Closing the Eye

Boy was this an experience; got this done on my Havoc DH (907) after 50 odd pulls using the build [spell=203550], [spell=206478], [spell=206475], [spell=204909], [spell=206476], [spell=206477], [spell=213410] and running [item=137038] and [item=137014].

First big tip I have for this is a comment another user made: In the first stage you need to think of every cd you have as being either a healing cd or a survival one, EVERY one, i'll explain how I was using each as I walk through the encounter. Second big tip that I haven't seen many people mention, [spell=217832] does work on Xylem and it is a godsend. I use it when he teleports to the other side of the area, when I'm low on health, when I'm waiting for stun or eyebeam to come back up, or just to get my bearings; this ability should be as much a part of your rotation in this stage, as interrupts.

So I'm going to give some tips for each phase (I'm also going to assume you know generally how the abilities work.)

Stage 1: Frost:
So a couple key points to make for this and every frostbolt stage you encounter: make sure when you interrupt you move him as close to the center as you can, this is going to make your life a whole lot easier by shortening the distance you have to travel when he surrounds you in ice and teleports (sometimes if you get him close enough you can [spell=217832] him before having to leave the ice wall.) Doing this is also going to help when he does his mirror image phase, as you'll be within range to reach him in 2 [spell=195072]. Other thing I found to be very helpful; if you find yourself about to be surrounded in the ice and you have Fury of the Illidari available you can use it along with a [spell=188499] and kill most of the ice. This'll spawn a ton of souls that you can pick up half of and reach Xylem and stun and go into [spell=198013] Metamorphosis, but the souls will also stay up long enough that when you get surrounded by ice again you can [spell=195072] over to the area and pick up the second half of the souls.

Stage 1: Arcane:
I found this phase to be a lot more manageable to stay alive in, his arcane barrage hits harder but has a longer cast time and just isn't as bad as constant frostbolt spams. You really won't be able to move him to the center like with frost but I did find that between arcane barrage's he has a second window where you can move him back a little bit, so I often did that to make the teleport transitions smoother. There is a delay when he is about to teleport to the other side of the room and sometimes I was able to get a stun or [spell=217832] off on him and it made it so when he appeared on the other side he was still locked up and it gave me more then enough time to reach him. The only other tip I have here is don't use your interrupt on anything except for the draw power, I screwed myself more then once trying to stun and having him be immune because of dr.

Stage 1: Shadow:
Not much to say here, just keep strafing to dodge the orbs and use this opportunity to get your health up through chaos cleave souls or blur if you have the legendary.

Stage 1: Mirror image:
This is easily the worst part of the fight for me, when the boss transitions from frost to arcane its not that bad because you should have him close to the center anyways so you'll be in range to just dash to the spot, but with the arcane phase its a lot harder to get him to the center so more often then not you'll have to traverse the entire room. I saved my meta for the first arcane to frost transition. On the second arcane to frost transition (which was always the last for me, I always got 4 at ~75%, ~55-60%, ~40%, ~20-25%) I would [spell=195072] to get to the hemisphere that he is on and kill an image, regain health, use throw glaive or eyebeam or something to kill the next one to get in range to use retreat to reach the boss. I made sure I saved blur for this one in particular because it really was awful for me. When you do kill an image you get healed and are safe for at least a couple seconds so keep an eye on what you have coming off cd and just get to the boss alive (and get ready to stun because you'll probably be almost dead)

Stage 1:
Couple final things for this stage. Even though I ran momentum I never used [spell=195072] or retreat for anything other then movement, while I'm sure you can weave them in they are just too damn vital to completing this stage so I opted not to. I also generally left blur available if I had an emergency moment where it was either die or use it. In my early attempts this was more often but as I got more comfortable with this stage it became very rare to use it like that. Also just understand that the dps in this phase is fairly irrelevant, keeping yourself alive is the primary goal and that should be your main focus; don't take risks if you don't need to, don't use cds outside of survivability, just take it slow, set a pace, and grind it out. Also I never used a second pot outside of the initial prepot which I'll explain below

