Garr

Garr is a lava elemental lieutenant of Ragnaros in Molten Core, fought together with eight Firesworn that explode when they die. In the lore he and Baron Geddon each guard one half of the talisman that imprisons Prince Thunderaan, so Garr is one of the two bosses that can drop a Binding of the Windseeker, the first step toward Thunderfury.

Background

Garr came into Azeroth with Ragnaros during the War of the Three Hammers. His part in the Firelord's history is the betrayal of Thunderaan, Prince of Air. During the wars between the elemental lords, Ragnaros had Garr and Baron Geddon ambush Thunderaan, and the Firelord devoured most of the prince's essence. What was left he sealed in a talisman of elemental binding, broke it in two, and gave one half to each lieutenant.

The two have guarded their halves ever since, and Warcraft Wiki's account says they no longer trust each other: Geddon suspects Garr wants both halves for himself. Both draw strength from the runes cut into the floor of the Core. Garr stands on the Rune of Blaz, between Gehennas and Baron Geddon, one of the runes that has to be doused to reach Majordomo Executus.

Abilities

Garr is a melee boss with two raid-wide effects:

• Antimagic Pulse: dispels one helpful magic effect from everyone nearby, stripping buffs again and again through the fight.
• Magma Shackles: slows the movement of everyone nearby by 60% for 15 seconds.

Each of his eight Firesworn casts Immolate on players, and when one dies it explodes with Eruption, a blast of fire that hurts everyone around it and knocks them back. If Garr is pulled too far from his adds, they become enraged and hit even well-geared tanks very hard (patch 1.5 added this).

Strategy

Warlocks make this fight easy. The common plan was to assign Firesworn to warlocks, who keep them banished for the whole fight, often with a voidwalker to hold each one between banishes. Any Firesworn without a warlock is off-tanked and killed one at a time, away from the rest of the raid. Melee players back off when a Firesworn is about to die so the explosion doesn't catch them.

The main tank holds Garr from the start of the fight. Once the off-tanked Firesworn are dead, the raid kills Garr, then finishes the banished Firesworn one by one. Priests and paladins spend much of the fight removing Immolate from the tanks and putting buffs back on after each Antimagic Pulse. Later, well-geared raids sometimes had one tank hold Garr and every add at once and simply burned them all down.

Killing Garr also stops the Lava Surgers that charge through the nearby tunnels from respawning (patch 1.4).

Loot

Drop chances are from our database (patch 1.12). Garr drops Tier 1 helmets for every class.

The rarest drop is the right half of the Bindings of the Windseeker. The [Aurastone Hammer] is a one-handed mace for healers, the [Brutality Blade] a one-handed sword, the [Gutgore Ripper] a dagger for rogues, and the [Drillborer Disk] a tanking shield. Garr also has a chance at the rare epics shared with the other non-flamewaker bosses, such as the [Talisman of Ephemeral Power]. Since patch 1.7 he has also dropped [Lava Core].

Quests

The Bindings of the Windseeker start the Thunderfury chain. With both halves, a player takes them to Highlord Demitrian in Silithus (Examine the Vessel). For Thunderaan the Windseeker he wants Ragnaros's [Essence of the Firelord] and ten [Elementium Bar] smelted from ore found in Blackwing Lair. The prince is then released, the raid defeats him, and Rise, Thunderfury! wakes the sword. Because the drop chance is so low, many guilds farmed Garr and Geddon for years without seeing both halves.

Sources

• Garr - Warcraft Wiki
• Molten Core (Classic) - Warcraft Wiki