CastleVania: Symphony of The Night (Metal medley) DrDante89 2010-04-05 | Hey, it's been a while. This (only slightly delayed, cough) one is a medley of songs from CastleVania: Symphony of The Night (cleverly titled Medley of The Night). I've been working on and off on this since I uploaded Oath To Order. Mostly off. Anyway, it's finished now!As stated, this song is a medley. The songs are:0:00 - Moonlight Nocturne2:01 - Dance of Illusions2:16 - Lost Painting3:23 - Dance of Gold4:03 - Wood Carving Partita6:28 - Dracula's CastleSince this song has NO keyboard samples whatsoever (the bass and the drums are the only tracks I'm not playing) I figured a video split or grid was in order. This doesn't mean what you see is all you hear, but 4 screens cover most of it. 7 screens would just be stupid.As some incredible perceptive individuals might spot, there are two different electric guitars in this one! In addition to my Ibanez RG270DX I'm using my (fairly) new Gibson Les Paul Standard 2008. I'm mostly using the Gibson for leads and stuff, and the Ibanez for the rythm parts. For the acoustic parts I'm using my Fina FAC-603CEQ classical guitar. All this go through my Pod X3 Live. Like the other times, I used Cubase for the bass and drum samples, and everything was mixed in Sony ACID 5.0. For the video, I used Windows Movie Maker to get the raws from my webcam, and then I used Sony Vegas Pro 8.0 to multiply myself.Also, the guitars are tuned down in this song, from E to D:e--dB--AG--FD--CA--GE--DAll in all, this was a fun one to make. It took quite long though, for which I entirely blame school, and not at all excessive video gaming. Honestly. Also, mixing was a bit trickier, so the next one probably won't be ALL guitars. Whenever that'll be...EDIT: Re-mastered the song, the audio track in the video is still the old one, but I now have a better quality version.EDIT 2: The links are updated. (4/10-2017)EDIT 3: The links are gone! If you're interested in tabs or the mp3, send me a pm! (5/1-2020)
Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End - Drink Up Me Hearties (Metal Cover) DrDante89 2020-01-05 | Hey people, it's been a while.I want to start out by saying a HUGE thank you to everyone who's supported me throughout the years, despite my inactivity. I read every comment, and every kind word has meant the world to me. If you're a returning viewer, then I'm sorry for the delay. If you're new - hello there!It's been one of my biggest regrets that I stopped making these, and despite starting to transpose and arrange this over 7 years ago it got stuck in a development hell of sorts. Writing and playing music has sadly not been a big part of my life these recent years. I went to Japan, and I did write and play while I was there (that's where I started this). Then I went to China for a year, and after that it got progressively harder and harder to get back into it. My guitars were always something I naturally ended up spending a lot of time with, and that just wasn't the case anymore. It hasn't helped that I haven't been in an actual band in ages. Life moved on, and while a few friends managed to bring music along with them, I didn't. It's not been until very recently that a combination of not feeling like shit, having some time off, and getting some proper motivation all came together and got me to actually finish this.So, I upload a cover after more than 8 years... and it's not a video game cover. Hear me out. I heard Drink Up Me Hearties in it's entirety at some point and realized I wanted to make a cover of it. I figured, hey, I could do this one as a quick in-between thing and then go back to video game music. Like something you'd put at the end of an album with "(Bonus Track)" appended to it. Maybe only on Japanese releases. You know, that kind of thing. But then life happened, and this didn't, and it became this thing that I never finished. Going forward, I still intend the Metallic Pixels project to be mainly about video game metal covers, but I just had to get this one done.Speaking about going forward - I obviously want to keep doing this. Doing these covers, along with writing my own music, has been one of the most rewarding things I've done, ever. (Again, to those of you who've supported me by leaving a kind comment or liking a video in the past, I cannot thank you enough.) That being said, I'm fully aware that it would be naïve of me to simply assume things will pick up again just because I got a video out. Additionally, while my motivation has made a comeback, I do have less time than before, now that I have a job. One big reason I got around to finishing this was because of Christmas vacation. So I'm treating this video as less of a come back celebration, and more of a cautiously optimistic sign I might do more. I certainly intend to - but intent alone has evidently not been enough in the past 8 years.So, about the video itself! There are 8 guitar tracks, making this one of my more ambitious covers. My Symphony of the Night medley was similar when it came to track complexity, but that one was easier to transpose, while this one was easier to arrange. Since science has moved forward, and we do have the technology, I decided to get all tracks in the video. Sticking Mega Man in the center was something I decided on literally a minute before rendering it. Not sure if this is going to be a recurring thing or not. I guess it depends on the cover.For this one I used my trusty old Ibanez RG270DX, as well as my Gibson Les Paul Standard 2008. I thought about using one of my acoustic guitars for the clean parts, but there was no way I could play the Up Is Down theme on an acoustic, so I used my Gibson for the clean part in the beginning too.The tools I used were virtually identical to my last cover - I recorded through my POD X3 Live, I used Cubase for the drum and bass tracks, I put mixed it together in Sony ACID 10.0, and I put it back in Cubase through a compressor to even out some levels. Video recording was done with my Logitech C920 camera.I've realized I might need to modernize my process in the future. The reason being that the specific compressor I use I've only really been able to find in Cubase SX3. Getting that to run on a Windows 10 machine is easier said than done, and it crashes super often. When I made my last cover, I used my Windows XP machine for that, and while I do have it next to me I don't even know if it runs anymore. I also might have melted part of the power brick for my POD X3 Live.For this cover I've used a Drop C tuning:dAFCGCA final time - I'm incredibly grateful for all the kind words I've gotten over the years. I do read them all. While I cannot in good conscience promise anything, I sincerely do hope the next one won't take as long as this has, and that it'll be a proper video game cover.If you're interested in tabs or the mp3, send me a pm!Until next time!
End of the Risen Threat - Mistweaver Monk DrDante89 2018-02-18 | Hi! This is Mage Tower challenge 36, End of the Risen Threat for Mistweaver Monk, THE FINAL CHALLENGE. It's done, it's over. It's my last monk challenge, my last healer challenge, and my last challenge period. I think I built this one up to be worse than it actually was. It was still a healer challenge, and therefore annoying and frustrating and sanity-draining, but it was definitely not the hardest healer challenge. It took me roughly 5 tries to beat.I'm not going to go into too much detail about the encounter. For that you can check the description of my Restoration Shaman video. Here, I'm just going to mention how you can deal with the scenario as a Mistweaver Monk.In phase 1 you will heal your party while encountering three different types of enemies:1. Corrupted Risen Mage - Leg Sweep it around 60% HP, besides that just heal through the damage.2. Corrupted Risen Arbalest - Cast Paralysis on it when it starts casting Mana Sting. If you cannot, make sure a party member is between you and it. Besides that, just heal through the damage.3. Corrupted Risen Soldier - Cast Paralysis on it during Knife Dance if the incoming damage is too high. Heal through the damage when they fixate someone. You can also kite them if they are on you, by dropping Transcendence in the middle of the platform.There are five waves, and the only ones that should give you trouble are the last 2. For wave 4, make sure to cast Paralysis on one of the Soldiers when they Knife Dance as often as you can, and use Dampen Harm to survive the rest. Life Cocoon is also useful to keep you up. For the last wave, either let the Soldier do Knife Dance, or use some way of stopping the cast that isn't Leg Sweep or Paralysis. Use those for the Mage and the Arbalest, and let your CDs help you survive the wave.Drink up, and follow your party inside. Once you regain control, kill off the eyes one by one, healing yourself up in between. Aggro the Felguard, and AoE the pack down. Hit the orbs with any amount of damage to deactivate them, and open the gate. Dispell the feared NPC, and start healing up the others. After they are up, kill the Arbalest (dealing with Mana Sting as suggested above). Open the gate, and aim a Chi Burst so it'll move up the entire section to the gate. Open the gate, kill off the Inquisitor, and then the eyes like you did before.At this point, you have time to wait for all of your CDs to reset. When you're ready, open the gate.Here, you want to keep Renewing Mists up on your party members as much as possible. When the first wave of NPCs are in line of sight, pop Invoke Chi'Ji, the Red Crane, Thunder Focus Tea, instacast Enveloping Mists on two NPCs, and spam Vivify to heal all three up. For the second wave, try to do something similar (it's ok if one gets through). For the third wave, do the same thing with Thunder Focus Tea again, and hopefully you're done (the phase ends when 8 NPCs are healed). If you let any adds through, you'll have to deal with them like in phase 1.For the last phase, pop drums and keep your party up (only Jarod will take constant damage), while avoiding the fire pools. Keep yourself at around 50%, and make sure you're not higher when Ignite Soul wears off. Take care to not be too low when Erdris leaps on top of you, and try to conserve space by not spreading the pools too much. If you die the party can still take off a significant chunk of boss HP on their own, as long as Jarod is topped off. When Erdris dies, you win, regardless if you're dead or alive.I did this with an average ilvl of 931, using Soul of the Grandmaster and Doorway to Nowhere. I'd recommend an ilvl of at least 900 for this. Bring an intellect flask, Potions of Prolonged Power, stat food and lots of patience. This is not an easy challenge, but treat it with respect and you'll eventually get it down. I am very glad to be done with all of these challenges. This is likely the last WoW video I'll upload for a while, since there's not really any content of this type left. When that's no longer the case, it's very likely I'll upload more. Cheers!
End of the Risen Threat - Holy Priest DrDante89 2018-02-17 | Hey! This is Mage Tower challenge 35, End of the Risen Threat for Holy Priest. This was my fourth time doing the healing challenge, as well as my final priest challenge. Only Mistweaver left, and I'm done! This was not the hardest healing challenge I've done, but it was still tricky. As with any healing challenge, a wipe feels much worse than a wipe on another challenge type. This took me around 7 tries to beat, at an average ilvl of 926.I'll not write too much about the details about the encounter, just how to deal with it as a Holy Priest. More details about the encounter in general can be found in the description of my Restoration Shaman video.In phase 1 you will encounter three different types of enemies:1. Corrupted Risen Mage - Hit it with Holy Word: Chastise when it's between 50% and 65% HP, heal through the rest of the damage.2. Corrupted Risen Arbalest - Cast Shackle Undead on it while it's casting Mana Sting, or make sure a party member is in the way of the arrow before it hits you, heal through the rest of the damage.3. Corrupted Risen Soldier - If you have other incoming damage, cast Shackle Undead on it while it's casting Knife Dance. Heal through the rest of the damage, and use Desperate Prayer if you need it.There are five waves, and you want to make sure you have Holy Word: Chastise available near the start of waves 2-5. If you manage to get to the last phase without using any CDs, you're in good shape. Use them there and you should be fine.After that, drink if you need, and then run after your party. When you get out of the stun, kill one eye at a time, healing yourself up in between each. Aggro the Felguard pack and kill it off with Holy Nova. Deactivate the green orbs by hitting them once with Holy Nova, and open the gate. Immediately dispell the feared NPC, put up a Renew on each of the remaining 3 NPCs, and start healing them up. Once they are healed up, kill off the Arbalest (use Holy Word: Chastise or Shackle Undead to interrupt it's Mana Sting). After that, run up the stairs, clearing the way with Holy Nova, until you get to the last room. Single target the Inquisitor down, and kill off the eyes like you did before.At this point, you have unlimited time to wait for your CDs to reset. When you're ready, open the gate, and run to the last part.Keep Renews up on your party members (you will take no damage yourself, however), and heal them with Flash Heal and Holy Word: Sanctify when needed. When the ghost NPCs start moving towards Erdris, use Drums and Apotheosis, and heal them up with Flash Heal and Holy Word: Serenity. Apotheosis should be up for parts of the second wave as well. You can use Divine Hymn in between the second and third wave to help alleviate the damage on your party. As soon as you've healed 8 adds, the next phase starts.If you let any adds go through they will attack you, like in phase 1. One or two adds are managable. Three is difficult, and four very hard. Once those are done, the last phase starts.In the last phase, you want to keep Renews up on your party, and keep your own HP around 50%. Jarod will take more damage than the others, so keep that in mind. Try to stand at the edges of the fire pools, to conserve space. When you get Ignite Soul, you can use the fire to bring your health down to below 50% if you need (when it expires it will deal your remaining % HP as damage to your party). However, watch out for Erdris leaping towards you before or after it expires - you want to be at low HP, but not too low. Smite the boss when you have time, and Holy Word: Chastise is great (you can interrupt his leaps if you're quick with it). Remember that your Spirit of Redemption can keep your party up for a while if you die, and even after that they can chop off a significant portion of his health by themselves. Unless you die very early on during the last phase, you can still make it.I did this at an average ilvl of 926, using Velen's Future Sight and Entrancing Trousers of An'juna, as well as the 2 piece set bonus from Antorus. I'd recommend an ilvl of at least 900 before doing this, as it still wasn't easy at significantly higher levels of gear. Bring an intellect flask, Potions of Prolonged Power, stat food and drums. Also bring lots of patience. Good luck!
End of the Risen Threat - Holy Paladin DrDante89 2018-02-09 | Hello! Here's Mage Tower challenge 34, End of the Risen Threat for Holy Paladin. It's my third ever healing challenge, as well as my last Paladin challenge. I've come to the point where I can't delay the healing challenges any longer (the two challenges I've yet to complete are Mistweaver Monk and Holy Priest). While I was doing this, I was reminded of the reason I have put them off for so long. This did not take me that many tries (only 5), but no other challenge type is nearly as frustrating to fail towards the end than the healer challenges, not even the arguably harder tank challenges. The length of this video should be an indication as to why.I'm not going to go too much into detail regarding the specifics of the scenario. For that, check out the description of my Restoration Shaman challenge. Here, I'll just mention how to work through the scenario as a Holy Paladin.Put your Beacons on Jarod and Granny Marl. Save Avenging Wrath for the final 3 adds, but feel free to use other CDs in the second to last phase. You deal with the adds in the following way:Corrupted Risen Arbalest: Ignore, until they start casting Mana Sting. Either cast Repentance on them, or hide behind a party member (Jarod if possible).Corrupted Risen Mage: Ignore, until they get to roughly 60% HP. Then, hit them with Hammer of Justice.Corrupted Risen Soldier: Ignore. Use Divine Protection if damage gets high.If you have time to spare, anytime where I wrote "ignore" you help DPSing.After all the enemies are dead, drink up, then follow your party members. When you regain control of yourself, start killing eyes, but make sure to heal yourself up between each one. When they are dead, pull the Felguard to you, and kill off the demons. Afterwards move towards the gate, making sure you deactivate the green orbs before they are too close to you by doing any damage to them (Consecration is good for this). Dispell the friendly NPC running around, and start healing up the remaining three. After that, kill off the Arbalest (disrupt her during Mana Sting as before or hide behind one of the friendly NPCs). Head towards the last room while dealing with the orbs as before, and kill off the demons in the room. I'd recommend killing off the Inquisitor first, but make sure to heal yourself between killing eyes.Here, you can wait as long as you want before going on. Make sure you have CDs and mana back before you continue.Put Beacons on Jarod and one other party member. Ideally, switch the other Beacon to whoever will take damage, only 2 will take damage at the same time, and Jarod tends to be one of them. As soon as the NPCs that are drawn towards Thorn have crossed the "fence" at the edge of the area, start healing them up. I would consider Avenging Wrath to be one set of CDs, and everything else you have besides Lay on Hands to be another. Use one for the first wave, the other for the second. For the third wave, heal up one, and Lay on Hands the last. You need to heal 8 before you can continue. Missing one is fine, missing more makes it significantly harder.Kill off the ones you let through as in phase 1.For the last phase, use drums, and keep everyone in your party at high HP. Keep yourself high enough to not die to the fire he drops when he leaps towards you. When you get Ignite Soul, stand in the fire until you are at roughly 35% HP. Higher than that and you risk a party member dying, lower and you risk dying by the fire pools. Keep this up and try to conserve space by placing pools beside each other. If you have time to spare, do damage to the boss. If you die and your party is fully healed, they can easily knock off around 20% of his health on their own, so don't give up immediately if you die.This was an incredibly frustrating challenge, mainly because each try can take over 15 minutes, and it's very easy to fail near the end if you don't know what to do. Protection Paladin took me 26 tries, but in a way this was much worse. I did this with an average ilvl of 927, but with no tier, no healing specific legendaries, and more importantly, very little experience with the spec. If you feel very comfortable with Holy Paladin, I'd recommend an average ilvl of at least 900. Regardless, bring tons of patience, drums, flasks and potions. Good luck!
