[10N] Lord Rhyolith - one / two tanks? and stacking q, and leg dps q

[Ilam]

So, do you need two tanks for Rhyolith? We were working on him earlier and our tank was adamant we needed 2, one for the spark and one for the fragments. I can see two tanks helping pick the adds up but not sure it would help overall, considering DPS would need to step up pretty significantly to get the adds down in time... how do you do it?

And is one (melee) DPS on each leg sufficient? I assigned a 'swinging DPS' to nuke one or other leg when req. and they seemed to be doing pretty well with that.. curious how others have approached this.

Lastly, what's the best way to approach heals? I tried putting a marker on me and having ranged / heals stack as close to me as possible but with everything going caraaaazy this didn't work too well... again curious to see how others have approached this... I'm assuming it's also important for people to jump Rhyolith's Concussive Stomp??

We only had two solid attempts after a night spent pugging Beth (fatigue set in) so I assume we just need more time to learn the fight, but any pro tips would be greatly appreciated...

[Garrus]

I've never seen why it'd be needed to two tank the fight if your DPS is good, the adds shouldn't overlap. Melee on legs (2-3), rest on adds.

I've solo tanked it with no problem.

We have all our melee DPS focus on 1 leg at a time, depending on where we wanna steer him. Range can DPS the legs when there is no adds, but they have to listen to our melee DPS calling out which leg to DPS. Range/Healers stay grouped up on a marked healer and move out of stuff with him.

If you wanna see our kill.. that may help you. You just need good communication on which leg to DPS and when.

[Judgejoebrwn]

You can actually jump his stomp? Never tried, just assumed that wouldn't work...

Anyways, whether or not to use two tanks really depends on your group makeup. If you're melee heavy, you may want to use two tanks and have the ranged focus the Spark and the melee focus the Fragments (as the melee can't get close to the Spark). We just got our kill and that's what worked for us since we were oddly melee heavy. If you have 3 solid ranged dps, it should be sufficient for them to handle the adds while the melee drive the boss, prioritizing Fragments over Sparks.

Since the recent hotfix to make him a bit easier to turn, it's no longer terrible. Previously, we'd have two melee dps fulltime on a leg and it would barely move (sometimes not turning at all). Last night, having just a feral druid on a leg alone got SOME turnage. Whenever we needed to turn him quickly, we'd call for it. If our two ranged had finished their Spark, they'd help before the next Spark spawned. If our DK's were done with the Fragments, they would assist until the next wave. Got him to move rather well.

As far as healing goes, if the volcanoes and adds are kept under control, there is very little overall damage going out on this fight. However, we always had numerous people getting caught in the lava streams that made healing pretty stressful. There's no specific need to stack as the stomp is the primary source of raid damage and it's relatively light, but if you are having issues keeping the raid alive (probably more likely due to volcano failure), stacking will certainly be beneficial.

-Judge

[Deleted]

So, do you need two tanks for Rhyolith? We were working on him earlier and our tank was adamant we needed 2, one for the spark and one for the fragments. I can see two tanks helping pick the adds up but not sure it would help overall, considering DPS would need to step up pretty significantly to get the adds down in time... how do you do it?

And is one (melee) DPS on each leg sufficient? I assigned a 'swinging DPS' to nuke one or other leg when req. and they seemed to be doing pretty well with that.. curious how others have approached this.

Lastly, what's the best way to approach heals? I tried putting a marker on me and having ranged / heals stack as close to me as possible but with everything going caraaaazy this didn't work too well... again curious to see how others have approached this... I'm assuming it's also important for people to jump Rhyolith's Concussive Stomp??

We only had two solid attempts after a night spent pugging Beth (fatigue set in) so I assume we just need more time to learn the fight, but any pro tips would be greatly appreciated...

One tanking is fine as long as your ranged DPS is solid.

Judge it thus; how high a % is your Spark on when all the Fragments spawn? .. if it's sub 10% then you're golden 'cos the Frags will go straight for healers making them quite easy and predictable to pick up once the Spark dies. They don't do much damage.

Just mark your resto druid (or paladin with Righteous Fury up).

Regarding the legs .. we just put everyone on the same leg and called out switches vocally. The big guy spins quite quick with a few people on him.

You can't jump the stomp. We all tried to jump every one and none of us managed to avoid the damage aside from one or two lucky resists.

Make sure your Spark is tanked away from the raid and that everyone is moving from the little fire trails, they hurt.

Raid damage will decrease rapidly once the kiters get some practice in and are stomping the volcanos before the +fire damage debuff stacks too high.

[MalooTakant]

we did 3 melee on legs, 1 tank rest pretty much just spread where ever they wanted without much issue. Might want to grp a bit for fragment spawn but really shouldn't be an issue for your tank to gather them and they die super quick. On our kill attempt we spit our leg dps, 1 melee on each leg with our 3rd melee as the driver. With just him switching it was much quicker to even back out with equal dps on both legs whenever he pulled back. Although I don't think that's necessary our melee seemed to like it.

