End of the Risen Threat: a Legion Timewalking Mage Tower Guide for Healers

This challenge, End of the Risen Threat is meant for most of the healer specializations: Holy Priest, Holy Paladin, Mistweaver Monk, Restoration Druid, and Restoration Shaman. It is currently available in the Broken Shore hub area at all times, and you no longer need to wait for a Legion Timewalking event to be active.

In order to reach this area, you can take a portal from Orgrimmar / Stormwind's portal room to Azsuna and then fly or take the flight path to the Broken Shore hub, Deliverance Point. You can also use the Dalaran Hearthstone to quickly reach Dalaran and then fly to Deliverance Point.

In this challenge you will need to defeat all enemies and the final boss, Lord Erdris Thorn, in a 7-stage encounter.

If any of your allies dies in the process, you get booted out of the challenge, so keeping everyone healthy is also fundamental.

Ultimately, many of the enemy abilities are designed to cause unhealable damage unless dealt with by your utility and / or strategy. We will explain below what to watch out for and how to neutralize each ability.

Because inside the Mage Tower Challenge you have your gear scaled to item level 120, the best gear you can use is gear above 120 that has multiple sockets available such as Legion's crafted legendaries ( Vigilance Perch), and enchants that scale well at 50 such as Enchant Neck - Mark of the Ancient Priestess.

Heart of Azeroth and Ashjra'kamas, Shroud of Resolve have extra stats relative to comparable gear for the neck and cloak slot, making them great options.

You can also get some old trinkets which are very powerful when downscaled, but with the current tuning of the challenges, just using your regular gear should be perfectly fine as long as you follow this guide and get a decent amount of practice with the challenge itself.

To allow these challenges to present a consistent level of difficulty over time, your various borrowed power systems will not function within the Mage Tower challenges. This includes:

• Dragonflight Embellishments
• Any Covenant-related effects (Covenant Ability, Signature Ability, Soulbinds, Conduits)
• Legendary Powers from Shadowlands or Legion (the items will still provide stats, their equip effects will not)
• Legendary items from Questlines ( Ashjra'kamas, Shroud of Resolve, Warlords of Draenor Legendary Rings, Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest, Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings)
• Any Shards of Domination
• Any Battle for Azeroth systems (Azerite Gear, Traits, Essences)
• Any tier set bonuses
• Mists of Pandaria Legendary Meta Gems

Disclaimer: the enchants listed below are meant for Timewalking gear pieces. If you are using current tier armor, most of the enchants listed will not work and you should instead use regular enchants, as many of these enchants only work on low item level gear.

Slot	Option 1	Option 2
Neck	Enchant Neck - Mark of the Ancient Priestess	Enchant Neck - Mark of the Claw / Enchant Neck - Mark of the Trained Soldier
Shoulder	Greater Crane Wing Inscription	Secret Crane Wing Inscription (if Scribe)
Cloak	Enchant Cloak - Minor Power	Enchant Cloak - Fortified Leech
Chest	Enchant Chest - Eternal Stats	Enchant Chest - Glorious Stats
Bracers	Enchant Bracers - Eternal Intellect
Gloves	Enchant Gloves - Major Spellpower
Belt	Living Steel Belt Buckle	Ebonsteel Belt Buckle / Eternal Belt Buckle
Legs	Brilliant Spellthread	Powerful Ghostly Spellthread
Boots	Enchant Boots - Greater Haste / Enchant Boots - Greater Versatility / Enchant Boots - Greater Precision	Enchant Boots - Pandaren's Step
Rings	Current ring enchants
Weapon	Enchant Weapon - Machinist's Brilliance	Enchant Weapon - Jade Spirit

While current gems are fine, we would recommend using primary stat gems whenever possible. For healers, these would be Burning Primal Diamond or Burning Shadowspirit Diamond on a helm meta gem socket and one Leviathan's Eye of Intellect, one Kraken's Eye of Intellect, one Saber's Eye of Intellect, and as many Timeless Tanzanites as you can get.