Feltotems Fall - Destruction Warlock DrDante89 2018-01-31 | Hi! Here's Mage Tower challenge 33, Feltotem's Fall for Destruction Warlock. This marks both my final Warlock challenge, and my final Feltotem's Fall challenge. All that's left now is 3 healing challenges, and then I'm done! This was a very easy challenge. It took me one whopping try, on my least played class, playing a spec I had never played before. Granted, I have done several Feltotem challenges before this, so I knew what to look out for. However, Warlocks can remove one aspect of the fight, so you end up with even less to worry about.I won't go into too much detail about the fight itself here. More on that can be found in the description of my Beast Mastery challenge video. I'll simply go over what you need to do as a Destruction Warlock in order to beat this fight.Reverse Entropy gives you even less to worry about, so I'd recommend that. Besides that, you want Mortal Coil and Grimoire of Service. You want your Felhunter pet out, to interrupt Tugar's Fel Burst cast. He will cast Fel Burst more often than a single Felhunter can manage, however, so you want to rotate your Felhunter interrupt, Mortal Coil, and Grimoire: Felhunter in order to interrupt him. You can also Fear him, but you also want to Fear him during a different part of the fight, so only use it in an emergency to avoid triggering diminishing returns.When Jormog is up by the pit, you want to keep Havoc up on it as much as possible, but initially it wont take much damage. Just make sure you avoid getting hit by swirlies and falling rocks, and focus on Tugar. Make sure to interrupt his casts, and make sure you're not casting when Sonic Scream is cast by Jormog, as it will interrupt and spell lock you. If any Fel Surge Totem spawns, prioritize killing it off quickly over almost anything else (it will die from any amount of direct damage).When Tugar starts casting Earthquake, Fear him. The rocks will still fall, and Jormog will still crawl around, but Fearing Tugar will prevent any eggs from falling from the ceiling. After the rocks have fallen stand in the middle of the circles. When Jormog pops it's head out and start charging you, side step it, and ideally so it hits one or more rock patches. You want to have it hit as many of these as possible during the time Tugar is alive.Eventually, Tugar will die. When this happens, switch over to Jormog. It's Sonic Scream will now do more damage, but you can Fear it to interrupt it. Just keep doing this until it's dead.That's basically it. You really don't need any specific gear or legendaries for this, you just need to avoid certain mechanics, and deal with others. I did this at an average ilvl of 919, and I'd recommend at least 900 for this, which should be easily achievable given the current content. Bring consumables if you want, but they're not necessary. If you do happen to die, don't beat yourself up over it. While I did one shot this, I have also done every other Feltotem challenge available in the game, so I was used to the mechanics. Just keep at it and eventually you'll get it. Good luck!
Thwarting the Twins - Affliction Warlock DrDante89 2018-01-31 | Heyo! This is Mage Tower challenge 32, Thwarting the Twins for Affliction Warlock, marking the final time I have to deal with the Magespear twins. This was significantly harder than the Demonology challenge, even using the Mortal Coil cheese strategy. It took me 16 tries to beat this, at an average ilvl of 919.So, this description will not really go through any details about the fight, and will only briefly mention how you deal with it normally. More about that is in my Balance Druid challenge video description. Here, I'll mostly describe how the execute the cheese strategy (which still works as of 2018-01-30).A few talents are a must for this strategy. You need Mortal Coil and Grimoire of Supremacy. Besides those I recommend what I chose (you can see them at the end of the video, 2221211 for the lazy), but they are not technically required.Start the fight with your Infernal out, and stand very close to Karam. He will knock you back once, and then go onto your Infernal. Just do slow and steady damage to him at this point, as there's no time pressure to get to the next part of the fight (you just have to do enough damage to keep your Infernal alive). The cheese takes place when he approaches 34% HP.At 33-34% HP he starts casting Purgatory, which will result in him becoming immune while he heals for a while. If he does this, you have failed the cheese. When he's casting Purgatory, as well as when he is channeling the spell afterwards, you can do nothing to him. HOWEVER, if you cast Mortal Coil at him before he starts casting Purgatory, and time it so it hits him as he is casting it, you will cancel the entire next phase of the fight. Normally he'd go immune, leaving you to do damage to Raest, until he becomes immune, at which point you'll have to repeat a harder version of phase 1, and then when Karam casts purgatory the second time, you can finally kill Raest. Hitting Karam with a Mortal Coil that was cast before his Purgatory cast, but landing during his cast, skips phase 2. This way, as soon as you can do damage to Raest, you can do it for the rest of the fight.So, assuming you hit the magical timing, immediately switch target to Raest. Stay away from Karam - although he is tanked by your Infernal, he will still hit you with his Rising Dragon if you get near him. Start burning Raest down as hard as you can without popping CDs, while the Infernal keeps Karam busy (preferably on top of Raest). Make sure to not get hit by any adds. Do not focus them, but feel free to cast the occasional Seed of Corruption on Raest when they're around. When Karam gets low, he'll eventually get into his second Purgatory phase.As soon as this happens, switch pet to Doomguard, pop every CD you have (including drums), and start nuking Raest. Focus down any Hand from Beyond that spawns (you can interrupt it with your Doomguard, or eat a cast with Unending Resolve). Make sure Agony is kept up on Raest through this. You can ignore the first rune, simply banishing the Thing of Nightmare. Ideally you want to be done with the fight when the second rune spawns, but if you're in a situation where you can deal with it, feel free to stand on it when it expires. When Karam becomes active again, you can use Mortal Coil, Fear and Cripple to buy you time to get Raest down.That's basically it. If you have Sacrolash's Dark Strike, the fight becomes significantly easier, to the point where you really don't even need to cheese it. Just make sure you pick Absolute Corruption, cast Seed of Corruption when adds are around, and everything should be slowed to the point where you shouldn't get hit by anything. Without it, I really recommend the cheese strategy for as long as it works. I had no tier set bonuses when I did this, and my legendaries were Kil'Jaeden's Burning Wish and Insignia of the Grand Army. I'd recommend an average ilvl of at least 900 for this. Bring consumables and patience, and you have a solid shot at this. Just be prepared to spend a few tries, as it's still one of the harder DPS challenges unless you outgear it. Good luck!
The God-Queens Fury - Demonology Warlock DrDante89 2018-01-31 | Hello! Here's Mage Tower challenge 31, The God-Queen's Fury for Demonology Warlock. It's my first Warlock challenge, and my final Sigryn challenge. As with any Sigryn challenge, this is not a hard challenge. In fact, it might be the most forgiving out of all Sigryn challenges. The trickiest part about this is just knowing the Demonology rotation, really. I have done all the other Sigryn challenges before this, so I did know how the fight worked. Still, it only took my least played class a single try to do it at an average ilvl of 918.I won't be going through the fight in high detail here. Instead, I'll just go through how you beat it as a Demonology Warlock. There is more information about the fight in general in the description of my Enhancement Shaman challenge video.Grimoire of Supremacy makes this fight very predictable. Having a Doomguard up at all times makes sure you can interrupt Faljar, and Cripple mostly nullifies Velbrand's Berserker's Rage. Mortal Coil is great for both the extra healing, and for buying extra time on sensitive transitions.So, start out by popping CDs, drums and a prepot, and start nuking down any of them (AoE if they're close to each other). The general order of importance when it comes to abilities is this:1. Sigryn: Blood of the Father - Fear her.2. Velbrand: Berserker's Rage - Cripple him, and run away.3. Faljar: Runic Detonation - Run over the runes, prioritize the smaller ones first.4. Sigryn: Dark Wings - Look for the wall of Valkyr, move to the gap (Cordana Felsong style).5. Velbrand: Bladestorm - Run away from him.6. Faljar: Ancestral Knowledge - Focus him (you can save Thal'kiel's Consumption for this if you want).Deal with the above mechanics, and you basically have it. The DPS check is very low (even during the later parts of the fight, when Faljar starts doing Ancestral Knowledge more often). Pick up the healing orbs if you need to, there's no point saving them (they despawn after a while).That's it. I did this with no game breaking legendary (Kil'Jaeden's Burning Wish and Insignia of the Grand Army), and no tier set bonus. I also didn't do the fight flawlessly. Just bring enough consumables and spatial awareness and this is very much so doable from an average ilvl of 900 and above, which is easily achievable by just doing Argus world quests and LFR. Good luck!
Feltotems Fall - Discipline Priest DrDante89 2018-01-30 | Hey! This is Mage Tower challenge 30 (only 6 to go!), Feltotem's Fall for Discipline Priest. This is my second Priest challenge, leaving only Holy left (some day I'll get around to doing the remaining 3 healing challenges, I swear). I did this directly after doing Shadow Priest, so the gear situation was identical - an average ilvl of 916, no tier set bonuses, and "only" the Argus ring and Norgannon's Foresight as legendaries. This challenge took me 13 attempts, so I'd rank it as somewhere between easy and medium difficulty.As with any new video, I won't be going through the entire encounter in detail here, instead focusing on dealing with the fight as a Discipline Priest. I wrote more about the fight in general in my Beast Mastery Hunter video description.Before you start the encounter, I'd recommend that you make a macro to target any Fel Surge Totem and cast Shadow Word: Pain. Also, either make sure you have a way of seeing when Jormog casts Sonic Scream, or get a WeakAura for it.Start out by nuking down Tugar with a pre-pot and your CDs. When Tugar casts Fel Burst, fear him to interrupt him. This will most likely not be off CD for his next cast, so every other Fel Burst has to be eaten. You should be fine for these if you combine Power Word: Shield, Fade, and Shadow Mend (using the Masochism talent). Since this way of dealing with the mechanic needs a cast, an extra GCD, and a third button, it's very tight to fit into the cast time of Fel Burst, which is why it's useful to have a feeling when he's about to cast it. You can survive Fel Burst with just a Power Word: Shield, but you'll be very low, so in most cases you can't make any other mistakes while that happens, and for a good few seconds after it. Besides that, you pretty much want to cast Power Word: Shield on CD, to help with passive incoming damage, and to keep Atonement up on yourself. At any point when Jormog is up by the pit, he will occasionally cast Sonic Scream. This does some damage, but more importantly interrupts and spell locks you if you're casting when you're hit. This is why it's important to be aware of it. I used this time to cast Power Word: Shield on myself, or Plea if it was on CD.When Tugar casts Earthquake, move away from the falling rocks, preferrably towards the middle to buy you some time for Jormog's charge. Dot up the eggs, and cast Halo, and this will either kill them off, or leave them very low (a single Shadow Word: Pain is enough to finish them up). In case they do spawn, move out of the green swirlies. When Jormog pops it's head up, be prepared to side step it's charge (stay away from any dust on the ground in this phase, as it will stun you and do a lot of damage). Ideally, try to steer it into the rock circles. You want to have it run into as many circles as possible by the time Tugar is dead. The remaining mechanic is the Fel Surge Totem. As long as you have the macro, just hit it once and you're fine, but it's very important that you don't miss a totem. The totem itself will not kill you, but the long stun duration will set you up to get screwed over by something else. After Jormog has charged a few times, it pops back up by the pit, and resumes it's occasional Sonic Scream casting.Generally the 10 seconds after Tugar starts casting Earthquake tend to be the hardest parts of the fight. You have to dodge the cross swirlies as usual, keep an eye out for Jormog's charge, dot up the eggs, cast Halo, be prepared to hit your totem macro, be prepared to deal with Tugar's Fel Burst (which could include a solid 2-3 seconds of cast time + GCDs), as well as trying to keep up your standard Penance + Smite rotation.Every now and then Tugar seems to cast Fel Burst in closer succession than is possible to deal with using Fade. You can use Pain Suppression or Power Word: Barrier to deal with this.I used drums and my second potion when Tugar was low, since the second phase doesn't really need it. When Tugar dies, kill off any eggs/worms that are remaining, and start nuking Jormog. Sonic Scream will now do a lot of damage, so make sure you have Power Word: Shield and Shadow Mend up for each, and try to use other CDs like Fade to help when needed. As long as you keep up Atonement on yourself (which shouldn't be a problem given the amount of shields you use), your normal damage rotation should bring you back up to max HP before the next Sonic Scream. Just remember to not get interrupted by it, and Jormog should die after a while.I'd recommend an average ilvl of 900 before doing this, which shouldn't be too hard to get with the current content. Just remember that while this is a fairly RNG-free challenge, there's still quite a lot to keep track of, so bring some patience. Also bring some food (I used haste), intellect flasks, Prolonged Power potions, drums and (optionally) healing potions. I brought some, but forgot to use them. Good luck!
Thwarting the Twins - Shadow Priest DrDante89 2018-01-30 | Hello! Here's Mage Tower challenge 29, Thwarting the Twins for Shadow Priest. It's been a while since I got some challenges done, but this time I figured I could get some out of the way. This is my first Priest challenge, and I did it on a somewhat new 110. I made sure to do Argus on LFR before trying this, just to get the legendary ring, and I already had Norgannon's Foresight. At an average ilvl of 916, this took me 5 tries, and without any tier set bonuses or better legendaries. Therefore I'd rank this challenge among the easier ones. Still, it wasn't entirely free.I won't go into too much detail about the fight in general, here I'll just write about how you can deal with certain mechanics as a Shadow Priest. There are more details about the fight in general in the description of my Balance Druid challenge video.The strategy I was using depends entirely on Surrender to Madness. If you don't want to use that, what I'm writing here might significantly differ from what you instead might want to do. Start the fight with a pre-pot (Prolonged), followed by dotting up and burning down Karam. When you're far away from him, feel free to Mind Blast and Mind Flay him. You want to sneak in as many Mind Flays as possible without sacrificing your distance to him, since spawning a Void Tendril will keep him slowed for you. When you want to keep moving, just use Shadow Word: Pain. In Void Form, add Void Bolt to your movement rotation. If you want to buy some space for reapplying Vampiric Touch, feel free to cast Mind Bomb on him. When he reaches 33%, he'll go immune, and Raest becomes targettable.Use Mind Bender on Raest, as well as Void Torrent, but not drums or your second potion. You want to keep him dotted up at all times, while you mostly ignore the adds. Keep moving away from them, but make sure you don't circle around Raest into Karam, as he'll become active shortly thereafter.Dot Karam up again, and resume kiting him. This is the hard part of the encounter. Assuming your DPS is ok, you need to deal with roughly 3 Hands from Beyond. Dot them up as soon as they spawn. For the first one, use Mind Bender and interrupt it when it's nearly done casting. For your second one, pop your second Prolonged Power potion, and either eat the cast with a Power Word: Shield on you, or use Dispersion. For the third one, either use Dispersion to live through the cast, or use Surrender to Madness to burn it down before it's done. Around this time Raest should become active again, and you should use drums (if not I'd use drums anyway to push the phase quicker).The last phase, assuming you get here cleanly, is just about nuking Raest and moving away from danger. Make sure to stand on the runes when they go off, and switch targets to the hands when they spawn. When Karam becomes active again make sure to dot him up to help with your Insanity. As long as you keep nuking, Mania should make sure you can always move away from danger. When Raest is down, the completion criteria is met, and you're free to die. Horribly.I'd recommend at least an average ilvl of 900 to do this. If you do a few days of Argus world quests as well as the last wing of Antorus LFR (for the ring), you should easily beat that. Besides that, bring food (I used Bear Tartare, although I'm unsure if it helped a lot in this case), an intellect flask, Potions of Prolonged Power, and drums. Also, patience always helps. Good luck!
The Highlords Return - Brewmaster Monk DrDante89 2017-12-13 | Hey! This is Mage Tower challenge 28, The Highlord's Return for Brewmaster Monk. It's my second Monk challenge, and my final tank challenge. Good bye Kruul, I can't say I'll miss you. The tank challenges tend to be amongst the harder ones (with Vengeance Demon Hunter being the exception). This might be one of the easier tank challenges, but I find it hard to rank, since I never felt like I was fully in control of the fight. I think this is mainly because I don't really feel like I understand how Brewmaster Monks work in these types of situations, yet. It took me 20 tries to do this, but most of them I felt like I was just hitting buttons at random.More in-depth information about how the different mechanics work can be found in the description of my Protection Warrior video. Here I'll just go through how I dealt with the different mechanics as a Brewmaster Monk.The general idea of phase 1 is the same as with all tank challenges - stay in melee range of Variss when you have less than 5 stacks of Aura of Decay, and stay out to reset them if you're at 5 or higher. If you happen to end up with really high stacks (7-10), take a healing orb to let it reset without incoming damage. You want to use a potion and whatever damage CDs you have at the beginning of the fight. Place your Black Ox Statue between Velen and Variss, so it picks up all the adds (Nether Horrors in particular). You can either taunt it to grab aggro of them, or you can hit them all with a Chi Burst. When they've reached you, hit them with Keg Smash and Breath of Fire to AoE them down. Repeat this while dodging the knock backs from the Infernals. You can either kill off the Tormenting Eyes with a Keg Smash, or you can head over to them to just punch them to death, whatever suits your Aura of Decay stacks better. I made liberal use of the healing orbs in phase 1, as you have a much easier time dealing with the incoming damage in phase 2 than many other classes. You can interrupt Variss with either Spear Hand Strike or Paralysis, but you cannot keep him CCed with Paralysis for long. Just treat it as a long range interrupt and save it for his Drain Life.When Kruul arrives, the fight becomes much more straight forward. Ironskin Brew and then a few Purifying Brews will last you through most of the Annihilate casts. For casts on you when you have 3 or more stacks, you might want to consider Fortifying Brew. Using Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox you not only get great burst damage for phase 2, you also get a taunting pet that can eat a couple of Annihilates on it's own. This means you could probably last through phase 2 for longer than any tank class. Just make sure to taunt Kruul if he's stuck in a pool of fire. Besides this, deal with the rest of phase 2 the "normal" way - make sure to pick up adds, move out of fire zones, strafe when Infernals are up, and interrupt Twisted Reflections. Be mindful of the beams, but also consider that they might be helpful in moving you out of harms way in certain situations.I'm very happy to be done with all the tank challenges. I'm not completely out of the woods yet, since I have some healing challenges left to do, but I feel like I have the hardest parts of the Mage Tower behind me. When I completed this my average ilvl was 923, and I'd recommend an average ilvl of at least 910 for the challenge. Good Brewmaster players could probably do it at a lower ilvl, but currently it's very easy to achieve 910, so I'd recommend putting my effort there instead of trying to smash through this at lower ilvls (unless you've got something to prove). I used Soul of the Grandmaster as my only legendary for the simple reason that it's the only legendary I have on this still somewhat fresh 110. I also brought Prolonged Power potions, Bear Tartare, agility flasks and drums (healing potions can help too). Unless you're very familiar with both the Brewmaster Monk play style and The Highlord's Return, keep in mind that this can take a while to get done. It's not an easy challenge, even if it might be one of the easier tank challenges. Good luck!
