7.2 Challenge Scenario (Artifact Appearance) strats/tips

[Deleted]

Made it boys!



No defensive legendaries in P1. Achor + Mo'arg in the 2nd. 902-903 iLvl

Congrats,and thanks to you i found the Addon - Talent Set Manager. It helped a lot for fast switches.

[Ehwall]

Where are you? It's down in NA but up in EU.

I'm NA, which would explain it lol thanks!

[Deix-EU]

Well, managed to get into Void phase after 20 tries, and 40% with a fuck up in talent switching, Guess could have been 20%. Can't do better for now:
- Don't have 2 last new traits (amazing gain)
- Thank you god for the ring as a first leg, but now without Sephuz, Mo'arg, Belt, Prydaz and my ilvl 899 it's kind of very harsh
- Random as fuck transition phase with damage from space sometimes while you're flying: tips that made me improve on this mechanic however: right at the start of transition phase, activate Blur and gain some yards running (there's server delay) a bit before Fel Rush in air. Also, the technique of from bubble to bubble etc. works too.
- With my 700k DPS I HAVE to get 4 transition phases, near 5 ... it's kind of a higer difficulty for me xD
=> Will try after getting new traits and maybe some other combinaison of leg/gear more opti

[Cersee]

Anybody manage to do both the havoc and the vengence one? I'm already planning the next mage tower visit so I can do vengence, and I'm wondering if I should plan on spending as much time (47 tries on havoc), with probably a solid 10 of them in p2 (took me awhile before I finally went demonic and got a kill). I'm obviously a slow learner, so should I expect it to take more time or less time.

I did both in this rotation. Havoc one took ~10 tries and the Vengeance once took ~60-70. I am a dps main, so for the tank one i was just using prydaz and achor, with 907ilvl and a 909 weapon, and 38 traits. It was extremely challenging.

[razkah]

Havoc. Did it with 900-901 (no 4th gold trait, I went a hipster route). Around 55 tries done total, most of them being dying to silly shit in phase 1. I reached phase 2 a total of 10-15 times.

Phase 1: Prydaz, Sephuz, 3323223

Some specific things I did that I remember being impactful (I'll assume you're familiar with the fight and general strat):
- I felt like I am playing a tank here and not a DPS. The mindset this phase seems to imply is closer to a tanking one. Try to use one tool at a time to stop damage, avoid wasting tools if you are in meta and outleeching everything anyway, even avoid unnecessary movement so you can heal to full from souls on demand. Your job is to stay alive and in control, eventually you will kill him.
- Whenever he's about to do his Mirror phase, make sure your camera is looking at the room. It is super trivial to spot where he blinks if he remains on your screen. You'll see the unit being actually moved there (i.e. you will literally see a nameplate on the right spot for a sec), you'll see all kinds of effects with trailing or particles 'fly' into the right direction, hell you'll sometimes see the mage himself there for like half a second before he gains the invisibility. You'll probably start dashing there by reflex.
- In frost phases, always try to get the boss to the middle of the room. He actually runs to you if interrupted in that phase (most of the time), so getting him close to the center should be something you manage to do every single time. This is super important both for Razor Ice and for the eventual Mirror phase. Might as well just make it a rule.
- In arcane, don't entirely rely on interrupts. Keep in mind you can't move him by interrupting, not reliably anyway. He does however move a little bit to you after every barrage, if you're out of melee range. Try to backpedal from him at the end of his casts and you'll see what I mean. It's quite limited, but I found it to be enough. I believe the way his movement and casting work is intentional and not bullshit like it may feel at first. (Him being easy to position where you want would trivialize his other spell, the teleport.)
- In arcane, the teleport seems to be timed, and happens regardless of Xylems status. There also seems to be a pattern of 1-2 barrages followed by 'big' spells. I knew my arcane phases so well, that I always had a prison on him for the teleport. He always started with casting one barrage, then one shadow phase, then 2 barrages - I let the first one go through, and prison'ed him at the end of the second. I then waited until he did the power drain, and prisoned him either on the next barrage or the barrage after. I heard the casting sequences differ for people, so you probably have to figure it out yourself, but this helps deal with his teleport a lot.
- Blur is generally best saved for arcane. You have 1 target to generate souls off of, so you need to play like you're screwed on sustain (you are). Slowly rotate through an Eye Beam meta, a Blur, and your stuns/interrupts. If you pull off the prison/teleport trick EVERY time, this is actually trivial.

