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High Botanist Tel'arn, Healer Guide

Updated 6 years, 4 months ago for patch 7.2 by Preston. View the change log.

High Botanist Tel'arn Dungeon Journal ModelThis page covers a healer-focused strategy for High Botanist Tel'arn in The Nighthold. While it's tailored for healers, other roles may also find the information useful. If you have any suggestions or feedback, you can leave a comment below or tweet @PrestonDvorak.

This guide has been updated and maintained based on my own experiences with the fight as well as Dungeon Journal information. I'll continue to update it as-needed.

General Mechanics and Abilities

Tel'arn is a three stage fight where he sacrafices his powers to summon Images of himself as the fight goes on.

Normal and Heroic

  • Tel'arn and his Images all share health on Normal and Heroic.

Stage One - high botanist

This Stage starts when the fight begins.

  • Recursive Strikes hits the current tank and deals 15% of the damage to anyone else affected by Recursive Strikes, usually the other tank.
  • Avoid the Controlled Chaos explosion rings. The first ring has a 10-yard diameter, then grows to 20-yard, and finally 30-yards.
    • Being hit by any of the three exploding rings will almost certainly be fatal.
    • Each time one of the rings explodes, it deals a moderate amount of damage to the entire group whether they're inside the ring or not.
  • Parasitic Fetter places a steadily increasing damage over time effect on a player and roots them in place.
    • If the Parasitic Lasher reaches its target, the player will be affected by Parasitic Fetter.
    • Parasitic Lasher use Rampant Growth, gaining movement speed and eventually becoming immune to movement impairing effects.
    • This should be dispelled as soon as possible.
    • When dispelled, Parasitic Lashers spawn and fixate on a random player.
  • Avoid the Solar Collapse beams.
    • The beams are centered around a random player and move in towards each other.

Stage Two - solarist

This Stage starts at 75% health, when Tal'arn sacrifices his ability to cast Solar spells and creates a Solar Image of himself.

  • Tel'arn will not longer use Solar Collapse.
  • The Solar Image has its own abilities, in addition to using Solar Collapse.
    • Plasma Spheres gradually lose health on their own and upon death use Plasma Explosion.
    • Damage the Plasma Spheres so they die at least 5 seconds apart to prevent the Plasma Explosion damage bonus from stacking.
    • Don't stand within 4-yards of the tank to avoid splash damage from Flare.
    • Summon Plasma Spheres causes three Plasma Sphere to appear around the room.

Stage Three - naturalist and arcanist

This Stage starts at 50% health, when Tal'arn sacrifices his ability to cast Nature and Arcane spells and creates a Nature Image and an Arcane Image of himself.

  • Tel'arn will no longer use Parasitic Fetter, Controlled Chaos, or Recursive Strikes.
  • The Nature Image has its own abilities, in addition to using Parasitic Fetter.
    • Avoid touching Toxic Spores, which are randomly placed at player's locations.
    • Keep the boss and all adds out of Grace of Nature pools.
  • The Arcane Image has its own abilities as well, in addition to using Controlled Chaos and Recursive Strikes.
    • When affected by Call of Night, you must not stand within 5-yards of any player who also has the debuff, but you must stand within 5-yards of at least one player who doesn't have the debuff. Failing to do either of these will cause moderate damage to the group for as long as you're not positioned properly.