The Highlords Return - Protection Paladin DrDante89 2017-12-13 | Hello! Here's Mage Tower Challenge 27, The Highlord's Return for Protection Paladin. This is my second Paladin challenge, a huge step up in difficulty from my first (Retribution). As with all tank challenges except Vengeance Demon Hunter, it's a hard challenge. If you do it on a character geared with normal/heroic Antorus gear, you might just breeze through it, as long as you respect the mechanics of the fight. If you don't have good gear, prepare to spend some time on this. This took me 26 tries, which is still fewer tries than it took me to do Guardian Druid. I'd therefore say that this isn't the hardest tanking challenge, but it's still not trivial.I'm not going to go into too much detail about the specifics of the encounter, but instead write about how to deal with certain aspects from a Protection Paladin point of view. In the description of my very first Mage Tower challenge video, Protection Warrior, I went through the abilities more in-depth.Protection Paladin is not a class that should have to clear the room of healing orbs in phase 1. If you find yourself doing this, I'd recommend trying to survive without them. It's ok to take one every now and then for emergency reasons, but you want to save a couple of them for phase 2. In phase 1, pop a Prolonged Power potion before engaging, and then your offensive CDs. The main flow of the fight should be as follows:Phase 1:1. If you have less than 5 stacks of Aura of Decay, stay in melee range of Variss. Hit him with everything but Judgment. This includes Shield of the Righteous.2. If you have 5 or higher stacks, stay just outside his aura, and keep using Blessed Hammer.3. If you find yourself with a ton of stacks (7-10) for some reason, this is a good time to take a healing orb to let it drop off without incoming damage.4. Grab aggro of any adds that spawn. Taunting is usually fine for this, unless you're close enough to them to hit them with something else (even the Nether Horrors, they all tend to aggro you if you taunt one).5. Kill off eyes with Judgment.6. Constantly strafe, or at least be prepared to strafe, when Infernals are up.It's somewhat important to kill off Nether Horrors quickly, since their damage ramps up, but as long as you keep on top of Blessed Hammer and Avenger's Shield you should be able to get them down in time. Infernals will just kill themselves after some time, so just make sure they don't knock you around. One Judgment will not (with my gear level at least) always kill off one Tormenting Eye, so make sure you face it if it starts casting its knock back. Unless you take a very long time to get Variss down, don't use Avenging Wrath a second time. You want to save it for phase 2.In phase 2, there are 5 main issues you need to deal with:1. Get out of the fire zones, and top yourself up afterwards.2. Strafe if Infernals are up to avoid getting knocked off.3. Interrupt Twisted Reflection.4. Grab aggro of all adds.5. Have a plan to deal with all the Annihilates.You also want to burn Kruul as hard as you can, so you want to pop all your CDs again, as well as your second potion and drums. If Kruul is in an inconvenient spot when something happens (for example, say your Avenger's Shield is on CD, he casts Twisted Reflection while being in a pool of fire), you can hit him with Hammer of Justice, Blinding Light, or a healing orb to give you a few extra seconds. Just keep in mind that he will usually recast whatever he was casting as soon as he can. For dealing with Annihilate, you want to save the heavier defensive CDs for later, and successively ramp them up. At casts 3 and later you want to combine CDs. Remember that you can use Blessing of Protection on yourself, but be prepared to remove it as soon as the cast goes through in order to regain aggro of everything.As you can see near the end of the video, you can still finish the challenge while dead. The objective is to get Kruul to 0 HP, while Kor'vas and Velen survives. I could have survived the last Annihilate with Blessing of Protection, but I didn't think he'd cast it after he initiated his death animation. Ultimately, it didn't matter.I'd recommend an average ilvl of at least 910 to do this. I did this with an average ilvl of 912, and no tier set bonuses. This is still a fairly fresh 110, so most of my gear is entry level Argus gear. I did have Rethu's Incessant Courage, and (extremely fortunately) Tyelca, Ferren Marcus's Stature as my only Paladin specific legendary. Tyelca is incredibly useful for this challenge, since it allows you to hit Variss/Kruul and all of the Nether Horrors in one Avenger's Shield. It's not mandatory, but it helps a lot. As a Protection Paladin, I'd recommend any legendaries that boost your damage, since I found it harder to get Kruul down than getting Variss down. You also want Prolonged Power potions, Bear Tartare, strength flasks and drums. Bring patience, and eventually you'll get through it. Good luck!
Feltotems Fall - Windwalker Monk DrDante89 2017-12-06 | Hi! Here's Mage Tower challenge 26, Feltotem's Fall for Windwalker Monk. This was a very simple challenge compared to most others, as it only took 3 tries, with an average ilvl of 915, no legendaries, no tier set bonuses, and close to no knowledge about the spec. If you know how to play Windwalker you really don't need my input on it, but if you're still watching this then I'm sorry if my execution makes you cringe. This was significantly easier than Beast Mastery Hunter, and even that is considered to be one of the easier challenges.I won't go too much into detail about the challenge itself (more on that can be found in the description of my Beastmastery Hunter video), but instead I'll mention how you deal with certain aspects of the fight as as Windwalker Monk.Start by nuking Tugar. You want to alternate burning him down, and cleaving off him when there are adds up. Save your interrupts for Fel Burst. You can also use Paralysis to interrupt him, in case Spear Hand Strike is on CD. When he casts Earthquake, avoid getting hit by the falling rocks (they always fall in the same 3 spots). During this part of the fight you want to AoE down the eggs and the worms, while avoiding the dust cloud (which is where Jormog is burrowed). Jormog will charge at you occasionally while he's burrowed. Side step him, and ideally have him charge through the fallen rock circles. At any point in the fight (while Tugar is still alive), if a Fel Surge Totem spawns you want to kill it off immediately. Also take care in avoiding the swirly cross, and try to side-step the single swirlies that the worms cast while they are alive.When Tugar is dead, start burning down Jormog. His Sonic Scream does more and more damage after Tugar dies, so it becomes a DPS race between you and Jormog. However, you can interrupt his casts using almost anything but a normal interrupt (Paralysis, Leg Sweep, etc.), so you don't need to take much damage. After a while, he hopefully dies.The 3 most likely things to kill you in this challenge are:1. Failing to interrupt a Fel Burst.2. Failing to kill a totem, and then having something else kill you.3. Getting hit by Jormog's charge, and then having something else kill you.It's very easy to kill off the worm adds, and there's really no time limit on the beginning of the fight, so take your time and make sure you don't miss any of the important parts. If you know you're about to take some damage, keep your finger on Touch of Karma and you can get through most of it.That's it, really. The main difficulty of this challenge is having a Windwalker Monk at 110 with Argus WQ level gear. It would be a bit strange for me to recommend a very low average ilvl for this challenge since I did it at 915, but I'd say that you could probably do it without much trouble at 900, especially if you have any legendaries (though, at this point it's going to be rare to have less than that if you have any legendaries unless you're still in leveling gear), or any tier set bonuses. Bring an agility flask, some Potions of Prolonged Power, and some drums, and you should be good to go. If it's your first time doing this challenge, however, don't feel bad if it takes a few times to get the mechanics and the movement right (I did spend some time on this as a Beast Mastery Hunter, so the challenge itself wasn't completely new to me). Just keep at it and you'll get it. Good luck!
The God-Queens Fury - Retribution Paladin DrDante89 2017-12-06 | Hey there! Here's Mage Tower challenge number 25, The God-Queen's Fury for Retribution Paladin. It's been a while since I last completed a challenge, and one reason for that is that I needed to level more classes. Now I have 2 classes at 110 with challenges to complete, and the final 2 between 100 and 110. Any new challenges I do are on fairly fresh characters, so it'll be a while until I do the more difficult challenges. Thankfully, this isn't a very difficult one. This took me 5 tries with an average ilvl of 902, using the crafted legendary belt and no tier set bonuses. The scariest part about this challenge was when I noticed that the recorded footage was corrupted, due to me running out of disk space in the time span between recording the footage with ShadowPlay and the rendering of the .mp4-clip. ShadowPlay first records the footage into a temporary file, and then creates the watchable video file afterwards, and there wasn't disk space enough for the second part. Luckily, I was able to recover most of it, so this video still shows the entire completed challenge. I did re-record the last part where I show my gear and my talent build, to keep it consistent with my other uploaded challenge videos.I won't go too much into detail about how the fight works here (for that I'd recommend checking the description of my Enhancement Shaman video, or the Wowhead guide), but I'll mention how I deal with some of the mechanics.In general, using Justicar's Vengeance, Retribution Paladins have very good self-healing, without sacrificing too much damage. This means that in most parts of the fight I'd recommend grouping up all three bosses for AoE, instead of keeping Sigryn CCed with Repentance for the majority of the fight. If you can't get them grouped up, try at least keep them in a line for Divine Tempest. If you don't feel comfortable doing this, you can keep Sigryn CCed for 90 seconds out of every 105, by casting Repentance on her once, then once again when it's close to running out, then letting her be free for 15 seconds to let the diminishing returns reset. If you do this from the start of the fight, her casts of Blood of the Father should coincide with her being CCed. If you choose to have her out at the start for extra AoE, I'd recommend waiting until her first cast of Blood of the Father until you start chain-CCing her.Keep doing damage to the bosses (while saving your interrupt for Ancestral Knowledge) until you have to deal with mechanics. Run over the runes (smallest first, largest last), find the gap in Dark Wings, run away from Velbrand when he casts Berserker Rage (slowing him with Hand of Hindrance helps), make sure Sigryn is CCed during Blood of the Father, run away from Velbrand when he Bladestorms (or stun him to interrupt him), and burst down Faljar's shield to interrupt his cast when he starts casting Ancestral Knowledge. The priority list of dealing with mechanics are:1. Blood of the Father (Sigryn)2. Runic Detonation (Faljar)3. Ancestral Knowledge (Faljar)4. Dark Wings (Sigryn)5. Berserker's Rage (Velbrand)6. Bladestorm (Velbrand)Any boss can only do one ability at the same time (meaning Dark Wings cannot overlap with Blood of the Father, etc.), but there will still be some nasty overlaps across the different bosses. After a while, however, some abilities stop happening, and you end up only having to deal with Ancestral Knowledge and Dark Wings. Make sure you are at full HP, and a lot of the mechanics are survivable if you happen to screw them up. Besides that, just make sure you keep an eye out for all the mechanics, and make sure you deal with them in the correct order during the overlaps. Also make sure to pick up the healing orbs that appear early in the fight whenever you are close to them (they despawn fairly quickly, so not much point saving them).I used Rethu's Incessant Courage, which helped a bit, but it's mainly because I've yet to have any paladin legendaries drop. I imagine the fight can get even easier with certain legendaries, but they aren't really necessary. Same goes with tier set bonuses. This fight is not really about gear, (I'd recommend an average ilvl of maybe 890 to try this challenge), it's almost exclusively about dealing with mechanics. Sure, if you try to do it at 830 you might have some trouble, but it's very easy to reach 900 with the Argus content (WQs, etc). I'd recommend bringing a strength flask, a couple of Prolonged Power potions, and drums to speed things up a bit. If this is your first Sigryn fight it might take you a few tries to get the mechanics right, just keep at it until you do. Good luck!
Closing the Eye - Survival Hunter DrDante89 2017-11-11 | Hi! Here's Mage Tower challenge number 24, Closing the Eye for Survival Hunter. This is my final Hunter challenge, marking it my 8th completed class. Again, I'm at the point where I have to level the next class to 110 before I can do any more challenges, so I'm unsure when the next ones will show up. Additionally, I only have 2 of the remaining 4 classes at high levels (100+), 2 of them are at level 1. I still plan on getting all of them done before the end of Legion however, so I'll have to get that started at some point.This challenge was really difficult. It was the last Xylem challenge left, and from the feel of it I'm guessing it would actually be one of the easier Xylem challenges, given that you have some gear and some helpful legendaries. I decided that I'd try it out on my very newly dinged hunter, which had no legendaries at all, no tier set bonuses, and had an average ilvl of 906. I was very close to giving up and waiting for better gear, because I consistently got to a point where I could have made it if I had better luck on procs, and I didn't feel like grinding my head against a wall until I got lucky. I just happened to realize that I might have more success if I switched one talent for another, and even though that turned out to be the case you can see how close I was to failing at the very end. That being said, a better player more familiar with the Survival Hunter playstyle could definitely have done it in fewer tries with my gear. For me, this took 25 tries to beat.I'm not going to go through every part of the fight in detail. I'll just mention how I dealt with certain mechanics as a Survival Hunter.Start the fight by popping CDs and burning Xylem down. When he teleports away, clear the ice with Butchery (2 should do it). You reset the CD of Exhilaration very quickly doing this, so you can cast Butchery once, most likely get Exhilaration off CD for a heal, then cast Butchery again and clear the CD immediately for another. Move out of the ice and Harpoon to Xylem. Repeat this 2 more times. When he goes into his intermission, kill the nearest Mirror Image, and while you stand in the bubble, figure out where Xylem is (look at the minimap), and decide on a Mirror Image that is between you and Xylem, but in reach of your Harpoon. Time your Harpoon so that you don't get hit by their knockbacks, kill the Mirror Image, and repeat until you're close enough to Xylem that you can Flare him. When you do this, the intermission ends. Harpoon over to him, and start burning him again.In his arcane state, you might actually have to do something about his casts, so he won't kill your pet. You can trap him or stun him (if you have the ability to do so), but save your interrupt for his Draw Power. Avoid his Shadow Barrage (the orbs travel in the direction he's looking while he's channeling it), interrupt Draw Power, and keep your pet up while continuing to do damage. When he goes back into his frost state, deal with it as you did in the beginning of the fight. The same goes for the intermission. Keep this up until he gets to 10%, at which point phase 2 will start.Here you get some time to drink up, change talents, gear, etc. Position yourself and your pet near the edge of the platform on the same side Xylem teleports to. Pop a Prolonged Power potion just as the Corrupting Shadows finish it's first line of dialogue, and drag the boss to you. Start kiting it slowly along the edge while doing damage to it. When it starts casting Seed of Darkness, use Aspect of the Cheetah to get as far away from it as possible, while still being able to follow the line (you don't want to have to move across the beams on the way back). When the adds spawn on you, put down Caltrops beneath them, pop CDs and burn them down with Butchery + Mongoose Bite + Fury of the Eagle. If you need, use Ranger's Net to slow them down further. When they're dead, resume damage on the Corrupting Shadows. When the next Seed of Darkness cast happens, pop a Skystep potion to achieve a similar distance as you got from Aspect of the Cheetah. Kill the adds, and get back to the boss. Shortly after you get back to the boss, pop your CDs and Netherwinds and go ham on the boss. Use the residual duration of Netherwinds to get the 3rd set of adds down (you won't have movement speed for this). At this point, you just want to nuke and pray, since you will run out of space and cannot handle a 4th set of adds.I did this at an average ilvl of 906, but that was without any tier set pieces or legendaries. With (at least) legendaries, I'd recommend at least 900 for this challenge. I used an agility flask, mastery food, a Tenacity specced pet with Netherwinds (Mana/Nether Ray), potions of Prolonged Power, a Skystep potion and Astral Healing potions. Just remember, this might take some time, so don't feel bad if it does (even if you have better gear than I had). Good luck!
Feltotems Fall - Beast Mastery Hunter DrDante89 2017-11-09 | Hello! Here's Mage Tower challenge number 23, Feltotem's Fall for Beast Mastery Hunter. It's my second completed artifact challenge for hunter, and my first time doing Feltotem's Fall. This was VERY tight without any legendaries at my ilvl (902). For a while I suspected I needed more gear to do it, but I eventually figured out a way to stay alive throughout it. With the right legendaries, I'd guess this would be one of the less difficult challenges. For me, however, it took 26 tries.So, the fight is divided into 2 phases, and you need to get 2 enemies down, Tugar Bloodtotem, and Jormog the Behemoth. Initially, you'll do very little damage to Jormog, but you can increase it throughout the fight. This means that the first phase is focused around Tugar.Tugar will do a few things throughout the fight. You want him tanked by your pet at all times. He will cast Fel Shock occasionally on you, which is unavoidable. He'll also cast Fel Burst, which you must interrupt/handle. You can do this with Counter Shot, Intimidate, and Freezing Trap. If you start with Counter Shot, you should always have one of these up for the cast. If you have a Turtle, Crab, Beetle, Basilisk or Shale Spider pet you can have it eat a cast with it's damage reduction shield, and heal it up with Mend Pet. This means you have an extra CD to deal with Fel Burst. I didn't have any healing legendaries, so I used a Spirit Beast pet instead for Spirit Mend.My pet was specced into Feriocity for this challenge, but there's also the alternative to have it as Tenacity. You'll struggle with the damage, but if you take Aspect of the Beasts your pet can survive a cast with the damage reduction it gets from Kill Command. This way you can get an extra "CD" (you can't use it on every cast due to the amount of time it takes to heal your pet back up again) for Fel Burst, while still using a Spirit Beast pet. However, I'd still recommend keeping your pet as Feriocity and making sure you nail all the interrupts. Also, if your pet dies it cannot regain aggro on Tugar, so just exit the scenario and try again if that happens.Tugar will spawn a cross of green swirlies on the ground underneath you occasionally. Just get out of it before it does damage. Every now and then, Tugar will channel Earthquake, which will spawn three rocks on the ground (make sure to not get hit by them, their spawn locations are fixed), and some worm eggs. Kill off the eggs (if you damage an egg but don't kill it, the worm that hatches spawns damaged, so it's still worth it if you can't finish off each egg), and start cleaving down the worms that get out. However, they're not that dangerous. Just avoid the extra swirlies on the ground until they're dead. Lastly, Tugar will occasionally spawn a Fel Surge Totem. Kill this off with a single Cobra shot ASAP (only Fel Surge from Tugar has a higher priority than this). If the cast goes off, you get stunned for 5 seconds.Jormog will do a few things while all of this is happening. Occasionally it will cast Sonic Scream. This can be interrupted with Intimidation or Freezing Trap, but as you're using these for Tugar you're just going to have to endure them. It also does unavoidable damage (Fel-Infused Saliva) to you, and will be the main source of damage you take throughout this fight. When Jormog is up by the chasm, you can also do damage to it, but initially it reduces all damage taken by a lot.When Tugar casts Earthquake, Jormog will burrow. You'll see where it is by following the cloud of dust on the ground. Every now and then, it will charge towards you. When it does this, it's head pops out of the ground for a second. Watch for this to make sure you wont get hit by it. However, if it charges through the patches of rock that get left behind by the Earthquake, it loses one stack of it's damage reduction shield. After it has charged through 9 of these rocks, it will take full damage from your abilities. At this point you can cleave it, but you still want to keep your focus on Tugar until he dies.Phase 2 is very simple, but becomes a bit of a DPS race if you don't have any healing legendaries. Jormog will get a 150% damage increase buff, meaning the Sonic Scream will start to hurt a lot. Use Freezing Trap, Intimidation and Aspect of the Turtle to avoid damage here. You can survive one unmitigated hit, but without any healing legendaries you're probably not going to be able to take 2 in a row without healing up to full in between. Just make sure you get your interrupts off, and burn Jormog as hard as you can until it dies.If you have Roots of Shaladrassil, large parts of the fight become completely trivial. In any case, I'll recommend that you have an average ilvl of 900 before doing this. It's doable with less, but it's pretty tight at 902. 900 is also easily achievable on Argus. All in all, this was a pretty fun challenge, Just keep at it, bring consumables and patience. Good luck!
