The Ruby Sanctum is a raid added in with patch 3.3.5 that contains three mini-bosses and a final dragon boss called Halion. The raid is very much like Obsidian Sanctum (OS) with several smaller bosses around one main boss all in one chamber.

The raid is tuned for Icecrown Citadel (ICC) geared raiders and will be difficult for anyone that does not have at least the first several wings of ICC defeated.

The first three bosses are all relatively simple, much the way the drakes in OS are. Therefore just a simple rundown of how to fight them is provided, before we move onto the main event, the Halion fight.

Baltharus the Warborn

Baltharus has several main attacks and creates duplicates of himself when he is lowered to 75%, 50%, and 25% health.  His abilities are as follows:

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Blade Tempest – Hits everyone in his front arc for damage from his weapon.

Cleave – Hits the tank and three additional targets in his front arc.

Enervating Brand – This marks a random player and starts siphoning power from them to Baltharus.  It reduces the target’s damage, and anyone within 12 yards of the target, by 2% and increases Baltharus’s damage by the same.  Once marked it applies the 2% debuff/buff every 2 seconds for 10 seconds.

Repelling Wave – Knocks back anyone nearby a long distance, over 100 yards, and does fire damage.

Start this fight by marking Baltharus so that everyone remains sure which is the real one.  Tank Baltharus facing away from the group and anyone that can be at range should stay at range.  Healers and ranged DPS should not be affected by his knockback since they will be far enough away.  The tank and melee though should position themselves so that they are not thrown too far away from the group, it is safe to DPS him from the side as long as you do not enter the front arc.

DPS needs to stay on Baltharus and work his health down, while the off-tank picks up and holds the duplicates that spawn away from the real boss and facing away from the raid.  If the off tank can not handle the incoming damage, the guild’s main tank may want to take add duty here and have the off tank on the boss.

Saviana Ragefire

The Saviana fight is relatively trivial with just three very basic mechanics to worry about as follows:

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Conflagration – Conjures fire on random players, burning them and anyone nearby.

Enrage – Increases Saviana’s attack speed greatly for 10 seconds, this can be removed by a Hunter’s tranquilizing shot.

Flame Breath – Deals significant fire damage to anyone in Saviana’s front arc.

The fight starts by the tank grabbing agro and facing Saviana away from the raid.  Healers and DPS spread out as much as possible and to the sides and await one of the special abilities.  When enrage happens simply have it removed by a hunter or rogue and keep DPSing. 

When Saviana flys into the air to cast Conflagration everyone needs to watch for the affected players and spread out away from them. Healers keep them alive until Saviana lands again and then everyone returns to position and starts DPSing again.

General Zarithrian

Zarithrian will summon adds throughout the fight as well as having two main abilities, which are:

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Cleave Armor – Reduces the enemies armor by 20%, stacks up to 5 times.

Intimidating Roar – A 4 second terror affect for anyone nearby.

The fight starts when the main tank agros the General, and pulls him to the side.  When this happens the General will spawn two adds that the off tank should grab and DPS kills them off quickly before focusing on the General.  As the fight continues more adds will be spawned, have the tanks pick them up and DPS down them repeatedly as they have an AoE damage effect.

Throughout the fight the main tank and off tank need to trade agro on the General any time they reach three stacks of cleave armor.  This is so that they can be healed through the fight.  The debuff is not applied that often though so it is not too hard.

The fight just revolves around clearing adds and agro trades. Rinse and repeat until Genreal Zarithrian is dead.

Halion

The final boss in the Ruby Sanctum is the dragon Halion.  Halion has several abilities and mechanics that need to be dealt with.  In addition the space you have to deal with Halion becomes limited once the fight starts as a fire wall appears around the circular center area to prevent players from spreading out too far.  In addition players need to contend with three different phases in order to defeat Halion.

The fight starts in the physical realm for phase one.  At 75% health Halion opens and enters a portal to the twilight realm at which point a portal to the twilight realm opens and phase two starts. Once Halion is lowered to 50% additional portals between the physical and twilight realms open and both realms must be dealt with at the same time, creating phase 3.

Due to having to essentially fight two of Halion in phase three the raid group needs to be divided into two groups.  It is best to pre-arrange this before the fight so everyone knows where they are going.  Each group requires a tank, healers, and DPS.  More about the group composition is discussed in the phase three strategy section.

Abilities

All Phases

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Twilight Precision – This is active in all phases of the fight.  It is an aura that grants Halion an extra 5% chance to hit players as well as reducing all players’ ability to dodge his attacks by 20%. 

Phase One

Flame Breath – This is a standard dragon breath attack doing a large amount of fire damage to anyone in Halion’s front arc each time it is cast. 

Fiery Combustion – This ability has three separate effects.  The first effect is a DoT that Halion casts on a random non-tank player every 20 seconds. The DoT does a significant amount of fire damage every 2 seconds and places a Mark of Combustion on that player.  The marks stack on the player the longer the DoT remains, this is the second effect.