Also, Queen's Garnets can be easily obtained via the Auction House (farmed at the Dragon Soul old raid) and are used to craft Brilliant Queen's Garnet.

While you can use your regular flasks in Timewalking content, they have a much lower effect due to the downscaling involved.

Thus, is is preferred to use flasks from Battle for Azeroth (31 Primary Stats) or flasks from Legion (21 Primary Stats).

Using a Pocket-Sized Computation Device (Mechagon) with the Cyclotronic Blast red card inside provides a high amount of burst damage, which can be useful in some of the stages where there are priority targets.

Unstable Arcanocrystal (Withered J'im Legion World Boss) and Chipped Soul Prism (Doom Lord Kazzak Warlords of Draenor World Boss) both provide a very high amount of stats.

While each stage has its own dangers, you will be required to perform strong single-target healing on friendly NPCs that do not appear on raid frames in the later stages. Make absolutely sure that you have your best single-target heals on mouseover keybinds ready to go before starting, in order to avoid wasting precious attempts because of UI issues.

You will also need to dispel one NPC that is not on your party frames later on, so make sure to have it ready and keybound ahead of time.

The first stage is also the most challenging, as you will face relentless waves of three types of enemies, all of which have abilities that can end your run immediately:

• Corrupted Risen Mages chain cast Arcane Blitz, a high-damage single-target spell that boosts the damage of further casts by 50% for a short duration and stacks. Any sort of cast disruption you can land on a Mage will make it lose all damage stacks, so stop them after they get off one or two casts before damage is too high and one shots you or your party members;
• Corrupted Risen Soldiers mostly melee, can critical strike, and can enrage and fixate you or your teammates. They also periodically cast Knife Dance, which does a lot of AoE damage to all of your group;
• Corrupted Risen Arbalests shoot random targets and use Mana Sting, a dispellable debuff which drains Mana and deals significant damage per tick. Have one of your allies take the shot for you and instantly dispel it to make this ability almost irrelevant.

You counter Corrupted Risen Mages by focusing damage on them and disrupting them to reset stacks if they get more than one or two casts off. Corrupted Risen Soldiers should be disrupted on their Knife Dances or, alternatively, you can use healing cooldowns to power through the damage. Also, either use a personal cooldown or run away from their fixates to reduce damage taken. Finally, make sure to position yourself behind an ally when Corrupted Risen Arbalests cast Mana Sting and be ready to instantly dispel it as soon as it lands.

Because of the difficulty of this stage, we will cover each wave of enemies that you need to face individually:

1. 1 Arbalest — this is the easiest wave and you can just focus on positioning for the Mana Sting while helping with DPS;
2. 1 Arbalest, 1 Mage — focus down the Mage as quickly as possible while using any interrupts, stuns, or displacements to stop its Arcane Blitz casts;
3. 1 Soldier, 1 Mage — similar to before, focus the Mage quickly while disrupting its casts. Remember to stun or displace the Knife Dance cast once it begins, which will give you more than enough time to kill the Mage before another dance begins. Do not underestimate the damage of the Soldier fixates, as unlucky incoming crits can easily ruin your day;
4. 2 Soldiers, 1 Mage — this is the hardest wave, as having two soldiers will make the double Knife Dance much more dangerous and you will have to run away or use a personal immediately if you get double fixates. As always, interrupt and kill the Mage quickly using any area of effect crowd control you have to interrupt all enemies when the first double dance starts channeling. Healing cooldowns and Bloodlust or Drums of Deathly Ferocity are very useful to kill the Mage fast and also help keep your group stable through the high incoming damage, while all enemies are up and also on any double knife dances you get later;
5. 1 Arbalest, 1 Soldier, 1 Mage — is similar to the 1 Soldier and 1 Mage wave as long as you position yourself correctly and dispel the Mana Sting quickly. Interrupt and focus the Mage down first, disrupt Knife Dance once it starts channeling and use a personal cooldown to survive the Soldier fixates, especially if it lines up with Mana Sting, since kiting could make you get hit;

As the hardest stage in this challenge, your full Healing, DPS, and utility toolkit will be thoroughly tested throughout the waves, especially in the final two. Keep an eye out on who the Mages target while casting Arcane Blitz, as you will need to throw quick powerful single-target heals to prevent deaths, especially if Knife Dance is also happening simultaneously.

