Torghast Help

Classes Mage
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I have seen a lot of Mages complaining about the difficulty of Torghast. I’m not making this post to debate whether it is difficult or not. However, it is completely doable (both wings on level three) on a fresh 60 with 147 item level and basic covenant conduits (a second mage that recently dinged 60: hotdisaster)

Please remember that this post is not about speed running or complaining. I’m posting this for people who are struggling on their Mages and want some tips–not people begging for changes to the class or torghast.

Mindset:
-I think it is important to not expect to rush through. I get other classes can faceroll, and to an extent I believe we can too, but if you’re struggling then facerolling should not be what you are expecting.

-When selecting Anima Powers try to form a build with them. Pick ones that will build off of others. There are tons of combinations that make mage really interesting. Some of those builds I’ll be posting. If you have other combinations you wish to post or that work for you feel free to post them!

-Kill everything. Yes it will take longer. Yes you may get very little phantasma for a single mob. Yes you may not get extra anima powers. However, there is a chance that you may get an anima power. Also, some anima powers can build off of the vases/looting phantasma.

-Don’t be afraid to pull small, use cool downs, and crowd control.

-Remember to use Alter Time, Counterspell, Spellsteal, and Invisibility

Lastly, I realize that there are some much better Anima Powers out there that may not be listed. I chose to list kind of a balanced list. Just because it is listed here does not by any means mean that it is the best Power. These Powers are what has worked for me in both Beta testing at higher levels as well as live.

Survivability

Triune Ward Casting any Barrier spell grants the effects of Blazing Barrier, Ice Barrier, and Prismatic Barrier.

Grisly Icicle Damage no longer breaks Frost Nova.
Polymorbid Rat Liver Teaches you Polymorph, which works on Undead creatures.

  • Tome of Zoomancy Polymorphed creatures regenerate health 75% more slowly, and the first 3 damaging attacks or spells that they receive do not break the effect.

Protective Phantasma Looting Phantasma grants you an absorb shield for 65 per Phantasma, up to a maximum of (1 * Total health). The absorption stacks, and lasts 5 min.
Curious Miasma When you attack a new creature, you are healed for (480% of Spell power).
Secret Spices Killing a Mawrat increases your maximum health by 2%, up to 100%.
Highly-Polished Handmirror Your Mirror Images become more intelligent, gaining access to more spells and abilities.

Damage:
Mad Wizard’s Intellect At the beginning of each floor, you will receive an intuition, telling you to cast a series of spells in a certain order.
If you successfully cast these spells in the correct order, your Intellect will be increased by 10%.

Runecloth Wrappings The damage of Arcane Blast, Fireball and Frostbolt is increased by 2000% when you cast it while Invisible.

Spellweaver’s Mojo Your Fire, Frost, and Arcane spells cause the target to take 30% increased damage from your other two elements for 8 sec.

This is perhaps one of my favorite Anima Powers. Make sure to use—
Arcane: Fireblast + Frost Nova (Arcane Spell)
Frost: Fireblast + Arcane Explosion (Frost Spell)
Fire: Frost Nova + Arcane Explosion (Fire Spell)

Seeker’s Scroll Breaking a Destructible Object increases the damage of your next Fireball, Frostbolt, or Arcane Blast by 10%. This effect stacks up to 100 times.

Builds:
Rat Extermination:
Alluring Cheese Icon Alluring Cheese — Your Conjure Refreshment Icon Conjure Refreshment also conjures Alluring Cheese, luring up to 3 neutral Mawrats.
Bloating Fodder You cause Mawrats to explode on death, dealing (200% of Spell power) Plague damage to all other nearby enemies.
Curious Miasma When you attack a new creature, you are healed for (480% of Spell power).
Secret Spices Killing a Mawrat increases your maximum health by 2%, up to 100%.

Scroll of Explosure Damaging an enemy with Arcane Explosion increases the damage it takes from all sources by 15% for 10 sec.

Dimensional Blade Blinking through a Mawrat will instantly kill it and reset the cooldown of Blink.
Clouded Diamond Blinking leaves a Mirror Image behind. This Mirror Image lasts for 10 sec.
Highly-Polished Handmirror Your Mirror Images become more intelligent, gaining access to more spells and abilities.

