1. #1

    Amber Shaper 10M Normal advice needed

    Greetings,

    My guild is starting to work on Amber Shaper 10m normal and after a morning of wipes I'm looking for some advice. We have been getting folks to practice the constructor button pressing in LFR but then again it's rather RNG so you can go about weeks without getting re-shaped. Aside from that, there are other issues.

    When the boss transitions at 70% it seems after he finishes channeling scalpel he will always re-shape one of our tanks. Then the monstrosity shows up and we have only 1 tank to tank both the boss and him. We tried to break the re-shaped tank asap but then we run into problems timing wise. It seems the next monstrosity amber explosion happens almost immediately (~5sec give or take) after the next reshape so our new construct always have to rush rush rush. If the person is slow it's GG.

    We pop lust at the beginning of p2 to shorten the phase because people are not good with buttons. The monstrosity goes down pretty quickly. But the damage in p3 is rather insane.

    I'm also not sure if we should 2 heal or 3 heal this fight. We tried both and in general with 2 healers we almost if not always have one of the healers getting re-shaped in P2. So if someone screw up their construct's explosion it's also GG.

    Here are our logs: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-vhhlbn7z2zq7eew5/

    Composition wise we have:

    - Bear tank
    - DK tank

    - Disc priest (or holy)
    - Holy paladin x 2

    - Enh shaman
    - Hunter
    - Warlock
    - Mage
    - Shadow priest

    I guess as you can tell from our logs we are just really unsure about the strat we are suppose to use. Guides and videos tend to tell different things. There's the normal one, the drink 1 pool in p2 one, a zerg strat etc. Help is appreciated. Thank you.

    GM/Raid Leader of <Air>, Sargeras-US, Alliance
    13/13M Mythic Morning/Day-Time Raiding Guild

    Now recruiting for Legion! Apply at air-guild.com

  2. #2
    The first and most important thing I noticed/checked from your logs is all the Amber Explosions that are getting off. Both from the big add in phase 2, and the people getting transformed.

    People need to know how to construct otherwise it's just going to be painful.

    Also, my guild found that if you push phase 2 before the tanks get Reshape life a total of 3 times (First MT, then OT, and then the MT okay), then the timers get all screwy and don't line up nicely with reshape life.

    Hope this helps a little.

    Edit: My guild 3 heals it, it makes it easier when a healer gets constructs.

    Seeing you wrote your raiders are not good with buttons...well that's just not an excuse. They need to know what they're doing. It's 4 buttons, 1 you don't even use in phase 2.

    I'll give you a quick breakdown of how to use them.

    1 = Attack, use this to interrupt the Amber Monstrosity and to apply a stacking debuff on the target that increases damage taken. Use DBM to be aware of when Amber Explosion is going off. If the CD on Amber Explosion is 7 seconds or higher, then I'd go ahead and use your 1 ability on the add at will. Otherwise save it for the interrupt.

    2 = Self Interrupt. Use this to interrupt yourself. As far as my knowledge gos, DBM actually counts down for you. Do not cast this until you can actually see your cast bar. DBM counts like this "5..4..3..2..1 *casts*" We had a problem where people would interrupt just as it said 1 because they thought it would interrupt it, but all they did was blow the cooldown before it was even cast.

    3 = Eats pools, heals construct and restores Will Power. This should never be used in phase 2. If someone east in phase 2, smack them and tell them the wipe is now their fault. In phase 2, if you're a construct and you run out of Will Power before you can break out. It's the dps's fault, if you eat, it's your fault. In phase 3, I tend to eat when my 1 ability is on CD, since i can cast 2 wherever and i do need to eat. Do not just spam eat pools though, other people need them too.

    4 = Breaks free. Only available below 20% health.


    Hope these tips help :3 I'll add more if they appear in my mind.
    Last edited by Cyzen; 2013-01-15 at 09:58 PM.

  3. #3
    We just got this down the other night.

    In general it's GG if your reshaped guys are letting their explosions happen. It's don't-stand-in-the-fire level of personal responsibility, tell them to stop sucking and press 2 when their boss addon shouts at them.

    We 2-healed it, and yeah it's tough if you get a healer reshaped in p2, especially if they're the first target. Just have to keep on your toes and be ready to pop healing/defensive cooldowns to get through it if it happens. 3-healing is probably possible but your dpsers need to be good; we tried 3-healing but had a hard time breaking the reshaped tanks out in p1 before their willpower ran out.

