With the new changes to Mage Tower Timewalking, players are trying out different builds in order to get around some of the restrictions. The latest change was on June 20th and it included abilities like Skystrike which is now banned with no exceptions. What does this mean for current Legendary Legendaries?
We discovered in Patch 9.1.5 that when in Mage Tower Timewalking, players will be unable to use some skills and effects. While in the Mage Tower, Covenant powers, Shadowlands Legendaries, and other items will be unable to use.
Timewalking in the Mage Tower in Patch 9.1.5
Blizzard announced the reintroduction of the Mage Tower in Patch 9.1.5 nearly a month ago. Players will be able to face 7 distinct tasks throughout all 36 specialties in World of Warcraft, with unique transmog prizes and a mount available if all 7 challenges are completed.
Check out Blizzard’s official article for additional information on the Mage Tower.
Timewalking Announcement from Mage Tower
In Mage Tower Timewalking, balancing player power is important.
According to the announcement, player strength will be adjusted when timewalking in Mage Tower.
Blizzard
We’re tuning the encounters in Timewalking to normalize player power, with the goal of providing a meaningful level of difficulty to current players. While the Challenges were considered quite difficult for most of Legion, we’re tuning them to provide a meaningful level of difficulty to current players.
Because the Mage Tower had not been publically tested, we had no idea what sort of normalization Blizzard would select. However, the new spell PvP Stats – Spec Stat Template – All Specs (Mage Tower Edition), which is almost similar to the Legion PvP stat template spell PvP Stats – Spec Stat Template – All Specs, was previously datamined.
To put it another way, the only thing that mattered about your gear in Legion’s PvP stat formula was its item level. You couldn’t utilize it no matter how much crit or haste your gear had, or what trinkets you had on. Every class had a stat template that was automatically allocated in PvP combat — a set of main and secondary stats that were the same for everyone in the same spec. Based on the item level of your equipped gear, this may be raised by a tiny amount.
Now, we don’t know how the Mage Tower will be normalized, but based on this datamined spell, we may be getting “stat templated” — that is, it won’t matter what gear you have on since every player of the same spec will have the same stats. This makes sense if Blizzard wants Mage Tower Timewalking to remain a challenge indefinitely, since they’ll be able to simply tweak or modify the stat templates as required, and they won’t have to worry about the content becoming outscaled or a specific item breaking the encounter. When testing begins on Thursday, we’ll have to see whether this is verified.
Banned Abilities and Effects – Class Restrictions
Blizzard seems to have developed a list of prohibited effects and abilities to ensure that Mage Tower Timewalking does not become excessively easy or difficult as a result of the addition/removal of systems. We’ve datamined these forbidden skills, and they won’t work when your character is in one of the seven Mage Tower Timewalking zones. This list was built in the database in such a manner that Blizzard may easily add to it in the future.
The following skills and effects are presently prohibited:
Unholy or Blood Shards of Domination, as well as genuine Soulbind characteristics, are presently not on the prohibited list (e.g. First Strike). Because the rest of the Covenant and Shard of Domination effects have been prohibited, this is most likely an oversight.
This datamining seems to be supported in the latest two 9.1.5 PTR versions, with two additional strings added. When you attempt to utilize a restricted ability within Mage Tower Timewalking, these strings seem to be the error text messages.
- SPELL FAILED NOT IN MAGE TOWER NEW SPELL FAILED NOT IN MAGE TOWER That won’t work in Mage Tower.
- NEW TOOLTIP NOT IN MAGE TOWER Disabled when timewalking in the Mage Tower
Conclusion
Blizzard may alter these limitations before launch, and we’ll be able to try out the Mage Tower ourselves for 24 hours on Thursday to see how things go. If these limitations take effect, you’ll be playing your character without the Shadowlands mechanics you’ve been familiar with over the past year. Blizzard, on the other hand, will be able to tune around this.
What sort of stats will players have in these challenges if your class doesn’t have their Covenant ability?
However, keeping Shadowlands systems (and future systems) out of the Timewalking challenge is probably a smart idea in order to keep the Mage Tower alive in the future!
