New Torments and Blessings Coming to Torghast in Shadowlands Patch 9.1

By TheRedRogue Updated: 2021/07/25

About the Author
The guide you’re reading was put together by The Red Rogue. I’ve been an avid World of Warcraft player and rogue main since 2005, with more hours invested in Torghast than I’d willingly admit. I have various achievements under my belt including several Cutting Edges, Keystone Masters, Gold Dungeon Challenge Modes and as a personal goal, completed Twisting Corridors solo on the first week it was available as well as the Flawless Master (Layer 12) achievement on the 9.1 PTR, Flawless Master (Layer 16) on the 9.2 PTR, and for the fun of it- Layer 12 flawless runs using a Racing Wheel.
I focus mainly on PvE content and I hope my testing and documentation of Torghast is helpful to you. Feel free to reach out to me via Twitter, my Youtube Channel, or community Discord, and I hope you have a great day!

What are Torments?

Layer #

# of Torments

1-5

6-7

8-9

List of Torghast Torments in Patch 9.1Torment Breakdown

Avenger - Enemies grant nearby allies increased haste on death.

Backup - Torghast Bosses are granted a powerful ally to assist them in battle.

Claustrophobic - When 5 or more enemies are with 10 yards of you, they deal 10% increased damage.

Hardened - Non-elite enemies have 25% increased health.

Lockdown - While in combat your location is periodically bombarded, dealing physical damage and slowing you.

Raging - When non-boss enemies are brought below 30% health, they gain 50% increased damage.

Reinforced: Commanding - Elite enemies grant nearby non-elite enemies increased health and reduced damage taken.

Reinforced: Doom Conduits - Elite enemies periodically summon Doom Conduits while in combat.

Reinforced: Follower of Klontzas - Elite enemies can cast Lesser Subjugations.

Reinforced: Reflective - Elite enemies will periodically gain a reflective shield while in combat, inflicting Physical damage to all attackers for 3 seconds.

Reinforced: Unstoppable - Elite enemies begin with a shield that cancels 1 incoming stun or interrupt effect.

Supernatural Power - Unnatural Power is significantly stronger.

Thanatophobia - When brought below 40% health, become horrified for 3 seconds. This effect can only occur once every 2 minutes.

Tricks and Traps - Traps deal massively increased damage and are more commonly found.

Twisted Magic - Magic damage done increased by 15% for ALL players and enemies.

Twisted Strength - Physical damage done increased by 15% for ALL players and enemies.

Unstable Phantasma - Phantasma will periodically coalesce and attempt to escape with your phantasma.

Volatile Doom - Enemies have a chance to leave a Doomed Soul Remnant on death. After a brief delay, it explodes, dealing Shadow damage immediately and over 10 seconds to nearby players.

Tips and Tricks for Handling Torghast TormentsAvenger

This causes non-trivial enemies to apply Vengeance to any nearby allies when they die. Trivial enemies can receive the buff but will not apply it to others when they die. Examples of trivial enemies are: Mawrat, Mawsworn Ward, and Skeletal Remains.

Vengeance will give 10% Haste and Attack speed, stacking up to 10 times. Enemies will retain these stacks as long as they remain in combat, so if they reset or you can drop combat in any way it will remove any stacks. You can intentionally force an enemy to reset combat by running far away from their spawn point in Torghast or with a variety of class/race-specific abilities such as Vanish, Feign Death, and Shadowmeld.

Backup

The floor 5 Torghast boss will be accompanied by a Mawsworn Doubtcaller. This enemy has three interruptible casts; the most potentially threatening one is Hymn of Doubt. This channeled spell will reduce your movement speed by 8% and can stack.

The area of effect of this spell is 100 yards, so it will cover the entire boss room in Torghast. If you know you will need to move during this boss encounter to avoid damage, interrupt this Hymn of Doubt cast or CC the Mawsworn Doubtcaller whenever possible.

Claustrophobic

This Torment will cause the edges of your screen to be obscured, and all enemies within a 10-yard range of you will glow red. A circle will form around you, showing the distance necessary to end Claustrophobia. This results in a small increase in damage, so ideally you will defeat any low health or weak targets first to make this Torment cease. Outranging your targets is an option if possible. All said, this is a fairly minor Torment to handle.