And lastly, wiping on it a lot is totally normal. There's A LOT of things that can go wrong, and most of my clears into p2 had some amount of improvisation, and that is something you'll only learn to do by experience.

Phase 2: Cinidaria, Sephuz, 2233111

I used Bloodlet/Momentum/MotG build for this. I could kill the adds with just a potion up, so the only non-standard thing I had to do was use a big CD for the second adds, I used bloodlust (meta at the start because I thought I'd have it up again at the end, but that didn't happen).

Key thing was pooling as much Fury as I could before running away with the debuff. Remembering how to properly play Momentum/Glaive build took some time too, it is quite different to the current build rotationally. I had a 3% wipe just because I was horrible at the rotation once and that felt bad man. Using Fury of the Illidari on the boss out of habit when meme bursting will almost definitely wipe you (it definitely wiped me).

In retrospect, using Barrage or something like 2 min meta (so you can meta on 1st and 3rd adds) or other strats would've probably been more reliable for me. I did the Glaive strat without the Glaive legendary, heh (bracers). However, if you are struggling with AoE damage and remember how to play the old Momentum/Glaive style, then this is something that might be viable for you.

Not much more to say about p2. It's mechanically simple and there's many ways to do it, you just need to find one that works with your available gear/legendaries. Don't be afraid to sacrifice a lot for super good cleave or AoE tools - time saved on adds translates into single target damage easily. The black pools never stop growing.

[Deix-EU]

I also see on some successfull video a lot of luck in mirror positioning or people with 2 min. meta able to do meta 2 times to reach it while there're fucked.
Transition phase is hard, you can get with no felrush left, mage positining at the very edge (worst case), slow debuff and yet can't reeach it in time dying at his feet mainly.
Try hard.

[Skyepic]

I also see on some successfull video a lot of luck in mirror positioning or people with 2 min. meta able to do meta 2 times to reach it while there're fucked.
Transition phase is hard, you can get with no felrush left, mage positining at the very edge (worst case), slow debuff and yet can't reeach it in time dying at his feet mainly.
Try hard.

It seems like an oxymoron when people claim Xylem is "all about survival" (which it is) but act like using the bubbles during the mirror image phase is the anti-christ. Dying in the mirror image phase because "he ported too far away" or "i didn't have two fel rushes" or "i wasn't close enough to the center" aren't really valid excuses. If you can double fel rush to him and reach him, great. If you can't, you should learn how to do the phase as intended usign the bubbles. The bubbles last long enough for you to regenerate an entire rel rush charge. Fel Eruption will either 1 shot an add or drop it below 20% so one attack will kill it once you get into the new bubble. unless you get super unlucky with crits blade dance will usually 1-shot an add as well.

As plenty of people have already said, Xylem is about survivability so treat it like one. Claiming you lost an attempt because of mirror image RNG is just being in denial.

[Killface1]

I had trouble getting fel rush to line up with the bubbles, and combo'd with the slow, it seemed significantly harder to do it that way tbh. My kill (and all my good attempts) came after I stopped trying to use the bubbles and just started figuring out when he was gonna phase change and thus mirror image, and using an imprison + cheating toward the middle so that I could be there on time.

But yeah, RNG isn't really a great excuse, you can figure out when he's gonna port, and he even starts a single cast of the next phase ability before he does, so it should be entirely manageable to cast imprison and start booking it toward the middle when you see that happen.

[Deleted]

I've seen several videos and funny thing is I never saw somebody use BE racial ability to silence him
Anyway, heres my video, maybe it will inspire you for something new.
youtube.com/watch?v=omzIkDu-XEU

[Deix-EU]

I had trouble getting fel rush to line up with the bubbles, and combo'd with the slow, it seemed significantly harder to do it that way tbh. My kill (and all my good attempts) came after I stopped trying to use the bubbles and just started figuring out when he was gonna phase change and thus mirror image, and using an imprison + cheating toward the middle so that I could be there on time.