The idea behind this build is to blow enemies up using mawrats. It can also provide some strong survivability if complementary anima powers are also taken! It is a slower build, and it isn’t something I recommend if you aren’t having issues, but it can definitely be helpful if you are struggling.

  • Alluring Cheese mawrats do not dissapear (if they do it takes quite a while). Set down tables and get a nice army of rats.
  • Bloating Fodder is stackable so the more you have the more increased damage it does to enemies that are in range of the rats you kill.
  • Secret Spices will increase your total health by 2% for every maw rat you kill and Curious Miasma will heal you when you attack a new maw rat.
  • If you take Dimensional Blade you can kill the rats by blinking (I sugguest shimmer instead) through them. When you Blink/Shimmer through the rats it will grant charges of Blink/Shimmer. With Clouded Diamond every time you Shimmer/Blink it will spawn a Mirror Image, which can be empowered with Highly Polished Hand Mirror. This combination can be great for survivability.

One-Shot!
I highly recommend going Arcane (at least for bosses). I believe you can change specs at the traders on floors 3 and 6–it might only be the case that you can if the trader has the bubble surrounding it.

Runecloth Wrappings The damage of Arcane Blast, Fireball and Frostbolt is increased by 2000% when you cast it while Invisible.

Seeker’s Scroll Breaking a Destructible Object increases the damage of your next Fireball, Frostbolt, or Arcane Blast by 10%. This effect stacks up to 100 times.

I always choose these powers when offered.

Tips with Runecloth Wrappings:

  • Arcane likely sees the most benefit out of this and if you cast it with four arcane charges it will hit harder. Therefore I tend to like to pair it with:
    Alluring Cheese Icon Alluring Cheese.
    That way you can use Touch of the Magi on one of the neutral rats to get four Arcane Charges.

1.Timewarp
2.Rune of Power
3.Arcane Power
4.Presence of Mind
5.Greater Invisibility
→ Arcane Blast = Big Dammy!

Tips with Seeker’s Scroll:

  • Break vases and don’t use Arcane Blast until the boss (I sugguest Missile Spamming). This way you will not lose your stacks and it will be up to 100.

I am not saying that these methods are perfect by any means, but they are examples of combinations that I have found in my runs. I believe that it is important to realize what your class and spec are good at and where its limitations are. For example, mage does not have any self healing. Therefore, when I see Triune Ward, Resolute Medallion, Curious Miasma , Secret Spices , or Protective Phantasma I will typically pick it up unless it is something like Runecloth Wrappings Seeker’s Scroll being offered instead.

About the Vendors:
-I tend to pick the 300 Phantasma or anything that increases my Phantasma gains, but that largely depends on what the alternative choices are. This is a personal choice, but my reason for doing so is because of potential better options from the vendor on Floors 3 and 6.

-I know you can change talents (potentially only with a tome) and I believe you may be able to change specs at the vendors; however, this may be dependent on whether there is a bubble surrounding them.

-Do not buy the orange orb or anything dealing with Phantasm/Vases at the Floor 6 Vendor. It is a waste to do so since the only thing in the room will be the boss.

-I will typically buy the flat Stat Increase items before anything dealing with Alter Time/Shield after Polymorph . . . that’s just me.

-The vendor at times sells a powerful DPS Potion and a Potion that grants you an extra life. Both of these can be helpful if you are about to lose your run or are struggling with DPS.

3 Likes
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I must suck because I had trouble with the last boss and a few mobs.

I didn’t get good anima but some of those elites are immune to cc+ silence and spam bolts at you so fast lol.

Just finished it with my Druid friend was a blast

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That is why I typically grab:

It allows for almost all elites except for the boss to be Polymorphed. However, I do often try to kill all elites for the chance of another Anima Power, so I often Polymorph one of the Elites in a large pack. Speaking of which, I find it important to pick off bits of packs at a time. Pull kind of carefully with them and if the elites are pulled by accident, I invis out. I always try to kill the elites while they are by themselves.