Thwarting the Twins - Marksmanship Hunter DrDante89 2017-11-09 | Hi there! Here's Mage Tower challenge number 22, Thwarting the Twins for Marksmanship Hunter. My hunter hit 110 4 days ago, so I decided to have a go at the challenges pretty much straight away this time. This challenge took 8 tries to beat. I did this without any legendaries or tier pieces (just haven't gotten any yet), so this can be seen as a demonstration that you can do some challenges without spending a lot of time on a character (the main reason is that it's really easy to get decent gear ilvl-wise in 7.3). Legendaries and set bonuses would have helped, but the challenge is fairly consistent. This in general means that it's doable, but with less room for error.If you want a more in depth explanation of the mechanics of the fight, I'd recommend you check out the description of my Balance Druid video. Here, I'll just mention how hunters deal with the mechanics.Whenever Karam is chasing you, you want to use Concussive Shot to keep him slowed down as close to 100% of the time as possible. To be safe, you can use it as soon as it's available. While doing this, just kite him in a large circle around the platform and damage him down to 33.3%. I saved Trueshot for Raest's first phase. Whenever he starts healing back up, use Trueshot and start burning down Raest. Whenever adds are near him, use Multi-Shot and Marked Shot to kill them off. Explosive shot is also pretty good here. Additionally, Exhilaration goes off CD really quickly by killing adds, so don't be afraid to top yourself up with it.When Karam rejoins the fight, resume kiting as before, but mix in some Multi-Shot to keep killing adds. When a Hand from Beyond spawns, first make sure you can safely stand still for the duration of Windburst. If not, trap Karam, and then interrupt the Hand. Then, do a Windburst followed by a Piercing Shot, and finish it off with some instant cast shots. If you have A Murder of Crows up here, it works pretty great on the Hands. You should be able to get every hand down in a similar fashion (if the CDs don't align, remember that you can survive one cast of Grasp from Beyond if you use Aspect of the Turtle in advance). Keep doing this while making sure Karam doesn't reach you. Whenever no hands are up you want to focus on Karam, with the occasional Multi-Shot + Marked Shot to clean up some adds. When he starts to heal for the second time, start focusing on Raest again.From now on, you want to nuke Raest as hard as you can. I use my second potion here, together with drums and Trueshot. While you get Raest down, be prepared to handle the runes. If the runes end up in a bad place, try to plan your movement so you won't have adds on/near the rune when you're on it. If needed, use Tar Trap to help out here. When Karam wakes up, keep Raest as your primary target to get him down ASAP, but remember to keep using Concussive Shot on Karam, and remember to switch focus to the Hands when they spawn. Handle this, and handle the runes, and hope you get Raest down before you're overwhelmed. Don't worry about Karam, the objective is completed when Raest dies (at which point Karam will despawn).If you have good gear, and good legendaries, this fight is pretty easy. Just keep Karam slowed while killing everything else, prioritizing runes, Hands, and then Raest. If you don't have good gear/legendaries, you can still do it, but you'll notice it's not that forgiving. I'd recommend an average ilvl of 900 for this, but you can probably do it with less (especially if you have legendaries, but at this point, unless you've skipped Argus, it's hard to have less than 900 if you have legendaries). I had an average ilvl of 906. Just come prepared, bring potions (Prolonged Power and Astral Healing), flasks (Seventh Demon), food (I used Bear Tartare for the extra movement speed), drums, and patience. It might take a few tries before you get it right, but keep at it and eventually you'll get it. Good luck!
Closing the Eye - Subtlety Rogue DrDante89 2017-10-21 | Hi! This is Mage Tower challenge number 21, Closing the Eye for Subtlety Rogue. This marks my 7th finished class, and once again it means that I have to level another class to 110 in order to keep doing these. Next will be Hunter, whenever that happens. This challenge was actually fairly difficult. It took me 19 tries, and the last phase was a pretty tight DPS check. However, my rogue has only been at 110 for less than 3 weeks, it only has 1 tier piece (which I'll only use whenever I get a second piece), and it only has 1 legendary (which is an Outlaw legendary, and also bad). My average ilvl was 915, which is alright for this challenge, but without Mantle of the Master Assassin, The Dreadlord's Deceit, or Will of Valeera, this challenge is definitely not a pushover.I'll mention a bit about how you deal with certain aspects of the fight as a Subtlety Rogue, but in case you want more in-depth details on the encounter itself I wrote more about that in the description of my Arms Warrior version video of this fight.Start with pre-pot, stealth and your usual opener (I'm doing my best in the video, but then again I'm very new at Subtlety). Interrupt his Frostbolt, and keep yourself up with Crimson Vial and Shadow Dance (Soothing Darkness). Whenever he teleports away, the preferred method of dealing with the Razor Ice is to cast Marked for Death on one, and then follow that up with an Eviscerate, and keep doing this to clear a path out of the circle. You can use Cloak of Shadows to ignore one of these 3 Razor Ice circles. If you have The Dreadlord's Deceit you can just clear everything with one Shuriken Storm. Get back to Xylem with a Shadowstep, and repeat until he goes into his intermission phase.Here, go to a nearby Mirror Image, and kill it with Marked for Death + Eviscerate. Look at the minimap for the yellow mark, and start leapfrogging over to it with Shadowstep + Marked for Death + Eviscerate. When you're close enough, just run with Feint to Xylem's shimmer. You can also, as soon as you know where you're going, use Cloak of Shadows to run to him (with Sprint up you can do it from quite far away as long as you run straight to him).In the next phase, start doing damage as usual, but don't interrupt his Arcane Barrage. You can stun him during his Shadow Barrage, but if you're confident in avoiding his orbs I'd recommend not doing this, since it's a nice break from unavoidable damage. Whenever he starts casting Draw Power, Kick him immediately. When he teleports away, run up to him and repeat this.In the same way as above, deal with the Mirror Image intermission, and then his frost phase, until you get him down to 10% (until this point he will do some combination of the phases above). When he hits 10%, be prepared to respec, eat and switch gear if you need it. Since I don't have The Deadlord's Deceit, I went for Death from Above to help deal with the adds. Just before the Corrupting Shadows becomes hostile, use a second pre-pot and restealth (just as it finishes it's first line of dialogue).Start burning it down, but I'd recommend saving Shadow Blades until later. Also save Goremaw's Bite. Start kiting it slowly along the edges of the room. Whenever it starts casting Seed of Darkness (never interrupt this), Sprint away (try to bring some combo points with you) a fair distance, and wait for the three adds to spawn. As soon as they do, Nightblade one of them, Goremaw's Bite the second, and Nightblade the third. Use Shadow Dance, Shuriken Storm, and Death from Above to burn the adds down before they reach the boss. Remember to reapply Nightblade in case any adds start moving faster again. After these are dead, move to the boss again to continue the DPS onto it. Do this again twice, and by the time you're at the third set of adds, use Shadow Blades, your second potion, and drums to burn them down and let the rest of the duration go onto the boss. When it's HP gets low, it will Berserk, hitting you very hard and very fast. When you start going too low, use Evasion, and hope you kill it before it kills you. Don't forget to use Cloak of Shadows here if you run out of space.I found that the last part of the fight was pretty tight, numbers-wise. With better legendaries (and some tier pieces), you should be able to do this at an average ilvl of 900, with proper execution. I brought drums, Potions of Prolonged Power, an agility flask and Bear Tartare, as well as some tomes for respeccing. Even with pretty good gear and experience with Subtlety, you should still be prepared to spend quite a few tries on this, since there are some mechanics that will outright kill you if you don't know how to handle them. However, once you get the hang of it, there's very little RNG, so unless you're severely under-geared most issues are solvabe. It's just a matter of proper execution. Good luck!
An Impossible Foe - Outlaw Rogue DrDante89 2017-10-20 | Hey there! Here's Mage Tower challenge number 20, An Impossible Foe for Outlaw Rogue. This is the last Agatha challenge I had left, since none of the remaining 16 specializations have her on the menu. I still consider my rogue a fairly new 110 (I hit max level earlier this month), which for me means that I only have one legendary, and not enough tier pieces for any bonus. Now, I do "main" Outlaw on my rogue, so the legendary I had was at least an Outlaw legendary (the boots, so not ideal, however), and I'm definitely more used playing Outlaw than any of the other rogue specs. This challenge also happens to be one of the tricker ones if you're unable to outgear it. For me, this took 22 tries, so probably the longest amount of time I've spent on Agatha out of any spec.As with any of the rogue challenges, if you have the Will of Valeera, the difficulty of this challenge gets greatly reduced. In that case, you should definitely take Slice and Dice, since the only real reason you would want Roll the Bones is for Grand Melee. However, after a few frustrating tries with Marked for Death, I gave up on trying to roll the right buffs. Theoretically, using Roll the Bones together with Marked for Death (great for many weak adds) is able to beat Slice and Dice. In practice though, the insanely large variance of Roll the Bones means that unless you already outgear the challenge and practically don't need any buff, you will have tries that are doomed, no matter what you make of it. For that reason, I went Slice and Dice instead. It felt like in most cases, Slice and Dice was not only (obviously) the consistent choice, but it was also much better at getting the adds down (if you're accurate with your targeting/heavily using specific macros for it Marked for Death will annihilate adds, but then you have to live with Roll the Bones). The downside is that any major mistake in placing Fuming Imps/letting Fuming Imps live, standing in any kind of damage for too long, not burning down Agatha's shield/Smoldering Imps quickly enough, or really anything that does damage at all, is much harder to recover from. If you have Will of Valeera, a lot of these issues are solved by a Feint or two, meaning you can go Slice and Dice and fumble your way to beating this challenge, essentially. Without the pants, I'd still recommend Slice and Dice because of how Roll the Bones can just ruin your attempt no matter what, but you really have to be aware of your surroundings, and you have to be crystal clear on what you need to kill in what order. Generally this is:1. Fuming Imps (if you can't kill them, lead them towards the side)2. Smoldering Imps3. Umbral Imps4. Imp Servants5. AgathaWhen Agatha's shield is up and Dark Fury is active, this changes to:1. Fuming Imps (in my opinion, but if you have the space you can just lead them to the side and ignore them)2. Umbral Imps3. Agatha (followed by a Kick)4. Smoldering Imps5. Imp ServantsAvoiding the burning rocks takes priority above everything above. Besides that, try to avoid the Plague Zones and any swirlies on the ground as much as possible. If you know you'll be late in interrupting Agatha's Dark Fury, use Cloak of Shadows when needed. Unless you're topped up and nothing bad is happening, you should use Crimson Vial on CD. I used drums together with pre-pot on pull, and then the second potion whenever I feel I need it closer to the end. I used damage CDs as soon as Adrenaline Rush and Curse of the Dreadblades lined up (if you have the boots like I had, don't forget that Sprint is also a damage CD). Spiced Falcosaur Omelet is the go-to food, and don't forget your flask. Agatha might be the challenge that (unless you outgear it) is the easiest to learn, but one of the harder ones to master. I'd recommend an average ilvl of 900 for this, but unless you have the right legendaries it might be better to wait until 910. If you have Will of Valeera, however, anything beyond 900 is just a bonus. So with this I say good bye to Agatha, and good luck to you!
The God-Queens Fury - Assassination Rogue DrDante89 2017-10-13 | Hello! Here's my 17th Mage Tower challenge, The God-Queen's Fury for Assassination Rogue. This marks my first challenge done on my somewhat freshly dinged rogue (I hit 110 about 10 days ago). Therefore, I have no tier pieces, and only one legendary (even if I'd crafted/bought the boots, my first real legendary would have replaced them). The legendary wasn't even for Assassination (I have the Outlaw boots), but then again, this is Sigryn. As it turns out, it's probably also the easiest Sigryn so far. This took me 7 tries, but the 6 first were mostly about figuring out what buttons you push as Assassination (I've only played Outlaw, before that only Combat). It wasn't until the 5th try I realized Leeching Poison didn't prevent you from using Deadly Poison. Again, I'm completely new at this.As with the other versions of this challenge, you want to cleave everything down while dealing with the mechanics - Blind Sygryn when she's casting Blood of the Father, run over the runes when Faljar summons them (prioritize the small ones), and run away from Velbrand when he's in Berserker's Rage. Dodge the Dark Wings (find the gap), burn down Faljar's shield and interrupt his Ancestral Knowledge, and run away from/Kidney Shot Velbrand during his Bladestorm. Avoid standing in fire, and the rest can be ignored. Make sure to use Crimson Vial whenever you need it, and be careful so you don't bring Sigryn out of her Blind by accidental AoE.However, rogues have a ton of oh-shit buttons. Having to run by Velbrand during his Rage? Evasion. Accidentaly bring Sigryn out of Blind? Cloak of Shadows. Can't make it to a rune?Cloak of Shadows. Can't make it to the Dark Wings gap? Cloak of Shadows. Can't bring Faljar's shield down in time/have Kick on CD?Cloak of Shadows. Even if Cloak of Shadows is on CD, almost all sources of high avoidable burst damage is AoE, meaning you can Feint it. Now, this doesn't mean you can ignore mechanics, and if you consistently fail mechanics, even with these safety buttons in play, you will eventually die. This just means that it's not nearly as punishing to do this as for most classes.I did it with an average ilvl of 909, with no tier set bonuses, and with only one legendary, which only acted as a stat stick. If you also actually play the spec, it should definitely be doable below an average ilvl of 900 (if you have the Will of Valeera, you can probably just eat most mechanics and Feint your way through all of it). At this point, as soon as you get to 110 and get your Argus intro quests done, just fill your equipment slots with World Quest gear, and you can do this. Just make sure to pay attention to the mechanics, and it's a piece of cake. Good luck!
End of the Risen Threat - Restoration Druid DrDante89 2017-09-25 | Hi there! Here's Mage Tower challenge number 18, End of the Risen Threat for Restoration Druid. It's the second healing challenge I've done, and it both marks my 6th finished class and the halfway point to 36 challenges done. However, I've actually run out of challenges to do. I don't have any more classes at level 110, so I need to level more of them before I can do more challenges. This challenge took me 4 tries, but as in the Restoration Shaman challenge, each try really felt like a lot more. Amongst those tries I also had 2 wipes in phase 4, which takes a long time to get to. Really glad to have this out of the way.I went through the details more closely in my Restoration Shaman video, but I'll mention how you can deal with some of them as a druid in here.The scenario can be divided into 4 phases (even more if you ask some people). In phase 1 you heal your party while they kill off waves of enemies. In phase 2, you move through parts of Black Rook Hold on your own, doing both damage and healing until you reach your party. In phase 3, you need to heal your party and spot heal ghost NPCs in a short time window, and in phase 4, you need to heal your party and deal with mechanics while they kill the boss.In phase 1, you can either deal with the Arbalests by just moving so another member of your party (ideally Shadowsong) takes the hit, or you can interrupt it, either with Typhoon, or by casting Ursol's Vortex before they teleport away (doesn't always seem to work, however). You need Typhoon, or a stun to deal with the mages' stacks (one Typhoon will result in their stacks resetting), so make sure you have something up in time for them. When the soldiers fixate you, remember that Bear Form is pretty neat if you're the only one taking damage. For phase 1, I saved Incarnation for the final wave.Nothing particular about phase 2, kill the eyes individually, kill the Dominator pack, Sunfire the orbs, dispell the feared add and heal up the others. Kill the arbalest using the adds as shields, Sunfire the orbs and kill the remaining eyes individually before killing the Corruptor. Here you can wait for CDs if you want, but I found that I didn't need Drums for the first phase, so I didn't have anything to wait for.In phase 3, keep HoTs on your party, and cast the occasional Ironbark if anyone takes more damage than the others. For the first wave of ghosts I used Incarnation, as well as Drums. Waiting to use it until you can actually heal the ghosts (the first few seconds they are out of line of sight) lets you get a few instant Regrowths off during the second wave. If you need, you can use Essence of G'Hanir together with an extra Rejuvenation or so to finish the wave off. For the third wave, I start off with healing one (I realized later that it would be better to heal two of them first), and then I use Tranquility to top them up.In phase 4 it's very important to keep your HoTs up on your party. Be mindful of the overlap that happens when the boss leaps to you after the Ignite Soul has gone off - you want to be prepared to heal yourself up in between with Swiftmend, or use Barkskin/Displacer Beast to reduce the extra damage. Whenever you can, help with damage on the boss. I was very sloppy with fire placement in the video, but a kill is a kill. As you can see, even if you die you can get the kill credit as long as you don't release. Your party can easily chew off a couple of %, so unless you die very early in phase 4, just wait to release until either a party member dies, or you win. Hope for the latter.I used Prydaz and Ekowraith. Ekowraith is very useful in the last phase no matter what, but healing throughput legendaries are recommended if you have any. I play almost exclusively Guardian on this character, so I didn't have any. At an average ilvl of 917 (probably even lower if you're not as bad as I am at healing) they're evidently not necessary, however. I'd still recommend an average ilvl of 900 for this, however. The hardest part about this challenge is just the fatigue that sets in after you fail a try. Just keep at it and have patience, and you'll get it eventually. Good luck!
