The Mage Tower is a new addition to World of Warcraft that came with Patch 7.2.
It offers a variety of minor benefits such hidden chests and additional artifact power,
but most importantly of all, the ability to undergo an extremely difficult trial in order
to unlock class and specialization exclusive weapon skins.
As you can probably guess from the title alone, the challenge I will be guiding you through
is called "Closing the Eye", in which you will have to defeat not only Archmage Xylem,
but his demonic master as well.
If you would like to obtain these fancy new cosmetics it is important to understand that
the Mage Tower Challenge is exactly what the name entails - a challenge.
If you think you're going to beat it in a single attempt, or even a dozen attempts,
I'm afraid you're in for a rude awakening.
That said, it is not impossible, and if you come prepared chances are high you will be
able to complete it eventually.
So if you willing to do what it takes to look downright awesome, allow me to give you a
helping hand and hopefully make the journey just a bit easier.
SLIKA
Preparation
Before you even begin thinking about attempting this challenge you will need to gather a large
amount of consumables, but thankfully they are mostly on the cheap side.
Here's what you're going to need:
- 2000-3000 Nethershards - Drums of the Mountain (if you're not a class
that has access to Bloodlust, Heroism, or Time Warp)
- Defiled Augment Rune - Tome of the Tranquil Mind (you're going
to need to swap from an AOE/survivability built to a full-on single target one)
- Food - Damage potions
The amount you will need will vary depending on how quickly you adapt to the fight and
how much you're willing to endure in a single sitting.
I would personally recommend going with one flask, about 20-30 food, 20 damage potions,
and 10 pieces of all the rest.
The reason for this is that the first phase (the actual fight vs Archmage Xylem) does
not require much in terms of damage, so there's no need to waste any of your precious runes
or potions on it.
And if you manage to get to the final phase of the battle 10 times within 2 hours, chances
are you're about to finish the whole thing anyway, so there's no need to overspend on
your consumables.
As for the talents, the name of the game here is survival.
Pick the ones that amplify your healing (especially when you kill an enemy), and if your class
has any ability that lets you jump around on a relatively low cooldown you'll want to
get that as well.
Finally, you want to ensure you have at least one strong source of burst damage in order
to deal with the Ice Prison should your jump ability ever be on cooldown.
The first phase of the fight is not about damage, so don't worry if you're taking suboptimal
talents, just make sure you actually survive until phase 2!
While it isn't necceary, and I personally haven't used it, you can also make the challenge
slightly easier by installing the Deadly Boss Mods Challenge pack (https://mods.curse.com/addons/wow/dbm-challenges).
It gives you a bunch of helpful timers and warnings - things you don't technically need,
but might just come in handy.
Phase 1 - Frost
The initial Frost Phase begins after Xylem finishes his overly lenghty monologue.
All you will have to deal with in this phase is a constant barrage of relatively low damage
Frostbolts and three Ice Prisons you will have to escape as quickly as possible.
The first thing you'll want to do is interrupt his initial Frostbolt cast and then drag him
as close to the middle as you are comfortable with.
This is done in order to ensure that when you get stuck in the Ice Prison you can easily
jump straight to him and continue punching him in the face.
If you have absolutly no mobility spells and you can't avoid the center beams, consider
dragging him to the side instead.
The Frostbolts aren't terribly powerful, but Xylem pretty much chain-casts them, so don't
get too comfortable as the damage can stack up relatively quickly.
In order to survive this you will need to use a combination of interrupts and self-healing
cooldowns.
Don't feel afraid to drop low on health during this phase, because as long as he's not about
to use Ice Prison you are going to be perfectly safe.
How you do this is going to vary depending on your class, but here are the general guidelines
that should work for most cases:
*Silence the first Frostbolt and pull him towards the center
*Let him hit you 2-3 times in order to give you something to heal
*Activate a self-healing cooldown/ability and completely ignore interrupts if you can
maintain ~90% HP *Incapacitate or silence him in preparation
for the Ice Prison phase
SLIKA
If you've done everything correctly you're going to get Ice Prisoned with around 70%
HP.
The individual shards of ice that surround you aren't very strong, and a single powerful
AOE spell will clear them out (in my case a Demon Hunter's Eye Beam is enough on its
own).