4

Running iceward for double frost nova helps a lot.
Dont forget to use alter time early and often as you can be really aggressive and heal back to full.

Mirror images will take aggro from you. I use these after I alter back.

I really like to pull massive when I have the anima power that inceases your blizzard damage by 850% when used on the floor for the first.

The fire blast anima power that causes it to send your target into the air is an awesome additional interrupt and helps a lot with the multi spell school casters.

1 Like
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Oh yes I do too but a few runs you just get bad rng lol.

My favorite is sheep that does massive aoe. I sheep one pull the entire floor and cc it right on top of the sheep and let it explode and kill them all.

Try this it’s tons of fun

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That’s true. My tip is to pull non-elites at max range and try to pick off the pack. If the elite (or if one of the elites) happens to be humanoid, polymorph that one. If you happen to grab both, quickly blink out and Greater Invisibility to drop aggro. That’s typically how I deal with that situation. There have been times where I’ve had to deal with both Elites. At that point it becomes a priority game . . . I’ll typically focus on the melee over casters, interrupt the casters, Nova the melee.

It’s also super important that if there are the skeleton adds in the pulled group, that you kill those out of range. If they are killed near you, their death debuff will become deadly, especially if there is an elite that is melee with them. If I cannot nova them/blink away and there is a melee elite, I will let them wail on me until I can safely get out of range or I kill the elite. There debuff is just extremely potent.

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Admittedly this is hugely RNG because you have to pray for the right anima powers, but I’ve actually felt comfortable going in as fire of all things, specced for the Blazing Barrier Blink talent. It has an annoyingly slow start, but having Cauterize allowed for extra oopsies.

I had one run that was going miserably until it all turned around with a combination of Triune Ward, a couple of generic barrier boosters, Conjure Cheese and the ability to gain 4 stacks of Blink by zipping through a mawrat. I was able to effectively give myself a 35k shield 4 times every 15 seconds (minimum) and I basically stopped taking damage for the rest of the run.

Another attempt had me with the Fire Blast juggle skill, combined with Time Warp speeding up time by 30% along with the one that increased its duration by an additional 300% before killing you. I effectively bounced Synod like popcorn until he was dead and he wasn’t able to do anything to me.

My last run, I was lucky enough to get two stacks of the +2000% Fireball-from-invis, 62 stacks of the +10% base damage to your next Fireball for every busted jar, and then my Rune of Power + Combustion + Invis + Fireball popped the boss for 725k damage.

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See this is where I disagree, I don’t think it is about being lucky. There are plenty of enough powers to make runs more than capable. I mean people act as if they legit get six anima powers per run and they are all something like wand grease or the alter time one. I don’t think people are actually “exploring” enough. Yes the powers you can choose between are RNG, but I guarantee that people at the very least get 5-6+ solid powers to work with per run if they clear every single thing.

-Are some Powers better than others? Of course.
-Are you less likely to get some of the better powers? Of course.
-Are there plenty of decent powers that are pretty helpful? Absolutely and synergizing these will make you more than capable of succeeding.

I’m sorry I just don’t see this as the luck and RNG crap that people keep saying in their posts. Sure in essence everyone would rather have Triune Ward compared to Resolute Medallion or Curious Miasma, and guess what, most people will get more of the latter than the former, but it shouldn’t be “OmG RNG MaGE Suxxx. I geT CurIouS MIasMa insTeaD of LEET TrIUNe WARddd.” Because Curious Miasma is actually amazing, it isn’t bad at all—just an example.

Now I’m not saying you said this at all, or implied it . . . it’s just I’m really tired of seeing other Mages consistently saying that people are just getting lucky with their anima powers. I really don’t believe that “luck” or “RNG” is a valid argument because there are plenty of powers/combinations/capabilities to handling Torghast, but many seem to think that their lack of skill is an RNG problem rather than the problem being that they are too lazy to make sure they are getting all powers possible, they are making poor choices with their powers, or they simply don’t know the capabilities of their class/spec and do not use certain powers in ways that make them helpful to the class/spec.

