So i have never attempted Mage Tower on any classes… I want to focus on that over the next 2-3 weeks before Season 4 launch and get that spellbook mount. Just a few questions:
Is there a site or youtube video that has Mage Tower info that is CURRENT? Most of them are like 12+ months old… but of course I might be missing soemthing.
Is it possible to do on each spec in full 470/480 ilvl DF gear? Or do I need to farm Legion raids?
Is there a CURRENT list of easiest spec to hardest spec to complete? Yes, I get that is subjective but the majority is still true.
You CAN do it in regular dragon flight gear, farming old socketed gear or specific tinkers like the Seed from emerald nightmare make a lot of them much easier.
You will still have to do mechanics even with twink gear but it lets you make a mistake and recover or best dps checks easier.
in terms of updates guides I haven’t seen any releases lately from anyone I follow or for any specs I’ve looked at. They’ve all been older too
Edit: as far as tips I would recommend checking out Wago for a weak aura package if you use addons to tell you events
I want to say you can bring old Legion legendaries in there, because they worked at the time.
It’s still difficult, but I feel how easily you can get old Legion gear, it’s a bit easier to “gear up” for it these days. Also older profession enchants and whatnot.
I think some SL stuff works in there too, but I could be wrong on that. They first brought it back during SL.
Most tier sets and legendary don’t work, I think it occasionally bugs out though. For example when I did the Bear one my tier set was working to give me extra health and damage so it helped beat the soft enrage.
If you want the best gear it’s typically the socketed stuff from Siege of Orgimmar.
And the seed pod from Emerald nightmare first boss.
I remember making a full set of crafted Shadowlands gear with the thorns effect on every single piece. That was the little bit of damage I needed to complete the Arcane, Ret, and Arms challenges.
They scale down but the effect stays and actually adds a decent amount of damage! Assuming the enemy is actually hitting you, anyways.
The Ravaged Seed Pod trinket helps a ton, so do the Unblinking Gaze of Sethe for classes who can use it, and Infernal Cinders for Rogues. I’ve done most challenges with mostly Dragonflight Gear, with many toons using Bloody Coin gear.
I don’t think so. Here are my tips for the Easiest.
Agatha: Elemental Shaman
Feltotem’s Fall: Windwalker or BM. All are pretty easy once you get the hang of it.
Tank: Guardian Druid.
Healer: Resto Shaman.
God Queen: Assassination Rogue did the most damage for me. Enhance Shaman and Ret are probably second best.
Closing the Eye: Arms and Survival.
Thwarting the Twins: Shadow Priest.
Use Drums. They are required on many challenges, unless you have gear which makes your damage insanely high. Potion of Unbridled Fury is the best combat potion as well.
I did the majority of mine in fresh 70 gear. Guardian Druid I got 2 days after hitting 70. I had minimal gear, mostly quest greens. For warrior I used a boost I had and got it the same day. Zero gear farmed.
I’ve done 8 of the challenges (and got the mount) and I can say gear is barely a factor. The largest impact on your success is by far how you handle the mechanics and how you play your spec.
Knowing what cds you have to deal with each mechanic and making sure to use them not only at the proper time, but plan out which to use so you have them in the future when you need them again.
It’s all timing.
The only exception to gear I would recommend is the seed trinket from Emerald Nightmare first boss. I used this for the discipline challenge and it completely removed the adds as a factor. Other than that I used no special gear.
Only consumable I used is drums which I would recommend for certain challenges (Holy priest and Arms Warrior in particular because they have dps checks at the end)
Overall I would recommend trying the challenges and closely studying the patterns of mechanics. If you can get them memorized it becomes trivial to counter things because you’ll know what cd is for what and when. No panicking or guessing.
Also don’t be afraid to take breaks. A couple times I found myself getting really frustrated and it made me play poorly. Once I stepped back for a day or so I beat the challenges when I came back.
I got all appearances back in the day in Legion, but did many again in dragonflight just to finally get the spelltome. I used mostly dragonflight gear, but definitely do some homework on trinkets, because some are really great from older expansions.
Nothing will ever again be as easy as when warlocks could fight the Twins with an infinite-duration, slowing Corruption DoT on the guy chasing you. Was hilarious.