Mythic Differences

  • The fight now starts with all three of the Images active. They have the same abilities as Heroic, but no longer share health.
    • The recommended kill order for the Images is: Naturalist, Arcanist, Solarist. The ability explanations in the rest of this section assume you're using this order.
  • With all three Images alive, the fight is the same as Stage Three in Heroic.
    • Players with strong magic immunity abilities may need to clear Toxic Spores throughout the fight.
  • Once the Naturalist is killed, some of his abilities will begin affecting the fight in new ways.
    • Plasma Spheres now spawn two Parasitic Fetters when killed. Players in melee need to be especially careful not to be caught by the Fetters that spawn near them.
  • Once the Arcanist is killed, his abilities as well as the Naturalist's abilities will affect the fight in new ways.
    • Flare, which is targeted on the current aggro target, will now also apply Parasitic Fetter to the target and anyone within 4-yards.
      • It's very important that only the current tank gets Parasitic Fetter, meaning even the off-tank should be standing behind the boss.
      • When Parasitic Fetter is dispelled, it now triggers a Controlled Chaos.
      • The strategy here is to keep your tank alive as long as possible before dispelling or letting them die, at which point the off-tank taunts the Solarist to the other side of the room, with the same rules: no one else within 4-yards, and survive as long as possible.
    • Call of Night is replaced by Collapse of Night.
      • The "real" way to deal with this is to have the two affected players run to opposite sides of the room, as far away from the unaffected players as possible, to prevent the Collapse hitting the rest of the group. Affected players will also need to be followed by one player each to prevent the normal pulsing damage of not being stacked on someone.
      • An alternate way to deal with this is to have the affected players kill themselves as quickly as possible by running through Toxic Spores. If done quickly enough, no Collapses will trigger.

Healing Strategy

Healing this fight should be straightforward as long as mechanics are handled properly.

Stage One - high botanist

The abilities here are shared with some of the Images Tel'arn creates in Stage Two and Stage Three.

  • Recursive Strikes causes damage to the second tank, depending how much damage the first tank took.
  • Controlled Chaos causes moderate damage to the group, and fatal damage to anyone hit by the rings themselves.
  • Parasitic Fetter should be dispelled as soon as possible, without overwhelming the DPS with Parasitic Lashers.

Stage Two - solarist

Stage Three - naturalist and arcanist

  • Any player who hits Toxic Spores will need light healing to moderate healing depending how many stacks they gain.
  • If Call of Night debuffs overlap or aren't handled properly the group will need moderate to critical healing.
  • On Mythic, the current tank will need significant healing in the final stage due to the Parasitic Fetter debuff. It's important not to dispel it until absolutely necessary.

 Debuffs to Track

 DBM Settings

Below are the DBM settings I'll be using for High Botanist Tel'arn. You can set them up however you'd like, but these ones should work well as a starting point. Some settings may be Mythic only.

Healer DBM settings for Tel'arn Thumbnail
Healer DBM settings for Tel'arn

 Videos

Heroic, Restoration Druid PoV

Below is a video of me and my guild defeating Tel'arn on Heroic difficulty. There is no commentary, only game sounds.

Mythic, Restoration Druid PoV

Below is a video of me and my guild defeating Tel'arn on Mythic difficulty. Again, there is no commentary, only game sounds.


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Changelog - View the last ten changes. - +

April 30, 2017 - 12:00 am (Nighthold) - Added Mythic Tel'arn video to healer guide.

April 30, 2017 - 12:00 am (Nighthold) - Added better mythic information to the Tel'arn healer guide.

April 11, 2017 - 12:00 am (Nighthold) - Updated healer DBM settings for the first six bosses, added Mythic Aluriel kill video to healer guide.

April 04, 2017 - 12:00 am (Nighthold) - Added mythic kill video to the Tichondrius healer guide and reviewed all information, only minor corrections were needed.

March 24, 2017 - 12:00 am (Nighthold) - Guides reviewed for patch 7.2, no major updates made.

March 13, 2017 - 12:00 am (Nighthold) - Added Mythic kill video to Krosus healer guide.

March 06, 2017 - 12:00 am (Nighthold) - Did a full review of all healer guides. No major changes were made, mostly just wording clarifications.

February 14, 2017 - 12:00 am (Nighthold) - Made final update to Trilliax healer guide and added mythic kill video.

February 12, 2017 - 12:00 am (Nighthold) - Made final updates to the Chronomatic Anomaly healer guide and added the mythic kill video.

February 11, 2017 - 12:00 am (Nighthold) - Added mythic information to Skorpyron and Chronomatic Anomaly DPS guides.