Actually, having the Mage Tower be active full-time was probably the biggest benefit. Previously, whenever I thought about doing the Mage Tower, it was never up. And when it was up, I didn't feel like doing it.
In any case, here's the Holy Paladin skin:
The healer challenge was pretty interesting. The hardest part was probably the section where you had to heal the ghosts, and it was challenging mostly because it didn't use the UI. So it felt like a completely new skill you had to learn.
The final section was rather annoying. The Ignite Soul mechanic, where your allies take damage equal to your health when the debuff expires, is supremely nerve-wracking. Especially when I realized--in the middle of the fight--that I was wearing [Highfather's Machination], which heals you when you drop below 50%:
"Alright, I'm standing in the bad, my health is dropping. I'm not healing myself. I'm down to 30%, good. Debuff expires in 3, 2, ... Wait,why did my health just jump back over 50%? OMG, everyone's dying! Heal, heal, heal!"
Ah well, it was a fun experience.
I also did the Retribution Paladin Mage Tower, fighting Sigryn's council. I think this challenge must have been very sensitive to gear level, and got significantly easier with better gear. With the level of gear I had, it was fairly straightforward once you understood the mechanics. Here's the Ret Paladin skin:
I also tried the tank challenge. It looks fairly doable. My problem is that everything is going fine, and then I get punted off the edge. That happened a couple of times, and I gave up for the night.
I think the Mage Tower Challenges were an excellent part of Legion, and I have mad respect for those people who completed them when they first came out. I also like the way Blizzard let increasing iLevel decrease the difficulty while still preserving a lot of the challenge. You still have to do mechanics correctly, even if you have more room for error. The Dev team did an outstanding job here.
Just like you, I recently completed the ones I was interested in. which, for a druid, means tank (eve if the skin is meh), because feral I already had (the skin is so beautiful.....). The gear helps a lot, the tank challenge is a DPS race, and more stats never hurts.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it's a good idea and I hope thy bring it back in some form or another in the future.
Congrats on your druid skins!
DeleteYeah, I think the praise for the Mage Tower challenges was universal enough that they will bring it back.
I blown through the Protection Paladin challenged by outgearing by 60 iLevel. I also did Guardian Druid challenge that was trivialized by the 2 Legendaries (basically if you got the right Legendary, you can completely ignore the hardest mechanics of the first phase by not standing in the stacking debuff).
ReplyDeleteI don't heal, but I might want to give Holy Paladin challenge a try.
That's true, specific Legendaries did make the challenge easier, which was a weakness of this implementation. It will be interesting to see the results when we don't have a Legendary system.
DeleteAgree 100%. The mage tower challenges were some of the hardest, but most rewarding game play I've every experienced in WoW. Hope they do it again in BFA.
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the challenges you completed. I too am looking forward to them in BfA.
DeleteWassup? I'm back! Now ... what's this mage tower thing?
ReplyDeleteHeh, difficult solo challenges targeted at specific specializations.
DeleteI think the Mage Tower Challenges were a good idea, but after having done 16 of them I don't think they were well tuned. The Affliction Warlock one can be trivialized by taking a particular talent, others by having the right legendaries, etc.. Things like that make me wish the Mage Tower was staying. What does it matter if you breeze through it by sheer level or by the right talents/gear at level?
ReplyDeleteThat said, some of them were quite fun. I hadn't played Survival at all on my hunter this expansion and that challenge was just so much fun for me, for example.
Yeah, after doing a lot of them, I can imagine seeing strengths and weaknesses. And you are right that it didn't interact well with the legendary system.
DeleteMaybe it would have been better if Legendaries had been disabled. But then the stat-heavy legendaries would have been the best ones.