Stacking Stamina

Tanking the Ruby Sanctum

My name is Cassieo, and I’ll be your tank today.

First off, I’d like to point out that this is not a typical WotLK raid.  It’s design goals are very much in the tune of what we’re going to be seeing in Cataclysm.  The biggest change is that you really need to plan out your pulls and use strategic positioning and crowd control to succeed.  Also, you won’t have your faction leader’s 25%+ buff to everything.  All of a sudden you’ll see lower health pools, lower healing, lower everything.  Be very aware of this change and advance with caution the first few times in here.  There are still a lot of “don’t stand in the fire” and “move away, and now back” sort of mechanics, but you can’t just faceroll through the trash any longer.

There are 4 types of trash mobs here, only 2 of which are very interesting.  The mundane ones are the Charscale Assaulters who cleave and have a shockwave and the Charscale Elite who just have a stun attack.  They do hit like a brick though, so don’t underestimate them just because they have boring abilities.

Charscale Invokers have a standard scorch spell they’ll spam at you, so have a fire resistance aura/totem active.  They should be casting it at you, so Warriors can bounce it back at them and DKs can AMS it if their getting low on health.  The nasty ability is the flame wave spell they cast:  it does a ton of damage to everyone in range and knocks you back a good ways.  If you’re not careful it will knock you into another trash pack or a patrol.  These can be interrupted so try and make sure they never get one off, and put your back to a wall just in-case one gets cast.

The worst of the trash are the Charscale Commanders.  They’ve got a mortal strike that can really mess things up in there, what with all the very high amounts of damage and no faction leader buff.  However, the real kick-in-the-junk is their Rallying Shout buff that increases the entire pack’s damage by a huge amount.  This plus an Invoker’s flame wave and half your raid will be dead.

Pulling strategies will vary by raid composition, but I highly suggest having the tank pull threat with a high threat AoE ability that causes no residual damage or DoT effects: Avenger’s Shield, Shockwave, Swipe, etc.  Avoid abilities like Consecration or Lacerate at first.  Next have your tank move the enemies back to an open fighting area while your CC’ers work their magic.  Because everything here is dragonkin we’re talking hibernate, freezing trap, and even cyclone or wyvern sting (for your second kill target).  If you have one available, you can also use a frost trap to help make the pull go more smoothly.  Kill Invokers first, as they can cause the most positioning and mechanical trouble, then Assaulters and Elites, last break the CC on a loan Commander and take him down.  If you’re having trouble with your CC, then feel free to wipe the Commander’s out first.

Another option if your group just can’t get the CC down, and your healers are bad ass, is to have your OT separate the Commander from the pack and hold him in another area.  This will negate his shout and leave you with the MS debuff only.  Due to player’s current dislike of using CC, this may just become a standard tactic.

In between all the trash you’ll have the 3 mini bosses.  Each one is pretty simple:

Baltharus the Warborn is first up.  He has 3 tricks up his scales: a big nasty whirlwind attack, a debuff called Enervating Brand, and he clones himself at 50% life.  Melee dps needs to run away when he whirlwinds but the tank won’t be able to leave.  You can have the OT taunt Baltharus away from the tank and into an unoccupied area before the tank taunts him back.  This will diminish his whirlwind damage greatly, but no one can be standing in that path or they’ll be insta-gibbed.  The debuff, Enervating Brand, will reduce your damage while increasing his, and it’s got a small AoE. Just stand away from other players until it fades. When he clones himself at 50%, have the OT bring him away from the raid.  All dps should remain on the original boss.  You can try and do the OT taunt trick with whirlwinds at this point, but it’s going to get tricky.  Best to save survival cooldowns for this part, rotate them through, and blow Hero-lust at 50%.

Saviana Ragefire is next; she’s a large drake with pretty much normal drake-like breath attacks and such.  She also has two bonus abilities.  One is an enrage that does AoE damage to the raid, but you can deal with that easily by having a hunter tranq her, or even easier is if a rogue uses Anesthetic Poison.  Slight dps loss, but it pretty much negates that mechanic.  Every 30 seconds or so she’ll lift into the air and mark 2/5 targets (10/25man).  These targets need to spread out away from the rest of the raid as they’ll get a fire based DoT and disorient effect that’s got a small AoE (similar to Festergut’s bile attack).  If your tank gets it, an OT should pick her up.  She also has an agro wipe before she lands, so dps need to delay a second for the tank to re-establish threat.

