In Amidrassil, the WoW developers also adhere to the principle that the first boss of a raid only has a few mechanics and rarely poses serious problems to the players in a raid. If you open your eyes from time to time and don’t constantly stay in the fire, then Gnarled Root should be defeated after a few tries.
But first you must decide whether you prefer to use your talents to deal massive area-of-effect damage or pure single-target damage; Both are important in this fight. We recommend that you design at least a handful of damage dealers exclusively to deal damage to a single target. These should definitely have their cooldowns ready at a certain point, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
If you prefer a video guide, check out Stankie Gaming’s tactics video, which is also based on PTR test results.
Phase 1 – Garden of Despair
The first phase of the fight is quite relaxed. Drag the boss to the edge of the area and have him look outside. The reason is SHADOWFLAME SPLIT, which hits all targets in front of it. Tanks also receive the TERRIBLE FIRE BATTLE debuff, forcing them to switch out regularly. Your healers must take care of HORRIBLE SCREAM. The entire raid takes heavy initial damage and more damage over the course of ten seconds, which cannot be avoided.
With FLAMING PESTILENCE the boss launches small areas of fire around him that you should not let hit you. This also creates many additions called Tainted Whip. In normal mode, these are immediately vulnerable. Give your tanks a moment to pick them up and then quickly bomb them. Not only do they leave a nasty bleed on their targets, but they also constantly buff each other. Therefore, they are not allowed to live too long.
In heroic mode, adds are initially inactive and cannot be attacked. This is where CONTROLLED FIRE comes into play. Several player characters will be assigned this circle of fire and must move away from the group. If the circle explodes after a few seconds, it deals damage to all players in the circle and leaves an area of fire behind. This in turn activates the adds in heroic mode so you can attack and kill them. Pro Tip: If you place the boss near existing fire areas, the adds will appear partially inside the fire and activate immediately. And you want to activate it, otherwise you will have problems in phase 2.
The second phase ends when all the roots are destroyed. To do this, in normal mode players have to reach the roots with the fire circles. In heroic mode you have to absorb the impacts and then get to the roots.
Source: polished
Phase 2: Agonizing growth
When the boss reaches 100 energy, it moves towards the center, creates a deadly pool of poison beneath it, and begins phase 2. It lets some large roots grow outwards from it, breaking your line of sight. Position yourself around the boss so that there are multiple players in each resulting area.
All Tainted Lashers that you didn’t activate in Heroic Mode in Phase 1 will now wake up and attack you. The more you played before, the easier it will be now. But it can also be a good tactic to ignore them in phase 1 and now let everyone join in and eliminate them. But this requires massive area damage and good timing of your mass stuns. Therefore, we advise against it.
The boss itself now takes almost no damage, but will hit you with huge area damage. Several players are marked with a circle of fire and must approach the roots that have emerged in order to light them. Other players should not be in the circle. In heroic mode, things work a little differently. Here the fire circles are just lying around and you need to intercept them to use the subsequent debuff to destroy the roots for a few seconds.
Once all roots are removed, the boss falls into ROOTED AGONY for 20 seconds. He takes double damage and deals immense area damage himself – the perfect moment for heroism and bloodlust. It is then upgraded by ten percent and begins phase 1 again. This switches back and forth until you or the boss are on the ground.