Welcome back to the next installment of our 10.1 raid guide previews proudly presented by Kingston Fury! In this guide, we'll show you how to defeat the Amalgamation Chamber encounter in heroic Aberrus.
Encounter Overview
The Amalgamation Chamber encounter is a two-phase fight. During phase one, you'll fight two Elementals: a fire one called Eternal Blaze and a shadow one called Essence of Shadow. The two bosses do not share a health pool. When either of these Elementals reaches 50% health, they will combine into a single Shadow Flame Elemental boss called The Shadowflame Amalgamation, which starts phase two.
Phase One
During phase one, each of these Elementals has its own set of abilities. First off, they need to be spread at least 25 yards away. If they're closer than that, they'll each deal 200% increased damage, which is bad. You'll likely want them further away than that, though, as each boss also does pulsing AOE every 5 seconds that affects any players within 50 yards. Each pulse applies a stacking DOT with the debuffs themselves lasting 20 seconds. You'll want to split the raid into two groups with each group assigned to half the room and one boss on each side.
There are two ways to deal with the pulses. Option one is just Zerg the bosses and push them to 50% before you die. With this option, the debuffs will continue stacking every 5 seconds and after a while, the DOT will start to hurt really badly, requiring you to use some healer cooldowns to keep everybody stable. Option two is to have the tanks taunt swap the bosses at around 75% health. Doing this will allow the debuff to expire and reset on both sides, lowering the healing requirement of the phase dramatically. Both options were viable during testing, so experiment and see whatever works best for your team.
As a note, the shadow boss debuff does also reduce your health by 1% per stack. Depending on how the boss health pools are tuned, this alone may prevent the Zerg Strat on live servers, especially early on.
Aside from the pulses, each boss also has a few abilities affecting players near them. Internal Blaze will periodically cast Fiery Meteor, which is exactly what it sounds like and works like all the other meteor abilities in this game. You'll want the targeted player to immune this if they can or else just have everyone on the fireside soak it. Molten Eruption will put out several soak circles on the ground that explode after a few seconds. Any circles that don't get soaked explode for heavy raid damage, so don't miss soaks.
When The Fire Boss casts Swirling Flame, it'll throw three fire tornadoes towards a random player, so just don't get hit. As a note, these tornadoes do cross the entire room, so even people on the shadow side need to keep their eyes open for these. The Essence of Shadow boss casts Coalescing Void, which will put a swirly on the floor that explodes after a few seconds and pulls players towards it. This deals fall-off damage, so just don't be inside the swirly when it explodes or your end leaders can be mad at you.
Umbral Detonation puts a debuff on a few random people. After six seconds, it'll explode for minor damage to anyone inside the circle and leave a goop puddle on the ground. Try to drop the goop near the wall or just far away from people to conserve space. Shadows of Convergence will spawn a bunch of Shadow orbs that will move quickly towards the boss. Do not get hit by these. There will be space to dodge between the orbs, so keep your eyes open and move early.
Aside from all of this, each boss also has a tank smack that does heavy damage of the boss's respective magic type. When either boss reaches 50% health, they'll both get a shield and go effectively immune to damage. During this time, they'll each throw a constant branch of swirlies on the ground, so watch your feet and don't eat any of these. After 15 seconds, both bosses disappear and phase 2 starts with the spawning of the Shadowflame Amalgamation.
Phase Two
This boss's health is based on the combined remaining health of the P1 bosses, so it's important to have them both as close to 50% health as possible. During phase two, the amalgamation will pulse every 10 seconds, applying a stack of a DOT and reducing max health by 1% per stack. Because of this, you'll want to lust as soon as this phase begins.
The amalgamation has several abilities that are basically combinations of the phase one abilities. Gloom Conflagration puts a meteor soak circle on a random player that needs to be soaked. If less than five people soak this, the raid wipes immediately. After the explosion, a shadowflame orb will appear at the same location. This works exactly like the coalescing void ability, so run away and don't be standing near the orb when it explodes. An easy way to handle this is dropping a Warlock Gateway and having everyone take the Gateway right after they're done soaking the meteor.
Blistering Twilight puts debuffs on several people that'll expire after six seconds. When these expire, each debuff drops a goop puddle on the ground and then launches four tornadoes shooting straight across the room. No, you cannot stack with these. We tried that, it was really funny to watch though. Try to drop these near the edges of the room away from people.
Convergent Eruption will put several soak circles around the room. If you fail to soak any of these, it'll deal heavy damage on the raid and you'll probably lose people. Following that, shadowflame orbs will appear in a circle around where each explosion was and then move quickly inwards. Being hit by an orb will deal massive and honestly, probably lethal damage, so be careful and don't eat an orb.
The boss's last two abilities are tanks max Crushing Vulnerability, which hits for heavy physical damage and causes the tank to take 200% increased shadow flame damage for 10 seconds. Shadow Flame Burst is a frontal cone aimed at the current tank that does heavy Shadow Flame damage. If you eat a Shadow Flame Burst while you have Crushing Vulnerability, you'll almost certainly just die. So tanks will need to swap after each Crushing Vulnerability. Also, make sure the boss is always facing away from the raid so you don't nuke people with the frontal.
Phase 2 can really get pretty hectic, and the damage ramps up really quickly. Use raid cooldowns as necessary, watch your feet, don't eat unnecessary damage, and make sure you never miss any soaks. GG, it's a pretty fun little boss, and let's move on to the next.
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