Halion for Healers

Last night I got the chance to run both the 10 and 25 man versions of Ruby Sanctum and I thought I’d post my thoughts. Unfortunately we were unable to bring down Halion in either, but I did get to see all three phases.

First, in regards to all of Ruby Sanctum: Don’t underestimate it. We’ve all gotten used to our nice, fat 25% buff in ICC and now it’s gone. We definitely saw some wipes on the trash and a lot more on the minibosses. A lot of this can be attributed to learning new encounters, but that doesn’t mean they have to hit softly either. We ended up using CC on the trash to make each pack easier, which I have to say I’d like to see more of in general.

After you defeat all the trash and the three minibosses, Halion will fly down to the center. Before you start the fight, make sure you split the raid into two even groups; you’ll need this for phase 3 (It was pretty even to just to melee/ranged for our groups). Once you engage him, he’ll create a ring of fire around him, so make sure you’re all ready to move in when the tank is pulling (not like one attempt where the tank ran in while we were all eating for our buffs). This is a dragon, so you have a cleave, flame breath and tail to watch out for. The flame breath is a good chunk of damage, but should be no problem for properly geared tanks and healers.

Phase one has two big sources of raid damage. The first is Fiery Combustion, which is a DoT that ticks for decent damage, but more importantly stacks a debuff called Mark of Combustion. When the DoT is cleansed, a void zone is left behind that both causes damage and knocks players back; this void zone’s size is determined by the size of the stack of Mark of Combustion. Basically, whichever raider gets this debuff will need to run out from the raid as soon as possible so it can be cleansed.

The second ability to watch for is Meteor Strike: this ability will mark an area under a raider where a meteor will land. Everyone should move away from this area, and stay on their toes, because the meteor will send out a snaky, “X” shaped path of fire from the center. It didn’t seem to do too much damage in the fire, but why stand in it?

Once Halion reaches 75% health, he’ll shift into the Twilight Realm and open a portal for you to follow him. This is phase two. Everybody, save for maybe one tank should go in (One tank can stay out to get an aggro lead when phase three comes). Also, make sure you let a tank get in before you enter, and move immediately as soon as you zone in. Our raids were running into the issue of non-tanks dying while entering the Twilight Realm. Partly, this was because of raiders entering before the tank, though it’s also very easy to be cleaved once you enter (from my logs, it looks like the cleave is what killed me every time). Since you do have to wait for the tank, it’s a good idea to prepare for a lapse in healing whichever tank is going in. For me, this meant Earth Shielding, putting up a Riptide and proccing an Ancestral Fortitude with a Lesser Healing Wave or two. From there I would enter the portal as soon as I saw that tank disappear and start healing quickly. The same dragon sort of things apply here: a breath, cleave and tail whip.

In this phase there are three raid damaging abilities. The first is a raid wide AoE of shadow damage from Dusk Shroud. If you’ve done Sindragosa, think of the constant damage there and you get a good picture of this encounter.

Secondly, there’s Soul Consumption, which is the compliment of Fiery Combustion. The ability is nearly the same except now the void zone on the floor will suck you in instead of knock you back.

The final ability is Twilight Cutter. Basically, there are two purple orbs (the same color as everything else) which will form a laser in between them that you cannot be hit by. Seriously, it will kill you. Since these orbs rotate (clockwise), you need to kite the boss so that everybody can avoid the beam.

If you get him down to 50%, he’ll finally enter phase three by opening portals back to the Physical Realm. This is where your raid will split up. Nothing changes for either realm, in terms of damaging abilities, but now your raid will have to stay alive and DPS Halion evenly. You’ll notice that there’s a percentage at the top of your interface that corresponds to Halion’s Corporeality, starting at 50%. If he takes more damage in the Physical Realm, then he will start to shift more to the Twilight Realm, where he will both cause and take more damage. This works vice versa, as well. Basically, if Corporeality is going lower than 50%, the Physical Realm needs to slow down, and if it goes above 50%, the Twilight Realm needs to slow down. Luckily, this will tend to even itself out, due to it causing him to take more damage in the realm where he was previously taking less, and as healers, we don’t really care about it. Still, it’s nice to know.

If you can survive this phase and DPS evenly, Halion will drop and you can scour him for your shiny loot!

Good luck!