The third and final effect is that when the DoT is removed or expires from the player a flaming zone is created on the ground where the player is which throws nearby players away.  This zone stays on the ground for 40 seconds causing fire damage to anyone in it.  The zone is variable in size relative to the number of stacks of the mark that the player had on them.  So you need to remove it quickly, but not until they are clear of the group so that players are not thrown all over.

Meteor Strike – The last of the abilities in phase one is a meteor strike that is called down roughly every 35 seconds.  A random player will be targeted and a mark will appear on the ground under that player’s location. Players then have 6 seconds to clear the area before the meteor lands.  Once it does it deals fire damage to anyone within 12 yards of the mark and sends out flames in an X type pattern.  The flame travels to the outside firewall before stopping.  The flame will remain in play for almost the entire timeframe before another meteor strike occurs.

Phase Two

Shadow Pulsars - These are two shadow orbs that float around the outside of the fight’s area and occasionally (every 30 seconds) connect for 10 seconds.  When they connect shadow energy will create a beam across the room that will damage anyone in its path for a lot of shadow damage each second they remain in it.

Dusk Shroud – This is a damage aura from Halion that deals shadow damage to everyone in the raid every 2 seconds.  It must be healed through.

Dark Breath – This is an equivalent of phase one’s flame breath.  The only difference is that it deals shadow damage.

Soul Consumption – This is an equivalent to phase one’s Fiery Consumption with two minor differences.  The first difference is that the damage caused is shadow damage instead of fire.  The second difference is that instead of players being thrown away if they are caught by the zone drop they are sucked to the middle of the shadow zone.

Phase Three

All of the phase one and two effects are in play as well as the following.

Corporeality – This ability phases Halion more strongly into one realm or the other in a manner related to the damage caused to him in each realm. For example if the players in the physical realm cause less damage than those in the twilight realm then Halion will deal and receive more damage in the physical realm. This slides back and forth throughout the fight. It can reach as much as Halion taking 200% extra damage and causing 400% extra damage.  The extra damage taken is great, however, that much extra damage caused will make a tank impossible to heal through, therefore the balancing act required between the zones.

Strategy

Phase One

In phase one you should have the tank take Halion all the way to the edge of the space against the firewall and face him sideways to the rest of the group.  Melee should line up against Halion’s back leg, and healers and range should find a spot grouped up at max range towards the flame wall.

Whenever someone gets marked with fiery consumption they simply move as quickly as possible away from the group and have it removed once clear. Repeat this for each time fiery consumption is cast, keeping the zones away from the group.

When meteor is cast everyone must react to it quickly.  There are several possible positions for it to drop on since players will be in one of three positions.  If the drop location is on ranged, they simply move to the side by at least 15 yards and regroup.  If the drop is on melee, everyone slides from the rear leg to the front leg, which will grant enough distance as long as everyone was in proper position.  Lastly if the drop location is on the tank, the tank needs to backup 15 yards and have everyone follow.  Once repositioned, simply watch where the flame X forms and adjust to it as required.

Keep adjusting as required until you are able to drop Halion to 75% health.

Phase Two

When phase two starts Halion will open a portal to the twilight realm and enter.  The raid needs to follow him through which begins phase two. This phase is strategically very similar to phase one for dealing with the dropped shadow zones, breath, and facing.

However, due to the shadow pulsars when everyone enters the realm the raid needs to group up behind an orb and follow it around the zone until the first beam occurs. Once it does everyone stops and does as much damage as possible as quickly as possible, popping trinkets, cooldowns, and heroism/bloodlust.

Once you get to the second beam timer you need to adjust and get behind it before it happens and then repeat the above without the cooldowns.  If done properly you can start phase two by strafing forward, sit and plant for a while, strafe backward to get behind the oncoming orb before the next beam, then sit and plant again.  Repeat this until you have Halion down to 50% health.

Phase Three

Phase three is a combination of both phase one and two.  Portals will open to both the physical and twilight zones and Halion will appear in both zones at once in a ghostly form.  You must deal with both mechanics at the same time, while trying to equalize the damage caused between both zones as much as possible.

This is where the raid splits into the predefined groups talked about earlier. Each group requires a tank, healers, and DPS.  Group one returns to the physical realm while group two stays in the twilight realm.

DPS between the two groups needs to be as even as possible.  You should keep the following in mind while breaking up the groups though, due to the mechanics and movement required in the twilight realm ranged DPS should return to the physical realm where they will get more time to DPS while stationary. Melee DPS should stay in the twilight realm where they can more easily cause damage while following Halion around the room.

Keep DPS equal as much as possible between the zones while continuing to avoid damage from the mechanics you learned in phase one and two. Players can take portals to move between the zones to adjust the damage output. 

In the end though, if you can get to phase three and have fairly balanced groups you should not have any issue defeating Halion.


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Last Updated: Aug 07, 2021

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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