Ruby Sanctum: Video Guide for Trash and Mini-Bosses

[Chamenas]

This is NOT an official TankSpot guide. But hopefully this guide will still help any groups struggling with any of the trash or mini-bosses. Let me know how I can improve. I'll be working on a video companion to my Holy Pally guide next.

Thanks to the TankSpot community being so helpful to me, helping me learn the game and become a better player. I only hope I can return the favor.

Edit: Video quality should improve a bit later. Youtube is still processing it.

Hello, my name is Lulia and this is my guide to the trash and mini-bosses in the Ruby Sanctum encounter. This video was made as of patch 3.3.5 and various aspects of the encounters could be subject to change in future patches. First, let’s start with the trash pulls.

There’s only two trash pulls which are particularly worrisome in the Ruby Sanctum, but I will briefly cover the abilities of all of the trash mobs that you encounter. The most worrisome trash comes in the form of two separate packs which patrol the back and consist of two Invokers, two Assaulters and a Commander each. As you can see here, the key to successfully dealing with this trash is to have one tank taunt the Commander and pull it a decent distance away from the group. Burn down the commander first.

The reason we pull the Commander away is because he gives a buff to all of his allies which will increase their damage and his. This, combined with his own mortal strike, means that if he is near his allies when he gives this buff, he will be too difficult to tank and the raid will likely wipe. You will want your strongest tank on the other pack as they will be taking a lot more damage. Kill the invokers next.

The Invokers have an ability called Flame Wave which needs to be interrupted if possible. As I’m currently pointing out, it has a very visible cast animation. It does a decent amount of damage and knocks back anyone within range of it when it goes off, this includes the tanks, melee, and any ranged or healers who happen to be standing too close.

The assaulters have a cleave ability and a shockwave. This means that tanks will want to turn these around and melee and ranged do not want to be in front of them. These are otherwise fairly harmless melee mobs, which is why they usually go down last.

The final type of mob has its own pull, there’s two pulls of two Charscale Elites each on either side in the back. These mobs are tank and spank.

The first boss that most groups deal with is Baltharus the Warborn. He is the boss to the left as you enter the Sanctum. The reason I suggest him first is because he provides a decent challenge to the group, this encounter will show you whether or not your tanks and heals are prepared, and whether or not your DPS can stop when told to.

The most obvious ability that Baltharus has is called clone. In 10 man, a clone will spawn at 50%, this is proceeded by a cast which will knock everyone back and stun them for a few seconds. Because of this, positioning Baltharus is key. As you can see in this video, we had the first tank pull Baltharus to the root extending from the tree, with his back to it. Your other tank will want to join him there just before 50% to avoid the knockback as well.

However, the reason you do not want your off-tank to stand there the entire time is due to another ability called Blade Tempest. This is a whirlwind-like ability, except that it only happens as a cone in front of the caster. During this time the tank will take quite a bit of damage. Tanks should pop cooldowns through this ability when possible and heals will have to focus on keeping the tanks up. It is possible for a Blade Tempest to happen just before 50%, if this happens, call off DPS and wait until after he begins casting it to draw him into 50%, and make sure your off tank is in position to pick him up as soon as it ends. When your off-tank does pick him up, have them move the clone as shown in this video.

The other ability you need to watch for is called Ennervating Brand. This ability will decrease healing taken by 2% for all nearby allies that have it, and it will spread to anyone within 12 yards of anyone inflicted with it. This ability stacks. This means that melee want to be behind Baltharus and try to remain 12 yards from the tank at all times. If this is too difficult, any melee affected by the brand will have to run away from Baltharus when afflicted, and can only return when it falls off. Ranged and healers simply need to make sure they’re 12 yards away from melee and the tank.

After Baltharus splits, try to focus DPS on one of the clones, usually on the one they’ve been focusing on which should be targeted by the initial tank. When that clone dies, the other one will disappear.

The next mini-boss is Saviana Ragefire, a drake on the right side of the Sanctum after entering. Like all dragons, she has a breath. I didn’t notice a tail swipe or thrash. She has a few other abilities to note. First, she will enrage every once and awhile. Have a rogue with anesthetic poison or a hunter with tranquil shot ready. If none of these are available, tanks will need to pop cooldowns and healers will need to keep the raid up through the AoE. You may want to figure out some sort of tank swap for the CDs if no hunter or rogue is available.

Obviously this fight is easiest if you make sure to bring a Rogue or Hunter with you. Occasionally, Saviana will fly up into the air and out of range of the raid. At this time your raid should group up in a tight pack, ours didn’t and you’ll see why that’s a problem here. After flying up, Saviana will target two random raid members with Flame Beacon and they will gain red arrows above their heads, similar to the ones seen on Sindragosa. These raid members will need to run away from the group 10 yards, and remain 10 yards from each other. After a few seconds they will be hit with Conflag, which works much like vile gas on Festergut. It will disorientate them for several seconds and deal a hefty amount of damage. In addition, it will spread to anyone within 10 yards of them.

