Strategy
The encounter is made up of 2 phases. Phase One (from 100% to 25% health) requires the raid to move Rhyolith around the room to break his armor while Phase Two (from 25% health to the end) is a standard nuke phase.
Initially, Rhyolith is protected by an armor that your raid needs to remove progressively by making him step on the volcanoes that he regularly creates throughout the fight.
During Phase One, Rhyolith will ignore players (i.e., he does not melee and does not need to be tanked) and roam around the room. He is in constant motion and cannot be stopped. However, he can be steered left or right, according to which of his feet you deal damage to: attacking the left foot makes him go left while attacking the right foot makes him go right.
The idea here is to attack his feet in such a way that he keeps going from one volcano to another. At the same time, Rhyolith must be prevented from reaching the lava that surrounds the encounter area, as it will cause him to wipe the raid.
In addition to these particular mechanics, the raid will also need to kill adds and deal with various abilities that Rhyolith will use.
When Phase Two starts, Rhyolith's armor shatters. He then needs to be tanked and the fight turns into a regular nuke phase. The boss needs to die before he wipes the raid with a very damaging ability that eventually causes the healers to run out of mana.
All the abilities used by Rhyolith and the adds he summons deal Fire damage. Therefore, it is imperative that the raid is provided with either Elemental Resistance Totem or Resistance Aura for the entire duration of the fight.
During Phase One, Rhyolith's left and right foot have their own unit frames and can be attacked. Rhyolith himself is, of course, also attackable. The protection provided by his armor also applies to his feet.
The damage done to a foot is divided equally between both feet. More precisely, every few seconds, the health of both feet is adjusted so that it becomes equal. For example, if one foot is at 48% health and the other is at 50% health, then both feet will be at 49% after the adjustment.
The health pool of each foot is always exactly half that of Rhyolith. Every time you damage a foot, Rhyolith is damaged for the same amount and inversely, each time you damage Rhyolith directly, the damage is also split evenly among his feet. This mechanics means that, during Phase One, the raid will do most of its damage on Rhyolith by attacking his feet to control him.
When Phase Two starts, his armor shatters, he needs to be tanked, and his feet are no longer attackable.
For this fight, your UI displays a Direction Gauge. The default UI shows a horizontal energy bar that fills and depletes. Some addons display it as a percentage bar. The value indicated/displayed by the bar shows where Rhyolith is currently steering:
the closer to the left (or 0%), the more Rhyolith is steering left;
the median value (or 50%) represents Rhyolith moving in a straight line;
the closer to the right (or 100%), the more Rhyolith is steering right.
When attacking the left foot to make Rhyolith turn left, or the right foot to make him turn right, there seems to be a slight delay (about 1 second) before Rhyolith eventually starts changing direction. The raid will need some practice before finally being able to make Rhyolith change direction at will. Normally, half of the raid's DPS players should be on this task at all time (usually all the melee players), with sporadic help from the rest of the DPS players.
It looks as if Rhyolith has some inertia. When the damage done to both his feet is no longer unequal, the Direction Gauge will have a tendency to go back to the middle.
It is imperative to prevent Rhyolith from reaching the lava pool surrounding the fighting area because it empowers him with a powerful ability that will, in all likelihood, wipe the raid.
5.2. Phase 1 Strategy
In this fight, tanks and healers have the easier role as their task is rather simple. DPS need to properly distribute their damage among Rhyolith's feet to make sure that he steps on as many active volcanoes as possible, while taking down the adds.
5.2.1. Positioning
The fight requires no specific positioning. All the ranged players should be stacked up at range to make AoE healing more efficient. Melee players will almost exclusively be on Rhyolith. Most of the damage is unavoidable, which leaves only 2 things to watch out for:
Spark of Rhyolith should be tanked away from the raid (12 yards at least), so that they do not debuff anyone else than their tank. A great location to tank them is on the edge of the plateau, as it gives more room for maneuvering Rhyolith.
When craters trigger Magma Flow and release lava streams, everyone needs to move out of their path. So far, we have only seen 3 patterns for the directions of the streams:
5.2.2. Tanking Assignments
During Phase One, only the Fragments of Rhyolith and the Spark of Rhyolith, which are spawned by every 20-25 seconds, will require tanking. Most guilds will prefer to use only one tank. A 2-tank strategy should only be employed if these two conditions are met:
the DPS cannot kill a wave of adds before the next one spawns;
the healers cannot keep up with the damage done on a single tank by 2 waves of adds.
