All I know is that I was able to complete the Feral challenge during Legion without any raid gear and was able to get halfway into phase 2 on Guardian challenge. But now with the same gear, I can only survive for about 15 seconds on Guardian Challenge. I use the holy orb to wipe the health debuff but it stays on and I just die. I used to be able to survive multiple waves of the shadow horrors or whatever they are called and kill them quickly but they just come out and kill Velen now. I used to be able to stand in the death zone and attack the floating guy for a while but now I attack with everything and barely make a scratch on him. Something is very wrong with the tuning. Make it something to enjoy and have fun with. There are a lot of things to keep track of and it can be fun to practice handling them all but this is nothing like it was before. I used to be able to take hits and now I cannot. I used to be able to deal meaningful damage and now I cannot.
The most notable changes that have happened since Legion that made the Bear challenge so much more difficult are all the changes made to our ability to survive and some minor damage nerfs to not having the artifact.In fact, everything about our challenge that was tuned for us, was tuned for us by Legion standards.Mind Rend - I think this was tuned fairly well despite not having Mark of Ursol as a Magic Mitigation tool anymoreAura of Decay - mostly still balanced, since we can still Thrash AND Swipe him from outside the debuff range if you have Balance AffinityEyes immune to physical damage - They didnt want them to insta die if they spawned near us when we thrashed and got our multi thrash procs that we no longer have (as a passive at least)Kruul was also causing me some issues, as I could not keep myself up to survive the Annihilates even with the proper combinations of defensives, then I remembered that our Frenzied Regeneration has been nerfed since Legion, the Cooldown was increased from 24seconds w/Haste to 36seconds w/Haste, We lost a charge, and it heals a flat amount instead of a % of damage taken in the last X seconds.I had to change my play a bit to accommodate for that, and not only that I completed this Challenge in an entirely different way than I did in Legion. Phase 1 being completely counterintuitive as I burned the Inquisitor in Boomkin with HotW, only to be in bear form to Thrash the nether adds and Swipe like twice, then back to Boomkin and casting. I also couldnt use the trinkets I used in Legion because they just did dogwater damage and healing compared to Cyclotronic hitting the boss for like 10% of his hp when its used, not even critting.It is way overtuned, but it is doable.
If the people complaining in these comments put half the effort they put into making up excuses into beating the Mage Tower, well, they wouldn't have to be making those excuses. Some things might just be meant for better players than you and that's FINE.
I have no problem with difficult content, especially if the rewards offer no player power. If it is too much of a challenge for the majority of the playerbase, so be it. If it is too much of a challenge for someone who doesn't main or hasn't played a specific spec in a while, that's a GOOD thing, IMO. As there is no tangible power benefit from succeeding, the reward is strictly prestige and this should be limited to players who put in the effort to succeed and earn it. Roast me like chestnuts on an open fire, tis the season after all.
I don't care if they nerf it, I actually hope they don't. I say this as a Guardian druid who has yet to beat it. I actually like the chance to get better and use my whole kit for once. That said, I really, really hate that the optimal strat to put dmg in quickly is to spend the majority of P1 as a moonkin. I'm a tank, I'd like to BE a tank for more than 20% of this challenge thanks. I don't mind a bit of owlweaving or catweaving but this feels pretty ridiculous. I could say screw that strat and just bear it up but i'd likely have 3-4 infernals up in P2 because of our low damage profile with all of our borrowed power disabled. As a full-time teacher, not a full-time gamer - I'm not skilled enough yet with the fight to handle all those infernals + adds + Kruul. I've hit 5% and I'm going to keep at it in between grading report cards.Also this.
They are right that mage tower was insane hard when it was relesed, but it's because it was available before the content it was designed for, so people were so undeargeared first time it was up.
My problem comes with class changes vs no design changes. I did the Outlaw one back in the day (in Tomb gear as it seems that was intended), and sure it took me a bunch of pulls, but was doable. Now Outlaw is extremely stressful, moreso than it was then, because of changes. AOE cap means sometimes my damage is going to Agatha but not hitting Umbral Imps, which is useless. Between the Eyes used to have a stun effect which could be used the stagger the servants and give me more time for dealing with other mechanics. Legion legendaries meant I had a bit more customization to deal with whatever mechanics were giving me issues. My artifact ability gave me access to a cooldown to help burn though Dark Fury's shield. I could still re-roll my Roll the Bones to get more optimal dice for that section of the encounter, which was integral to the fight at the time.Those changes, without any changes to make the fight itself more accommodating, is causing a lot of headache. I'm perfectly fine with something being challenging - I have my 'of the Black Harvest' title on my warlock alt, and enjoyed doing it. But currently this feels like a miserable mountain to climb. I haven't even gotten in attempts on other specs/classes yet.
And where is our legendary, in legion we had atleast one legendary what is worked, and now we have a naked class with only talents -.-" gg blizzard @#$%^&s in position. Atleast give us 1 working legendary slot like legion, if we are so hardly scaled down.
Having all expansion features disabled (covenant, conduits), and also the legion artefact weapon and legendary disabled, has to call in for some sort of balance. That is coming from stacking sockets with base stats, which makes this literally the Socket Tower, a jewelcrafters dream.
If a certain challenge is legitimately overtuned, that's fine. It's worth evaluating how to make specific challenges reasonable.But just by reading many comments about the Mage Tower, it's immediately apparent that people use "overtuned" to basically mean "I can't do it". Some of the things you guys say about consumables or gear or "impossible" damage is extreme hyperbole.Please be honest with your abilities and enjoy the Mage Tower for what it is: a genuine challenge. Don't take content away from players who enjoy challenges. If you don't want to try, then don't do the Mage Tower.