People dont even want to use consumables and complain they need to be use a full TW set or is impossible. You have 6 gems slot from shadowlands content and trinkets from WQ/Korthia are some of the best thanks to being scale down.
I created my monk this expansion and has 0 gear from the previous expansions, I did all of them fully on shadowlands gear/consumables.
I can only speak in-depth about the enhancement shaman challenge, it’s a completely different fight. In Legion there was 2 phases, the first phase was Runes, shield, Berserk, whirlwind, occasional valks, and blood cast, but at 50%ish it changed to just Valks and shield. You could hex Sigryn for the majority of phase 1 and not have to worry about her blood cast pretty much at all. Her demon form AOE did WAY less AOE dmg as well and I’m pretty sure you could stun her cast where I don’t believe you can now. Once you hit phase 2 it was just avoid puddles+valks and bust shield all other things stopped. You could still get overlaps in late phase 1, but the shield was easier to bust and her demon form AOE didn’t hit as hard so you could take a few pulses. So it wasn’t an immediate wipe if things overlapped.
Now it’s 1 phase and you cannot just keep Sigryn hexed because there is no phase 2 and even if there was we don’t have enough DPS to push it before she is immune. As soon as Valks start showing up it starts to become a game of luck. If too many 1 shot mechanics line up it’s game over because there is no outplaying it, which is what makes the encounter poorly balanced. The preferred way to overcome it now is to Hex her Blood cast and then immediately break for more cleave dmg because our DPS isn’t great. The only way to deal with 1 shot overlaps is to kill faster so there are less chances for them to overlap.
Then we have consumables, in Legion you really didn’t need them to beat the encounters and they certainly weren’t tuned for their use. This version they are pretty much a must use because of either the poor gear scaling or overtuning. On top of that your best option is to farm old gear/enchants, which is a giant red flag that scaling isn’t balanced correctly. One of the big things about MMORPG’s is progression and when you have to dump your current gear for gear you likely DEd 2 years ago it doesn’t feel good.
Honestly I feel like it’s a complete failure. They not only didn’t bring the original encounter back, they made it worse mechanically, messed up scaling, and overtuned it. What should have happened is templates, SL conduits/covenant skills/legendaries being enabled, no consumables, no mechanics changes, and actual testing to tune it not just guessing at a multiplier. Then you would have an actual legit challenge where everyone is on equal footing instead of the current find the cheese and hope you complete it before they nerf the cheese. Of course those that already beat it with cheese get to keep the rewards though.
To be fair, Affliction warlocks had numerous “cheesy” things that could be done to significantly make the fight more manageable.
The corruption slow was a big one, but not everyone had that ring. So you could also time Mortal Coil to hit right as Karem phased which would stop his heal and make him resume chasing you, effectively allowing you to nuke Karem in one go and then just deal with Raest while whittling down the adds and soaking the occasional rune.
If you positioned your pet properly, you could also get Karem to aggro to the pet instead of you, of which since Karems attack is classified as AoE, the pets took basically zero damage. (Though this was hard to pull off as the fight started and was next to impossible to get in subsequent phases.)
Everyone I know that did the Affliction challenge did it via one of those three methods. While arguably the Mortal Coil and pet tanking cheese wasn’t intended, Blizzard left it alone and those were quite hard to pull off. But the challenge was absolutely tuned around Affliction having that constant 60% slow on everything.
That being said. This iteration of the Mage Tower would still be challenging and very hard for a lot of people if they were left at the PTR tuning. Massively inflating the health pool of Agatha, Raest, the NPC’s for God Queen’s Fury, etc… was not needed. While yes, they are doable. It’s not comparable to Legion at all.
During Legion, even above average players were pulling some of the challenges off during Tomb of Sargeras, while most of the playerbase didn’t really start completing them until Antorus. With even more completing them after the overcharged artifact. It absolutely should not be overcharged artifact end of the expansion easy. But it definitely should be tuned to between Tomb(which it was balanced for, with borrowed power) and Antorus(to make up for not having any borrowed power of which our classes are designed around).
