WoW: Season of Discovery 10-man Mage squad defeats Blackfathom Deeps raid
Blizzard EntertainmentOne of the significant new content additions in World of Warcraft: Season of Discovery is the 10-man raid adaptation of Blackfathom Deeps, and an unorthodox group of spellcasters has now defeated it.
The new raid has been conquered many times at this point, with players able to scoop some unique, fresh gear in the process. Though there are some unusually tricky mechanics for Classic WoW, the powers that each class has access to in Season of Discovery makes a full clear a relatively achievable goal.
As a result, many players are finding ways to renew the challenge of the raid while they wait for the arrival of the game’s second phase. This includes unorthodox group compositions, timed runs and attempting the raid with less than ten players.
Now, one dedicated squad has completed Blackfathom Deeps with an entire team of Mages.
New Mage powers make a Blackfathom Deeps class run possible
In a post on Reddit, one member of the raiding party shared a victorious screenshot of the Mages posing in front of the defeated corpse of Aku’mai at the end of BFD.
In other versions of WoW, this would be an impossibility. Mages are one of the squishiest classes in the game, and they have minimal ways to heal themselves, with their excellent damage output not enough to prevent death in raid scenarios.
This all changed in Season of Discovery, with new Runes designed to allow the Mage to operate as a Healer in the game. In this raid, the group relied on each player maintaining Temporal Beacon on themselves for significant healing throughout.
This works because Arcane damage is converted to healing on any nearby target that has Temporal active. Essentially, this then amounts to a self-sustaining group that can output as much healing as it does damage.
With the second phase set to arrive sometime before the end of February, there is still plenty of time for more novelty runs like this to hit the record books. Blizzard has promised additional experiences further down the road, so there should also be new targets to conquer as the year progresses.
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