Stage 2: Boss #2 electric boogaloo:
Man do I have some choice words for whoever thought that adding a 96m boss right after a 144m boss was a reasonable idea. So after you push Xylem to 10% you get a brief respite where I would go and collect any remaining souls laying around. I've seen some videos where players would use this time out of combat to switch gear and talents to something more single target and bursty, I opted to stay with the high survivability build and I'll flat out admit that this was a close kill, within 2 seconds of a wipe because of room and adds. So when the boss spawns there's a little rp that takes a few seconds and this is where I popped my 2nd prepot but I didn't use any cds outside of the normal eyebeam meta. The boss will frequently drop growing puddles, if you stand in them they will destroy your health and slow you down so don't stand in him. I brought the boss the the edge of the room and slowly kited him around the edge. DON'T stun this boss or interrupt him at all, I flat out removed interrupt from my action bars during the break, you'll wipe if you do. Every, rough guess 45s, he'll channel an ability and put a debuff on you that'll summon three adds when it expires. These adds will try to go to the boss and if they reach him they do a burst of damage and heal him significantly. So the goal here is to run to the furthest point you can to drop these adds and kill them before they reach the boss (who'll still be channeling.) First set of adds I used meta and fury to kill, second was drum lust and fury, third was second pot and fury. Every add I also used stun as soon as they came out as well as eye beam. You'll start to run out of room really quickly and by the 4th set of adds I had meta back up and opted to kill the boss. I don't believe the build I used is an optimal one and obviously it was such a close kill, but at my item level it did work, but if you are having issues in this phase it may be worth your time to search for the players that were talent swapping and see what they were doing.

That's more or less all the advice I have for this. This encounter sucked. There's no nicer way to put it. The damage and self healing output required to do this was insane (my numbers show 780k dps and 160k hps) and was damn frustrating the whole way through. If you want to try this then all I can say is be prepared to slog through it and good luck.

This quest starts the scenario that leads to obtaining the challenge appearance for your artifact. Currently, these scenarios are incredibly difficult to the point where it might genuinely be impossible to complete unless you're better geared -- and by 'better geared,' I mean 910-920+ ilvl. Don't expect to make any headway until Tomb releases, is what I'm saying.

It would've been very nice to have the above communicated in-game before you were one-shot and came here to figure out what happened, but oh well.

Archmage Xylem has 116m health and 3 phases, and changes phase after a set timer. He can be interrupted, stunned, knocked away and gripped.

The four ley beams on the center on the room will hurt you for about 400k and push you away.

Frost Phase

He spams frost bolts that hit for about 300k, then every few seconds he blinks away, stuns you for 2 seconds and puts an AoE around you that hits for 480k per tick and lots of (killable) Icicle Spears. If you touch any of these spears you die take 2.8m damage. You have to kill the spears to safely get out of the AoE.

-Demon Hunters can double jump and fel rush out of the AoE.

-Abilities that trigger upon a EXP yielding kill such as Bear Tartare, [spell=101568] and Victory Rush will be activated when you kill one of the icicles.

Tips for Frost Death Knights:
-If you use Anti-Magic Shell just before he's about to stun you, you won't be stunned at all.
-Try to align [spell=196770] so that it ends just when the spears spawn, clearing them.
-Once out of the AoE, it is possible to cleave any remaining spears, to proc [spell=178819].

Mirror Images

Multiple mirror images of Archmage Xylem will spawn around the room, each inside a circle, and the floor will be covered in purple stuff. The images cast an ability that hurt you if you're inside the bubble and knock you out of it. You have to kill the images before they complete their cast (you can interrupt them) and stand inside the bubble as they're safe spots from the purple AoE and they heal you. The phase ends when you get to the Archmage (he's the dot on your map).

-The mirror images will also trigger the previously mentioned abilities.

Tips for Frost Death Knights
-You can maximize the heals you get from the bubbles by using [spell=49184] and [spell=49143] on images from afar.

Shadow Phase

Once you reach the Archmage, this phase will begin. He'll spam Arcane Barrage which hits very hard and has a long cast time, but can be interrupted. After two or three casts he'll cast shadow balls, which are projectiles that you have to dodge. Then, he'll use Arcane Barrage again 2 or 3 more times and then start drawing power from the focusing iris. Interrupting Draw Power is very important, so use defensives for the second row of Arcane Barrages, if possible. After successfully interrupting him, he'll once again cast Shadow Balls. He will cast Mirror Images again after this phase is over, then return to Shadow Phase once again, then switch to Frost Phase, and the cycle starts anew.

Once Xylem gets to 10%, stage two will begin. There will be a short RP, getting you out of combat and thus letting you change talents, food buffs or gear, if needed. After the RP is over the Corrupting Shadow will spawn. It has 92m health and it can, too, be interrupted, gripped, knocked away and stunned. You want to take it to the very edge of the platform and kite it around the edge, since it will cast an AoE that grows in size the longer the fight goes on. About every 40 seconds or so, it will channel Seed of Darkness on you. You want to run away as far as you can since when the channel's over three adds on top of you will spawn. These will try to get to the boss, and if they do, they'll heal it. The boss will remain immobile while there are any adds up. The adds can be stunned and gripped too.

I strongly recommend using Bear Tartare for the first stage, then switching food buffs during the RP intermission. You should also save your second pot and drums for the second stage.

Good luck!