Things aren't as easy as they sound, however, because you will be taking constant heavy
damage while standing in the icy circle.
And if that wasn't bad enough, if you accidentaly run into one of the shards you will die instantly!
As terrifying as this sounds, the Ice Prison is not actually that hard to overcome.
If you're a class that can jump or teleport all you need to do now is to find where Xylem
ran away to, and then simply jump there in order to continue with the same strategy from
above.
I would recommend jumping before using your dash/teleport spell, because while it technically
might not be neccesarry, I found myself ocasionally clipping the ice shards and dying a pointless,
lazy death.
If you have spells that give you health when you kill or stun enemies (such as Demon Hunter's
AOE stun) you might want to consider killing the ice shards around you purely to regenerate
a bit of health.
This is also the way you will have to break out if you're a class with low or no mobility
(such as a Frost Death Knight).
Simply use your strongest spells to break the ice around you, all the while leeching
as much health as possible from the massive amount of shards you're killing.
You're probably going to die a few times before you learn what spells to save for this phase
and how best to approach it, but don't worry, once you figure it out you will be set for
good as its always exactly the same.
On the other hand, if you're a Demon Hunter the Ice Prison is a complete joke since you
can not only double jump over it, but you can also use your stun to generate souls in
order to heal to full!
Once you escape the Ice Prison chances are you will be somewhat low on health, but don't
panic as Xylem's damage is slow and predictable.
Just make your way towards him, interrupt him the moment you come in range, and drag
him back towards the center - just like before.
The one difference this time around is that you most likely won't be able to let him hit
you 2-3 times before healing, which means you will be potentially starting the Ice Prison
phase with lower health.
This is an extremely dangerous proposition, so I would recommend carefully weaving stuns
and interrupts in order to minimize incoming damage.
SLIKA
Phase 1 - Transition
After Xylem uses three Ice Prisons the timing for the fourth one will be replaced with a
transition to the Arcane phase.
The transitional phase is by far the hardest part of this encounter, and you're probably
going to die quite often, so just make your peace with that right now.
So what happens is that Xylem teleports to a random location on the opposite side of
the map, and soon begings channeling a spell that does a ridiculous amount of damage per
second, and also slows you down... because why not!
The only way to stop it is to run all the way to where he's hiding in order to hit him
with an area of effect spell since he is otherwise untargetable.
I've heard many people complain that they have no idea where Xylem teleports to, but
I've personally found him to be rather easy to spot.
All you need to do is start running to the opposite side of the map the moment he teleports
away from you, and while running simply take a glance at the minimap to find where the
giant yellow circle is - that's pretty much it.
If you're more of a visual type of player, however, you can also spot Xlyem by a large
amount of white sparklies that float all around him.
If you're a class with high mobility, and if you've previously positioned Xylem as close
to the middle as possible, this phase can be done within a couple of seconds.
Simply use all of your mobility and damage reduction spells in order to reach him, and
then just hit him with an AOE spell before he even deals a shred of damage to you.
Similarly, if you have spells that make you immune or highly resistant to magic you can
use them to completely ignore this phase - just don't forget that Xylem's spell not only deals
damage, but also slows!
If you mess up, or if you have no mobility cooldowns to rely on, you will have to do
thise phase "properly".
Once Xylem teleports away the entire room will be filled with clones of him, all slowly
channeling a spell that bounces you around.
These illusions don't have a lot of health, and they can be intterupted, so pick the furthest
one you can safely reach and just nuke it down as fast as possible.
Once dead these illusions will drop a rapidly shrinking shield that lets you ignore Xylem's
damage and refresh your cooldowns.
While you're safely inside the bubble you should pick which illusion you're going to
go for next and slowly start wittling its health down from range.
After that is done all you need to do is take a stroll to the next bubble, and then repeat
the process until you're able to hit Xylem with some sort of AOE attack.
All of this sounds simple, and in reality it is, but there is a lot of ways to mess
up and die almost instantly.
So if you're not sure if you can reach Xylem before the damage/slow starts ticking in,
just err on the side of safety and jump from illusion to illusion.