End of the Risen Threat - Restoration Shaman DrDante89 2017-09-25 | Hello! Here's Mage Tower challenge number 17, End of the Risen Threat for Restoration Shaman. It's the first healing challenge I've done, and it also marks my 5th completed class. I've put off doing the healing challenges for a while now, since they seemed like a real hassle. This only took me 4 tries, but it felt like a lot more. The healing challenge is a lot longer than any other challenge (except maybe The God-Queen's Fury if you have bad gear), so if you fail near the end it really sucks. Personally, I've had a lot more experience with tanking and DPSing this expansion than I've had with healing, so this is also somewhat outside of my comfort zone.I'll go through the scenario in as much detail as I can here.Your party consists of Commander Jarod Shadowsong (a tank), Granny Marl (ranged DPS), Callie Carrington (melee DPS) and you. Shadowsong will eat most of the damage during the fight, but he is also the most durable. Occasionally the other two will get targeted by abilities, and you need to be ready for this as they drop a lot quicker. The scenario ends if any player in the party dies (except if you die during the final phase, more on this later).In phase 1, you face waves of enemies. The enemies are different combinations of Corrupted Risen Arbalests (archers), Corrupted Risen Mage (casters) and Corrupted Risen Soldiers (melee). The archers will do small amounts of damage to random targets, but will occasionally teleport away to another part of the platform and start casting Mana Sting on you. If this hits you, it will drain you of all your mana very quickly, so you need to have another member of your party (ideally Shadowsong) soak this for you by moving so he's between you and the archer. After it hits it will leave a DoT, so remember to heal whoever soaks it afterwards. The mages will cast Arcane Blitz on a random target. Every time it lands, the mage will get a stacking buff that increases the damage of Arcane Blitz. You want to interrupt this cast and occasionally purge off stacks to deal with this. The soldiers will either Fixate on a target (usually you) and deal a large amount of melee damage, or they will cast Knife Dance, which deals AoE damage to your party. You can deal with the Fixate by kiting/stunning or just healing through, and the Knife Dance by just healing through it. The waves get harder and harder, and I recommend saving Bloodlust and Ascendance for the final phase. If you need, burn Ancestral Guidance on the second last wave to get through it.After phase 1, you get out of combat, meaning you can drink, etc. Phase 2 requires you to reach your party within 5 minutes. First, kill off the Flickering Eyes, one at a time, healing yourself up between each one. Kill off the Dominator and the bats in the next room, and move past the Orbs by first hitting them with any damaging spell to neutralize them for a few seconds. When you reach the friendly NPCs, dispell the feared one, and heal the rest of them up before they die. After that, kill the archer, and use the healed NPCs as shields for the Mana Sting if you need to. Move past the orbs as you did before, and kill off the eyes, one at a time while moving away from the laser eyes the Corruptor spawns. After you've killed the eyes, and the Corruptor, you've beaten phase 2 and you have time to rest out of combat. Here, I wait for Sated to reach 1 minute remaining.Phase 3 involves your party attacking each other, and ghost adds moving towards the boss. Keep your party alive, and spot heal the adds before they reach the boss. I used Ascendance on the first wave of 3 and Ancestral Guidance on the second wave. On the third wave you just need to heal up two of them to beat the phase (you need to heal up 8 in total). Any of them you don't heal up will become enemies you need to beat.Phase 4 will start after a few seconds, and this is where you want Bloodlust to help your party's DPS. Keep your party up, and avoid the fire zones. When you get Ignite Soul, you want to use the fire to get your HP to at least 50% (after Ignite Soul runs out it will reduce your party member's HP % by your remaining HP %). Watch out so you don't die during this overlap (I did, but I ankhed). Just keep this up while occasionally DPSing the boss and he'll die after a while. If you die near the end, don't release. Your party can easily do a couple of % of damage entirely on their own, and you can get the kill credit while you're dead.The legendaries I used were Prydaz and Roots, for the simple reason that I don't have any Restoration legendaries. The self sustain is nice however, as it lets you focus on your party. Ideally, you want some healing throughput legendary for the final phase, but as you can see, at an average ilvl of 924 you don't need it. I'd recommend having at least an average ilvl of 900 to do this, maybe even higher if you don't have any healing legendaries. Good luck!
The Highlords Return - Blood Death Knight DrDante89 2017-09-16 | Hey there! Here's my 16th Mage Tower challenge, The Highlord's Return for Blood Death Knight. This went from feeling pretty difficult (at least on the same level as Guardian Druid), to only taking one attempt after the Netherlight Crucible was unlocked. It took me 4 tries all in all, and this makes Death Knight my 4th class to complete, challenge-wise. At the same time, I can't say it's an easy fight. I have quite a lot of experience with the mechanics from all my combined attempts on other classes, so while 4 tries at ilvl 919 sounds like a fairly easy tank challenge, I wouldn't expect this to take 4 attempts if you've never done the challenge on another class before.As I don't have any Blood legendaries, I used Sephuz's Secret and Aggramar's Stride. Sephuz is probably a solid choice whether or not you have Blood legendaries, since the movement speed and haste helps a ton. I won't go too much into detail on how each mechanic works, but I'll mention a few things on how you should deal with them as a Blood Death Knight.Start by popping a Prolonged Power potion, and start burning Variss. If you need to keep doing damage to him while being elsewhere, remember that you can grip him to keep him in melee range (this also happens to trigger Sephuz). The eyes cannot be damaged by physical damage, but 2 Blood Boils, or even a single Death's Caress (over time) will kill it (it is nice to get rid of them ASAP, however). When the Nether Horrors spawn, make sure you get aggro, drag them away from Velen, put down a Death and Decay and pump out a few Blood Boils. When they start channeling, just run away from them and ignore them until they're done. As a rule, whenever you don't have any stacks from Variss' aura, go back in and whack him a bunch of times until you do. You want to make a habit of constantly moving as soon as the Infernals show up. Even if they're not currently a threat, it's very easy to lose track of the fight for a few seconds if you stand still, and then run the risk of eventually geting knocked back. Just keep running, and it's not going to be a problem (especially if you have the insane movement speed combo of Sephuz + Aggramar's). If you choose Bonestorm like I did, it's also a nice way to burn down the Nether Horrors.Once Variss dies, Kruul joins the fight. Pop drums and your second potion, and Dancing Rune Weapons if it's available. Now is when you want to start doing the real damage, and fast. Make sure to interrupt his Twisted Reflection, and have at least one damage reduction CD for every Annihilation past the first. After a few of them you might just want to chain interrupt them with the orbs and hope you can burn him down before you die. Make sure to move a lot, especially if you notice him stop for a split second - it might be because he's about to jump. With the movement speed increase from Aggramar's and Sephuz I didn't have any problems getting out of the pools, but you can save Anti-Magic Shell for these if you need. Remember to pick up and kill the Nether Horror adds, and remember to keep avoiding the knock-backs from the Infernals. If you do all this right, eventually either Kruul will die, or you will due to his Annihilation. If the latter is true, you need to do more damage in phase 2, meaning you either need to work on your rotation, or you need better gear.I would recommend an average ilvl of 910 for this fight. It's pretty easy to get, and odds are you will spend more time trying to beat the challenge at lower ilvls than it would take time to actually get gear up to 910 at this point. If you're like me and had more than 910 before the Netherlight Crucible released, I'd definitely look into doing this right now. The extra experience I have from the hundreds of tries I've done over multiple classes helps, but you no longer need to cut those extra corners in order to even have a chance of making it. Right now the main difficulty is pure mechanics, and if you can nail those you have a good shot at beating this. Good luck!
Thwarting the Twins - Frost Mage DrDante89 2017-09-15 | Hello! This is Mage Tower challenge number 15, Thwarting the Twins for Frost Mage, making Mage my third class to be completely done, challenge-wise. This took me 7 tries, but it was definitely not too easy. At least it felt like I actually had to perform well to get this done. In that regard this might have been my favourite challenge so far, everything just clicked when you did it right. But even then, this is not my main spec, and it's not my main class, and I know I did some things wrong. You just have to make sure to not screw up on the important parts.There are more details in my Balance Druid video regarding the general mechanics of the fight, but I'll go through in short what you need to worry about when you do this as a Frost Mage. I used Belo'vir's Final Stand and Shard of the Exodar during this challenge. There are probably better choices than the ring for this fight, but I have absolutely zero Frost legendaries. If you use the ring, remember that you have to bring drums to use it (since the fight is shorter than 5 minutes long).At the start of the fight, pop drums and your pre-pot, and start kiting around Karam. You need to have him slowed at all times when he is active during the fight. Make use of Frozen Orb, Blizzard, Cone of Cold, whatever you have at your disposal. Try to minimize the time you are wasting DPS by only running when you can cast instants, or use blink to move.When Raest becomes available, start nuking him. As long as he and his adds are up, you should be able to have a pretty huge uptime on Frozen Orb, meaning you will have tons of instant cast Blizzards on top of that. You should be able to interrupt and nuke down every single Hand from Beyond, just switch to them when they spawn. Keep your Ice Barrier up, and try to place your spells so that everything that moves (including Karam) will move through them.The big difficulty comes in timing the runes at the end of the fight. You can notice in my video that I time it badly, and I not only have it activate without me on it, I also got hit by Karam trying to prevent it. The big difference between Frost Mage and say, Balance druid is that the Thing of Nightmare can be slowed by your frost spells. This means that it might even be ideal to let it spawn if Raest is close enough to death (in retrospect, I should have ignored that last rune).I did this with an average ilvl of 917, but with the right legendaries (and more experience playing frost) I can bet it's easily doable at lower average ilvls. I'll recommend an average ilvl of 900 as usualy for non-tank challenges, partly because 900 should be very easy to achieve right now. For consumables I'm using the usual intellect flask, Potion of Prolonged Power, and Bear Tartare (since you kill loads of adds and need movement). Remember to bring drums if you use Shard of the Exodar. Good luck!
An Impossible Foe - Fire Mage DrDante89 2017-09-15 | Hiya! Here's Mage Tower challenge number 14, An Impossible Foe for Fire Mage. This took me 4 tries to beat, but was definitely more hectic than some of the other Agatha challenges I've done. If you're comfortable with the Fire Mage play style, then this might not be that difficult for you, but as someone who pretty much only plays Arcane, I definitely messed some things up a bit.I'm not going to delve too much into the details of this encounter, since I've already done so in previous videos, but I'll focus this description on how you deal with certain aspects of this fight as a Fire Mage.I used Belo'vir's Final Stand and Soul of the Archmage for this fight. Both because I didn't have better (I'd rather have used Prydaz instead of Belo'vir's, and I'd rather have used pretty much any other Fire legendary than the ring, but this is what I had). At least the ring let me build up to Hot Streak off Dragon's Breath.In general, you want to spend your Hot Streak on Flamestrike if there are imps up (place it between them and Agatha), or Pyroblast if there are either no imps or you need to get her shield down. Meteor really helps with getting down her shield, as long as you can place it where it only hits her. You really want to make sure you're not wasting your Counterspell on anything but her Dark Fury (I did by accident a few times and it never ended up well). Also, remember to use Phoenix's Flames to proc Hot Streak when imps are up (although it might mean you need to interrupt your cast). Remember to keep your Blazing Barrier up as much as possible, and remember to blink occasionally to heal (also to activate the shield from Belo'vir's if you use it). Besides that, just avoid rocks and try to not panic. If you need to get away from adds or prevent them from going somewhere, don't be afraid to use Dragon's Breath or Frost Nova, and use Scorch when you need the mobility (I know I forgot a lot of times). As long as you don't panic and have some patience, you should be able to do this in a few tries. If you're a master of Fire Mage and have decent gear, my guess is that you already have this done. If not, go and do it now!As with the other Agatha challenges I used Spiced Falcosaur Omelet as food, since you do the challenge on the Broken Isles, and you kill loads of imps that help you proc the haste buff. My average ilvl was 916 when I did this. As usual I'd recommend an average ilvl of 900 before doing this to save yourself some frustration. Good luck!
An Impossible Foe - Feral Druid DrDante89 2017-09-15 | Hey! This is Mage Tower challenge number 13, An Impossible Foe for Feral Druid. This took a whopping 1 (one) try to beat, but I was probably fairly overgeared. The biggest obstacle in beating this challenge is actually the normal AoE Feral rotation. If you can get comfortable with that, have indicators to remind you about bleeds, etc., then just add on a bit of situational awareness and this becomes pretty easy.I won't go into too much detail about how this fight works, since I've already done that in the description of my Fury Warrior video, but I will mention a few things about how Feral handles specific parts.For legendaries, I used Prydaz for general survivability, and Luffa Wrappings for Thrash awesomeness. Balance Affinity combined with Luffa means that your Thrash will probably hit everything even remotely close to you every time you use it. If you also use the Brutal Slash talent, you don't really even have to worry about the imps, they just automatically die when you're around them. Just make sure to keep your bleeds up on Agatha, prioritize Umbral Imps when they spawn, and position Fuming Imps out of the way when they spawn (as a Feral Druid you can actually just kill them before they blow up to avoid having to deal with Plague Zones if you want). Make sure to focus Agatha a bit extra when her shield is up, and interrupt Dark Fury when it's down. As long as you make sure to not get hit by rocks and do the above (while also doing your normal rotation), it's a very easy challenge. If you haven't done Agatha on any character, be prepared to spend a few tries to get familiar with the flow of the fight. If you have beat it, just familiarize yourself with how Feral works, and you should be fine. As you might notice in the video, I messed up on a few occasions (at one point accidentaly popping out of Cat Form, then into Bear Form, and then finally back into Cat Form). Even then, this was pretty easy in comparison to other challenges.For consumables, I used the usual (agility flask, Prolonged Power, drums), and Spiced Falcosaur Omelet. The food works, since you're actually in a cave in Azsuna, which means you're on the Broken Isles. I had an average ilvl of 919 when I beat this, and I'll do my usual recommendation for non-tank challenges to be around at least 900 before doing this. At the moment, with Argus and the Netherlight Crucible up, this should not be difficult to achieve as long as you put some effort in. Good luck!
