Greetings, everyone! Today we'll be taking a look at Aberrus the Shadowed Crucible, a new raid in World of Warcraft. Specifically, we'll be discussing what's new on Mythic difficulty, how to fight changes, and potential approaches. Keep in mind that this is not a complete guide on how to defeat this boss on Mythic difficulty and that it is PTR, so things can change, be reworked greatly, and sometimes they just don't work at all.
What's New on Mythic
First of all, there's Unleashed Shadow Flame which deals red-white damage and sends out two orbs of Shadow Flame somewhere in the room. They will explode after 15 seconds, dealing a ton of raid white damage and giving everyone in the raid a 200k plus absorb per orb that explodes. Luckily, Searing Slam has been beefed up on Mythic to destroy Shadow Flame orbs if you hit him with it. So, you're left with the choice of either controlling where you put the Searing Slam magma vortexes or get a gargantuan feeling absorb on the raid. Pretty much two orbs spawn and, shortly after, a single player gets targeted by Searing Slam and they need to remove one of the two orbs that spawned. Due to this, you can no longer pre-plan where you want to place your Searing Slams unless you want to heal through two of the 200k absorbs on the entire raid. You can no longer plan where you want to place your Searing Slam. They are the ones to spawn the love of vortexes, previously called reservoirs, and these in turn spew out the lava waves on the raid and wipes the raid if they get hit by a Searing Slam. So, rather than just stacking them in the corner, players targeted by slam need to quickly get to one of the two orb and decide which is better to place it on since there will always be a better or worse place to spew lava waves from or if it continues like it did during testing where these orbs could spawn in the middle of the room. Well, you for sure don't want boss to leave slam there because on Mythic boss starts with these smoldering rage debuff for 90 seconds meaning if you trigger intermission during those 90 seconds he deals 500 more damage during it so well you die. But yeah, during testing if the ball slammed down in the middle or even just so his left pinky toe reached the outside Circle he triggered into Mission. Now I hope you add some kind of grace period to that, but otherwise while you really need to make sure he doesn't slam near Mid and tanks be ready to intercept the boss to the side so it doesn't run back through the middle.
Now on top of all of this, the frontal meteor that boss spawns, everyone in the raid needs to soak it now because for every missing player rashock gains one energy and at 100 energy Ray dies. So, if you're less than 20 people in each soak, you run the risk of needing to drag boss to the middle to reset energy, but boss will still have the smoldering rage debuff so you die. So, it's a bit like Guardian from Sanctum of Domination where if you missed putting a bomb on a pylon, boss would eventually do his raid wipe sooner. Now to spice it up even more, player soaking the meteor slam gets overcharged which deals a ton of ticking damage and lasts until you've run into the dead center of the room and clear it. Clearing it triggers conduit flare which deals a ton of damage to everyone in the raid regardless of where they are. So, due to the everlasting dot, you want to clear him fast but if you clear him too fast, well everyone dies. With the current tuning while testing, this seem to be a good old stack rate cooldowns and just clear Giga fast type of mechanic. This could change but depending on tuning it could be a clear one or two groups at the same time wait a bit then clear the rest rather than just clear everyone.
This meteor soak always overlapped with Shadow energy orbs detonating so you'd always get smacked by this with at least a 200k healing absorb on the entire raid into everyone clearing their overcharge and blowing up the raid some more just keep healing. So, just remember, if you die from this without pressing consumable, still blame the Healer. Love it.
Currently, the intermission timing seemed kind of the same as on heroic but, like I said, it depends on having everyone soak the meteors correctly. Otherwise, you'd transition too early and die. Play it correctly and you transition after the third series or right after the shadow blast cone. One thing to keep in mind is boss will stop doing its other abilities during the intermission. So, if you transition too fast, it is possible to get the two Shadow orbs and then no Searing Slam, leaving you with a 400k healing absorb at the start of the intermission which is not the best.
Conclusion
Overall, I'm super hyped for this fight. It was a ton of fun testing. I do wish they'd add some kind of animation or something or whatever in the middle of the room. Sure, I know I need to run there to clear overcharged, but I mean, you could just mark a random position in the room and say the same thing. "Oh, this is the location you clear it." There's nothing special. It's just a flat floor texture. Just give me something to run into. Let me know what you think of the new Mythic mechanics. If you have any questions, hit me up here or become a patron or Twitch sub and get access to these stanky game Discord which is the fastest way to get a hold of me and it's also filled with a lot of useful info and helpful people. Don't forget the usual stuff like comment, subscribe, and most importantly, ring that notification bell. Gotta pass that YouTube. I'll go. I'm also streaming all my progression rating on Twitch Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays stanky gaming. Thank you all for watching and I will see you next time!
