I did got 26 Tower skins, and I was pretty happy with most of them and some of them are my favorites in game.
I couldn’t help but feel that some of them were pretty underwhelming I’m comparison however, such as Mistweaver Monk, Sub Rogue, Fury Warrior, and all hunter specs. Personally I thought the hidden appearance for Fury warrior was leagues above the challenge skin.
Did anyone else feel like they should have swapped a few Mage Tower skins with pvp, BOP or hidden?
Hard to beat warebear.
Edit i love the boomkin one, but astral form ruins 2/4 cause it covers the blade effect.
Oddly enough, I prefer the Balance of Power for Boomkin over the Mage tower.
The crescent moon one? I like it too. Just the light saber scythe does more for me.
I think the next set of mage tower rewards will show more love to the other ones.
Right now I would be happy with Blizz removing the spec restrictions on them for mogging. I don’t understand why Blizz is so restrictive on these things it makes no sense.
Every other game doesn’t care because it doesn’t make sense to restrict such cosmetic things.
I thought I really wanted Mage tower Boomkin until I got it. I ended up preferring Moonstaff. 
Destro lock is a rather underwhelming mage tower appearance that I rarely use. The work applied to the design for it took no imagination or originality. It was like the art department hates destro locks. Ironically the afflock and demo appearances are pretty cool, but I never play those specs.
I just want the mage one they didn’t add at all anywhere. I’m still mad about that. Displayed in the Mage Hall but non-existent.
http://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/500005-staff-2h-artifactaegwynsstaff-d-06.jpg
https://i.redd.it/prkv2eiutr6z.jpg
I felt the same way about the death knight artifact ability. It was supposed to be animated and not just be static floating swords. It was pretty atrocious to look at all expansion.
I like the balance of power jungle cat better than the mage tower glokitty.
Overall I agree that some of the MT appearances aren’t my favorite (like WW) but overall I think they did an amazing job with all the different artifact appearances.
There’s 36 specs times 6 different shapes (not counting tints). Everyone is going to have a different favorite.
I kind of feel bad for the art team now, they must feel it’s pointless to design new weapons when they’ll never look as awesome as artifacts.
Actually, we’ve seen some very cool staves this xpac along with some very nice daggers. I will agree that the other weapons have been underwhelming.
It is true that some of the Mage Tower appearances aren’t the best… but to be frank, they don’t HAVE to be.
For one reason, I’d say the Fury Warrior appearance from the Mage Tower is definitely one of the best… but at the same time, it goes exceptionally well with my tendency to favour blue-coloured transmog sets, and even thematically lines up with my preferred shoulders (Prideful/Grievous Gladiator, depending on faction; the blue version in any case).
People will disagree over what is the “best” appearance, so trying to figure out which one will be the best received and designate it the challenge appearance isn’t always going to work out. Some are a hit, some are a miss.
That being said, let’s pick some specs with better alternatives to their Mage Tower appearance:
Ret Pally
Balance of Power (BoP) appearance, a sword made of fire, was always going to be the best one. Also annoyed the animations for the runes on the sword exist on only one side of the blade for some reason (runes on other side of blade are static).
Blood DK
Both the Hidden and BoP appearances are better models in my opinion. BoP being a wicked scythe-like appearance, and Hidden with it’s brilliant glow. Speaking of which, most hidden appearances are ESPECIALLY vibrant with their glows (either that or a weapon type switch), which is probably why it tends to be popular.
Frost DK
Hidden appearance blows the Mage Tower out of the water. Mind you, most Frost DK appearances are tiny one-handed swords… and Mage Tower doesn’t deviate from that.
Prot Warrior
Hidden appearance again. The flail becomes annoying after a while as it doesn’t feel like it has good reach visually (tendency to hang down instead of swing at the edge of the arc), and the shield isn’t too special to be honest. Hidden appearance has a hefty mace which will grow on you… and the most ridiculously HUGE shield in the game.
Holy Priest
These hidden appearances keep cropping up, don’t they? The Mage Tower appearance isn’t bad… it’s just the hidden appearance is that good.
Fire Mage
Yeah, it’s the hidden appearance again. The bright appearance is better than the Mage Tower.
Holy Paladin
The Mage Tower is decidedly bright… but almost to a cheesy extent. The best one is the BoP appearance, which just looks like a perfect Paladin weapon. It even has the scales from the Judgement set (Tier 2, the most iconic paladin set of all time) emblazoned on it!
Outlaw Rogue
A bit like the Holy Priest above, the Mage Tower appearance isn’t bad by any means. But seriously, what’s going to beat out Thunderfury?
I absolutely love this one right here
Sadly it’s the only one I got
I see that one and I regret not getting it. Every single time.
The Marksmanship one is lovely.
I do kind of agree on Sub Rogue. Chunky blocks of wood covered in ice seems rather lame to me.
Sub rogue. But sub rogue had some of the worst skins for all of them, probably only out-garbaged by Beast Mastery.
edit: I just remembered that Survival got a bunch of garbo spears. The MT one is nice, but I don’t feel it fits ANY hunter except Night Elves. Mine’s a worgen, it just looks weird
I like the Fury one though, I do agree the hidden one is better, and acquiring it was quite fun. But Agatha was such a pain in the rear, I mog them as a memento
of overcoming that obese imp.
The feral druid sparkle kitty will hands down always be the best in my eyes.
Especially the super rare purple one.
I found that what matters most in terms of bang for the buck was getting the appearance for a character and spec you play a lot. What I ended up getting mostly was appearances I just don’t use. I hope to make use of my of my boomkin(mainly from Balance of Power) appearances now that she has flight and leveling to 120 is more of an option.
My beast mastery hunter disagrees; none of the skins for Titanstrike appealed to me at all.
On the other hand, I doubt I’ll ever find another staff that’s as quintessentially Brewmaster as the hidden appearance for Fu Zan.
I think Ret’s pretty tied when it comes to the BoP and its Mage Tower appearance.
Fire Mage though, man. Star Sword. I love the rune-blade we get but a sword made out of freakin’ stars. I just wish I could use the blue one for my frost spec x_x
Personally, I like the Survival Hunter MT skin…the BM Hunter one not so much. I agree with you regarding the Ret Paladin skin…my favorite is the Burning Reprisal from Balance of Power.
This is kind of silly. It’s going to be completely subjective. For example, I think you’re nuts to suggest that the mage tower skins for MM or SV were underwhelming. They were an updated version of Rhok’delar and what Lok’delar should have been (as there’s at least one similar stave that blooms like Rhok’delar). It’s seriously pissed me off that I can’t use the high rez versions since I’m always in BM and stuck with 2004 Rhok.
So I’m going to say no, they shouldn’t have swapped stuff, because no matter what they did, someone would feel that a particular skin was better than others and should have been in the Mage Tower or vice versa. People have very different aesthetic tastes. At some point they just have to shrug and do what they want because there’s no way to satisfy everyone.