    As you've seen, scalpel and reshape are always back-to-back, and he won't change to p2 while he's doing them. So if you bring him below 70% once he starts casting scalpel, he'll reshape a tank (since he's still in p1) and then summon the monstrosity and you're boned. So you want to bring him down to 75%ish, wait for the next reshape, blow up the reshaped tank and then quickly take him down to 70% before he starts casting scalpel again.

    Also as a tip, we found that we needed to wait for 4 scalpel+reshapes before starting p2, because with only 3 we didn't have enough amber pools to survive p3.

    I'd say lust in p2, because you're going to have most of your raid reshaped during p3, and so the extra haste won't help as much. But p3 has the soft enrage, so if you're having a bunch of wipes at 5% or less then it's probably worth giving it a shot.

  4. #4
    A few things that made this fight easier for us:
    - We had everyone change their DBM alerts and timers to ONLY show amber explosions (either their own or the add); this makes a LOT easier to see the DBM timer to what really matters.

    - We have ppl calling on vent when the add is about to explode, usually giving some 5-10 secs ahead - whoever is transformed stop spamming 1 and/or get closer to add (in case eating pools) to make sure this will get interrupted.

    - We 3 heal it, hero on 2nd phase.

    - Make sure ppl are killing adds on 2nd phase, they hurt a lot too.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Xelaeno View Post
    When the boss transitions at 70% it seems after he finishes channeling scalpel he will always re-shape one of our tanks. Then the monstrosity shows up and we have only 1 tank to tank both the boss and him. We tried to break the re-shaped tank asap but then we run into problems timing wise. It seems the next monstrosity amber explosion happens almost immediately (~5sec give or take) after the next reshape so our new construct always have to rush rush rush. If the person is slow it's GG.
    This shouldn't be a big problem. Neither the boss or the monstrosity hit particularly hard, so any tank should be able to tank both without it being an issue. IIRC, you've got 30 seconds or so to break the tank in the vehicle out before the next reshape life. The first amber explosion from the monstrosity should be soon after the reshape life, so they should save amber strike (button 1) and not spam it till they interrupt it.

    Note that you should only dps down people in the vehicle to just below 20%, and then switch back to other targets. Whoever is in the vehicle should stay in until just before their will power runs out, so they can keep stacking the debuff on the boss or monstrosity

    We pop lust at the beginning of p2 to shorten the phase because people are not good with buttons. The monstrosity goes down pretty quickly. But the damage in p3 is rather insane.
    Popping lust in P2 is good. P3 is rather short, and you get most people in the vehicle by the end anyway, so lust isn't that useful there. You should wait till you have some stacks on the monstrosity before you pop lust though, so you can get more damage on him. we usually wait till about 5 or 6 stacks.

    I'm also not sure if we should 2 heal or 3 heal this fight. We tried both and in general with 2 healers we almost if not always have one of the healers getting re-shaped in P2. So if someone screw up their construct's explosion it's also GG.
    Definitely 3 heal it. It's not a dps check since it's all about the vehicle. People in the vehicle do a lot of damage with the autoattack (smash). Most importantly, they need to stack that debuff as high as possible by spamming 1 when not saving it for the interrup in p2. There are a few tricks to do more dps and get the debuff stacking faster on the boss in p3:

    1. Try to tank the boss and monstroisity in p1 and p2 around the center, so that the pools end up closer to the boss when he moves there in p3. That way people in the vehicle don't need to move too far from the boss to drink pools, maximizing amber strikes on him.
    2. People shouldn't drink pools till they're about 35 or so will power. When they reach that low, they should go out and drink multiple pools at the same time, then come back and keep spamming 1.
    3. People in the vehicle should right click the boss to ensure they autoattack is up. I've seen amber strike not trigger it before.
    4. If you have issues with people running out of pools in p3, you can extent p1 a bit longer by holding dps on the boss to allow for a few more scalpels.

  6. #6
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    Our guild 3 healed the fight.

    Phase 1: Tanked him around the bottom of the stairs area, moving around to spread pools a little. Our DPS followed a CONSTRUCT > BLOBS > BOSS priority, obviously switching off the construct at 20% to allow us tanks time to squish in as many amber strikes before our willpower is due to run out. We would usually get our third reshape with the boss at 71-70% (typically me).