Its going to take you a bit longer, but there is no big DPS check you need to worry about,
so just make sure you stay alive.
SLIKA
Phase 1 - Arcane
Once you hit Xlyem with an AOE attack he will immediately begin channeling slow, but insanely
powerful Arcane Blasts.
It is going to be tempting to interrupt them, but I'm afraid you're going to have to keep
your instant interrut on standby for later.
The reason for this is a spell called Draw Power which Xylem seems to cast almost completely
at random, and if you don't interrupt it INSTANTLY it will give him a stacking damage buff that
will almost surely spell your doom.
As such you will need to interrupt the Arcane Blasts with stuns, incapacitates, and any
other tricks your class has access to.
Every time you interrupt an Arcane Blast you should move slightly backwards because Xylem
will follow you for ~1 second before resuming his casting.
Much like the Ice Prison phase this will greatly help you with events to come as you will be
in a much better position and much quicker to react.
As I've mentioned before, these Arcane Blasts are very slow to cast, so if you have particularly
strong healing cooldowns you might be able to completely ignore their damage and just
heal yourself inbetween each cast - only ocasionally stunning to buy yourself some time.
If you do decide to stun/intrerrupt his Arcane Blasts, just make sure you do it near the
end of his case in order to gain as much time as humanly possible.
That said, don't drop down too low because he will teleport after 5-6 casts, and it would
be really silly for you to die just because you got a bit too comfortable.
Besides Arcane Blasts Xylem will also try to kill you with Shadow Barrage, which is
an uniterruptable spell that creates hordes of little shadows that spawn in the distance
and then shoot down a straight line.
Unless you use a powerful defensive cooldown these shadows will instantly kill you, but
they are surprisingly easy to dodge so I wouldn't really worry about them.
All you need to do is stand slightly behind Xylem (away from where the shadows are spawning
from), and use the little bit of downtime you have to heal up and refresh your cooldowns.
If you find yourself having trouble with this phase feel free to completely avoid the spells'
area of effect and just have a sip of coffe while you wait for him to finish.
Again, its not a DPS race, all that matters is that you stay alive!
Slika SHADOWS
Once Xylem attempts to cast 5-6 spells he will most likely teleport to the other side
of the map, immediately followed by another Arcane Blast cast.
If you've slowly moved him towards the center as I've instructed you above this should be
nothing more than a minor inconvience.
Simply find where he teleported, walk over there, and interrupt the extremely slow Arcane
Blast cast before he's able to knock 50% of your HP off.
Just make sure you don't panic and use your standard interrupt spell while walking towards
him, because you can never really tell when he's going to use Draw Power, and if you let
it channel for even a second you're going to be in for a world of trouble.
After 2-3 teleports Xylem will once again enter the transitional phase by teleporting
to the opposite side of the map.
As such, it is of the utmost importance that you pull him towards the center as often as
you possibly can!
If you need to trek from one side of the map to the other there is a high chance you'll
mess up and die, but if you just need to do one jump from the middle then you're going
to be able completely skip this entire phase.
So practice your pulling because it will make your life much easier!
Phase 1 - Frost ++
The second (and all future) Frost phases are slightly more difficult than the one you started
out with.
Almost all of the mehcanics are exactly the same, but instead of teleporting a couple
of meters away Xlyem will teleport to the other side of the map each time he puts you
in the Ice Prison.
This doesn't really change anything in terms of how you execute your strategy, but you
will need to be much more careful with how and when you use your interrupts.
I would recommend saving a long-range stun right before you get stuck in the Ice Prison,
purely so that you can interrupt the Frostbolt spam as soon as you're free.
The one new addition to this phase is that Xylem also casts Shadow Barrage, which is
again an amazing boon since it gives you plenty of time to heal up.
The strategy is the same as in the Arcane phase, but since you're pulling Xylem towards
the middle you will have a lot less room to work with.
Its slightly more difficult than before, and you can ocasionally find yourself cornered,
but as long as you don't take massive risks you will be perfectly fine.
Phase 1 - Ending
The entire battle against Xylem is a constant repeat of Frost - Transition - Arcane until
he reaches 10% health.