Thwarting the Twins - Balance Druid DrDante89 2017-09-15 | Hi there! Here's Mage Tower challenge number 12, Thwarting the Twins for Balance Druid. This took 10 tries to do, but those tries were fairly spread out, time-wise. Between the tries I did some target dummy work to get familiar with the spec, and specifically to get familiar with the way Balance druids kite with Starfall using the Stellar Drift talent. Once I got that somewhat under control (I say somewhat because as you can see in the video, I wouldn't call it the cleanest of kills), it became pretty easy.In phase 1, Raest becomes immune to damage, and you have to get Karam down to 33.3% health to progress to phase 2. You have to kite Karam while doing this, as he can almost one shot you if he gets close to you. He also drops pools of shadow under him as he moves, which slow you down by a lot if you move through them. Kite him in a large circle around the platform. Besides staying ahead of him, you also have to make sure to get him to 33.3% within a certain time limit - he gains a stacking movement buff that acts as a sort of soft enrage for this phase. You can Typhoon him to buy yourself some extra time if he gets too close, and you can "hard CC" him with Entangling Roots (just keep diminishing returns in mind). Once he gets to 33.3%, he will become immune to damage, and heal back up to 70%. At this point, Raest loses his damage immunity.The challenge is about killing Raest, not Karam. This means that while Karam has his soft enrage mechanic (his movement speed buff), if you can make quick work of Raest you won't have to deal with Karam that much anyway. I'd therefore recommend to pop your second potion, drums and CDs on Raest to nuke him down while Karam heals back up. Phase 2 is all about nuking Raest while he does a small amount of damage to you (ignore it), as well as dealing with the adds he spawns. You don't have to worry too much about the adds, just make sure to spend your Astral Power on Starfall and that should take care of them (a Sunfire also helps). They don't hit too hard, just take care to not end up in the middle of a large pack of adds. After Karam has finished healing back up, Raest becomes immune again, and phase 3 starts.Phase 3 is basically the same as phase 2, except Raest will be immune, Karam will chase you, and an additional add will spawn occasionally. This add, the Hand from Beyond, will slowly cast Grasp from Beyond, which unless you have mitigation (Barkskin, Prydaz, Bear Form) could one shot you. You want to burn this add down ASAP. You will be able to interrupt one cast with Solar Beam, but the cooldown is too long to use on two successive adds. I'd recommend interrupting the first add, eating the second add's cast, and hopefully not having to deal with more than that (although by that point you should be able to interrupt a third add). When Karam goes down to 33.3%, phase 4 starts.Phase 4 will reactivate Raest, and add Rune of Summoning to his arsenal. When he casts it, a rune will appear on the ground somewhere. After a few seconds, the rune activates, and by that point you must stand in it. If you do not, a Thing of Nightmare spawns, and will probably kill you outright. You should also be prepared to deal with Hands from Beyond. After Karam has finished healing, he will start hunting you down again. From the start of phase 4 you just want to burn Raest down as quickly as possible. I'd still recommend spending your Astral Power on Starfall to deal with the adds, and to let you move without losing DPS. Just proceed as before, staying away from small adds, nuking Hands, moving away from Karam and avoiding the pools. The tricky part about this phase is that you can't always afford to stand still on the rune for too long. This means that you might have to kite Karam and the adds away from it, and then quickly move onto it before it activates. Besides that, just keep it going until Raest is dead, and you win!For legendaries, I used Prydaz (to help with Grasp from Beyond and the occasional hiccup in kiting Karam), and Cinidaria. Cinidaria did provide a nice extra source of healing when Starfall first hit the adds, but the main reason I used it was that I don't have any Balance legendaries. For consumables I used the usual (Potion of Prolonged Power x2, drums, intellect flask and backup healing potions). It helped to use Bear Tartare as food during this fight, since you kill off a lot of small adds.I did do this after the Netherlight Crucible was unlocked, so my artifact had 15 higher ilvl than the week before. However, on anything that's not my main, almost every item comes from somewhat easily available sources. I did this with an average ilvl of 918, and I'd recommend having at least an average ilvl of 900 before doing this. Right now, an average ilvl of 900 should be very easy to achieve for anyone that tries (WQs, Relinquished tokens, Unsullied tokens, etc.). Just get familiar with kiting as balance, and you should be in a good spot. Good luck!
An Impossible Foe - Unholy Death Knight DrDante89 2017-09-01 | Heyo! Here's Mage Tower challenge number 11, An Impossible Foe for Unholy Death Knight. I would definitely rate this as one of the easiest challenges I've done so far, because of a few reasons. First, while I have a higher average ilvl than the 900 I'm going to recommend for this, it's not freakishly high. Second, I don't have any Unholy legendaries, but I do have some specialization independent ones (I was using Prydaz and Sephuz). Third, if you play Unholy somewhat regularly you should notice me messing up a lot. This took me 7 tries, and after the first 3 I realized I hadn't summoned my pet yet. It's also dead for a fairly long duration mid-fight in this video. I haven't played any Unholy since early WoD, so I just ran in, tried to avoid bad stuff, and pressed some buttons. Eventually it worked.The details of this fight are basically the exact same as for Fury Warrior and Elemental Shaman. I went through them more in depth in the description of those videos, here I'm just going to roughly outline how I treated the fight.Pop a Prolonged Power potion before you pull, as well as Army. Then, pop every CD you have (including Drums) and start to burn down Agatha. From now on, use every CD you have except for Defile/Death & Decay as often as you can. Save Defile for when you have a big group of imps near Agatha, then use that and Clawing Shadows to kill everything off. You can either bait the Fuming Imps to the side (you can also grip them to place them exactly where you want them), or you can simply kill them off before their cast finishes. As in the other versions, prioritize Umbral Imps when they are up.When she starts teleporting around, Wraith Walk to get closer to her while avoiding the rocks. Save an interrupt for her Dark Fury, but if you have Sephuz you can interrupt her imps every now and then after a Dark Fury to trigger it. At this point, just follow her around, avoid the Plague Zones, the rocks, and the swirlies on the ground, and keep imps down. Also, remember to get your pet back up if it dies.That's really all I have on this one. As I wrote above, I'd recommend an average ilvl of 900, but if you are comfortable with Unholy and have decent legendaries, you could definitely do this with less gear. However, with 7.3 just out getting to 900 is pretty easy. Good luck!
The Highlords Return - Guardian Druid DrDante89 2017-09-01 | Hello again! Here's my 10th Mage Tower challenge, The Highlord's Return for Guardian Druid, a.k.a. Manbearcow. This is definitely the second hardest challenge of the ones I've completed. It took me 33 tries, which is still well below the 200+ tries it took my warrior to beat this a few months ago. 33 tries might not seem much worse than the 20 tries it took for me to beat Closing the Eye for Arms Warrior. However, for most challenges I've done the vast majority of attempts were made trying to learn the fight - timings, positioning, etc. For this challenge (and for the Protection Warrior version of it), a large chunk of the attempts were spent simply trying to execute the fight correctly. Before beating this, I had roughly 5 attempts where Kruul got to below 5%, and one attempt were I wiped at 0% (around 200k HP left). Even after knowing what to do, unless you have really good gear (higher than at least average ilvl 925) this challenge might take some time. For druids, this fight is fairly unforgiving (you can get knocked off, you have limited mobility, and most of your utility is based around where you are located). In my Vengeance Demon Hunter challenge video, I got hit by knock-backs all the time. In those situations, I could simply hit jump in mid-air and reset my momentum. For a druid, if you don't have CDs ready, one knock-back could easily mean you just fall off the platform.The basics of the fight are the same as in my Demon Hunter and my Warrior videos. The big differences are:1. Eyes are immune to physical damage - however, one Moonfire will kill it before the DoT ends.2. Variss' Death & Decay aura is significantly larger - however, with the right legendaries you can still spend most of phase 1 outside of it.3. Nether Horrors behave like they do for Vengeance Demon Hunters - meaning they will start channeling an AoE after a few seconds that must be interrupted.Regarding legendaries, I used Ekowraith, Creator of Worlds and Elize's Everlasting Encasement. If you have Luffa Wrappings, they can help a lot, since most of your damage in this fight will come from Thrash. The point is, with either Luffa Wrappings or Ekowraith, using Balance Affinity you are able to Thrash and Swipe Variss from outside of his aura. You still have to venture inside of it to interrupt him, but you shouldn't have to get more than 2 stacks when doing so in most cases. Balance Affinity also helps you reach remote Eyes with your Moonfire.However, using Balance Affinity instead of Restoration Affinity means you're limited when it comes to self-healing. Therefore, you might have to use a lot of more orbs than other classes do, meaning phase 2 can be a bit luck-based (in that you can't as easily plan your fire placement around orbs on the ground if there aren't any).Whenever Nether Horrors appear, be prepared to cast Incapacitating Roar as soon as their Nether Storm channel starts. If you do it before the channels itself starts, they will simply recast it when they regain control. However, casting it close to the edge of Variss' aura means you can hit him too, easing up on the incoming damage while you take care of the adds.Apart from this, treat the fight like the other Kruul challenges, meaning you deal with Infernals and Kruul's abilities in the same way. The most difficult part of this fight is learning how to move around to effectively avoid knock-backs, dodging the shadowy lines in phase 2, and not getting stuck in the fire Kruul leaves behind after he leaps. With Balance Affinity, you can hit Kruul from fairly far away, meaning you can pre-move a lot to avoid finding yourself in the middle of a fire circle. It also helps to eat Bear Tartare (ignore the cannibalizing implications), since there are loads of adds to kill during the fight.As a final note, I'd recommend an average ilvl of 910 for this fight. It's doable with less, down to at least 900, but beating the DPS requirement of phase 2 becomes difficult at that point. However, with 7.3 fresh and the boost in gear ilvl from WQs, the Relinquished vendor, and from the weekly M+ cache, hitting 910 shouldn't be too difficult. Just remember that this might take a few tries to get right, even if you know what to do. Good luck!
Closing the Eye - Frost Death Knight DrDante89 2017-08-21 | Hi again! This is my 9th Mage Tower challenge (1/4 of the way there!), Closing the Eye for Frost Death Knight. This is a pretty hard challenge unless you have enough gear. There are still mechanics you need to nail down, but gear definitely helps you stay alive and hit certain timings so you wont have to deal with some annoying parts of the fight. This took me 4 attempts to do, but then again, I have a higher average ilvl than the 900 I'm going to recommend for this.I'm not going to delve too deep into all the details for this challenge - if you want to know how everything works there's more on that in the description on my Arms Warrior challenge video. Here, I'm just going to go through how to deal with what's given to you. You drop out of combat between the two main phases of this fight, so you can change gear in between. Phase 1 is more damage intensive, so I use Prydaz and Consort's Cold Core (brings Sindragosa's Fury down to a reasonable cooldown). In phase 2, I switch out Prydaz for Seal of Necrofantasia.Pre-pot a Prolonged at the start, and start burning down Xylem with BoS. In general, try to interrupt his Frost Bolts. When he teleports away, burn down the ice in front of you, move out of the ice zone and grip Xylem towards you. Keep doing this throughout this phase, using Sindragosa's Fury to clear the second wave of ice, and Icebound Fortitude + Anti-Magic Shell to power through the third wave. Use Dark Succor procs to heal yourself for free, and never move over to where Xylem teleports, just grip him to you after you escape from the ice. Shortly after the third wave, the intermission starts.Kill the nearest Mirror Image, and look at the minimap to find Xylem. Leapfrog from add to add, making sure to time it so you won't get hit by their casts, until you reach Xylem. Use Anti-Magic Shell if you need it to survive. When you reach him, pop your second potion and your second BoS. Dodge his Shadow Barrage while burning him down. Interrupt his Draw Power when he starts casting it, and then deal with the mechanics as you did before. Make sure to grip him to you when you get in range after he teleports, and use Wraith Walk to help close the distance. As he gets lower, make sure you don't use Sindragosa's Fury or BoS again, as you need it for phase 2. At 10%, phase 2 starts.When you get out of combat, switch gear (and talents, if you need). If you're low on HP, make sure to eat something. When the Corrupting Shadows appear, grip it out to the edge and start to burn it down while back-pedaling along the outer edge of the platform. Don't use BoS or Sindragosa's Fury here. When the boss starts casting Seed of Darkness, Wraith Walk far away. When the adds spawn, pop second potion, drums (I forget that in my video) and BoS to burn them down, continuing the BoS onto the boss. For the second set of adds, use Sindragosa's Fury to get them down (if you also hit the boss with it using Consort's Cold Core, kill the adds ASAP after using it, since the boss starts moving as soon as he gets out of the ice block). After this the boss should be low enough for you to seal the deal.If you don't have Consort's Cold Core, the above guide will have to be slightly adjusted to work around whatever you are using instead, but it's still definitely doable. Just be prepared to give it a few tries to get used to the fight. Good luck!
Closing the Eye - Havoc Demon Hunter DrDante89 2017-08-21 | Hey! Here's my 8th Mage Tower challenge, Closing the Eye for Havoc Demon Hunter. I'd say that with what gear you can get from fairly easy sources (LFR, m+0, emissaries, etc.), that this is a medium difficulty challenge. It gets easier with better gear, but there are certain aspects of it that are somewhat gear independent. This challenge took me 11 tries to beat, which if you don't count the first challenge I did (Protection Warrior) lies somewhere in the middle of the pack of my finished challenges when it comes to tries.For this I'm using Prydaz together with Cinidaria. These help with a bit of extra survivability and some first hit bonus damage. There are other, slightly better alternatives, but since this alt is mostly Vengeance, this is what I had to work with. For more details about how the fight mechanics work, you can check my Arms Warrior challenge video. Here, I'm mostly just going to focus on how to deal them.There is a point in between phase 1 and 2 when you drop out of combat. Here you can change gear, eat, and change talents. I didn't have any better legendaries to change to, so I just changed talents. You can see what talents I used in both phases at that point in the video.Pre-pot, and start burning Xylem down. I was unsure if I would have Metamorphosis up for the second phase, so I saved it until later. Each time he teleports away, "stun" the ice with Chaos Nova, and then double jump followed by gliding to get out of the circle. If you just move through the ice it will kill you. As long as you Chaos Nova the ice before gliding out of it, you will always have Eye Beam up when you reach Xylem. This means that you will leech more than enough to keep you alive, especially with Soul Rending. Keep doing this until it's intermission time.Here, you want to kill of a nearby Mirror Image, and then leapfrog from add to add until you reach Xylem (he's marked on the minimap). Use Fel Rush to move between them, and time it so you won't get knocked back by their cast. When you reach Xylem, continue damaging him. Dodge Shadow Barrage while doing this (you can stun him here if you want, but it's a nice time to regain some HP if you know how to dodge), and save your interrupt for his Draw Power. When he teleports away, close the distance and continue. Whenever you encounter something again in this phase, just deal with it as you did before (mechanics will repeat in different combinations). When he reaches 10%, you enter phase 2.When you drop out of combat, use a tome and switch talents (also eat and change gear if you need). As soon as the Corrupting Shadows appear, pop everything except Fury of the Illidari and Chaos Nova and start burning the boss down while moving him slowly along the outer edge of the platform. As soon as he starts casting Seed of Darkness, move far away from him without interrupting him, and wait for the adds to spawn. When they do, use Chaos Nova, Fury of the Illidari, Throw Glaive (to keep them slowed) and Eye Beam. Kill them off before they reach the boss, and repeat until he's dead.Phase 2 does have a DPS requirement, but this fight is mostly a mechanics check. That being said, aim for an ilvl of 900 before doing this challenge (basically 2 decent legendaries and LFR ToS gear). I used versatility food when I did this because that's what I had. If you're not as lazy as me, go get some crit food instead. Good luck!
The Highlords Return - Vengeance Demon Hunter DrDante89 2017-08-21 | Here's Mage Tower challenge number 7, and it's The Highlord's Return for Vengeance Demon Hunter. It's the second tank challenge I've completed, after completing it on my Protection Warrior as my first Mage Tower challenge.I was really confused after beating this challenge. On my warrior, it took over 200 tries. I had roughly the same level of gear on my warrior back then (maybe even better) as I have on my demon hunter right now. The only real difference is Concordance of the Legionfall (level 6 on my current demon hunter vs. level 0 on my past warrior). That being said, I was fairly sure that I could beat it, and I went into the challenge with the recommended talents, with the goal of using my first few tries to feel out the difference between the warrior version and this. This took me ONE try. One, as in a singular try, the first and only try I did. And looking back on my performance, it wasn't even that great. I knew the basics of the fight from having it burned into my brain during my 200+ warrior attempts, so I knew roughly what to look out for. I read that the Nether Horror adds did a pulsing AoE you had to interrupt, so I knew about that too. But I didn't even use Spirit Bomb, or Fracture for that matter. I just forgot, it being my first try. I also forgot to bring drums, I forgot to do macros for interrupts and for seals, I forgot the second potion, and I forgot to modify my WeakAuras a bit (the yellow glowing wings in the middle of the screen shouldn't even be there unless I have Felblade talented). As soon as I pulled I realized that I had missed some things, but thought "hey, I might as well keep going to see where it gets difficult". Compared to the warrior version, it never really did.I'll break down the fight a bit, but I won't describe everything in high detail. If you read this, and go look at the Wowhead guide, you're already reading more about the fight than I did.Phase 1: Alternate between damaging Variss and going around and killing everything else. Make sure you don't stay inside Variss' aura for higher than 4-5 stacks. When the eyes channel their beam onto you, face them directly until they stop or are dead. Try to sidestep the Infernals when they cast their knock-back, but if they hit you just hit jump to glide back. The big thing you have to worry about is the Nether Storm ability that the Nether Horrors cast. Make sure you have aggro on them, and then wait to cast either Sigil of Silence or Sigil of Misery (alternate between waves) until they have started their channel. In my video, I fail to time this almost every single time. I compensated for that by simply killing them before they can recast it. If things get tough, move onto a Holy Ward orb, but don't do it if there are Nether Horrors up far away from you (they might start channeling after they wake up, too far away for you to effectively interrupt them). Just do this until Variss is dead. I guess Spirit Bomb is nice for burst damage, either onto the adds or onto Variss when you go in to damage him, but since I forgot to use it on the only try I did, I can't back this up with experience.Phase 2: Kill Kruul before he gets too many casts of Annihilate off (more than 5 and you'll most likely wipe). Jump over the purple barriers that occasionally sweep over the platform, and continue to sidestep as many Infernal knock-backs as you can. Interrupting Kruul's Twisted Reflection is priority one in this phase, and failing it will most likely result in a wipe. Continue to deal with the Nether Horrors as you did in phase 1. I'd try to save an Infernal Strike charge for getting out of the green fire circles Kruul occasionally does. For the Annihilates, you can delay them by moving into a Holy Ward orb whenever it's cast. When you eat them, make sure you have Demon Spikes up, and save heavier damage reductions for higher stacks (for example, the first cast you use only Demon Spikes, for the second you use Demon Spikes and Fiery Brand, the third Demon Spikes and Last Resort, the fourth Demon Spikes, Fiery Brand and Metamorphosis, etc). Do all of this while keeping damage up on Kruul, and you're done. Just remember that you're not done until the white-out at the end (look out for extra Nether Horrors).For legendaries, Prydaz is pretty nice. Archimonde's Hatred Reborn is great for Vengeance, but I chose to use Cloak of Fel Flames for my first dry run. Besides these, most of the legendaries will help you in some way (although the shoulders seem pretty weak). I used versatility food, an agility flask, and a Prolonger Power potion. I'd recommend using a second potion together with drums when Kruul lands in phase 2. I think I also used a healing potion at some point, so bring a bunch of those.I'd aim for an average ilvl of 900 for this, but then again I think I overestimated this a bit. Just do a bit of reading, and be prepared for a bunch of more tries if this is your first time killing Kruul on any character. Good luck!
