Raid Setup
Introduction
Amirdrassil, the Dream's Hope, harbours a guardian like no other - Gnarlroot. Beneath the canopy of trees of green and crimson roses, his presence shatters the tranquil melody of nature. Heroic Gnarlroot may not sing a soothing tune, but he orchestrates a different symphony, one that tests the mettle of champions. His sole mission: to reveal the biggest DK burst in the realms of World of Warcraft.
Fight Style: Single Target fight with frequent add spawns.
Recommended Setup: 2 Tanks / 4 Healers / 14 DPS
Useful utilities: 4x Augmentation Evokers and 1 lucky Unholy DK.
Hero/Lust usage: Intermission when you have the 100% damage buff.
Easy Mode
- Hit the inactive plants with Controlled Burn circles and kill the Lashers
- Dodge swirls and frontals
- Soak Splintering Charcoal in the intermission and touch the roots afterwards
- Use DPS cooldowns on the boss once all roots have been burned
Mechanics
Tainted Lasher
Little adds that increase raid wide damage taken while active and apply magic DoTs and bleeds to players they hit.
Shoots out 4 beams of swirls, getting hit by those will inflict medium damage to the player, additionally every beam will spawn several Tainted Lasher adds that are inactive at first.
4 players will get marked with a large circle that inflicts low ticking damage to all players standing inside and will explode after 6 seconds. The explosion will leave a puddle on the ground, but will also activate all Tainted Lasher adds that it hits. Each Controlled Burn target can free every add on one of the sides.
Boss becomes immune to damage and activates any remaining Tainted Lashers and pulses Toxic Loam, which is just additional raid damage. Every 8 seconds a Splintering Charcoal swirl will spawn that needs to be soaked in order to remove Doom Roots.
Several roots will spawn in each direction, dealing a medium amount of damage to anyone standing in the spawn swirl. Players need to soak Splintering Charcoal in order to remove the roots.
Swirls that deal a low amount of damage to the player if soaked, or a low amount of damage to the raid if unsoaked. Players soaking this will gain a debuff called Ember Charred, it inflicts a low amount of damage and it's removed by touching pieces of Doom Roots.
Each player has 5 stacks from 1 swirl soak.
Strategy
Because Gnarlroot is the first boss, it's traditionally a simple fight. However, there are some aspects of the fight (100% damage buff) that will make this one of the more popular first boss encounters in recent history!
Phase 1 Strategy
Start the fight by having the raid spread around the boss, this will help you with Controlled Burn placement that happens early into the pull.
Delay using Hero/Lust until the end of the first intermission, which is when you gain the 100% damage buff.
Dodge all the swirls and the frontal and place the 4 Controlled Burn circles on the Inactive Lasher adds. Using the new Ping system to mark the side you want to go is great to avoid confusion. It's not a big issue if you miss some, but it will definitely help healers more in the intermission if you hit all of them!
Once the Lashers become active, they should get picked up by the tanks and placed on top of the boss for extra cleave and AoE damage.
Intermission Strategy
Eventually the boss will start casting Potent Fertilization and will become immune to damage. All inactive adds will become active, so make sure to deal with them first!
Massive roots will spawn around the boss that need to be burned down. To do this, players need to soak the Splintering Charcoal circles and touch the roots afterwards. Once it starts burning, move to the next part of the root until you lose your Ember Charred debuff. Keep doing the Soak and Burn combo until all the roots are gone.
Healers need to pay attention in this phase as there is constant ticking damage on the entire raid, this damage can escalate quickly if some circles are not soaked.
Once all roots are gone, the boss will take 100% increased damage for 20 seconds. Make sure you have all your cooldowns ready and blast the boss when it's taking extra damage.
The boss will do 10% increased damage after each intermission.
After the intermission, the fight so far repeats.
It’s worth mentioning that depending on the tuning of Heroic Gnarlroot’s health, you might need to play through several intermissions. If that is the case, we suggest using Heroism/Bloodlust and cooldowns just after an intermission ends, when the boss takes increased damage, specifically one that is in execute range (under 30% health).