Sparks of Rhyolith should be tanked out of the raid because they do proximity damage. There is no constraint regarding the positioning of Fragments of Rhyolith.
5.2.3. Healing Duties
If the raid performs properly, the only sources of damage are the following:
Concussive Stomp: moderate raid damage every 30 seconds;
8,500 Fire damage every second on a Spark of Rhyolith's tank;
Eruption: moderate (but increasing over time) raid damage for 20 seconds every 40 seconds. The more volcanoes are up, the more often Eruption will happen, to the point where (during the last minute of Phase One) everyone will have high stacks (possibly 20, the maximum) and will therefore take very increased Fire damage.
Surely, the healers will also need to contend with melee DPS hit by Summon Fragments of Rhyolith or Summon Spark of Rhyolith, and players who failed to move away from a Spark of Rhyolith or from the lava streams of a crater.
5.2.4. Target Priorities
For once, DPS are required to perform the complicated task. They need to control Rhyolith's movement and properly focus down the adds at the same time.
The only assignment of melee DPS is to attack Rhyolith's feet to turn him around. Handling the adds is a ranged DPS duty. However, If both Fragments of Rhyolith and a Spark of Rhyolith are up at the same time, one melee DPS in 10-man difficulty, 3 or 4 in 25-man difficulty can help out on the Fragments so that the ranged DPS can focus on the Spark.
Ranged DPS should give a high priority to the Sparks of Rhyolith. Early on, they can wait for maybe 10-15 seconds before attacking one, so that it takes increased damage (only if the tank can handle the increased damage the Spark also deals). Towards the end of Phase One, Sparks of Rhyolith should be killed as fast as possible because of the high stacks of Eruption everyone will have.
Fragments of Rhyolith should be killed within 30 seconds to prevent them from dealing damage equal to their remaining health when the time is up. Whenever ranged DPS are not busy with adds, they should focus on Rhyolith.
5.2.5. Handling Rhyolith
Making Rhyolith step on active volcanoes would normally not require the attention of all the DPS players, as the damage necessary on one foot to make him change direction is not very high (2 DPS in 10-man would do just fine).
Unfortunately, ranged DPS will be busy with adds for a large part of the phase while melee DPS will sometimes need to move away from the boss to help with the Fragments or to avoid Summon Fragments of Rhyolith or Summon Spark of Rhyolith Therefore, every DPS needs to help out with attacking the feet, whenever they can. Eventually, players will find the right balance between attacking the feet and doing their other tasks. They can also attack Rhyolith's chest if they simply want to damage the boss without interfering with his current direction.
A player, possibly a tank, since the fight is rather easy for them, should be designated to pilot Rhyolith, i.e. choose the next active volcano to be stepped on and give orders (attack left foot, attack right foot, etc.) so that Rhyolith reaches that volcano. That player also needs to make sure that Rhyolith is never moved close to the edge of his plateau. This would allow him to empower himself with Drink Magma, effectively wiping the raid (or at least killing most of it). Finally, the pilot needs to prevent Rhyolith from stepping on dormant volcanoes, as it gives him stacks of Molten Armor.
Should the raid manage to remove all of Rhyolith's armor before he reaches 25% health, he should no longer be allowed to step on volcanoes. This will prevent craters from spawning, removing the need of moving out of lava streams.
6. Phase Two
At 25% health, the armor that was protecting Rhyolith shatters and you get to see his true self. At that point, Phase Two begins. It is a burn phase during which Rhyolith must die before he wipes the raid.Rhyolith needs to be killed before he wipes the raid, as Immolation, especially when coupled with Superheated will deal heavy damage to your raid. Concussive Stomps, while Rhyolith is Superheated, are also devastating. Obviously, Bloodlust, Heroism, or Time Warp should be used during this phase.
Overall it is a very easy and short phase but for completeness, we give below all the relevant details.
If your raid used 2 tanks in Phase One, one of them will have to tank Rhyolith while the other one will DPS him.
DPS and healers should remain stacked up at range to improve the efficiency of AoE healing and abilities like Spirit Link Totem, if the raid has a Restoration Shaman.
Volcanoes will continue erupting (Eruption) just like they did in Phase One. Note that the stacks of the Eruption debuff will be reset upon entering Phase Two. Mages, Paladins, and Rogues can remove their stack of the debuff given by the ignited volcanoes (increased Fire damage taken) with Ice Block, Divine Shield, and Cloak of Shadows respectively.
Healers need to use all their cooldowns to keep the raid alive until Rhyolith is killed. They need to be especially on their toes for players with high stacks of the increased Fire damage taken debuff.
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