The God-Queens Fury - Arcane Mage DrDante89 2017-07-28 | Hey there! Here's my 6th completed Mage Tower challenge, The God-Queen's Fury for Arcane Mage. I won't go into too much detail on how the abilities work (already did that in my video of the Enhancement Shaman version), instead I'll write some things specific to doing this as an Arcane Mage.First of all, about my UI. I'm so sorry. I recently remade my UI from scratch, and I'm only really (mostly) done on my warrior, my shaman and my demon hunter (it takes me a few hours to set up the WeakAuras for one class). My other classes still have my old WeakAuras, but since I realized the Mage Tower only had a few hours left when I decided I wanted to try this challenge I didn't really have much time to work with. Second, this was the 6th character I got to level 110, it's the 6th worst geared character I have, fewer legendaries than my first 5, my 6th least played character, etc. Therefore, don't expect a masterclass in Arcane Mage-ry in this video. I miss/forget tons of stuff, I get hit by big abilities at least twice, and I probably cut it way closer than was necessary. Still, it's Sigryn, the pretty much easiest Mage Tower challenge of them all. That was my reason for trying it out, and it took me 9 attempts to complete the challenge.So, super short mention of the mechanics and what to do with them (for a more in-depth explanation, check the description of my Enhancement Shaman challenge video).1. Blood of the Father - Polymorph Sigryn (it doesn't heal her in this challenge, but Polymorph now has a CD).2. Runic Detonation - Run over the purple runes (smallest first).3. Berserker's Rage - Get away from Jarl Velbrand. Slow, and Frost Nova if you need to.4. Dark Wings - Find the gap and stand in it (like Cordana Felsong in Vault of the Wardens).5. Ancestral Knowledge - Nuke away Runeseer Faljar's shield, and interrupt his cast.6. Bladestorm - Run away from Jarl Velbrand.There are more, but these are the important ones. Prioritize doing these mechanics over doing damage.General Arcane Mage pointers:Arcane Mages have no way to heal themselves besides Leech, so your main way of not dying has to be shields. That also makes the healing orbs that get thrown into the arena occasionally so much more important - damage that gets through your shields is permanent without the orbs. This is especially important later in the fight when the orbs stop spawning. As long as you can get down Ancestral Knowledge every time before it goes off later in the fight there is no enrage timer - meaning you can take it safe and kite the melee bosses with Chrono Shift and Arcane Barrage indefinitely. I went for the more nuke-y strategy, but you also notice my HP going really low a few times. If you have worse gear than I have, or don't have Belo'vir's Final Stand, you might want to consider kiting A LOT. Another thing to consider is the slightly elevated area in the middle of the arena. This eats Blinks constantly, so never count on being able to Blink across it. Also, it is possible to Blink outside of the arena, which despawns everything and wastes your attempt. Additionally, only Evocate when you don't have to do mechanics. You notice me getting interrupted at one point, and almost dying due to it at another point. Lastly, Greater Invisibility is for all intents and purposes a damage reduction cooldown in this challenge. Use it if you cannot avoid a big hit.Belo'vir's Final Stand is a huge help in this fight. It's doable without it, but then you probably need to take Mana Shield instead of Shimmer, which will impact your DPS quite significantly. For your second legendary, use Prydaz if you have it. I didn't, so I just used whatever I had that wasn't Norgannon's Foresight. As with the other challenges, I'd aim for an average ilvl of 900. You can do it with less, but with ToS LFR almost completely out and ilvl 970 legendaries you can get to 900 with pretty much only LFR. If you want to do it with less, be my guest! Just prepare a few more Nethershards. Good luck!
An Impossible Foe - Elemental Shaman DrDante89 2017-07-16 | Hiya! Mage Tower challenge number 5 here, and it's An Impossible Foe for Elemental Shaman. I didn't actually plan to get this done this time the Mage Tower was up, but since I just beat Agatha on my warrior I figured I should at least try it on my shaman (my second best geared character). 7 tries later (the exact same amount of attempts it took my warrior) I walked away with my second shaman challenge done!First of all, if you are looking for a video where a master of the Elemental Shaman beats this challenge, this is not it. I have not played any Elemental Shaman this expansion, and you can see me constantly missing things in my rotation (capping Maelstrom, not using CDs properly, casting Chain Lightning on single target, and more). The reason I'm checking my artifact traits and hovering over Frost Shock in the beginning is because I had no idea how they worked nowadays. I'm not completely new to Elemental (I did organized raiding as Elemental in Wrath of the Lich King, and PUGged Heroic raids regularly as Elemental in early Warlords of Draenor), but I hadn't touched it since the 7.0 revamp. So, fixed my UI, I checked Icy Veins for a quick overview of the rotation, and I checked the Wowhead guide for the challenge for talent suggestions. After that I parked myself in front of a training dummy for a few minutes to get the key bindings right, and thought "well, I guess I'll do single target rotation when no imps are up, and hope I can melt everything with a few Chain Lightnings when they spawn, dumping Maelstrom on Earth Shock in the first case and on Earthquake in the second case". It turned out to be not quite that simple, but it still ended up being the basis for how I approached the fight - nuke single target if she's alone, change Lightning Bolt for Chain Lightning if I can hit at least one other target, and spend Maelstrom on Earth Shock only if I couldn't include both her and at least one imp in an Earthquake. If you compare what I just wrote to my video, you'll notice that I failed to stick to that repeatedly. I guess gear and appropriate legendaries helped make up the difference between planning and execution. ^^I popped everything at the beginning of the fight (I found that I couldn't utilize Bloodlust as effectively during phase 2, so I figured I'll just use it to give myself extra room for mistakes in phase 2). I noticed that if I used Stormkeeper at the start I would have it again roughly in time for the Umbral Imps. Apart from the start, every time Umbral Imps spawn, use Stormkeeper and 3 Chain Lightnings to melt them and any adjacent imps down ASAP. Apart from dodging burning rocks and placing Fuming Imps, these should be top priority when they're up, and always Chain Lightning off them. Placing a few Earthquakes under the healing imps has the added benefit of interrupting their casts occasionally. This, in return, causes them to start attacking you, and to not group up around Agatha. This is not ideal, but if incoming damage is not critical I guess it's better than having them heal her. It is annoying to not be able to Chain Lightning them off Agatha, though. I'm not sure how much Path of Flame actually contributed in comparison to Totem Mastery, but Earthgrab Totem was nice. Slamming it down behind you on top of the imps when she switched side in phase 2 was very useful. Also, this fight almost seems tailor-made for Lightning Rod, so you should always Chain Lightning off Agatha unless Umbral Imps are up.The priority list of what to handle first is roughly the same for Elemental Shaman as for Fury Warriors:Phase 1 priority:1. Placing Fuming Imps correctly.2. Killing Umbral Imps.3. Killing shield + interrupting Dark Fury (use Maelstrom on Earth Shock even with adds up if you need to).4. DPSing Agatha according to 4a. and 4b.4a. Only Agatha up: Lightning Bolt as filler, Earth Shock as spender.4b. At least one imp within Chain Lightning distance of Agatha: Chain Lightning as filler, Earthquake as spender.Phase 2 priority:1. Dodging burning rocks.2. Running to Agatha.3. Everything in the priority order for phase 1.For legendaries, you want survivability before damage. The only exception to this might be Al'Akir's Acrimony, which could really help when burning down imps. Roots of Shaladrassil are absolutely amazing for this fight. Without them I would most likely have to change my entire approach to the imps. Prydaz is also good, and I would recommend using at least one of the two. Besides that, I'd recommend an average ilvl of around 900. You can do the challenge with lower, but as I wrote in the description of my Fury Warrior video - it's not that difficult to get an average of 900 ilvl nowadays. At least not compared to the effort required to beat this challenge. Good luck!
An Impossible Foe - Fury Warrior DrDante89 2017-07-14 | Hi again! I'm here with my fourth Mage Tower challenge, An Impossible Foe for Fury Warriors. This was also my final challenge for my warrior, making it the first class I completed all specializations for (for those wondering why I didn't get the achievement for it in this video, the achievement bugged out and was awarded to me after I did the Arms challenge, Closing the Eye, which I did before this). Around the time of the launch of the challenges I would definitely agree with what I read, that Agatha was one of the harder DPS challenges, ranking higher than Xylem and Sigryn. However, you can outgear this challenge in a much more direct way than you can outgear the other challenges I've done. Xylem and Sigryn both have mechanics you must deal with, no matter how good gear you have. Agatha has mechanics you _should_ deal with, but given good enough gear only a bad combination of fails will ruin your attempt, and those are infinitely easier to spot than in say, The Highlord's Return. This took me 7 tries, where 4 of those were serious, flasked attempts. In comparison, Sigryn (shaman) took ~4 tries, Xylem (warrior) took ~20 and Kruul (warrior) took ~200. I doubt I would have been able to get Agatha in fewer tries than Xylem closer to the launch of 7.2, however.Agatha has two phases. In phase 1, she stands still in the center of the room. The soft enrage is that she seems to summon more imps over time, but I'm not sure if that's just my imagination or not. Besides that, the entire fight is about managing the imps, and burning through her shield to interrupt her Dark Fury every now and then. Charge in with pre-pot (and drums if you want, but some people save this for phase 2), and start burning her down. Odyn's Fury together with your opener CDs and a Whirlwind or two should take care of the initial adds, just focus the rest on her. Every time a Fuming Imp spawns, move to the side and have it detonate out of the way (the Plague Zone left behind will slow you and deal damage, you want to limit the spreading of these as much as possible). When one or more Umbral Imps spawn, you need to kill these fairly quickly, as they shield Agatha and teleport around to dodge you. Whenever she has her shield up and no Umbral Imps are alive, burn her shield down and interrupt her Dark Fury cast (this interrupt can in fact be blocked if it's too close to her shield being destroyed, so take an extra second or so before you interrupt to be sure). Use Battle Cry + Odyn's Fury to clean up imps whenever they come off CD, and Whirlwind + Bloodthirst to mob up any survivors. When she reaches 50% HP, she'll go into phase 2.In phase 2 she will teleport to the back of the cave, and every now and then teleport to the other end, back and forth. You will also have to dodge the burning rocks that move from the back of the cave towards the entrance. If you get hit by these you will take a large amount of damage and get stunned for a few seconds. This is the only "hard" mechanic - do it correctly and you're fine, do it wrong and you risk dying (at my gear level I could eat one in most cases without dying, but if I did there was probably something else I did wrong that caught up to me later). Everything else is a shade of gray, you can handle imps perfectly, really poorly, or anything in between. I didn't do the best job handling imps, but it was enough for a kill. There is one upside in phase 2, and that is that imps need to be close to her to heal her. This gives you a few seconds of free DPS whenever she switches sides, since you are faster than they are.As a summary:Phase 1 priority:1. Placing Fuming Imps correctly.2. Killing Umbral Imps.3. Killing shield + interrupting Dark Fury.4. Killing imps if they are 4~ or more.5. DPSing Agatha.6. Killing imps.Phase 2 priority:1. Dodging burning rocks.2. Running to Agatha.3. Everything in the priority order for phase 1.For legendaries, I'd recommend anything that improves your survivability (I went for Prydaz and Mannoroth's bracers). It's more important to stay alive than to do a bit of extra damage (in my kill I had loads of time to spare before I would have been overwhelmed). Since this technically is in the Broken Isles (a cave in Faronaar, Azsuna, to be exact), Spiced Falcosaur Omelet works. Since you kill loads of imps regularly, I'd definitely recommend using it. Besides that, I'd recommend an average ilvl of at least 900 to do this challenge. Of course you can do it with less, that all depends on how much time you want to put into this. The reason I recommended an average ilvl of 900 for Kruul was because below 900 it becomes incredibly difficult to pull off. The reason I'd recommend 900 for Agatha is not that it's as difficult (it's by far easier than Kruul), but that 900 is not that hard to get right now. The effort to get this challenge down dwarfs the effort to get that gear level. Good luck!
Closing the Eye - Arms Warrior DrDante89 2017-06-22 | Here's my third Mage Tower challenge, Closing the Eye for Arms Warriors. I would rank this one between the first two I did, but much closer to The God-Queen's Fury than The Highlord's Return. This took me 20 tries, of which 10-15 were serious flasked up attempts. I mainly play Protection, so most of my experience lies there, but Kruul took me roughly 200 attempts to get down. I also had Haste gemmed and enchanted on most of my stuff instead of Mastery, as well as the tank enchant on my neck (I didn't bother redoing all that just for this challenge), but at the end it didn't matter that much. That being said, this challenge does have a DPS requirement in phase 2, and there's not a ton of room for mistakes near the end. This is mostly a mechanics challenge, like The God-Queen's Fury. However, instead of just knowing the mechanics and how to deal with them, this requires a bit more planning.Phase 1 consists of him being in either frost mode, arcane/shadow mode, or an intermission between these. In his frost mode, just DPS him while he casts his frost bolts at you (you can interrupt them to reduce incoming damage if you want). When he teleports away, either jump and then while you're mid-air Heroic Leap away from the ice prison, or use Bladestorm or Warbreaker + Whirlwinds to destroy the ice. If you walk through the ice, it will kill you. If you move through the beams in any way other than leaping you take a small amount of damage and get slightly pushed back. He casts his prison three times before going into his intermission, make sure you don't use leap for the third one (you want it in the intermission). In his intermission, kill the closest mirror image to you and stand in the bubble it leaves behind (it heals you). Look at the minimap - you want to reach Xylem (who is hiding in a shimmering area at the marked spot on your minimap) fairly quick, but walking through the shadow will slow you and kill you pretty quickly. Choose one mirror image between your first bubble and him, and charge towards it just after it has finished casting it's low range knockback. Kill it, and when you've healed up, Heroic Leap onto the shimmer, and he should transition into his arcane/shadow mode. Here, save your interrupt for his Draw Power ability. When he starts casting the shadowy ball ability, take notice of where he's looking (the balls will travel in that direction). Just avoid them while still doing damage. After a while he will teleport away, just run/Charge/Heroic Leap to get to him. Shortly after this, he'll go back into intermission, and then into frost mode. I don't think there's an enrage mechanic in phase 1, but if you don't have the damage to get him to 10% (which is when phase 2 starts) before his third intermission, phase 2 will be difficult.Phase 2 actually starts by dropping you from combat. Here you can eat and change talents/gear if you want. You want some 3-target burst in phase 2, but it's still mostly a single target fight. Use a second prepot after the big boss stops talking, and start burning it down. Move it towards the edge of the room, and then slowly throughout the phase move backwards just so you don't stand in his shadowy goo. The soft enrage is when there's no more clear space. You want to pop drums here too, but I saved it for my second (third) pot. When he starts casting his channel, Heroic Leap away as far away and place yourself as far away as you can (don't interrupt him before you do this!). When your debuff runs out, three adds will spawn on you and slowly move towards him. If they reach him they will heal him by a large amount, most likely resulting in a wipe. Save Warbreaker for this, and if you have Battle Cry up you want to use it here as well. Sweeping Strikes is amazing here, and if you have a trinket like Kil'jaeden's Burning Wish or Might of Krosus (what I'm using) they're great here too. Shockwave also helps. After this, get back to smacking the boss. Rinse and repeat until he's dead.For food, I used Bear Tartare to get some extra mobility, since there were lots of adds to kill. This is post 7.2.5, but with no new gear (I'm still pretty much a Mythic Nighthold geared Protection Warrior). As long as you keep track of the abilities and time your cooldowns to deal with them, you should be able to get this challenge down without too much of a hassle in similar gear (Normal Tomb of Sargeras gear will outperform what I used here). Good luck!
Galolo vs Guldan (Mythic) DrDante89 2017-06-05 | Gul'dan (Mythic) by Galolo, 2017-06-04 (first kill for the guild).PoV: Zarachi (Protection Warrior).Present for the kill were:Amberg, Brewsham, Draknalor, Dräger, Intrue, Kiranna, Krånkan, Lajm, Lonelystar, Manickan, Neelay, Nissemusse, Pandaalex, Trazel, Tuzze, Ximo, Yinu, Zarachi, Zatra and Zethy.Thanks to those who couldn't participate during the kill but were there during progression!Music:Philipp Weigl - Even when we fall (remixed for this video by me)Philipp Weigl - Subdivision of the Masses (remixed for this video by me)Philipp Weigl - Like Starlight through a Veilhttp://freemusicarchive.org/music/Philipp_WeiglI used ShadowPlay to capture my game footage, and Sony Vegas Pro 11.0 to put it all together.
Galolo vs Trilliax (Mythic) DrDante89 2017-06-05 | Trilliax (Mythic) by Galolo, 2017-02-05 (first kill for the guild). As the date might imply, this is a fairly old kill that got stuck in editing hell for a few months.PoV: Manickan (Retribution Paladin).Present for the kill were:Amberg, Brewsham, Cásanovà, Chanex, Draknalor, Dräger, Foxeh, Kiranna, Manickan, Nissemusse, Penecaprio, Psychodelic, Shosanna, Svett, Trollalex, Ximo, Yinu, Zarachi, Zatra and Zethy.Thanks to those who couldn't participate during the kill but were there during progression!Music:Jesse Spillane - Face Punch (remixed for this video by me) http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jesse_SpillaneI used Sony Vegas Pro 11.0 to edit and render this video.