Yes you can do it in DF gear. No you don’t need legion raids. You should farm for old gear in case you want to lower your repair bill, get specific trinkets, or farm for gem sockets.
I’m not aware of a tier list.
But I can tell you from my experience, if you want a freebie do Fire Mage or Arms warrior. It’s practically given to you. Hardest ones will be Holy Priest or Blood DK. Most towers are more or less balanced between each other imho.
Any tips for a noob at this?
Someone already mentioned the timewalking discord, they have info there. Not sure if they have updated guides, but I know they had updated gear lists.
My personal advice is to never give up. Focus on learning and memorizing the challenge. Go in with the mindset you’ll most likely lose, but you’ll learn a little each time. Some of them took me over 200 tries (because I didn’t know the challenge or the spec I’m playing), others took 10, because I knew how to play them. Once you figure out the fights, buff up. Use potion of unbridled rage, use the BFA pot, get some blood sausages, drums.
Honestly gear doesn’t matter. You want to get good consumables ex: food, flask, drums, potions (you’ll have to look up what’s best for each spec).
My number one tip and advice, this is absolutely CRUCIAL: don’t get discouraged. You WILL fail, probably many many times. Every MT is a scripted event that you have to learn and memorize. Once you know it then it becomes easier and easier.
Number 2: get familiar with your spec. Ins and outs. Know what your abilities do and how they interact with each other. This seems like a “well duh” thing but with how much is just “paste the best spec in your talents and go” I feel like this needs to be said.
That would work. A funny thing I noticed. I wanted to test how much agi (on my bear druid) I could gain with a socketed piece of gear vs a normal piece of gear. The agi on the socketed piece was definitely lower than the non socketed. If fully socketed I would have only gained lik 9 agi instead of like 20 something. I didn’t think that was cool at all.
I completed all 8 challenges within the last couple of weeks, cause I also wanted to get it done before S4. Previously, back in the Legion days, I had only completed 3 of the challenges so the majority of the Mage Tower challenges were brand new to me when attempting them now.
Gear-wise, all my alts were 70 and had basic DF green gear. Almost all of them just had the basic Emerald Dream zone green trinkets, so nothing special. I used the free 5 Ingenuity Sparks you can get on every character and crafted base level Lariats, cause I knew the recipe, but it really wasn’t necessary. You can use these free Sparks for any decent embellishment gear if that tends to be super good for your specs, but you don’t need them. I only obtained the Ravaged Seed Pod on my BM hunter cause I found it easier to deal with the adds on the Feltotem challenge.
Some of the specs I played on the challenges I hadn’t played for many years and they were all reworked post-DF, so I basically didn’t know anything about half the specs at all before jumping into the challenges. I just did a little research on stat priority and practiced the rotation on training dummies for a few mins so I got used to what each spell did.
For the challenges, I didn’t use any food, flasks, pots, drums, or any consumables at all, and was able to complete all of them; some of them relatively easily too. My tips in approaching it would be:
Macros macros macros. There’s a lot going on in each challenge so reduce your cognitive load and macro as many things as you can. Macro target interrupts, macro @cursor ground spells, etc. I found a few of the Youtube videos, even older ones, that listed some decent macros in their video descriptions that still were relevant.
Use a fight timers addon, like DBM or a weakaura package. Something that has the timers of when important stuff is coming and calls it out so you’re aware when you need to react and prepare.
There are a lot of different talent builds advertised online for Mage Tower. I tried a lot of them and some of them were way harder for me than others. Just go with whatever build is easiest for you to use the best. One build may be a tiny bit stronger but if you’re not used to it or not playing it well then it doesn’t provide any advantage over a different build you can play easier.
You’re gonna die, a lot. It’s ok. It’s all about learning what’s happening in the fight and learning to react to things at the right time, that’s all. Just take each phase one at a time to learn it. I think I got most challenges done within 15-30 attempts each.
Here are the specs I used for each challenge and found these the easiest:
I’ve not attempted ret but I fought god queen as demo and I swear you really only have to pay attention to the mechanics, the felguard does 90% of the heavy lifting. Super easy.
Yeah, I remember a few other overpowered legendaries. Bear druids got one that increased the range of their AOE bleed, so they could comfortably bleed down the mage in phase 1 of the tank challenge without ever once having to step into his aura that reduced max health if they didn’t want to