It is possible for a tank to be hit with Conflag, should this happen, the tank not currently tanking will need to be ready to pick up the boss as the conflagged tank will still be under the effects of conflag when she flies back. As you can see here, one of our hunters was too close to the tank and conflagged him, the other tank didn’t pick him up so Saviana went to the next highest aggro target, me.

Aside from the air phase and the enrage, Saviana is a simple and easy tank and spank. Coordinate grouping up to minimize the risk of Flame Beacon targets running into a stray raid member and you win.

The final mini-boss is General Zarithrian, and he will not become accessible until the other two raid bosses are down. He has a few abilities to note, however we’ll start off by mentioning his positioning. Have your ranged and healers run in to where Zarithrian is standing initially, and have the first tank taunt Zairthrian and pull him to the wall on the other side of his initial position. This will help you deal with the adds that I will explain in just a minute.

The biggest thing that tanks need to be aware of is a stacking debuff that General Zarithrian applies which reduces armor. When it reaches 3 stacks, the other tank needs to taunt off of Zarithrian and hold it until the first tank’s stacks fall off. From that point on the tanks will swap as soon as their own stacks of the debuff fall off.

General Zarithrian also has a raid-wide fear that works much like intimidating shout. You will cower in place and be unable to move for a few seconds. If your tanks aren’t well-prepared, you may want to use external cds on them or have a priest fear ward themselves in order to keep the tank up during the fear.

In addition to all of these abilities, Zarithrian will spawn a set of two adds on a timer throughout the encounter. These adds will run up the entrance tunnels from where your raid came, on either side. The tank that is not currently tanking Zarithrian should pick these adds up. This can happen just before they need to taunt the boss, but it’s not really a problem to have Zarithrian and two adds on you.

The way that we dealt with the adds was to have the ranged burn them down as soon as they spawned until Zarithrian dipped below roughly 700k health. You do want to kill them as the adds cast an aoe blast which will get out of hand quickly and wipe the raid if they build up. However, if a set of adds spawn as he’s about to die, the tanks can simply hold the one or two sets of adds while the raid finished him off. Because the tanks have to deal with more than just the adds, it’s possible that ranged may pull aggro. This isn’t a major issue and the healers should be able to keep ranged up even if they are being attacked. Just kill the adds quickly and resume DPS on Zarithrian and you’ll get him down.

Once Zarithrian dies a neat intro will occur in which Halion appears. Enjoy and good luck with Halion! You can find a great Halion encounter video on Tankspot.

Thanks for watching this guide, hopefully it will help you and your group tackle the Ruby Sanctum. Good bye.

Differences in 25-man:
Baltharus spawns clones at 75% and 50%
There are more conflag targets for Saviana Ragefire (this makes grouping up and spreading out even more key than before)
General Zarithrian spawns 4 adds each time (two from each side)


EDIT NOTES:

The Trash can be CCed, including the adds on General Zarithrian. Though I still recommend simply assigning a couple of people to burn adds on Zarithrian than CC them.

Also:

One thing I really want to re-emphasize because I'm sure it will be overlooked.

Druids do not forget that you have Soothe Animal!

The trash packs have a very large aggro range. If and when you want to CC, make sure to use Soothe first to avoid pulling prior to your hibernate cast. Way too many druids in the game simply have never used this ability before.

For the more coordinated groups among us:

Baltharus: We pulled him to the large open area south of where he starts (down the path I mean, so we would have killed the trash there already). The OT stood at maximum taunt range away, going towards the portal, while the MT kept him facing the wall back there. Everyone else was spread out behind him. The OT taunted him the minute he did his whirlwind thing so he'd run straight at the OT and not hit anyone else. When there was a clone, both tanks would basically switch whatever Baltharus they would be tanking whenever one would do a whirlwind (e.g. if I was tanking the real one, and the clone did a whirlwind, I would taunt the clone and the OT would taunt the real one). Obviously all DPS was on the real one (marked by a skull) at all times.

[CatabriOnEarthen]

Lulia, could you post a transcript? I know I'm not the only one with hearing issues, but mine derive from the destruction of nerves in my ears as a youngin' who got the mumps back when the earth cooled, and vaccines weren't available, leaving me much difficulty when listening to voices of the male persuasion due to the low tone of the voice. I lipread to hear most men. And it's not an option here. Also, the music is drowning you out.

[Chamenas]

Transcript posted. Sorry about that.

Music will be softer in future videos.

[CatabriOnEarthen]

Thank you!