Fortunately, every class has at least one way to interrupt both the Mages and Soldiers at the same time, which you can use to cancel the first dance channels. Keep in mind that disrupting the cast itself just makes the Soldiers immediately use it again, so try to interrupt it as soon as it goes off, instead. If you do it perfectly, you will gain more than enough time to finish the Mage off before more Knife Dances happen in every wave where this is a source of deaths.

Use Leg Sweep, Ring of Peace, Psychic Scream, Capacitor Totem, Typhoon, or Blinding Light for this purpose, as well as any single-target crowd control you have, such as Hammer of Justice or Turn Evil.

Simply move ahead with your allies once you are ready and you will progress into the next stage once you reach the locked gate.

You can use this time to fully recover from the previous battles, wait for cooldowns, change your gear, or change your talents with a tome, if needed. Usually you will have the relevant cooldowns ready when you need them later if you go immediately, regardless, as there are a few time-consuming obstacles in the way.

This stage has a 5-minute timer, but you will have more than enough time to complete it before the timer is up as long as you keep pulling consistently. The most important thing is to not die or panic, so make sure to keep a slow and steady pace!

Once you can move again, you will be surrounded by Flickering Eye enemies which slowly move toward you. These are not hard to kill, but deal a lot of damage if you are near them and also explode when killed. The ideal strategy is to focus the one in front of you down quickly, heal yourself, then proceed to move into the space it occupied and that should afford you more than enough time to kill some more, which opens up even more space to kite, and so on.

The next room has a Felspite Dominator and three Fel Bat Pups which enrage after a short period. Simply kill off the Bats quickly and finish off the Dominator afterwards. Proceed to the next gate while using any damage abilities to temporarily deactivate the Unstable Fel Orbs before moving over them.

Past the gate, you will find a Panicked Soul and three Damaged Souls. Dispel the Panicked Soul to avoid being feared from its Incite Panic if it wanders near you while moving into range of the other souls — be careful not to aggro the hostile Corrupted Risen Arbalest at the top of the stairs, though — and heal them evenly, as they are taking damage over time and will turn into powerful enemies if you let them die.

Once they are healed, kill the Arbalest standing between you and the gate, making sure to crowd control it when it uses Mana Sting, or simply stand behind one of the three healed adds, who will soak it for you, buying you more than enough time to finish the Arbalest before you run out of adds to hide behind. These adds do not need to be dispelled from the sting effect, as they just run out when hit.

The next room is full of Unstable Fel Orbs. Deactivate any orbs in your way with your damage spells while running to the gate on the top. Be especially careful with any orbs standing next to the gate at the top of the stairs, as it is possible that this orb will reactivate on top of you while you are still opening the gate, so move inside immediately once it opens to avoid being hit from behind.

The final room of this stage has the Dread Corruptor responsible for the capture of the rest of your group and three Flickering Eyes. The Corruptor deals very low damage but has high health and creates rotating laser eyes on the floor which should be avoided as they increase your damage taken from all sources while you are touching them.

This is especially dangerous alongside the proximity attack and death explosion of a Flickering Eye, so we recommend killing the Eyes first to free up space inside the room, as the main reason you will die in this room is because of being caught by one of the Eyes while moving away from rotating lasers. As always, make sure to heal yourself to full after each Eye kill and reposition as needed. Once all eyes are dead, it is a simple matter to kill the Inquisitor while moving away from the lasers whenever he throws them on the floor.

