halion-guide
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Totem Talk: Enhanced moves with Halion
Axes, maces, lightning, Windfury and wolves. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 10 now out!) as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. The last patch of an expansion feels like the last gift of Christmas; you want it to be the most epic and the most incredible gift of them all, the one gift by which you'll remember this time forever. But instead, you're at your in-laws' doing the family gag gift exchange with a price limit of 20 bucks and a penchant for As Seen on TV products. In some ways, Ruby Sanctum is like that; it's not huge, it's not epic, it's not expensive, but it does have some potential. Maybe Ruby Sanctum is the Slap Chop of this expansion. None of this has anything to do with the article today. Except that I'm talking about Halion. Halion, the Twilight Destroyer. Three phases, good loot and a huge scale-up in difficulty on heroic mode. It's a good fight that requires paying attention throughout the entire 8-minute enrage timer, in which one death can mean a wipe, especially on heroic. There's no 30 percent buff incoming, so you either learn it and beat it, or you don't and fail. For our part, as enhancement shaman, there are a few tricks we have up our sleeves.
The Daily Quest: Edward isn't here
Here at WoW.com, we're on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment and you may see it here tomorrow! Take a look at the links below, and be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites. Let's talk about twilight -- no, not the vampire kind, the kind that has wings and breathes fire. Ruby Sanctum has proven to be a relatively entertaining raid, just difficult enough that people are finding it a challenge. Today we've got some posts from around the blogosphere regarding everybody's favorite fuschia dragon, Halion. Tanking Tips has a quick guide to tanking Halion 10-man and 25-man. World of Matticus talks about Halion and the failure rate. Borsked thinks that this is the good Twilight. On an unrelated note, I Like Bubbles has a scientific look at the RNG.
The Light and How to Swing It: Healing through Halion and friends
Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we discuss how to tackle Halion and his twilight cronies in Ruby Sanctum. In order to bridge the gap between Icecrown Citadel's release late last year and Cataclysm's eventual launch in months, Blizzard released a short raid instance to give raiders something to do until Deathwing breaks through. Ruby Sanctum is a transitional raid, which ushers out our major conflict with the scourge and introduces us to our new threat-dragons. Specifically, our red dragon allies have been assaulted by the Twilight Dragonflight, and it's our job to go clear out their pad before Alexstrasza comes home and gets really mad. With just a trio of mini-bosses and some scattered mobs to clear, the instance looks pretty sparse when we first enter. However, once we've cleared out the trash, Halion appears to stomp on us. He looks a bit like a melding of a catfish and a dragon, but mostly dragon. I'm fairly certain that Blizzard's art department hired a team of pre-school girls to choose the color palate, and so we're faced with a pink and purple dragon who's apparently supposed to be a pretty serious threat. Right. That's our color, and we've come to take it back.
Totem Talk: Revitalizing the Ruby Sanctum
Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast There has been a ton of excitement this past week with the announcement of the Cataclysm beta starting. Everyone has been refreshing their emails and logging into their Battle.net accounts compulsively checking for invites. I can't say I blame them; I know Rich and I are doing the same. So while everyone has been getting excited about Cataclysm, we have almost forgotten that we have some new content to play with. Ruby Sanctum was released and it marks not only the last official raid zone of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, but it is also a part of the prequel events leading up to Cataclysm. The Ruby Sanctum is the sacred grounds of the red dragons, and it has been invaded by the Twilight Dragonflight. You and your friends must travel forth into the sanctuary of the red dragons and purge the invaders from its insides. We have already discussed drops that a restoration shaman could find useful; now let us talk about some strategy and healing. So grab your totems and get ready to drub some dragons!
Spiritual Guidance: Healing Halion and the Ruby Sanctum
Every weekend, Dawn Moore enjoys drinking her tea English style and writing Spiritual Guidance to the pleasant sound of birds (this is quite fortunate, since she lives in an aviary.) This weekend however, Dawn's soundtrack is being interrupted by the sound of explosives. What could be the root of this?! Fox Van Allen must have finally teamed up with goblin engineers to foil Dawn's Sunday column. How will she write for healing priests with that incessant racket?! This week I'll be writing about how to traverse the Ruby Sanctum as a healing priest. I know, I know, I promised you all a leveling guide, but for the sake of being timely we'll have to push it back a week. Forgive me, please? In the guide I'll be covering Halion, as well as the three mini-bosses you'll have to defeat before you can face him. I will also examine priest appropriate loot in the instance and compare it to a few pieces we've seen in Icecrown Citadel. Hit the jump and we'll get started.
WoW.com's Guide to Halion
Halion is the final raid encounter to be released in Wrath of the Lich King. While Halion is not the most advanced or progressed boss in the expansion -- that's still Arthas -- he is going to be the final word on raiding for a while. The comparison between Halion and Sartharion is pretty valid. When you enter the raid entrance, there are three mini-bosses with whom you'll need to do battle. After clearing them, you get the opportunity to throw down with Halion himself. The mechanics are obviously different, but the raid has a similar overall feel. Don't worry -- there's no three-drakes-up mechanic this time around. (Video via EFBIEEI1) Table of contents Composition General strategy Abilities Tank strategy DPS strategy Healing strategy Other resources