The damage in the Feltotem encounter is way too high. That challenge feels like trying to do it back during Nighthold in Azsuna questing greens. the health the boss has is fine, but the eggs could stand to get a small health decrease. During Nighthold, Feltotem was extremely doable, even if you made a mistake here or there. Currently the tuning is so unforgiving that if you blink at the wrong time, you die. And that’s not okay.
Agatha isn’t a hard encounter, its just a battle of attrition due to how inflated her health pool is.
God Queen’s Fury was never a huge DPS check outside of bursting the one guys shield in order to interrupt him. It was about doing the mechanics and as the fight progressed, it got easier and easier until it was practically a free win once two of the NPC’s were dead. Currently, it too is a battle of attrition due to the massively inflated health pools, forcing you to juggle multiple very hard mechanic overlaps MUCH MORE than you ever had to during Legion. And that’s not okay.
The twins would honestly be in a great spot if they simply reduced Raest’s health. Even doing the fight"properly" and focusing Raest each time Karem goes down, then just blowing everything to try and nuke Raest after Karem comes up for the last time, it’s next to impossible to get Raest below 60-70% before that point. Whereas, during Legion getting Raest to 20-30% before that last phase was what made the burn possible. Now you are basically forced to kill Karem to get rid of the hands because you simply can not kite Karem long enough, while soaking runes, while killing hands, while dealing with adds, while also nuking Raest. Raest could easily use a 30-40% health nerf. That keeps the mechanics of the fight intact while bringing it more inline with the original. Opposed to the shenanigans and turtle tactics people are using now just to have any chance of beating it.
Kruul is in a “okay” spot truthfully, though Blizzard should revert the Nether Horror change for Druids. Past that, I genuinely feel like a 5% health reduction in the Inquisitor and Kruul, and the fight would be perfect. Again, that keeps all the mechanics in tact.
Xylem… his Frostbolts still need to be toned down a bit. And the boss in P2 needs his health cut by a solid 15-20%. The encounter is already a delicate dance of mechanics and damage(bursting the adds down fast enough in P2).
Risen Threat…yea, no. Burn it with fire. Nerf it hard. And then nerf that already nerfed version even more for Holy Priests. This iteration of the challenge is downright masochistic in its insanity.
TLDR: Rambled. More tweaks and nerfs are still needed to bring it inline with what the original was balanced around. And it honestly should be toned a bit easier than what the original was balanced around due to us being designed around borrowed power but having none for the challenges.
15% sounds fair here, the Frostbolts need an additional 15% as well, 5% right now is like 75 damage. Thats laughable, back in Legion it was hitting us for what around 7 to 8% of our HP? Right now its about 15%-20% of our health pool, which is about 1k to 1.5k damage, 75 damage dont do jack sh**. Barrage is fine, Comet Storm needs toned down a bit more, in Legion we could literally sit in it for days, now you cant stay in there for more than a few seconds IF THAT.
So they post one of the best tanks to play the game. All you clowns are ridiculous. The MT is overtuned for the majority of the playerbase there is no denying it. I personally like the fact that there is some solid good content but disagree for them to push for people to come back for something they had no idea was going to be this overtuned. it wasnt like this on ptr. it wasnt like this in legion. it is overtuned. stop the get gud bs
(yes i have completed it and yes it can be done. none of that it matters it is still overtuned)
or people could just get better instead of relying on being able to out gear it - not every bit of content is intended for everyone. if you don’t enjoy doing the content just don’t do it and accept you don’t deserve the reward
some people completed those legions ones right away and some people less skilled had to wait until they out geared it.
When I see them admit legion wasn’t exactly easy, then I’ll have sympathy. At no time could you just go in a kill it first time. You had to look up abilities and guides.
he wanted proof it could be done in shadowlands gear. i gave proof. you then come and complain about said proof. just can’t win.
ilvl 252, good try there, chump.
What does ilvl have to do with it?
Keep playing ignorant, I’m just sick of debunking your BS left and right. Find me a MT challenge cleared by a ilvl 220 character without any cheese, twins challenge, then I’ll bother replying to you again.