Hardened

A sizeable health % modifier, making lesser enemies take longer to defeat. While low impact on survivability, it can cause your run to take longer than normal. Since Time is a factor in your overall score, it's something to consider.

Lockdown

This will cause a large grey swirly effect to appear on the ground while you are in combat. If you are hit by this ground effect, four shackle spires will spawn, slowing your movement speed considerably. You can click on the shackle spires to remove them individually, or you can break the chain connection by moving more than 20 yards away from the shackle spires. Blinks, teleports, and similar effects can often be more than enough to break these chains if needed.

For those familiar with The Maw, this is very similar to one of the Eye of the Jailer effects, so be cautious of your positioning and avoid being hit as much as possible.

Raging

A potentially very dangerous Torment, this applies to any enemy in Torghast that is not a Boss type. Similar to the Mythic+ affix in design, this has been changed and is now able be removed with effects such as Soothe, Tranquilizing Shot, or Shiv. Be very careful when handling elite enemies during Raging, as this will stack with Unnatural Power. Your best course of action is to prevent enemy attacks with stuns and CC, or just avoid/outrange hard-hitting moves once Raging is active.

Reinforced: Commanding

This will cause Elites to apply an aura effect to their surrounding allies, reducing damage taken by 25% and increasing their health by 50%. You will know if any foes are buffed by Reinforced: Commanding if they are glowing red.

Depending on the layout of enemy forces, this can be a threatening Torment that will require some decision-making, Ideally, if the surrounding non-elite enemies are not a threat, then focus/cleave from the elite applying the Commanding aura; defeating this foe first will drop the health of the surrounding enemies greatly and reduce time spent on the pull. If possible, separating the elite via a root, knockback or another form of crowd control may help if the surrounding forces prove to be a threat, though you will want to consider how many stacks of Unnatural Power the elite will be gaining in the meanwhile if you choose this option.

Reinforced: Doom Conduits

Elite enemies in combat with you will frequently spawn large white orbs with a black beam coming out of them. The orb will rotate and can deal an exceptional amount of damage. Each elite in combat will spawn these, so you will need to be aware of your position while fighting. If possible, pull your enemies away from Doom Conduits to give you more room to fight them. Using interrupts or line of sight around corners to force your enemy to move can make this Torment much easier to deal with.

Reinforced: Follower of Klontzas

All Elite enemies will gain similar attacks to the Torghast rare, Subjugator Klontzas. These three attacks are noticeable as large, purple attacks, each applying a different debuff if you are hit. These are permanent* effects:

Lesser Subjugate Essence - 1% reduced Movement Speed
Lesser Subjugate Soul - 1% reduced Maximum Health
Lesser Subjugate Spirit - 1% reduced Damage Dealt

*These debuffs will stack if you are hit by the corresponding attack repeatedly; however, there are some known ways to remove them. From current testing, Cloak of Shadows will remove all harmful spell effects including these Lesser Subjugations. Any other class-specific defensives that can remove harmful spell effects should also remove these stacking debuffs, but the best scenario will be to avoid being hit by these Lesser Subjugation attacks whenever possible.

Reinforced: Reflective

When engaged in combat, Elites will gain a blue, runic visual effect. This signifies the Reflective Shield is active, lasting for 3 seconds. This more or less works like a 'thorns' effect, meaning you will take damage when you hit that elite while the shield is active.

It's hard to gauge exactly how much damage Reflective Shield causes because it doesn't seem to show up on damage taken meters in the combat metric addons I've tried. From my personal experience it seemed to result in about 20 to 25% of my health if I chose to attack during the shield.

If you're already low on health when this shield triggers, it can very easily cause you to die if you aren't keeping an eye out for the blue rune that will appear on the foe. This will require gauging how much damage you're taking versus how much you can handle, so be mindful of this Torment.

Reinforced: Unstoppable

All elites will have a large shield icon above them. The first attempted stun or interrupt will be negated, and subsequent ones will be successful.

The good thing about this Torment is that it does not affect other forms of crowd control such as incapacitations, fears, blinds, polymorphs, etc. If needed, use these to stop or delay any important casts.