This is a preparation stage, similar to the second, where you can wait for healing cooldowns, get full health and Mana, and adjust any gear or talents needed for the final stretch. You can go before the sated debuff from Bloodlust or drums expires, as you should save it for the final stage anyway.

Once you are prepared, open the last gate and go up the stairs to meet Lord Erdris Thorn, the final boss of this challenge. You will not face him just yet, however...

This stage serves to challenge your healing capabilities: you will have to keep your allies healthy as they fight each other, while simultaneously healing waves of 3 spread apart souls before they reach the boss and are converted into enemies.

Healing 8 souls will finish this part of the encounter instantly, which means that you should use healing cooldowns and consumables on the first and second waves in order to maximize your odds of healing 6 souls, at which point you can just use your baseline single-target heals to heal 2 souls in the final wave, with the third being automatically healed by the stage transition.

Under current tuning, the souls you have to heal have very little health, making them easily healed with just a few spells, or a single healing cooldown.

Regardless, always prioritize healing souls to full if you cannot heal them all in time, as any souls that reach the boss will convert into enemies in Stage 6, even if they had 99% health. You can also consider letting one soul go through on purpose on the first or second waves in order to get as much time as possible to regenerate Mana before the final stage.

Immediately drink once this stage begins if not at full Mana.

In this stage you will fight all the souls you failed to heal in time in the previous stage simultaneously. They convert into the same enemies you fought in Stage 1 so the same strategies to deal with them apply. One or two enemies are no problem, three is difficult as it was before and four or above is almost surely a wipe. If you did not let any souls get through, the final stage will begin almost immediately.

You will finally face Lord Erdris Thorn himself. Be ready to start DPSing him as soon as he becomes active! The soft enrage timer under current tuning is extremely tight, and you will have to DPS a lot to make it in time, at least if you are not using any special gear or consumables.

Losing at this stage with just a few percent left on Erdris is quite painful, so make sure to use a DPS potion at the start of the phase and pop Bloodlust or Drums of Deathly Ferocity to make the most out of the initial part before the boss starts using his mechanics.

He will periodically jump on top of you, dealing damage and leaving a fel damage zone on the ground. Make sure to position these in the edges of the room and near previous zones, and slowly circle around the room in order to maximize the space you have available until the whole room is covered in fel, which is the soft enrage you have to beat.

The jump and fel zones would be easy to deal with were it not for Ignite Soul, which is also periodically cast on you and both abilities are constantly overlapping.

You want to have enough health left to survive the jump damage and one tick of the fel zone, but not so much health that you oneshot your allies with Ignite Soul. Because this amount can vary a lot with your personal health pool, we recommend you to pay close attention to how much health you lose with the first jump and fel zone ticks while moving out. That is the amount of health you will want to have whenever you are not about to explode.

Ignite Soul lasts for 9 seconds before exploding for damage equal to your current life total to the rest of your party. You can use the fel zones to quickly lose health if needed in order to lower your health as much as you dare before exploding. Just be careful that you can get jumped on when waiting to explode, and if you are killed it will be down to whether your party can down the boss before any of them dies. Using a personal cooldown while waiting for the explosion to occur is a good way to ensure you will not be killed by a badly-timed jump while at low health.

Ultimately, this is a DPS race where you also need to heal your party and carefully control your health. The most important things are positioning the fel zones around the edges of the room to delay the enrage as much as possible and keeping everyone healthy, except yourself when about to explode with Ignite Soul.

Once the boss dies, even if you are also dead, you win the challenge and receive your rewards!

Your reward for completing the challenge is a transmog set of armor that is a recolored version of the Tomb of Sargeras set for your class, which was in turn inspired by TBC's Tier 6, which dropped in the Black Temple.

If you can manage to do all 7 challenges at least once, you will also obtain the Mage-Bound Spelltome mount and the A Tour of Towers achievement. Completing every challenge across all classes and specializations also awards the Tower Overwhelming Feat of Strength.

You can learn more about this mount in the guide below.