Heroic Rhyolith

Planning on knocking out my remaining Heroic FL guides this week so I can dive right into DS guides.

H. Rhyolith: Ugh. This guy is the bane of my existence. RNG-determined  volcano spawns suck. Weird turning mechanisms suck. Even after we had him on farm I cringe every time he's up.

This is another heroic fight that changes for ranged, but not so much for melee. There are more adds to kill, including little gray blobs that increase Rhyolith’s armor if they get close enough for him to absorb them. I don’t want to encourage too much melee cleaves – since, while damage on the adds is good, it could influence turning (or lack thereof). I did get in the habit of having earthbind hot-keyed for this fight. It did seem effective in giving the ranged (or the arms warrior that cleaved anyway) just enough time to kill some of the adds.

Again, have one person designated to call out directions. For Normal we had our raid leader calling turns out, for Heroic the melee leader (me) does it, since ranged and heals have a lot more of their own stuff to worry about. Try to keep him going straight for as long as possible after he crushes a volcano, so that you can respond to him activating the next, wherever this might be. Obviously if he’s near an edge you can’t do this, so you just have to turn him in a direction and pray it’s the right one. Even if it’s not, never change direction. It’s faster to force him to do a complete circle than to make him reverse. Also (and I learned this the hard way) call out straighten several seconds before you need it. Nothing sucks more than having him miss the volcano you aimed him for because he’s just a little too far right.

Phase 2 is different. Now there are dancing lasers! Do your best to avoid them, while still sticking behind and to the middle of the boss as much as you can to benefit from AOE-heals. Shamanistic Rage, Stoneclaw, and eating your lock cookies, are key here. Several of our wipes were just because we got flattened by his first phase 2 stomp + lasers. The goal is to stack everyone up for heals in the beginning, yet far enough apart, quick enough, that lasers won’t cut a path through half the raid.

Swag: Dreadfire Drape

We did him on normal last week, just to get the achievement. I may or may not have been yelling "DANCE YOU ANNOYING ROCK DANCE" as he spun around in all-right circles. May have.