[gabbu]

Wow nice guide for trash considering a lot of people fail on this trash. Well Done !! I am sure it will help tons of people.

[CatabriOnEarthen]

Music will be softer in future videos.

OH, I'm so glad there will be more videos! You did great. We went into RS last night 1-shot Warborn and Ragefire. Had tank miss-communication for adds on the 3rd mini, but we got him on the 2nd try. Had some not so good attempts on Halion before folks had to go do their real life thing.

[Hoogle]

Thanks Lulia,

much appreciated.

[Chamenas]

Glad it could help.

[Eressëa]

Thanks Lulia! I posted a link in my guild forums

[Quinafoi]

You see in our ten man we went for the approach of explaining all of the minibosses and trash with the following.

"Don't stand in fire."

But I guess your guide works fine too...


On a different note... all the trash is CCable (even the two pulls of elites are susceptable to CC, odd for a pull with only 2 mobs). For the commanders for instance, we just Hibernated them and killed everything else while they were asleep. P.S. Druids, don't forget you have Soothe Animal.

Additional notes... on 25 man there are two clones (3 total targets to be tanked) on the first mini boss and on the last there are four adds (2 on each side).

[CatabriOnEarthen]

Thanks Lulia! I posted a link in my guild forums

Me too. But then I have one raider in particular that seems to stand in fire a lot.

[Quinafoi]

On the second mini boss (the drake) while it is only necessary for the beaconed people to move, when you do it on 25 man difficulty there are more beacons and it may be more difficult for them to spread out in unique directions. Instead a more simplistic approach for the encounter which can be applied to either difficulty is to simply collapse on the drake when it is grounded to make AoE healing more effective and then scatter and spread out when in the air. If the entire raid spreads out, it doesn't matter who gets the beacons. Since you can't really do any damage to the boss during this time anyway and there is no healing required until people actually become conflaged it is just a simple strategy of collapse when grounded, scatter during air phase.

[Quinafoi]

More clarification on the third mini-boss. The adds are caster types and while it is nice to have your tank on them that will take slightly less magic damage, since the bulk of their damage is magic it isn't necessarily important that they are tanked. DPS can simply burn them down so long as healers are aware that some DPS will be taking minor damage from the adds directed attacks. Ideally you would like an interrupter assigned to both sides to interrupt the AoE. Not as critical on 10 man but on 25 man if all 4 were allowed to cast it at once it could spell trouble.

[Chamenas]

Yeah, I mentioned that range will likely pull aggro and it's not really an issue. I likely should have mentioned it was interrupt-able, but as you said, in 10-man it really isn't an issue to have their AoEs go off when it's just two of them, and the real focus of the fight is the burn on the actual mini-boss, so I didn't want to steal melee away from that. You have a bit more to work with in 25 mans though.

Thanks for the comments Quinafoi

[CatabriOnEarthen]

Quick question: Are the General's adds CCable? We kind of threw around (after the kill, lol) that since we CC'd some of the trash (making my folks get used to using all their skills) and our boomkin used hibernate, we were wondering if that was possible in the General fight.

Wow, awful English, but I think I got my point across.

[Chamenas]

They are CCable, or so I've heard.

[Quinafoi]

There is water near the drake as well. I know the water has no impact on the AoE fire damage in the encounter as I was able to test that myself in one of the three times I went through, but I never got picked for conflag and couldn't ever figure out if water had some impact on that mechanic. Has anyone tried that? It seems odd for there to be water next to a fire boss (ala Ignis) and not have some function.

[Chamenas]

I've heard reports of it being denied, which is enough to make me doubt it. But I didn't test it myself, it would take some very patient people to do so.

[Quinafoi]

They are CCable, or so I've heard.

Yes, although CCing them isn't of a great deal of value because they will pile up very fast. You can CC one while you kill another but you will want to still make sure you clear out an entire wave before the next spawns. I'm pretty sure at one point I tried to hibernate one of them.

Additionally on 25 man, the use of CC would actually reduce your DPS on them since not only are you spending time CCing but you are also removing the possibility of increased damage due to cleaving attacks. On 25 man it can be a bit of a pain to keep up with the adds. Basic goal is to always stay ahead of the adds until the boss is at around 10% and then just burn the boss.

[Chamenas]

Yes. The reason I mentioned killing them is because they will simply become very uncontrollable very quickly. A well-coordinated group could probably pull it off, but well-coordinated groups won't be needing my guide. For the pugs and such out there, the best way to deal with them is just killing them. Two ranged should easily be able to keep them controlled if they're pulling their weight in DPS, even if it means they never touch the boss, the three melee should take it down quick. If you have three ranged and two melee, the ranged should dispose of them quick and be able to help on the boss. If you have 1 ranged, melee will have to help them, and that's a fairly unbalanced group as it is.