Monday, July 12, 2010

Ruby Sanctum

Believe it or not last night was my first foray into the Ruby Sanctum. I haven’t done the 10-man version so I jumped right into the fun in 25-man. We had a fair bit of guild drama late yesterday afternoon so we got started late and didn’t down Halion, but I was thoroughly entertained. Blizzard created a challenging instance and the Halion fight itself was very nicely done. At this stage of raiding in WotLK everyone is used to over-powering trash but it’s highly unlikely that most, if any, raids will be doing that much here. The initial trash packs on either side of the portal are AOE trash but the other trash packs that wander around require CC and focus targeting. That was a welcome change from the typical raid experience.

The Halion fight was great fun and really not all that difficult to follow. Despite that we had several wipes that occurred mostly from mistakes with the beam in phase 2. Once we got specifics figured out about where to best stand and how the tank will maneuver Halion during phase 2 we got into phase 3 and our last attempt got Halion down to less than 1 million health. My biggest challenge was being able to stand still long enough during phase 2 at the dragon’s back left leg while the tank maneuver Halion so that I could take advantage of my Eclipses and not get singed by the beam. I had one death from a shadow void being dropped under me and then immediately getting tail slapped and stunned to death. It happened rather quickly so I didn’t feel much – that was until my body materialized back in the material world and I got tea-bagged by the main tank.

I can imagine after a couple weeks we’ll have everything down pat and will be clearing the place in an hour or so every week. It’s hard to think that the learning cycle we’re going through now was where we were at on Obsidian Sanctum in the early days of WotLK too. Will RS be as easy as OS is now in a few months?