Answer my question, what does ilvl have to do with it?
oh, are you forfox?
Got it, you have no idea how scaling works.
These seem like the basics, not something you prepare with over a 3+ month long time gap. Especially when the challenges are 2 expansions old and people have done them originally.
Look I did the tower in legion and I remember killing shadow priest tower in one Surrender to Madness with heroic Nighthold gear. Now the fight is way different and way harder, plus the class doesn’t have same powers and skills it used to have and it makes the tower harder.
Also some gear is poorly scaled and gives way to many stats and this what makes this so called timewalking set so strong and practically set your char to the level of Anotrus gear if you look at the challenge from Legion point.
Then it shouldn’t be difficult to do.
You have 3 more weeks currently, get at it.
Oh I think you know. But I don’t PvP at all so I’ve made peace with it. The “elite” PvP rewards are also literally the only other instance of this kind in the game and I simply didn’t think of them exactly because I don’t PvP in the first place. And any way my analogy was about mythic raids and PvE content in general.
Not the mechanics, the boss HP and damage output. I have yet to see anyone complain about actual mechanics, even the super annoying ones like the infernal KB in the tank challenge.
The problem is that on top of juggling all the mechanics players now have to also dish out incredible amounts of damage to compensate not only for the vastly increased health pools but also because they otherwise would not be able to survive since the unavoidable damage is also far greater actively limiting the time you have to beat the encounter.
And of course all of this is further complicated by the lack of both DPS and survivability that both legion legendaries and artifact weapons provided.
I’ve already explained all of this multiple times in this thread alone as have hundreds of other players but apparently we can do that until we are blue in the face for all the difference it will make to folks like you who are choosing to be purposely obtuse.
Yes, the challenges can be completed. No, they can’t be completed by the casual or even above average player. Yes, this is the latest in a long line of content geared only towards the top percentile of the playerbase and the bottom 95% or so are rightly ticked off and making ourselves heard.
People have had enough of Blizzard being run by and for “elitist jerks.”
Ok then, why is it so bad to have rewards tied to hard challenges? I mean I understand the majority is likely to take priority but… are you saying everyone that’s good at the game should be shafted by never offering truly challenging content? If I raided and had to never go above heroic for instance (or god… normal or LFR…) I’d lose my mind.
So where’s the middle ground? Pvp is obviously my main focus and in that area, elite rewards have always been a thing. It stands to reason such things should exist for pve as well.
I’m not wishing other people to have a bad time but reality is, there’s always going to be things that some people can’t do. Would it make it better if blizz was more transparent about the difficulty? I guess admittedly I’d just be let down if they nerfed it to irrelevance because I put in the work and if it turns into a handout then… it feels for naught.
There’s a difference between putting in the work and a handout, they can nerf the tank MT by 30% and it would still be challenging for the vast majority of casual players, the only difference is you wouldn’t have to optimize to the last possible stat point to be able to reasonably do it.
You chose to put in the gold for enchants and consumables and were rewarded for it by getting it before everyone else and before the nerfs, but that SHOULD NOT be the baseline requirement for dealing with badly tuned content.
As for me, I’m strictly talking about the Kruul fight, I’ve finally been able to get him to phase 2 after spending 5k+ on crap because I want this done and over with desperately, I can deal with the only two parts of this trash challenge that can be actually considered “tank” challenges which is annihilate and the interrupt, me also having to worry about getting his health down to finish the encounter should not be my job, it should be keeping the two broken pieces of glass they call Velen and DH#5 without aggro, i should not have to consider drums or potions to temp increase my damage in the tank, challenge.
This wouldn’t even remotely be an issue if Legion legendaries and artifacts worked as the challenges were created and tuned around originally, now we’re left with our terrible neutered classes after 4 years of borrow power all because Blizzard wanted to get everyone excited for something they had no intention of tuning to get people away from Final Fantasy’s newest expansion, which at this point, seems more enticing than banging my head on Blizzards terrible design decisions.
Then youd be wrong, and purposefully so.
Because there is no true difference aside from borrowed power. What these complaining people want is a cakewalk, which was not what MT was meant to be.