While you might feel compelled to use all of your strongest spells when you see him
on low health, I would strongly advise you to do no such thing because you will need
all of your DPS cooldowns for phase 2.
Instead, finish off Xlyem by using as little of your resources as possible, and with as
high of a health pool as you can manage.
If you were forced to waste your big 5-minute cooldown earlier in the fight and it still
hasn't recovered, consider delaying the kill for as long as you can because every little
bit of DPS will be of great use later.
Phase 2 - The Wait
Once Xlyem drops to 10% HP he will run to a predetermined point on the map and begin
talking for around ~30 seconds.
It is now that you should use Defiled Augment Rune to slightly boost your damage, and Tome
of the Tranquil Mind to respec into a primarily single-target focused build.
You might ocasionally get stuck in combat, which will delay your respec by ~10 seconds,
so make sure you can pick your talents and set your spells as quickly as possible!
You can practice this whole procedure infront of the Mage Tower as its considered a rest
area, and I would strongly suggest you do just that because you never know how buggy
the challenge is going to be.
If you're a class that doesn't have much AOE in its base kit, consider grabbing one or
two AOE talents just to make sure you can deal with the upcoming adds.
If you're geared enough (around 900 item level) chances are you won't have much trouble with
the adds, and this goes doubly so for those among you that have good legendaries, but
its always good to have a safeguard... just in case.
Phase 2 - The fight
The battle in phase 2 is against a single demon that doesn't do anything special itself.
The dangerous part of this fight is the corrupted ground the boss leaves underneath him, because
eventually it will cover the entire zone and kill you rather quickly.
In order to avoid this you will need to constantly drag the boss forward, always slightly ahead
of the corrupted ground.
The best way I've found to do this is to start where the boss spawns, and then very slowly
drag him to the edge of the map and then go around in a circle.
In order to ensure you're still dealing damage to the boss while running away you should
move him in a sort of diagonal.
As before you'll probably mess up a few times before this clicks, but once you figure it
out you will be kite him around like the best of them.
But once again, it is important to move him ONLY when the corrupted ground is nearly upon
you, because if you move him too quickly you're going to find yourself with very little room
to work with!
Besides the corrupted ground the only other ability the boss has is a channeled spell
that puts a short debuff on you, which when it expires spawns 3 adds that you absolutely
NEED to kill before they reach the boss.
There is no way to avoid this, so DO NOT interrupt his channel!
What you should do is continue dealing damage to the boss for as long as possible, and when
you have around 3 seconds left on the debuff you should jump/teleport as far away as possible.
SLIKA
Once the debuff reaches zero three demons will spawn directly around you and soon start
moving towards the boss.
They are completely immobile for the first second after their spawn, so take this opportunity
to set up some ground based AOE and deal heavy damage.
Once they start moving you should use your AOE stuns and slows in order to prevent them
from reaching the boss.
And that's pretty much it as far as strategy goes.
Its all about doing as much AOE damage as possible in as little of time as possible.
If you're undergeared you might find this portion of the fight nearly impossible, in
which case I'm afraid you're simply going to have to admit defeat and farm out a bit
of gear before trying again.
The same applies to the boss itself given that he is entirely a DPS check.
There are ways to make this slightly easier, and I'll note them in a second, but if you
find yourself running out of room and the boss is still 40%+ HP, you might need a bit
more gear before you're truly ready.
In order to dish out the most damage onto the demon you should use a potion before the
battle even begins, so that way you will be able to use two potions throughout the entire
fight.
The first one you should chug when Xylem starts saying something along the lines of "Hold
it off hero" as this signals the start of the encounter.
As soon as the demon becomes active you should also activate your Drums of the Mountain,
your strongest DPS cooldowns, and go completely insane since you won't have to move just yet.
Eventually the corrupted ground will creep in and you will be forced to move, but make
sure to prioritize getting as much damage in as possible given that this is your largest
burst window.
SLIKA
As for the second potion, you will be using it around 2 minute into the fight, when the
second pair of adds spawn.
Try and kill them by using as few DPS cooldowns as you can, mostly relying on the power of
your DPS potion to carry you, and as soon as you're done you should go ham on the boss
with your newly refreshed 2-minute cooldowns and last bits of potion.
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