But yeah, RNG isn't really a great excuse, you can figure out when he's gonna port, and he even starts a single cast of the next phase ability before he does, so it should be entirely manageable to cast imprison and start booking it toward the middle when you see that happen.

Frost DK video do it the bubble way (no choice) and yet I don't think they have advantage over us. I agree mostly, the challenge is intended to be done with bubbles. Sorry but I spotted the boss everytime at the right position but when he is at the EXTREME edge (most of the time in my attempts), you even Fel Rush * 2 and you don't reach it ! Don't need to say you have to walk because you can get over him with VR. And, walking toward him, so slowly, you die.
It happened also some strange damage from multiple frostbolt at the same time while I was felrushing and boom, dead in air. May I add in some videos, I don't see how it's possible not to take damage (without buffs) during this phase while I do, not always however.

I'll try the bubble way next time, I don't see how it can be a problem. Bloodlet could help in this matter to do like the DK vid, i.e: cast spell remotely on the "next target" while you're in the previous bubble. I spoke also to some of my mates of the "talent switching".
They find it:
"What ?? you have to switch talent ? And it's possible ? You must do something wrong or not the way it is itended". First feeling when you tell them how "we" do it.

[Zaak]

I've got around not using the bubbles. it took some time to get it right but I mostly had the timing right to just go to the center when he was about to TP away, thats why I switched from netherwalk to meta leech, which made it somewhat safer. But I didn't have enough DPS for P2 and was wiping around 20-25% at 896.

[Deix-EU]

Ok I saw another thing in vid. Sephuz is preventing people to die cause of haste run. Godlike those who have it, many many many vids have the buff during transition phase and it's peace of cake running to gain distance. When you have not, the fel rush thingy is very risky, some are even at 10% life (while 910 ilvl and 4.1M HP wtf ... ) at the end of the phase WITH sephuz's buff...

[ufta]

If you pull off the prison/teleport trick EVERY time, this is actually trivial.

How long does imprison last in this challenge if you don't break it with dmg?

[Deleted]

8 seconds.
4 seconds.
2 seconds.
PvP-a-like.

[ufta]

I haven't pvped hardly at all in several expansions. How long til the DR falls off and it goes back to 8 sec?

[Deleted]

Hi,
Sorry if this was asked before (though didn't see it) but do you guys have a keybind to show you which dungeons bosses you've killed or the ones remaining in order to unlock the purple skin?
Thanks in advance

[Deleted]

I haven't pvped hardly at all in several expansions. How long til the DR falls off and it goes back to 8 sec?

Look here. The spells are kinda outdated, but the mechanic explanation is right.
The DR is 15 seconds.

Notes for DHs:

*Stun*
Chaosnova: 5 sec (40 sec CD)
Meta-Jump: 3 sec (240 sec CD)
Fel Eruption: 2 sec (30 sec CD)

*Silence*
Kick: 3 sec (15 sec CD)
BE-Racial: 2 sec (120 sec CD)

*Disorient*
Imprision: 8 sec (15 sec CD)

[Deix-EU]

As for the "die easy" in the "no bubble" strat, look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcWKZ8sp5AA
4' 32" : he isn't doing "mistake" and yet he would be dead without Nether. So hum.

[ufta]

Look here. The spells are kinda outdated, but the mechanic explanation is right.
The DR is 15 seconds.

Much thanks

[Killface1]

I didn't use netherwalk or sephuz for my kill. I just figured out the timing on his ports, cast imprison on him around the correct time, and went and stood in the middle until he ported so I could get over to him 100% of the time easy peasy with two fel rushes. If you're tunneling boss right up until he casts, you'll have more pulls than not where you get screwed by how far away he ports. But since you know he's gonna port, and you have a bunch of ranged interrupts (consume magic, imprison, and fel eruption) you should just be able to run away from him, not dps him, and interrupt from afar. It trivializes the whole mechanic.

Anyway, bummed the tank challenge got nerfed before I had a chance to do it. I hate killing shit like this post nerf. I was happy I got the dps challenge done first week in NH gear and no nerfs, I wish they'd given the tank challenge another go to look at completion rates before they considered a nerf.

Because 10% less health on inquisitor and 20% on nether adds is a pretty huge nerf.