The End of the Risen Threat Mage Tower challenge can be completed by Restoration Druids, Restoration Shamans, Holy Paladins, Holy Priests and Mistweaver Monks. The challenge involves multiple phases, with focus on healing friendly party members (NPCs) and timed solo sections.
Phase One
Phase one involves 5 back-to-back waves of enemy mobs. Heal your party members through the damage and focus on a few of their key mechanics. Any time you can, do damage to the enemies to help speed up the phase, ideally spells that don’t cost mana and prioritise the Mage.
Interrupt the Mage after 2 or 3 casts of Arcane Blitz to reset the stacks and reduce the damage going out.
When the Corrupted Risen Arbalest is casting its Mana Sting arrow on you, make sure to be behind the warrior to have the arrow hit the warrior or CC to interrupt it if you have enough for the Mage, the Soldier and the Arbalest. When the Mana Sting arrow hits, you need to dispel the warrior to remove the damage portion of the DoT it applies. Position yourself throughout this phase so you are close to the warrior to be ready for the arrows. If the arrow hits you, it will sap 60% of your mana every second, making healing this phase a lot harder, but it can be dispelled and be recovered if you are quick enough. It’s often better to save the CC and to just let it hit the warrior.
The Corrupted Risen Soldier will channel Knife Dance, it will deal a high amount of AoE damage and should be CC’d to interrupt it or will need a high amount of throughput healing. After the Knife Dance, the Soldier will become empowered and start to fixate on you. You can, CC it, kite it or use a defensive if you can outheal it such as Bear Form and Frenzied Regen. When the fight gets hectic, using a defensive to allow you to stay in melee for the Mana Sting arrow and to focus on healing can be helpful.
If your spec has an AoE interrupt, try to use that one for when a Mage’s and a Soldier’s (or multiple Soldiers in Wave 4) casts line up, but it's not necessary. Always prioritise interrupting the Mage as the other mechanics can be out healed.
When the Soldier is channeling Knife Dance or Fixate, especially during wave 4 when there are two Soldiers active, you need to be prepared to heal through higher damage. Having a cooldown available for wave 4 and 5 is recommended, as well as using throughput buffs such as Drums.
Phase Two: Intermission
Once phase one has finished, you will have a slight downtime, use this time to drink/eat food and regain your mana. When ready, follow the friendly NPCs into the building.
Phase Three
In this phase, you no longer have your party members to heal. You will be focusing on doing damage and keeping yourself alive whilst moving through the rooms and up the tower within the 5 minute timer.
Exploding Eyes
You will move into a room with eyes that upon death deal a large amount of explosive damage, around 50% of your health. You want to focus them down one at a time and heal between each to stay healthy. There isn’t a major rush, so stay healthy and make sure you don’t die from killing too many at once.
Staircase
When all of the eyes are dead, the gate will open and reveal a pack of mobs that you need to kill. Attack them, but let them move into the room as there are Unstable Fel Orbs around them. The orbs will deactivate for a few seconds after being attacked, but will reactivate after that timer, so be aware.
Once these mobs have been defeated, you can attack the orbs to deactivate them, and move to open the locked gate behind them that leads upwards.
First Gate
There is a feared mob running around, you should dispel this mob first to avoid it fearing you when it gets too close.
Then, proceed to quickly heal up the friendly targets to full, if they reach 0 health they will turn into an enemy mob, you really want to avoid this. If any of the mobs do transform, you will need to kill them by yourself and may struggle to recover.
Once the friendly NPCs are healed, pull the Corrupted Risen Arbalest and DPS it down as quickly as you can. Be prepared to position yourself behind one of the healed friendly targets or CC to interrupt when it casts Mana Sting.
Second Gate
Moving up the staircase, open the next locked gate. This section of stairs has a lot of Unstable Fel Orbs, you need to damage them to 0 and make your way past them as they respawn after 3 seconds. Don’t get stuck in this gauntlet.
Third Gate
This room contains a Dread Corruptor (your primary target) and multiple Flickering Eyes (same as in the previous room). The rotating eyes on the floor with beams should be avoided as they increase the damage you take whilst also doing some damage to you, which is a lethal combo if an Eye dies and explodes whilst you have the debuff.
You want to prioritise damaging the Dread Corruptor first, remembering not to kill an Eye whilst you have the damage taken debuff and to not kill more than one Flickering Eye at a time as they still do large explosive damage when they die.
Phase Four: Intermission
This is another pause in the challenge, you can recover mana and let your cooldowns reset (including your Bloodlust/Heroism cooldown).
Once you are ready for the final phases, open the gate to start the next phase.
Phase Five
During this phase you will be healing waves of friendly NPCs (until you fully heal 8 in total) that move slowly from the outside of the room to the boss in the middle. The NPCs you fail to heal to full will be the mobs you fight in the next phase, so it's important to to maximise your success here to make the next phase easier. The friendly NPCs are the same as the enemy mobs in Phase One, so you can also target which ones you decide you won’t be able to heal in a wave to avoid stacking too many problematic mobs.
Whilst healing these waves, you also need to continue healing your party of friendly NPCs again. They have been turned on each other, so one may take more damage than the others. Keep healing up on them throughout this phase.
It’s recommended that you use throughput cooldowns and consumables in this phase to really burst heal the NPC waves. You should ideally only have 3 waves to complete this stage, so plan your cooldown usage to fully heal 3 NPCs on the first two waves and then 2 NPCs on the third wave.
Phase Six
Any of the NPCs you didn’t fully heal in the previous phase will now become hostile. These mobs are the same as in Phase One, so you need to deal with them the same way as you did before, prioritising interrupting with CC accordingly. Damage down the risen mobs and heal your party of friendly NPCs.
Just before the next phase starts and if your party members are already healthy, you can try to start to eat, if you position yourself behind your party members, you should be able to eat long enough to get some mana back before the final phase starts to ramp up. Although, it can be a little hit or miss to if you are in combat.
Phase Seven: Final Phase
During this phase you are fighting Commander Edris Thorn. You will need to continue healing your party members until they defeat him and finish the challenge.
You want to start this phase at the edge of the room as he will shortly leap to you, dealing damage and leaving a green AoE pool that you want to move out of. He will repeat this leap after every detonation of Ignite Soul. Ignite Soul is a debuff applied to your character that upon running out will explode and deal damage based on how much health you have to your party members. The more health you have, the more damage the explosion does to your party members.
Ideally you always want your own health to be around 40-50%, using the green patches on the floor to lower your own health if it's too high before an Ignite Soul explosion. Generally, avoid overhealing when Ignite Soul is on you and use damage reduction to avoid dying to the explosion rather than throughput healing on yourself. Your focus in this phase is to keep your party alive, so maintain your own health lower and keep them topped up after every mechanic.
Keep positioning the pools neatly overlapping each other by moving to the edge of the previous one, rotating around the room to avoid running out of space.
Although healing can be quite hectic in this phase, any extra damage you provide to the boss will speed up the final phase, so do what you can whilst not letting your party members drop.
It’s also important to note that if you die close to the end, wait before releasing as your party members might just have enough to finish the challenge.