General Zarithrian finally gets a little interesting.  He’ll summon adds which need to be tanked and killed as well as put a sunder armor debuff on the main tank (20% per application).  You’ll want to swap tank roles at 3 stacks through the entire fight.  He’ll also use an intimidating shout periodically so Fear Ward and Tremor Totem help immensely.  He can be disarmed/dismantled which can help when he’s hit that 2nd sunder stack.

Halion… ahh… king of giant purple dragons.  He’s the real complicated fight, but if your raiders can keep their heads, you’ll do fine.  He doesn’t have a very demanding enrage timer for a decently geared group, so playing the mechanics is once again far more important than dps numbers.  Make sure your raiders know, understand, and accept that.  This entire fight is about being aware of the battle conditions, so pay attention!

He’ll be fought where he appears, in that large circle in the center of the zone.  Make sure all raiders get inside the circle quickly as he’ll raise a flame wall and lock out anyone who’s not inside the circle.  Halion has normal dragon-like abilities such as cleave, tail swipe and breath weapons, but he causes much havok with AoE mechanics:

Meteor Strike: He calls down a big ball of fire to a flashing glyph on the floor.  Once the meteor hits, fire will tendril out in a sporadic and random pattern.  Don’t stand in the flashing glyph, and move if when the flames come your direction.

Fiery Combustion: He’ll place a debuff on raiders that does a DoT and builds up charges.  When the debuff is removed (or wears off) the charges will explode and place an AoE on the floor.  The explosion deals damage and causes knock back, so players will want to run away from other players to the edge of the fighting area before getting dispelled.  Because the charges grow quickly, players need to move immediately.

At 75% he’ll start Phase 2 where he retreats to the twilight realm.  Players enter a portal and fight him here.  He’s very similar to Phase 1, except everything is now shadow damage.  Instead of Firey Combustion, he’ll have a similar mechanic called Soul Consumption.  The same DoT/debuff/AoE mechanics apply, except that the explosions will suck in nearby players instead of knocking them back. It’s a good idea to use a defensive ability when you’re the first tank into the void and are going to be picking up Halion (usually your 2nd, and better geared tank). This is because you’ll immediately be taking the constant damage from being down there, and he’ll agro you right away and likely start attacking you before your healers can get in there and begin throwing heals your way.

Instead of Meteor Strike, he’ll cause these large shadow orbs to shoot a big laser of death across the center of the circle.  It’s actually best to fight him in the center of the circle at about a 45 degree angle to the beams.  He’s big enough that this should give your melee enough room to swing at him without getting in the beam and your healers and ranged plenty of room to maneuver.  Now that the room is split in 2, you’ll have even less room to move around and drop the AoE from your Soul Consumption, so getting in position and dispelling it quickly are even more important.

Just in case that wasn’t bad enough, he’ll also Dusk Shroud, a raid wide DoT, to everyone in the twilight realm.  Keep those HoTs up! This is another reason to have your twilight tank be your better geared tank. They’ll be taking this constant damage through most of the fight.

Phase 3 starts at 50%, and the rest of the fight becomes a balancing act.  He’ll appear in both the physical and twilight realms, so you should split your raid into 2 groups each with a tank, healer(s) and dps.  Your melee should stay in the twilight realm with your best HoT healer(s); your other healers and ranged dps will want to go back to the physical realm.  He gains a buff called Corporeality which starts at 50 stacks and will go up as he receives more damage in the twilight realm and go down as he receives more damage from the physical realm.  You want to keep him between 40% and 60% as best you can to maintain the balance, when he goes beyond these thresholds he’ll start to do massive amounts of damage and kill one of your tanks, wiping your raid.  Continue doing the mechanics from both phases 1 and 2; you’ll have yourself a kill.

Good luck, and have fun!