    Phase 2: Due to our timing, the non reshaped tank picks up both boss and monstrosity with CDs up, while the dps are told to burn the other tank quicksmart, with the idea of getting the 2nd tank back into the fray before the first fling. With our phase timing, our p2 reshapes tend to have 5-10 seconds before they have to do their interrupt, while it doesn't give them much time to react, it was also good practice for exposing them to the mechanic, and also worked well for not having both self interrupt and boss interrupt happening in short succession. The DPS had the same style of priority in this phase, if a DPS was reshaped, they had permission to hang around in the form as long as they had willpower (no eating pools) but had to get out before transformation, while healers had to be broken out ASAP. We didn't pop hero/lust in this phase, because we prefer to have more pools available in p3.

    Phase 3: We pop lust early in this phase since the players start transforming very quickly. We just tell people to burn the hell out of the boss and keep their willpower at safety levels. The boss died when we had about 5 constructs up.

    With this strategy that we formed through only about 10 attempts, we felt fairly comfortable with our kill, our p3 was a tad chaotic but only with 1 or 2 people transforming at 5% or so, due to forgetting to eat some pools.

  7. #7
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    Very nice topic and above all very decent tips to try out.

    We are starting on him as well (had few goes last night).

    We in the end went with 2 healers as the healing didn't seem that big of an issue (but will greatly depends of which healers we have along). Most times when the mostrosity came one of the tanks was the reshaped, which really wasn't a concern for us, as this enable to DPS the big thing as the reshaped thing to get it down faster. And well the other tank picked up the extra as well on top of boss. As when they are together they don't seem to hit that hard as all. I personally as bear didn't have to use much def. CDs.

    We died last night due to big add getting of explosions, but after the nth try it was almost fixed.

  8. #8
    Make sure your bear tank is not attacking the boss when he is transformed unless he is stacking the debuff because when he is auto attacking he is getting healed by Leader of the Pack

    ---------- Post added 2013-01-16 at 11:40 AM ----------

    Also near the wipe on your longest pull the lock was stacking the debuff on the boss was this because the monstrosity was low enough to just switch stacks to the boss?

    ---------- Post added 2013-01-16 at 11:45 AM ----------

    Finally looking at your Druid's activity (my main is a Druid) he did not use Savage Defense or Frenzied Regen at all, on the longest pull that is

  9. #9
    We use the perma-suit strat. We spec 3 tanks at the beginning of the fight, and whichever tank is a construct at the P2 transition remains a construct for the duration of the fight (they eat pools throughout P2). For us, this gave us better stacks and more consistent interrupts of the monstrosity's explosion.

    Some say this is needlessly complicating the fight. I see it as a reallocation of responsibility. One person's job gets harder, everyone else has their job get a little easier. (Other constructs primarily worry about interrupting their own cast). If you've got some people that are derpy in the suit, this might be the way to go.

    We 2 heal. Feel it gives us better control over the oozes. If you're using the perma-suit strat, you can zerg transformed healers out in P2 w/o missing an interrupt.

    P3 damage shouldn't be that insane. Suggests interrupts are being missed. On our first kill we had both healers transformed fairly early in P3, and went ~40s with off-healing & CDs.

  10. #10
    The strat that worked for my team and got us the kill in about 2 hours of pulls was this:
    2 tanks, 2 heals, 6 dps.

    Phase 1:
    Pull the boss and have your dps either slow dps or stop dps all together. The idea is to have 4 constuct phases stacking as many stacks as possible on the boss before he hits 71%. DPS priority is Construct then Amber Oozes, saving all their cooldowns for the phase 2 transition window.

    Phase 1 Constructs:
    The best rotation for the constuct in phase 1 is amber strike on cooldown, struggle for control when casting explosion, drink one puddle (only after using struggle at least 1 time), and then escape ONLY after reapplying the debuff right as the boss beings to cast reshape life on the other tank. Doing exactly that will leave as many pools up as possible for phase 2-3 and keep your construct willpower high enough that the tank doesn't die waiting to escape. With practice your phase one constucts can stack 7-8 stacks per rotation and as you get to the 5th reshape life you should be between 28-32 stacks on the boss and the boss should be hovering around 73-75%. *NOTE* if you find yourself doing too much damage to the boss as a constuct and running the boss too close to an earlier than desired transition, remember that your constuct actually melees the boss fairly hard. The simple solution is simply to turn the constuct away from the boss since Amberstrike does not require you to face the boss.