The God-Queens Fury - Enhancement Shaman DrDante89 2017-06-04 | This challenge is SIGNIFICANTLY easier than the tank challenge, The Highlord's Return. This is purely a mechanics fight, make sure you don't get one-shot by mechanics and it's a pretty easy fight. Of course some gear is required, but whereas this can be done without too much effort at an average ilvl of 890, the tank challenge (for comparison) needs an almost flawless execution even at an average ilvl of 910. If you have Roots of Shaladrassil, this fight is almost trivial. In the video you will see me having relatively low DPS in order to focus entirely on handling mechanics (and even then, I got hit by Dark Wings at one point), I forgot to bring Ancient Healing Potions, I didn't use any Defiled Augment Runes, I had one bad talent choice (Hailstorm, since I normally use Akainu's Absolute Justice instead of the Roots of Shaladrassil), which in turn meant I used Frostbrand, which was wrong in that situation (I should have taken Ancestral Swiftness and skipped Frostbrand in my rotation). Even then, this challenge is not a DPS race. In fact, it gets easier the longer it goes on, since they for some reason stop using some abilities after a while (at the end you can see that the only abilities I have to deal with are Throw Spear, Ancestral Knowledge and Dark Wings).The basic abilities that will keep happening throughout the fight are:Sigryn - Throw Spear: Move out of the green fire.Jarl Velbrand - Hurl Axe: Not super important, but if you can dodge the flying axes you can avoid some knock-downs.Runeseer Faljar - Shadowbolt: Normal incoming damage, but if you have Sephuz's Secret you can interrupt these to proc the haste buff.Sigryn will also do a charging knock-back called Advance, but it's not that important to watch out for.Big abilities that you need to deal with IMMEDIATELY:Sigryn - Blood of the Father: Hex Sigryn when this is casting. She will kill you very quickly if she's loose when this has been cast.Jarl Velbrand - Berserker's Rage: Try to slow him down (Earthbind Totem is handy here), and run away from him. If you end up in melee he'll hit you very hard, and very fast.Runeseer Faljar - Runic Detonation: Run over the runes before they shrink out of existance. If this collides with a Berserker's Rage, use a Lightning Surge Totem to stun Velbrand in order to reach the runes in time.Abilities that need your attention, but aren't that difficult to deal with/aren't that harsh:Sygrin - Dark Wings: Find where the Val'kyr are, find the gap, and stand in the gap when they charge.Jarl Velbrand - Bladestorm: Run away from him, and if you have Lightning Surge Totem available you can stun him to interrupt his cast. If not, just stay away from him until he's done.Runeseer Faljar - Ancestral Knowledge: Damage him until his shield breaks, and then interrupt his cast. The cast is a one-shot, but the shield is easy to break. If you're struggling, however, save cooldowns for the shield.Throughout the fight Odyn will throw healing orbs into the arena. These heal for quite a lot and will disappear after a short while, so don't forget to run over them to automatically use them.If you don't have the healing legendary, you will just have to heal yourself more, but again - it's not a DPS race. Just be patient, deal with all the abilities, and you'll walk away with a new artifact appearance.
Galolo vs Guarm (Mythic) DrDante89 2017-06-04 | Guarm (Mythic) by Galolo, 2017-01-11 (first kill for the guild). As the date might imply, this is a fairly old kill that got stuck in editing hell for a few months.PoV: Zarachi (Protection Warrior).Present for the kill were:Amberg, Brewsham, Cásanovà, Chanex, Draknalor, Foxeh, Kiranna, Neelay, Nissemusse, Psychodelic, Skyjuice, Svett, Sweetnos, Tózza, Trollalex, Ximo, Yinu, Zarachi, Zatra and Zethy.Thanks to those who couldn't participate during the kill but were there during progression!Music:Michett - Artificial anxietyhttp://freemusicarchive.org/music/MichettI used ShadowPlay to capture my game footage, and Sony Vegas Pro 11.0 to put it all together.
The Highlords Return - Protection Warrior DrDante89 2017-05-04 | Another WoW video here. I haven't forgotten the cover I'm working on, but sadly I haven't been able to record in a while. It will eventually be done, I can promise that.Also, sorry for the weird frame drops at the beginning of the video. No idea what caused it.To do this challenge you need to have decent gear (I'd recommend an average ilvl of 900 or more with 4-set from Nighthold), and you need at least one healing legendary (Mannoroth's Bloodletting Manacles are ideal, but Prydaz, Xavaric's Magnum Opus also works). If you have Thundergod's Vigor, it's incredibly useful as well. I'm using that and the bracers, which is the ideal combo. I also had an average ilvl of 910, and pretty much the best trinket's as well, which brings me to the main point: At the moment you need really, really good gear, and you also need to spend a lot of time on this. People have beaten this with lower gear than what I'd recommend, but by then the room for mistakes become very small. This is also post-nerf. I put most of my tries into pre-nerf, where I basically just got past phase 1.More details: In phase 1, you basically want to do as much damage to Variss as possible while not letting his aura stack higher than 5. If it does, you have to be prepared to take an orb (you want to save as many of those as you can), or some cooldown. Doing this somewhat lines up with eyes spawning, but you have to be flexible. If you have Neltharion's Thunder (the new golden artifact trait), you want to ideally keep that up, even if you're outside his aura. You can see me doing this once or twice in the fight, and you can do it without the Crackling Thunder talent (you just have to be close to the edge). Besides abusing your Ignore Pain button, your main method of healing is getting Victory Rush procs. This means that killing off everything too quick might actually be disadvantageous. At the same time, you want to have the infernals walk through his aura if possible, you want to have Shield Block up for when you're doing damage to Variss, and when the small adds are up. Try to only use Spell Reflect if the small adds are up, but if you have to use it to survive use it. Don't be afraid of using big cooldowns, but be conscious of when you're going to need them again. When the infernals start casting the knock-back, side step it. I usually move in a circle around the boss for this reason. When the eyes starts casting their knockback, look directly toward the eye until it stops or you kill it. It doesn't seem to be enough to simply not have your back to it, the viewing angle seems to be pretty small. Try to make sure Variss gets hit by all of your Demoralizing Shouts as he's the main source of incoming damage in phase 1. The rest is just rinse and repeat, put enough tries into it to get the timings right. The soft enrage in this phase is the amount of infernals that spawn before you kill Variss. You ideally don't want more than 2 of them. The infernals will regenerate every now and then, which is the reason why.Once you get to phase 2, you want to use your second potion (Prolonged) and use drums (for some reason my keybind didn't seem to work, so you see me click it instead). If you have a lot of aura stacks from Variss going into phase 2, don't be afraid to use an orb. The soft enrage mechanic in this fight is his Annihilation. After a few stacks of this, you will just melt. Thankfully, you can block it (meaning Neltharion's Fury is great here), and you can also get him to cast it on Kor'vas as long as you're not in melee range when he starts the cast (I doubt she can take more than one or two of these though). This buys you some extra time. The first cast doesn't do a lot of damage, but for subsequent casts you want to plan cooldowns (including your artifact ability). You can also interrupt these by walking into Velen's orbs. He also casts Twisted Reflection. If you get this debuff, it's a wipe. It should either be interrupted or Spell Reflected (ideally the latter). However, if you have to use Spell Reflection to survive one of his fires, be prepared to interrupt him. If you interrupt this with an orb he'll just cast it again when he's out of his CC. You want to fight roughly around where Velen is, since the Nether Horrors from phase 1 will spawn in phase 2 and go straight for him. You also want to as soon as possible get out of fires (if Heroic Leap is off cooldown, use that). You also want to avoid getting pushed to where you don't want to be by the beams (you can run through one, but not two at the same time). You can however use this to get out of fire, if you plan ahead. All while this is happening, move out of the knock-backs.I accidentally had Haft equipped. It saved me at the end, but there are better trinkets (like the Claw from Skorpyron). All in all, expect lots of tries, and don't feel shitty if phase 2 feels like a brick wall after struggling through phase 1. It took me roughly 200 tries to beat. Good luck!
Galolo vs Odyn (Mythic) DrDante89 2016-12-19 | Odyn (Mythic) by Galolo, 2016-12-18 (first kill for the guild, pre-nerf). When the video was rendered, I had written the wrong date (one day later). CBA to re-render, but I added an annotation.PoV: Zarachi (Protection Warrior).Present for the kill were:Amberg, Brewsham, Chanex, Dräger, Friskyttskan, Kiranna, Linken, Neelay, Penecaprio, Psychodelic, Svett, Sweetnos, Tózza, Trollalex, Ximo, Yinu, Zaogunen, Zarachi, Zatra and Zethy.Thanks to those who couldn't participate during the kill but were there during progression!Music:Chronox - Final Flight (remixed for this video by me)Chronox - In Orbit (remixed for this video by me)Chronox - JunoChronox - The Launch (remixed for this video by me)http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Chronox_2I used ShadowPlay to capture my game footage, and Sony Vegas Pro 11.0 to put it all together.
Galolo vs Xavius (Mythic) DrDante89 2016-12-05 | Xavius (Mythic) by Galolo, 2016-11-17 (first kill for the guild).PoV: Zarachi (Protection Warrior).Present for the kill were:Brewsham, Chanex, Draknalor, Dräger, Kiranna, Linken, Manickan, Neelay, Nissemusse, Psychodelic, Skogsbob, Stormsalot, Svett, Tózza, Trollalex, Ximo, Yinu, Zarachi, Zatra and Zethy.Thanks to those who couldn't participate during the kill but were there during progression!Music:Micett - DemolitionMichett - Bitch pleaseScott Joplin - Ragtime Dancehttp://freemusicarchive.org/music/Michetthttp://freemusicarchive.org/music/Scott_JoplinI used ShadowPlay to capture my game footage, and Sony Vegas Pro 11.0 to put it all together.
Galolo vs Archimonde (Mythic) DrDante89 2016-06-25 | Archimonde (Mythic) by Galolo, 2016-05-26 (first kill for the guild).PoVs: Zarachi (Protection Warrior), Zethy (Subtlety Rogue), Göstaxd (Arcane Mage).Present for the kill were:Barbie, Cásanovà, Dayum, Draknalor, Dräger, Feane, Göstaxd, Haylie, Kiranna, Manickan, Neelay, Níle, Psychodelic, Quietdemon, Robowcop, Skalvar, Ximo, Zarachi, Zethy and Zhanex.Thanks to everyone who couldn't participate during the kill but were there during progression!Music:Kai Engel - OneiriKai Engel - Low Horizon (remixed for this video by me)Kai Engel - Snowmenhttp://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kai_EngelI used ShadowPlay to capture my game footage, and Sony Vegas Pro 11.0 to put it all together.
That time Roadhog and Hanzo went to London DrDante89 2016-06-06 | Hey there! Some casual, unedited Overwatch with my friend Kali. This was sort of a test run to see how good ShadowPlay footage at 1080p 60fps would turn out, and how much of a performance hit I'd take doing it. Ended up being fairly transparent. Maybe an average of 5 FPS lower than without it, which I consider survivable (especially compared to the truckload of an FPS drop I get running Fraps). For reference, my GPU is a GeForce GTX 970, and my CPU is an i5-4670K.When recording it, I accidentally set the audio recording options to not catch my microphone, meaning it only got the game and what I heard through Skype. It might sound like Kali is insane and is having a 19 minute conversation with the voices in her head, but I can assure you that I was responding and doing some talking on my own in between my missed hooks and arrow duds. No idea if I'll make uploading game footage a thing or not. I have one more game-related video (as in, not a cover) coming that I know of, after that I'll have to wait and see.So, why is this not a cover then? Well, I can say that I do have something in the works, that the transcription and arrangement is done. Recording is half-way done, and exams are done for the moment. I really hope I can get it done in the coming weeks, but I don't want to make promises I'm not sure I can keep. I've kind of said "it's just around the corner" a few times too many for that already.All in all, I used ShadowPlay (in GeForce Experience) to capture the footage, and Sony Vegas Pro 11 to crop and render the video.Kali does World of Warcraft How-To's as well as some Overwatch content. Go check her out over at her channel:youtube.com/channel/UC-kfFJYlU3iOQMLjxU82zUgUntil next time!
TDDD23 - AcroBlastics DrDante89 2015-10-21 | Screencast of my 2D side scroller platformer game project from the course TDDD23 at Linköping University held during autumn 2015.
Wizards & Warriors (Metal medley) DrDante89 2011-08-27 | Hey people! I wanted to get this one done before I say a temporary farewell to my guitars for about a year. I'm going to Japan to study, and will probably not have the means to do more songs until I'm back.There are 4 guitar tracks in most parts of this song, and each one has a dedicated place in the window. The exception is at the very end, where sharp-eared individuals might hear two tracks I couldn't fit on the video.I only used my Ibanez RG270DX on this one, mostly in order to show off my green strings (which didn't really show that much, but you can see them if you squint), but also since this was a bit harder than the other songs I've done, and I still play better on my Ibanez than on the Gibson.The audio is as usual recorded through my trusty POD X3 Live. I used Cubase for the samples, the drums, while the bass and mixing was done in Sony ACID 5.0. The video editing was done in Sony Vegas 10.The video was incredibly frustrating to record. Since I'm going away I've stowed away most off my stuff, and I accidentaly did so with my webcam. That meant the only options I had was my shit laptop cam, and my digital camera. So I used the latter, where I would have to transfer the files via memory card. And the thing runs on batteries well, so I had to recharge those when I had the chance. More than once I had to scrap a take because the battery was dead. Ugh.I'm not including a list of what-song-starts-when, since frankly, I don't really know the names of the songs. I know the last one is the title theme, if anyone knows the names of the rest (if they have any) please tell me, and I'll update this.This song uses standard E tuning, which for those of are you who interested but for some reason don't know is:eBGDAEAll in all, I'm pleased with how this one came out. It was a bit stressing to do this right before I'm off to Japan, but I really wanted it done. Big thanks to the kind reviews I've gotten for my other covers, and to those of you with suggestions: you never know if a suggestion might sway my choice for the next cover. I do take all suggestions in consideration when I choose the next song, only most suggestions usually are from myself.EDIT: Added links to the mp3 and the tab! Whoo!EDIT 2: The links are updated. (4/10-2017)EDIT 3: The links are gone! If you're interested in tabs or the mp3, send me a pm! (5/1-2020)
Funny L.A. Noire bug - The Invisible Man! DrDante89 2011-06-21 | I just came across a quite funny bug in L.A. Noire - playing it on the PS3. For those who are confused, there is actually supposed to be another dude next to the one with the green shirt/jacket, and he's supposed to talk quite a lot in this newspaper flashback/clip. You can see his lines in the subtitles. The funniest part though, is when he puts on his hat and walks away at 1:56.Also, there might be more model bugs in this video. I only noticed one more - the dude who shoots down from the roof is also invisible.
Wizards & Warriors II: Ironsword - Title Theme (Metal cover) DrDante89 2011-03-16 | Hey there! Here's another video game metal cover, this time the title theme from Wizards & Warriors II: Ironsword. I'd been thinking of what to cover, when I heard this song, and felt that I just had to make one. I hope you enjoy it!This one only has 4 guitar tracks, so the video split should cover all the guitar parts.I didn't use my Gibson for this one, partly because I didn't feel like tuning it down, and partly because frankly, I kinda forgot. Oh well. It's still my Fina FAC-603CEQ for the acoustic parts and my old Ibanez RG 270DX for the rest. As usual recorded through my POD X3 Live. Cubase for the samples, drums and bass, and recorded and mixed in Sony ACID 5.0. My webcam, however, outright refused to record in anything higher than 15FPS, and I had to record through Logitechs QuickCapture system, so it's a bit lower quality video this time around. Self-cloning again thanks to Sony Vegas 8.0.This time, the guitars are tuned down to Drop C - that is down one step and then another step for the 6th string:e--dB--AG--FD--CA--GE--CThis would have been slightly more enjoying to make if I hadn't decided to only work on it when I really didn't actually have the time to, as well as finishing it 8 AM when I have a cold, but then again, you don't make time for music. Music gives you breaks every now and then.EDIT: Re-mastered the song, the audio track in the video is still the old one, but I now have a better quality version.EDIT 2: The links are updated. (4/10-2017)EDIT 3: The links are gone! If you're interested in tabs or the mp3, send me a pm! (5/1-2020)
Zelda: Majoras Mask - Oath To Order (Metal cover) DrDante89 2009-01-10 | This is me playing a metal cover of Oath to Order from Zelda: Majora's Mask. The arrangement was made by me, but was heavily influenced by the orchestral version of the piece. This is also a part of the Metallic Pixels project.A few comments: The acoustic guitar sometimes sounds a bit out of tune. That's what you get for having it tuned in E with the same strings for about a year and then suddenly tune it down a step. The acoustic parts were, by the way, incredibly frustrating to record. You could hear ever tiny teensy weensy mistake super clear with the settings I had to use. Apart from that, arranging and recording it was fun, but it took a while.I'm using my Ibanez RG270DX for the electric guitar parts and my Ibanez AWCELG for the acoustic parts (double Ibanez, hooo!), everything through my Pod X3 Live. Cubase took care of the drums, bass and various keyboard parts (organ, choir, strings), and everything was mixed in Sony ACID 5.0.In this song everything is tuned down a full step, from E to D:e--dB--AG--FD--CA--GE--DEDIT: Re-mastered the song, the audio track in the video is still the old one, but I now have a better quality version.EDIT 2: The links are updated. (4/10-2017)EDIT 3: The links are gone! If you're interested in tabs or the mp3, send me a pm! (5/1-2020)
