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Definitely a challenging boss, and once we’ve finally taken him out we head towards what has to be my favourite boss in the instance, DayShade.

When you first see him this is one single boss, however the moment you engage him he will split into two separate parts, Rukril & Ebonsoul. These two bosses have to be tanked at separate sides of their area.
At regular intervals both bosses will shield themselves and become almost impossible to kill. Thankfully they will also spawn fragments, which can be used to burst the other bosses shield.

What this means is that as well as having to constantly watch and control the bosses and fragments, you also have to be coordinated with the DPS, as both bosses will have to die together. If they don’t die at the same time, you will have one boss that is shielded but no opposite boss to spawn the fragments that burst it.

Unfortunately we did manage to make that happen, but as time was running short due to our wipes on Kaluva, one of the Community Managers quickly increases his maximum damage and 4 swings later, down he goes despite the shield.

This puts us at the last boss of the instance. Now, as I’ve already mentioned, we decided not to break the Aether Fragments, so we have the easy mode (if it can be called that) version of this boss, named Yamennes Blindsight. Had we broken all of the fragments, Yamennes Painflare would have spawned instead and been a lot more difficult to kill.

However to call this Easy mode is to seriously underestimate the encounter. There is still a lot of coordination required and it’s still rather difficult to take down.
The boss will stay in the centre the whole time and need to be tanked constantly. This boss hits like a truck though, so the tank will need to be good at surviving and the main healer will really need to be on the ball.

All the while the DPS will have to be piling on the damage. At set intervals illusion gates will spawn near one of three teleportation devices – these gates spawn adds that cause real problems for your raids, so you need to take the gates themselves out fast.

To slow you up a little the gates alternate between high and low locations. So if their first spawn is on the ground, the second will be on a platform above and you will have to use the teleporter to get to it.

I realise now that I have made this sound fairly simple, but believe me when you’re in the think of it it is anything but. Your tasks may be few, but when they are all going on at once, at a moment’s notice its very simple to get disorientated.

With that our tour was over, and I have to say that I was very impressed by the complexity, the style and overall feel of the Abyssal Splinter. Even though we had CM’s on hand to guide us, I really got the impression that this instance would be a great challenge and will really give you a feeling of achievement the first time you take these bosses down.

Hopefully I will get a chance to get back in there at some point, as I now really want to take down the Painflare version of the final boss.

Thank you to Mo Fadl,  Aidan Taylor, Craig Stephens & Christian Vestol for taking the time to show us all around.

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