    Phase 1-2 Transition/Burn phase
    This is where it gets a little tricky, as soon as you see your DBM timer showing 3-5 seconds left before the boss goes into amber scalpal/reshape life cast sequence blow hero and have all the dps and healers immediately blow up the boss. With the right timing/dps you will easily burn the boss into the high 30%'s or low 40%'s range. *Key Note* Your tank must remember to still escape before they out of willpower.

    Phase 2 one tank, perma-constucts:
    The last tank to get converted (which will happen on the phase 1-2 transition) will become your first permanent constuct for the rest of the fight. This person must maintain the amberstike debuff on the boss while also making sure to interupt the Monstrosity when it begins to cast amber explosion. This person must be extremely confortable with being the constuct as they are the lynchpin of this stratagy.

    DPS priority in this phase will be Constucts with healers inside-> Oozes -> Monstrosity. Also whoever is second on the Monstrosity's threat list must always be ready to kite the monstrosity as soon as they see fling going off (preferably running towards wherever the tank was thrown). A second option is to have a dps with a taunt to watch the fight timers and taunt the monstrosity right before it does fling to be the fling target so the tank can just pick the monstrosity back up after the fling. Once you have a second constuct out in phase two they should stack amber stike on the Monstrosity exclusively until it is dead and the first constuct should go back to stacking amberstike exclusively on the boss until phase 3 begins.

    Phase 3
    Depending on RNG with healers getting reshaped and the time it take the DPS to finish off the Monstrosity you will probably have about 3 constucts as you enter this phase and the boss should be wearing 50-60 stacks of the debuff. With this many stacks and the boss already being sub 40% phase 3 should last no more than 20-30 seconds, especially once dps classes begin hitting their execute abilities.


    This is stratagy really puts the burden on the final tank turned constuct to make sure they know what they are doing come phase 2 and your dps to know how to watch for the fling timer.

  11. #11
    There are like 10 different ways I've heard of doing this fight. I figured I'd throw out another possiblity cause I know different groups have different results. What worked for my group was:

    1. very light dps on boss at the start (this was for our p1-p2 transition, felt it was easier to do it at the start then to try and call it in the middle of the fight).
    2. p1 tanks ate 1 pool. this allowed the stacks to keep rolling on the boss
    3. p2 was pushed as a scalpel started, this cause the timing of the big add interrupt to happen between the reshaped players 2nd and 3rd self interrupt for the most part. keep in mind that he can reshape a tank, then summon the monstrosity. We didn't find both on one tank hard to heal with 3 healers. And the beginning of p2 was easier cause someone comfortable with construct was controlling it at the start.
    4. p2 constructs all ate 1 pool never more. stacks kept rolling and we ended p2 fairly quickly (I think right after 4th reshaped occurred).
    5. p3 people stayed on the boss until under 1/2 willpower then ran out ate 2 pools and back in. This was to get as much up time on the boss.

    With that strat we killed the boss with 1 pool left on the floor. Also a lil more on timing. In p3 I'd recommend just 1 spam as usual, when you hit your first self interrupt, do 1 more amber strike then run out and eat 2 pools. If you're fast at this you'll get back in just as your amber strike is coming back off cd. At least until the pools are very far away. We also positioned the boss in his p3 position at the start so that we were all around the boss and no pools were every more than 25 yards from him.
    Last edited by mahananaka; 2013-01-16 at 07:05 PM.

  12. #12
    Deleted
    Cheers for the tips, guys. I've got my own question though I might be over-thinking it. With Fling, is there anything that can be done to avoid the damage for the person being targeted? Or is it a case of spreading out and then the tank and whoever he lands on takes the hit, whilst the add is kited and then back to it.

  13. #13
    Deleted
    I didn't read the whole thread, so this might have been said already, but what helped us was two-healing it.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by land View Post
    A few things that made this fight easier for us:
    - We had everyone change their DBM alerts and timers to ONLY show amber explosions (either their own or the add); this makes a LOT easier to see the DBM timer to what really matters.

    - We have ppl calling on vent when the add is about to explode, usually giving some 5-10 secs ahead - whoever is transformed stop spamming 1 and/or get closer to add (in case eating pools) to make sure this will get interrupted.

    - We 3 heal it, hero on 2nd phase.

    - Make sure ppl are killing adds on 2nd phase, they hurt a lot too.
    This and we have people turn off the 5 second count down. I have a fast reaction so the count down always messed me up as I would immediately hit the button in a pavlov's response to the count down. Turning of unnecessary timers and turning off the count down helped a lot for our kill.

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