Can’t drive in real life? Maybe you’ll do a better job against Lord Rhyolith.
Imagine if you were driving a bumper car. The catch is that there is no steering wheel. Instead, you have to lean in a certain direction in order to get the car turning. Not only that, the accelerator is locked in place. You can’t stop, you can’t slow down and every few seconds it randomly decides to just give out before restarting again.
Oh, and if you make it to the side of a room, you explode.
That’s essentially Rhyolith. I haven’t even mentioned the numerous fire effects yet.
Your job as healers is to buy your raid group enough time for them to steer him into volcanoes and get rid of debuffs.
Dividing the raid
Drivers: About 7-9 total DPS (As much melee as possible)
Ad control: Everyone else that’s not driving
Healers: 6-8 (Recommend 7 to start)
Main tank: Pick a tank to exclusively pick up Fragments of Rhyolith. Their job is to stay near the center of the room and snap all of them the moment they spawn. If they’re not dead within 30 seconds, their explode and deal half their remaining health to a random player in 25 man (they deal their current health to a random player in 10 man)
Off tank: Infernal Rage are giant fire elementals that need to be snapped and dragged away from the group to the edge as fast as possible. They AoE any players within 12 yards. Their damage gradually increases every 5 seconds but the good news is that the amount of damage they take also increases every 5 seconds. Don’t let that fool you. Kill them fast.
Pick 1 player to call out the foot that needs to be DPS’d. Our caller experienced success when he was positioned to the side of Rhyolith instead of behind him. Rhyolith’s body has a habit of obstructing the view. Going from the side should at least give you a rough 270° degree field of vision which includes the direction Rhyolith is facing.
Dividing the healers
Main tank: 1 healer
Off tank: 1 healer + 1 raid healer who can float HoTs or shields
Raid: 4-6 healers
Phase 1
With his 80 stacks of Obsidian Armor, the firepower in your raid group is going to get blunted until they whittle that armor down by steering the rock dude over exploding volcanoes. The only way to steer it is for your players to DPS the foot that you want him to turn.
For positions, instruct the the raid to stay near the middle of the island (and your drivers are exempt).
Tip: Enable name plates as it clearly labels the legs.
For starters, pick a leg to get started with. We like to open up on his right leg first just to get him gradually spinning around.
Concussive stomp: He lifts his foot up and then stomps the ground. Contrary to popular belief, it appears that jumping at the precise time of the stomp does not negate the damage. There is a slight chance you may resist it.
Volcano: When Rhyolith ignites a volcano, every player is going to 36000 damage or so over 6 seconds to 6 players on 25 (3 players on 10). When a player is hit, they gain a debuff (Eruption) causing them to take an additional 10% Fire damage every 14 seconds. If your own stack goes above 8, use a self cooldown.
Heck, use a raid cooldown until they wear off.
Crater: This is the most dangerous ability. It will catch players unaware. There is a chance that a crater will cause a stream of lava to stream outward. Any player caught in the path takes 70000+ damage. One or two players eating that is no problem. Raid healers can take care of that easily. When you have a dozen players getting ripped by that with the fire debuff, it becomes a problem.
Tip: Designate a specific player or 3 to specifically call out streams when the ability kicks in. With the amount of stuff on the ground, it’s easy to miss.
Once Lord Rhyoliths’ stacks drop to 10 or less, your group doesn’t need to worry about steering as much. Enough armor has been shaved off to the point where you can bring him down to 25%. That triggers the second part of the encounter.
Phase 2
The last phase is extremely straightforward. Once you get to that point, you essentially have the encounter in the bag. He can now be tanked. Regroup your tank healers on your main tank.
All healers
Pay attention to your individual stacks of Eruption. I found that if exceeded 8 stacks, the damage would be almost unbearable and a wipe would be imminent. Raid cooldowns are needed until the stacks drop off.
The biggest threat are the fire veins that seem to sprout from volcanos. Between that and the decreased fire resist, players will die if they’re not watching where they’re standing. You might be able to eat the initial burst. I’ve had to do it once or twice to close the distance to a tank. I certainly don’t recommend doing it unless you know what you’re doing, have little to no stacks and have a self heal (or a healthstone) to negate the damage.
Priests
Desperate Prayer really helps here. Watch the ground for any fire veins before using your hymns.
Shamans
Lay down Healing Rain somewhere around the middle of the map. Your players can spot the blue circles and stand on top of them easily.
Druids
Not uncommon to see Rebirths being used on the encounter. Get away from any craters or volcanos before using them. Watch the ground for any fire veins before using Tranquility.
Paladins
With so much rampant fire damage going around, there is no wrong time to use Aura Mastery throughout the first phase.
I realise you guys are 25 man raiders and you do great reviews but you might consider giving some details for 10 man raids. Especially as there are more 10 man than 25 now it seems.
It’s a little harder for me to do that because I’m not really exposed to that environment on 10 man. While the mechanics are fundamentally the same, the approach, mentality and sometimes even spell usages aren’t. I don’t do enough 10 man to offer advice specifically on 10 man 🙁
@Voltigeuse:
As a 10 man raid, we used one tank and three healers.
The amount of people you can assign to steering will depend on your DPS team. Make it top priority to down the ads fast enough and figure out how many you can assign to the legs. Because melees are not a good choice for the big infernoing add, choose them for steering. The real struggle for 10 man here is to figure out the right balance and the strong demand for ranged DPS and AoE-damage.
We worked with 2 players on the legs and had one range help out at critical moments. We had to heal some melees through the Infernal Rage add’s AoE, but it was doable if they payed attention and moved out if their health was dropping too low.
We had one healer on the tank, one for the raid in general and one who followed the drivers to avoid range issues.
If possible call for Aura Mastery or the 20% bonus health warrior thing to give the raid time to stack up once phase 2 begins.
Hope that helps, and sorry for the bad English.
Just started on Lord Rhyolith yesterday and this will defiantly help.
It seems in Firelands I’m spending more time looking at my feet than I’m used to. Otherwise I’m just standing around doing the healy thing, when were we last able to do that? It’s been so long…
I must finish up researching the rest of the bosses!
TY
For shamans this is a fight where Totemic reach might be more valuable than other optional talents.