Most important thing is getting enough dps on sparks to have them dead or near dead when the next wave of fragments spawn.

[Deleted]

Hello,

I'm a druid tank we instantly swapped to me solo tanking after seeing what the fight was about. Usually There will only be around 2 add packs on you at the same time which shouldn't hurt you (Any longer - probably fragments explode). Pop cooldowns if you accidentaly get into a volcano or if you have too many stacks of the +fire_damage_taken debuff and shout on comms for dps on adds if you get second pack before 1st is dead.

[Durbi]

Hey,

we did it last on with our alts, went in with 1 tank, 3 healers and 6 dps

1 tank was more then enough as we never got overlapping adds, 1 at the time, had arcane mage, assa rogue and fury warrior on legs, boomkin, ele shaman and warlock on adds

tried with 2 dps on legs before that, but didn't work quite well, but since we went like that we 1 shoted him

and also we had every ranged on top of me (shaman healer) so AoE healing is effective

[Deleted]

2 Tanks can ease up the healing and make it easier to take the Spark outside the raid. Especially in melee heavy combinations. Most guilds (on 10 and 25man) do have 2 tanks in the raid (for other encounters) anyway. Removing one tank from the raid cause Rhyolith doesn't need a 2nd tank would feel kinda weird :/

[Garrus]

2 Tanks can ease up the healing and make it easier to take the Spark outside the raid. Especially in melee heavy combinations. Most guilds (on 10 and 25man) do have 2 tanks in the raid (for other encounters) anyway. Removing one tank from the raid cause Rhyolith doesn't need a 2nd tank would feel kinda weird :/

If two tanks aren't needed it's usually better to go with one, because it gives you the edge on certain mechanics. For Ryolith precisely, the boss will steer faster with more DPS on them.

Just like having 3 healers is usually the way to go, but not always, and that's why it's good that at least 1 healer has a strong DPS spec.

Anyway that's my view on it.

[Divinedoom]

I solo tanked it no problem on my warrior (10 man), and it should be no problem for any tank class. I suppose that on 25 man it isnt that much of a gain to switch from 2 to 1 tank, but on 10 man it's quite a substancial dps increase.

We had a settup of 1 tank, 3 healers and 6 dps (2 melee, 4 ranged).

The 2 melee were on the boss full time, Affl lock and boomkin were on adds fulltime whenever adds were up. And then we had 2 mages who had as priority to help burn down the big add and be on the boss otherwise. We choose boomkin and Affl lock to be on adds full time because the dps were complaining that the boss turned sluggish when dots/cleaves were on it. That was before the hotfix to make him eassier to turn in 10 man though.
I don't think it's necisarry to burn down the big add, but we decided to do it since the steering of the boss wasn't always perfect and there could be periods with very high raid damadge. And we wanted to lower the damadge on the tank some to help the healers out. Also note that the big add stacks a buff on itself increasing damadge done over time, so if you want to lower incomming damadge try kill the big add some quicker.

We had 1 melee calling out assignments for the turning and the others following that, while ofcourse using their own brain to not turn him too far. Pull the big add out of the raid (and make sure raid members move away as well), avoid craters, and most of all avoid the fire lines.

On 10 man the first phase and the transition into p2 were the main problems. Our first wipes were to people getting used to the driving and the fire debuff stacking too high. Once we had the driving under solid control it only took 2 more attempts to kill it. First time we got him into p2 we lost too many people during the transition and 5 manned to boss from 15%-5%. 2nd time we got him into p2 we easily killed him, use any tranqs/hymns you got left when entering p2. Once the raid is stable and people are stacked on the boss the damadge is quite low. Note that the firelines still spawn in p2 and are still deadly.

Don't worry too much if you're wiping in the 80%-50% range, you're actually quite close to a kill. It's all about figuering out the driving, once you got that it won't take long to down it.

Btw, adds despawn once you hit p2. So don't worry about having them down before you push (thats actually what we were doing since we didn't know they would despawn).

[Ilam]

Awesome comments guys, thank you all for the tips (and the video up the page).

We'll be back at it tonight and I'll go with one tank - two melee on leg, one calling direction, with at least one RDPS assigned to help out when it's called - ranged and heals stacked on me and close to the center whenever possible - fragments > spark.

My bad on the jumping concussive stomp thing, I recall taking zero damage from a couple, thought it was because I was jumping but probably more because I was too far away.

[herpecin]

2 Tanks can ease up the healing and make it easier to take the Spark outside the raid. Especially in melee heavy combinations. Most guilds (on 10 and 25man) do have 2 tanks in the raid (for other encounters) anyway. Removing one tank from the raid cause Rhyolith doesn't need a 2nd tank would feel kinda weird :/

thats what offspecs are for. if your a tank and dont have a damn near full 359+ DPS set you are doing something very wrong.