If you have multiple ways to stun or interrupt, then you can also choose to intentionally waste one so that you may successfully interrupt a more important cast after.

Supernatural Power

Unnatural Power stacks now grant 12 or 13% increased damage and movement speed to elites and bosses. The exact percentage alternates between 12 and 13%, with 1 stack of Unnatural Power giving a 12%, 2 stacks giving 25%, 3 stacks giving 37%, etc. This is a straightforward increase in damage and movement speed on elites/bosses, which should not have a major influence on your Torghast run.

Thanatophobia

Possibly one of the most diabolical torments added to Torghast, this effect can very quickly cause death. Immediately upon being brought below 40% maximum health, your character will become horrified for 3 seconds, unable to perform any actions.

An effective counter to this is to use a Gladiator's Medallion trinket. This PvP trinket will remove the Horrify effect applied by Thanatophobia, and conveniently also has a 2-minute cooldown, which is exactly how long the Numb debuff you will receive that prevents Thanatophobia from triggering again.

Tricks and Traps

While I can’t speak for how ‘more commonly found’ the traps are in Torghast while Tricks and Traps is active, I can say they deal an exceptional amount of damage from the many hours I’ve been testing this. Be sure to stay extra careful around traps in Torghast while this is active, as a single wrong step can send you back to the front door. While there is no longer a death counter in Torghast, dying will cause you to lose your empowered buff/progress, potentially resulting in a much lower overall score in your run.

If you are not great at navigating around traps, I advise investing some Tower Knowledge into the Good Reflexes talent in The Box of Many Things, as two points in this talent will reduce trap damage by 40%.

Twisted Magic

While this is a Torment, for some players this can be beneficial. This affects all magic damage dealt, so if you happen to be a caster while Twisted Magic is active, you will gain a noticeable increase in damage. However, this does mean enemy casters will be proportionately more deadly as well.

Twisted Strength

This Torment is the melee counterpart to Twisted Magic. This will increase all physical damage done by friend and foe alike, causing this to also be a potential boon to your Torghast runs. Again, remember to be cautious around certain elites, as there are plenty of hard-hitting physical attacks to contend with.

Unstable Phantasma

This annoying Torment that will cause a Phantasmic Amalgamation to spawn once every few minutes. When it first spawns, it will be momentarily immune to damage. It will then proceed to steal 25% of your Phantasma and move around randomly. After a short period, the Phantasmic Amalgamation will cast Escape!. If this cast is completed, the Amalgamation will escape, taking your Phantasma with it.

If you slay the Amalgamation before it can get away, you will be able to loot Recovered Phantasma, which will give you back the stolen Phantasma, as well as an extra 25 Phantasma for your troubles.

You can delay and prevent the Escape! cast with stuns, incapacitates and other forms of crowd control. However, the Amalgamation will continuously cast this until it is successful.

Volatile Doom

The Doomed Soul Remnant explosion has a relatively small radius, so it is simple to avoid, but it deals a potent amount of damage. If you are in the middle of a big pack of enemies while Volatile Doom is the active Torment, slowly kite and move as you defeat them to reduce the chance of you missing an explosion underneath you.

Since it is shadow damage, it can be immuned with any magic immunities your class may have available.

Reducing Torments in TorghastThe Box of Many ThingsFreed from TormentTower KnowledgeFreed from Torment

Rank 1 costs 40 Tower Knowledge and removes 1 torment.

Rank 2 costs 200 Tower Knowledge and removes 2 torments.

What are Torghast Blessings?How to Access Torghast BlessingsTower KnowledgeBlessing of the AncientsThe Box of Many ThingsBlessing of the Ancients

Rank 1 Costs 20 Tower Knowledge and gives 1 Blessing.

Rank 2 Costs 80 Tower Knowledge and gives 2 Blessings.

Rank 3 Costs 200 Tower Knowledge and gives 3 Blessings.

Benefits of Torghast Blessings in Patch 9.1

Advantage - Torghast Bosses deal 30% less damage, receive 30% less healing, and have 30% less health.

Anima Hoarder - Completing each floor awards an additional anima cell.

Armed - Granted a set of Obleron Armaments.

