There is a lot of discussion and criticism about the Mage Tower. I was able to complete The guardian druid one and hit my goal. I have tried a few others, but I dont intend on grinding them.
My opinion is that the MT is over tuned for what they initially said it would be. They said that equipment would be scaled to provide a reasonable challenge for all players. Here is the thing. It is not a reasonable challenge for all players. It is a very difficult challenge for skilled players. Nothing wrong with having that, but for most players it is too hard. I found it difficult to the point of not being fun.
Then there is the discussion of gearing. Farming Old Expac Gear. Specific Trinkets/Enchants/Gems. Spending lots of gold on pieces just to have a better chance. Farming old raids and dungeons. Killing a random rare enemy in a zone for a specific trinket that cheezes it for the next few days before it gets nerfed. While this is one aspect of min maxing some like, it is not for “all players”.
This brings me to my point. The Legion mage Tower should have had set gearsets for the challenge. Or just set scaled stats. Every class/spec, when doing into the mage tower has the same equipment/enchants/stats. Keep the consumable aspect. Then tune the encounter around these set stats. It would still be the challenge. It would still be difficult. But it would be the same level of challenge for everyone. Tuning the encounter would be so much easier, as it would have been designed for a set level of stats. It would have also eliminated the constant need to nerf all these random old items/enchants that keep popping up that impact the encounter in unintended ways. It would have eliminated wonky scaling with certain items. It would have made it just simply the challenge mechanics against the player.
I feel this would have been a good middle ground. What do you all think? Would the TW Mage Tower have been better, if every spec had to do it in the same MT Gear Set, with the same stats and enchants as everyone else? No other gearing or Min Maxing. Do you think the tuning and balancing would have been better with this as well?
It probably would have been better, yes. But it wouldn’t have lessened the whining. A lot of people just don’t like finding out they’re not the best at a thing. I do wonder what excuses they’d come up with if they couldn’t blame the gear.
Optimizing your character is a core part of an MMO-RPG.
Why have gear at all? Just have raids designed to a specific set of gear that you can’t change.
You known what they don’t do that? Because it’s boring beyond belief. Part of knowing your class is knowing how to optimise yourself.
Far too many players these days do a +15 and think they know the ins and outs of their class and that any challenge they face they should overcome with relative ease.
WoW is all about agency. Getting consumables, getting gear, getting gems, overcoming the challenge is what WoW is all about.
It’s already tuned for Shadowlands gear, as been proven by numerous people who have completed the challenges.
Some people think if there were templates then average players would be able to complete it. Because of 3, that will not be the case, quite the opposite because…
This is also an important factor.
If we left our templates to Blizzard we’d get garbage level boost quality gear.
We went through this in Legion with PVP templates. People wanting to adapt their character to their playstyle.
e.g. People who struggle to kite enemies wanting more Haste for faster spell casts, stuck with Crit and Mastery.
Searching in the AH for useful pieces of gear, watching guides and reading about consumables and useful items was actually the most fun part of the Mage Tower. I love that a challenge is so difficult that you actually have to think and invest yourself.
It also helps that I made 300k on professions thus far because of this and that’s including all of the costs for having to level alchemy, jewelcrafting etc. from scratch.
But yeah, this has been…quite interesting to say the least.
Personally I found the consumables gave far more of a boost than gear. As long as you have enchants and gems in your shadowlands gear you shouldn’t have an issue breaking any dps checks. If you are then you’re not optimizing your damage properly. When I did my BM hunter challenge I wasnt applying dots efficiently or using it on the big wyrm. As I optimized my dot spread and ensuring I didn’t lose dps uptime with my pet dying the fight become easier and easier.
With that being said these fights are challenges. You shouldn’t go into them expecting a one shot or to beat it in 30 minutes. You should expect to have to change your strategies as you are working on the fight to be able to clear them. If your first thought after a wipe is the fight is BS, rather than what you did wrong and how to fix that, then you are not going to have a good time.
its 2 expansions old…
they are bringing something back that’s 4 years+? old and time locking it cause “reasons”… shi t company, only wants money.
Look, the Mage Tower is a good challenging content for some specs, but outright punishing and straight out not fun for others. While I did complete it on my Mage rather fast on the first few days before nerfs, it’s still such a chore on Havoc that’s absurd and I’ve completed the original back in the day during the first few weeks it was available. Xylem is simply overtuned still while Agatha for example is a complete joke of a challenge.
What most people fail to understand is that outside of buffing all mobs/bosses health and damage before it hit live for whatever reason, some classes just don’t have the same tools they used to back in Legion. Havoc most all for example was literally built with Artifacts in mind, not mentioning the huge number of (some warranted) survivability nerfs it got from BfA to Shadowlands. It’s seriously a chore just trying to stay alive.
Same for druid, just looking at, not fully upgraded, claws for example we loose so much just, passive survivability and damage mitigation it isn’t even funny, not to mention damage, leech, and other things
Most people fail to understand that punishing =/= challenging. I’m not saying it’s impossible, because some people have been able to complete it, but to say it’s not overtuned and RNG dependent on some specs is just crazy.
I’m very against templates because it defeats the purpose of an RPG, but tuning is still in order to make this content fair for all specs. I’ve myself completed on several specs I consider myself good at, but some of them are just crazy difficult in comparison. What those guys against MT tuning must understand is that just because they’ve completed it on THEIR spec, doesn’t mean it’s fair for the other 35.
Yes, truly people are simply “whining” and doing so because they thought that they were the best at something, and it is that having been proven that they are, indeed, not the best at something that’s causing such widespread frustration.
How brilliantly you’ve reduced and demeaned the thoughts, experiences, arguments, and commentary from such a broad range of players and player types. You have solidly met the standard set for every first response to an intelligent and well-stated argument on this forum. Congratulations.
Then don’t do it? There’s more to WoW than just the mage tower. If you don’t enjoy the content and find it too difficult, you don’t have to do it.