfed to the ground.
Agree that’s a dumb complaint. However, it shouldn’t be harder to do Bear than to do Prot Paladin or VDH. And Fury shouldn’t be as dumb easy just because even 46 Strength Crusader still hard carries it.