Challenge Slayer - When a non-boss elite enemy is brought below 40% health, there is a 40% chance for it to die instantly.

Chaotic Concoctions - Gifted a chest of Chaotic Concoctions.

Cursed Souls - Soul Remnant’s Blessing is significantly empowered. However, every blessing received also lowers your stamina by 1%.

Diminishing Blows - The first 3 elite enemies you attack have their health reduced by 75%.

Phantastic - Your movement speed and haste are increased by 1% for every 50 Phantasma carried, up to a maximum of 20%.

Rampage - Killing an enemy grants ability cost and cooldown reduction for 20 seconds.

Resilient - Damage taken reduced by 10%. The duration of all incoming stun, silence, and fear effects are reduced by 25%.

Shoplifter - Brokers are now able to be attacked. Defeating them grants additional awards.

Surging Power - Gain increased movement speed while out of combat. While in combat gain 3 orbs of energy that rotate around you, inflicting Nature damage to nearby enemies.

Tips and Tricks for Torghast BlessingsAdvantage

This is a straightforward nerf to your end-of-floor Torghast Boss, reducing their damage, health, and healing. A simple yet effective Blessing to help make completing your Torghast run a little easier.

Anima Hoarder

This will cause an extra anima cell to spawn at the beginning of each new floor you ascend to. This does not include floor 1.
More anima powers is never a bad thing, and if you are lucky this can result in some very strong power gains to improve your success chance and performance.

Armed

This blessing will give you one of each of the following Obleron anima powers to start your Torghast run:

Obleron Ephemera Increase Versatility by 3%.
Obleron Spikes Increase critical strike chance by 3%.
Obleron Talisman Increase Mastery by 3%.
Obleron Winds Increase Haste by 3%.

While some classes may value certain stats more than others, this Blessing gives a lot of benefits all at once, resulting in a solid passive gain to virtually any class or specialization in the game.

Challenge Slayer

This Blessing can be range from being fantastic to having no impact on your Torghast run whatsoever. It has a pretty decent chance when an elite enemy is brought below 40% health to die instantly. You may hit the hypothetical jackpot and have it trigger on every elite you come across, or you can go an entire run without it ever triggering at all.

Chaotic Concoctions

At the start of your Torghast run, an interactable chest will be present. Looting this chest will give you 4 of each of the following items:

Draught of Temporal Rush - 25% Movement speed and 35% haste for 20 seconds. (10-second cooldown)
Long Tail Dynarats - Throw the dynarats at a target enemy, causing them to explode on death: dealing shadow damage relative to their maximum health to nearby enemies.(10-second cooldown)
Draught of Leeching Strikes - Increases the caster's leech by 100% for 20 seconds. (25-second cooldown)

Draught of Temporal Rush is an extremely potent haste buff and movement speed effect with no sated effect, unlike Bloodlust/Heroism. A very effective way of improving your damage on hard trash pulls or for the end-of-floor elite/boss if needed.

Long Tail Dynarats are extremely powerful if used correctly. Throw these at any difficult high-health elites or enemies if they have additional forces nearby, since the higher the target's maximum health is, the more area of effect damage the Dynarats will deal when the afflicted target dies.

Draught of Leeching Strikes is a very strong defensive item and its performance improves as you gain anima powers and effects that increase your damage throughput. Save these for bosses or enemies/pulls you foresee difficulty in surviving.

Cursed Souls

Freeing any Soul Remnants in Torghast will grant you 3% of your primary stat, up from 1%. However, you will lose 1% of your stamina for every Soul Remnant you free. You can counter the negative portion of this blessing by investing in the Enduring Souls trait in The Box of Many Things. This will cause the Soul Remnants you free to give 2% stamina instead of losing 1%.

Diminishing Blows

A short-lived Blessing, this causes the first 3 elites you encounter to die much faster. This can be difficult to plan around due to the nature of chaining kills, clearing Torghast floors efficiently, and the random nature of floor layouts. However, this can make the first floor of Torghast much easier since that is when you have the fewest anima powers available. If possible, prioritize elites you have the most difficulty with fighting for your class/specialization, but don't waste too much time traveling back and forth if you skip over enemies intentionally.

