I have died around 30 times today in the balance druid mage tower, i couldnt do it before the patch (when hands didnt spawn) and i cant do it now.
I play without consumables nor obscure gear you have to read wowhead to know the benefit of. My gear is a mix of shadowlands lfr and honor gear. I feel like im playing the mechanics better than the youtubers and they get the kill so easy while i die because i dont have damage.
The youtubers say its good to get Raest to at least 70% on the first burst window. I am happy if i reach 80% even though im doing the exact same rotation at the same time with max ressources pooled, investing all my globals into damage except one or two.
This temporary buff meta is not fun to deal with for me.
Please make the mage tower care 0% about your gear so that it is about skill and not obscure knowledge and the “exploit hard exploit fast” mentality.
I say just deactivate trinkets, gems, enchants, no consumables either and everyone gets the same standarized statsheet.
Point being: make it about skill because right now people who farm the right items and have the money to buy the items are the ones who kill the hands in one starsurge while i have to allign the universe to kill them, and immediately after i do, another one is already there.
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I’ll tell you a secret my friend.
Contrary to popular belief, World of Warcraft has NEVER, EVER been about “skill”.
It’s about having the skill to know how to cheese something.
WoW Classic was the absolute best proof of that. Mythic Plus is another proof of that.
I agree with you, but the reality is that the game has never been like that, even if there is an illusion of it. It’s always about the right gear, with the right (broken) trinkets, and the right combination of talents, and gimmicks to gain advantage.
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i agree. i have played balance druid for a long time and i would consider myself a skilled player in my class. unfortunately i spent most of the event so far reading about all the obscure trinkets and consumables i need. i read about the people taking advantage on the auction house of people needing this items and jacking up prices. I read about the items from certain expansions that will help that i don’t have because i didn’t play at that point in time . after tons of reading and feeling discouraged i said im ok i will beat this with skill and playing my rotation correctly while kiting. i got some decent shadowlands gear mixed with a small array of speed boost gear. the hands that come out spawn to quickly . i dont have my burst up for the second so i use solar beam . and then comes the third hand and guess what ? i got litteraly nothing left to stop it in time . blizzard made some small quality of life changes for shadowlands only to do this and make us pay tons of gold and time for something that almost seems impossible. why didn’t they test this version on the ptr ? why did they change it last min . maybe they hope we spend all our gold and have nothing for the next patch and then forced to purchase a wow token to get gold. maybe its all a gimmick. i have loved this game for a long time but things are starting to get ridiculous. im not the type to rant and complain . but this seems harder then in legion itself. maybe because in legion we had special artifact powers and abilities we no longer have ?? yet we cant use multiple new abilities we have currently cuz its “timewalking” if thats the case give us all the artifact powers back lol
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Wow is usually about grinding gear to do stuff all time. A person with the same skill in a bg could die easily to someone if they had different gear gaps.
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Is baffling they are allowing this cheese consumables that cost way too much gold for just 1 try but they don’t allow us to use the Essences of the Heart of Azeroth
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This is why I didn’t get looks from Mage tower back in Legion.
If you had the gear score and/or Legendaries you had it. I only wanted one look. (not the bear) And unless I spent what little game time I had in raids or mythics it was impossible. Not hard. Legitimately impossible. NO ONE under a certain gear score was able to complete it for the class/roll I was. And I just didn’t have the time or the energy to put up with raids and mythics to get the gear score.
I still tried mind you, but never got even close. There was nothing I could do then. I’m not even bothering now.
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People would have unsubbed if they’d known this in advance. And they don’t test stuff. They let it get tested on live. If too many people quit over something they’ll fix it.
Perhaps they were trying to put normal players in their place, to show them who is boss, that they could do this and get away with this, and there was nothing a player who subscribed to do this under the influence of what was basically false advertising could do.
Perhaps they never intended to let casuals complete it, so last minute switch-er-oo. Then found out people who didn’t deserve to finish were using bis gear and old consumables to do it. Stuff they needed to break to keep the wrong people from finishing.
Maybe they’re just punishing the casuals who are still playing because they can’t get back at the ones who have left this failure of an expansion.
Back in Legion I read that feral was the easiest challenge, told my friend, and he used my druid to see, because mine had the weapon and his only was set up for balance. He used Lightblood Elixir, which has since been banned because screw all y’all. So I have sparkle kitty form. He also did a test run on my disc priest before doing his, but I have no idea what that appearance looks like. It’s just another weapon appearance. Edict of Argus trumps all.
I did 20 pulls on the guardian one in Legion. I stopped because I didn’t like it and was sure I would never use it. Guess what? Balance of Power is great for me. Neon bear + neon kitty = c’mon, you know you want to glow!
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To be entirely fair, these two things are separate problems. Blizzard can’t regulate gold flow. Gold flow is a server specific economy thing. We can’t expect Blizzard to regulate something which is in the hands of players.
You can make flasks from your garrison. The cheap ones with the herbs from your farm.
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Nowadays not everybody even has a garrison.
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Ehh why not? Bunch of stuff is locked behind one. The WoD zones, mounts, invasion mounts, pet dailies, etc. Probably can make stuff with your pandaria farm too.
In fact probably could be making some gold with these changes if you dont feel like doing the mage tower. 
Good oppurtunities for goblins.
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I’m not saying I don’t have garrisions, but certainly not level 3 on all my characters and buildings on all servers.
It’s easy to start a garrison. But there is very little incentive to fully upgrade it now. And I think a lot of people just skip it because there isn’t time to do everything in the game.
Since I wasn’t playing during Pandaria, I only have a farm on one character on a different server that was cooking to provide food for my 110 who did BfA legion-capped PvP.
Just giving people ideas if they already spent there gold on that stuff. I am sure some players dont understand this but consumables also scale too so you can use old expansion food/flask/drums etc. Those are often cheaper too.
I remember spending months during Legion working on fishing and cooking and the farm on that character in Pandaria. It’s too late to start that now, if somebody wants it for this event.
Honestly you can craft like 20 ish flasks with WoD crafting in a bit of time for mage tower runs or check your ah for flasks. They tend to sell cheaper. If your alts hoarded mats you may also choose to craft what you already have.
In legion I used these potions for mage tower that used blood of sargeras. Using those same potions for pulls.
isn’t it in their hands when they sell gold for real life money?
wait, stuff older than legion… scale up?
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Alot of it has similar benefits. Cheaper to make. Using a shadowlands flask gives 19 stats. The WoD stuff gave 17. Not that big of a difference.
Because it cost alot of gold= needing gold= buying tokens= blizz getting more money.
Thus they wont change it because its paying them more.
Just another reason tokens have messed with the games integrity. XP
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No. Regardless of the token sales, it doesn’t change the fact it is the players posting things for ridiculous amounts of money. The player is setting the price. Not Blizzard. This was the case prior to the WoW token and it is still the case.
Make no mistake, I think the WoW token working for battle net balance is a horrible idea and it should have never went beyond someone being able to pay for their own WoW time with it. But the reality is this is a player problem involving pricing right now.