The reason I put the “Rat Extermination” build on my list is legit because I was playing my fresh 147 mage alt on level three. Initially I selected Alluring Cheese once I got it in hopes that I would get Runecloth Wrappings at some point during my run. I decided to buy the Rat Explosion power at the Vendor on the third level. I was facing a Tower Sentinel on the fifth floor and died to him, this is when I was like “Hmm, I wonder if I can get multiple rats from the Alluring Cheese.” I found out I could . . . A lot of rats and and a few Arcane Explosions and the Sentinel went down. I never did get the Runecloth Wrappings that run . . .

. . . but I was able to form a strategy from powers that I am sure some players would ignore because they do not appear that great on the surface; however, even the dull and weaker powers can synergize extremely well to provide players with enough to get through it. In essence I think that we have plenty to work with what is given.

I’m actually considering going through and picking one-two decent powers and none that can one shot—just to prove that this is a player problem not a class or design issue.

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I have yet to try an alter time build, but I’m hoping to be able to this week. There are some really interesting synergies in the powers that you can gain for that ability…

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To be fair, I don’t consider myself a good player. I’ve been meticulous about fully clearing every floor because I’m the paranoid type who hates missing power ups, and so far I feel like I’ve been pretty fortunate. Cromwell bent me over the barrel a couple of times before I barely got her down, though, and I actually don’t know if I would have been able to beat her had I not been fire because a good deal of my damage mitigation was running out of her casting range while spamming Scorch.

Fire did have an overall advantage in being able to deal with elites that can’t be snared, though. Otherwise I felt like I was playing like a vanilla low level mage of slow and plodding pulls until I got a power to help me push a little harder. Part of it might just be a confidence issue since the content’s so new and I haven’t attempted anything approaching difficult content since MoP.

I got the “arcane damage has a chance to turn enemies into furniture” and it felt like such a booby prize, though. I got it on floor one of a run, and I think I saw it proc maybe 4 times period. And two of those were on enemies taking a killing blow anyway. But it was also the same run that gave me the 725k Fireball crit on the final boss so it was hard to complain, lol

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honestly i was able to clear every tier/floor for my weekly soul ash cap as fire without issue. I think you nailed all the major points and to reiterate “take your time” also clearing everything helps to deal with big pulls so you have room to kite etc. but i truly love the whole torghast addition to the game!

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There definitely isn’t a lack of Anima Powers either like people imply. I just ran L3 Fracture Chambers, came out with 26 Powers–another reason I just don’t buy the RNG and Luck BS. Like the chances of not getting 4-5 good-great powers in 26?

I’ve yet to try Fire, I may give it a go. I am just super comfortable with Arcane (I like the burstiness and being up close style of play).

I too love Torghast; but, I also was a big fan of both Visions and the Mage Tower. I am honestly not sure which of the three I enjoy most haha.

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How the hell does Spellreaver Mojo work? I did what TC stated for my Frost Mage and nothing procced. Also, after 8 seconds does it refresh again?

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I was slow leveling and didn’t have much time last week. Only got Soulforge done. As expected for the first layer, it was quite easy. I didn’t actually take any damage the entire layer. Nothing got through frost barrier.

However, it was quite slow. I did a full-clear of everything up to the final boss and it took me 45 minutes.

I wonder if arcane is faster? My biggest worry with arcane is now mass snare and have to be up-close to AOE. I’ll take damage.

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When you hit an enemy with a spell (like say Frostbolt) then it will debuff the target and cause them to take increased damage from Arcane and Fire. As Arcane I typically hit them with Fireblast/Frost Nova and then my Arcane spell (and you refresh it by hitting them with another spell).

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It can be faster, my level threes were taking around 40 clearing everything. I mean I don’t mind the time, it’s under an hour, and I am sure if I were to skip things it would be much lower. I mean Visions took about as long if you full cleared. I don’t think it’s too bad.

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I’ve been fine doing pretty much the same strategy as you and never really have any issues besides one boss. The big slime that splits into other slimes. He is such a pain and only have been able to beat him with tribune ward. Any advice for that particular one all the other bosses seem like a joke compared to him.

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Best advice:

Get a tank friend, and healer. Run torg with 3. It’s the best bet for mages.