Phantastic

Stockpiling Phantasma will give you a Haste and movement speed increase, with a potential maximum of 20% movement speed and haste if you hoard enough. The benefit of this blessing can prove to be useful by the end of a Torghast run; however, the haste and movement speed buff stacks are based off your current amount of Phantasma. This means that when you spend any Phantasma, you will lose stacks of Phantastic Power.

Wings such as Fracture Chambers and Upper Reaches will see the most benefit from this Blessing, since you can use the Ravenous Anima Cell on enemies such as the Mawsworn Soulbinder, Mawsworn Acolyte, and Mawsworn Disciple to gain the Marrow Scooper anima power. This will causeSkeletal Remains to drop 10x more Phantasma. Since you will often find large amounts of these enemies in both Fracture Chambers and Upper Reaches, you will more easily be able to stockpile Phantasma for increased haste and movement speed.

Rampage

For every enemy you slay, you will receive a stack of Rampaging. This will reduce the resource cost of your abilities by 5% per stack and a 20% increase to your cooldown recovery rate. This can stack up to 10 times, resulting in a 50% reduction to resource costs for abilities, and 200% cooldown recovery rate. An exceptionally potent Blessing, especially if you can chain kills efficiently throughout your run.

Resilient

A simple damage reduction and crowd control duration reduction buff. While it doesn't seem as impressive as other Blessings, this effect can prove lifesaving in some situations.

Shoplifter

This Blessing causes the broker vendors to become Neutral. You are still able to purchase and sell items to them, but if you attack and slay them after you're done, they will drop a variety of items, including:

Ravenous Anima Cell
Rejuvenating Siphoned Essence
Fleeting Frenzy Potion
Cache of Armaments
Coalesced Power or Coalesced Power (same name, different powers)

The Cache of Armaments will grant you three Obleron anima powers randomly.

Refractive Shield from Coalesced Power is a pretty solid anima power. It deals uncapped Arcane AoE damage and stuns everything around you for about 1 second on a 15 second internal timer if you're being attacked. The stun is helpful as it can easily prevent multiple enemies from attacking or casting spells, and the damage output is pretty respectable in multi-target situations. It is less potent in single target; however, the free stuns are still very handy on boss fights and hard-to-defeat opponents.

Calculated Assault from Coalesced Power is less impressive, requiring enemies to be directly in front of you and to stay motionless. This puts a white beam effect on the ground, which then activates after 2 seconds, hitting all enemies in the designated area. The damage is not very high as of the latest testing, but it seems there are only two options for Coalesced Power from defeating the Brokers, so invariably you'll end up with this power if you choose to slay them both in your Torghast run.

NOTE: If you attack a broker by accident, you can reset them by just running far away. They don't have much health though so just be cautious with any passive AoE damaging effects you might have based on your anima powers/class/specialization.

Surging Power

This is a pretty great Blessing for speeding up your Torghast run. You will receive a 75% movement speed buff as long as you remain out of combat. Once you're in combat, the speed buff will go away, and orbs of energy will swirl around you that deal nature damage to all nearby enemies.

For melee classes, this blessing will not only give some good DPS throughput, but will allow you to quickly engage your next target, greatly improving the completion speed of your Torghast run.

Casters gain the most benefit of this Blessing by standing pretty close to your targets, but even just the movement speed can be a great benefit to engaging your next group of enemies more quickly.

Comments

Comment by Zakator

This looks like a very interesting system, can't wait to try it out!

Comment by Skullhawk13

I didn't mind the old torments being boring, but these new ones seem like they prioritized what was "interesting" over what was good gameplay. A lot of this will be incredibly difficult for some specs that were already having a bit of trouble soloing tourghast as it is. Which is a problem when they tie legendary progression to it.

Comment by Aerynsun8449

Big question, how do you get the shoplifter blessing? I've been searching high and low, I see a lot of information on the blessing, but not how to obtain it. Anyone?

Comment by QuiSIan

Reinforced: Doom Conduits + Lockdown
Am I playing Diablo 3?

Comment by Buffyangel

Don't interrupt the bosses ad for the 'Backup' Torment if you're trying to get the achievement.

New Torments and Blessings Coming to Torghast in Shadowlands Patch 9.1

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