halion-the-twilight-destroyer
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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.
Shifting Perspectives: Balance Ruby Sanctum guide
Every Friday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting balance druids and those who group with them. This week we are sipping some iced tea, sittin' on our porch swings, enjoying a nice sundae cone and talking about that time we slew the giant, rampaging, pink dragon. I want to take a spot of a breather from Cataclysm information just for this week. Mostly because I'm slightly frothy at the mouth, which I've been told isn't a good health sign, but more so due to the fact that so much is in the process of being changed right now that going into an in-depth discussion on a topic that's likely to have every scrap completely altered tomorrow is silly. Perhaps silly is the wrong word, after all that's never been something to stop me before, so let's just consider this to be an isolated case -- promises that next week will be a real Cataclysm discussion. In light of that, if there's anything specific that you'd like to see covered, shoot me an email and I'll see what I can do for you. Focusing on the here and now, which is actually what this article is about, I'd like to quickly go over the more recent raiding addition Ruby Sanctum. Although I've seen mixed reviews of the instance from others, I at least think the instance is a nice little dash of refreshing. It doesn't hold the same sense of urgency, the same notion that you're going to be stuck in here for hours upon hours, days upon days (even though many guilds, particularly those working on hard mode, will be) that I get from going into ICC. RS is a nice little cooldown raid; it's light, fun and refreshing like a cool glass of lemonade. To start us off, we'll take a quick look at the shiny loots, since that's what everyone really wants, and then we'll look into a brief little guide on how to slay the giant purple/pink dragon at the end.
Shifting Perspectives: Ruby Sanctum loot for druids
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting feral/restoration druids and those who group with them. Today, we check the loot tables, smack a dragon around until he barfs up epics and all-powerful thingamabobs -- and it's another Tuesday night in Sunnydale. I'm still in a World Cup kind of mood, hence the above video. Oh, Iker. Never change! Yes, I know about the Cataclysm druid forms. I haven't written anything about them yet because: I wasn't really keen on the new tauren druid forms I saw around this time last year, then wound up loving them once I saw them in motion. I don't want to make the same mistake with the Cataclysm druid forms, which is all the more likely because ... The Day-Glo coloration of the troll forms sent me into fits of despair over the implausibility of their stealthing past anything that wasn't a Palm Beach divorcée in a Lilly Pulitzer dress (to borrow a phrase from P.J. O'Rourke). Bah. Anyway, Ruby Sanctum ilevels are pretty straightforward -- the 10-man coughs up ilevel 258 gear (the same you'd get from ToGC-25), the 25-man coughs up 271 (between ICC-25 and ICC-25 heroic quality), and their heroic versions offer 271 and 284 respectively. In other words, you'll find some quality stuff here. Beyond the cut are the pieces that feral and restoration druids might want.
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.
Arcane Brilliance: Ruby Sanctum preview - mage edition
You'll have to forgive Arcane Brilliance (the weekly mage column) this week. Arcane Brilliance is a little down in the dumps. You see, Arcane Brilliance just isn't sure it can live in a world where Duke is the NCAA basketball champion and the Lakers are the NBA champion. One was bad enough, but now both of those evil basketball programs are champs? Ugh. What's that, you say? I could always just give in and root for Duke and LA? I suppose I could, but that would be like giving in and rooting for warlocks to do anything but die painfully in a fire of my creation. In other words: not going to happen. All signs point to patch 3.3.5 dropping very soon. When it drops, it will bring with it a few fun UI changes and quests, but most importantly, it will herald the final raid instance of this expansion, the last raid boss we're going to get before Cataclysm erupts in a massive explosion of Goblins and Worgen and Tauren paladins and Wars of the Ancients and such. Soon after the patch hits, the portal to the Ruby Sanctum below Wyrmrest Temple will open, and the same heroes who ended to reign of the Lich King will enter and challenge the fearsome Black Dragonflight, led by The Twilight Destroyer, Halion. And I want my fellow mages to be ready. So fill your pockets with strudel, put on your best dress, and meet me at Wyrmrest, mages. We've got dragons to slay.
Totem Talk: Restoration and Ruby Sanctum drops
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. Last week we talked a bit about some addons that you may have found useful as a restoration shaman. Sadly though, shortly after that post, news broke that AVR/AVRE would be going away in patch 3.3.5. The addon did some things that Blizzard was just not too happy about. The week was not filled with all bad news, though. We have had some amazing Cataclysm screenshots every day, Rich Maloy had an awesome post on enhancement weapons and the loot tables for Ruby Sanctum 25-man and 10-man have been slightly updated. There are still no heroic mode items yet, but there seems to be a fair amount of loot shaping up for restoration shaman in the normal mode alone. Keep in mind that this is still on the PTR and subject to change, but let us take a peek at what sort of itemization we can look forward to in the next content patch.
Know Your Lore: The Twilight Dragonflight
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. For those that have been following along over the past couple of weeks, I've been following a certain order of progression with the dragon flights. Originally, there were the proto-drakes. The largest of these was Galakrond, from whom the Aspects of the dragon flights were created. Next, the Black dragonflight and its leader, Deathwing -- created from Galakrond himself, fought to achieve supremacy over Azeroth. From Deathwing's eggs, the Netherwing were born, or rather, evolved due to exposure to the energies of the Twisting Nether. Today we follow that order with the latest addition to the dragons of Azeroth -- the Twilight dragonflight. The Twilight dragons don't really have a lot of 'history' to speak of, as they've only been recently developed, but there's enough to go into as far as their origins go. The Black dragonflight, intent on breeding a superior race of dragons that would overtake and control Azeroth, has spent several years trying to create this dominant race, with little success.
Assault on the Ruby Sanctum: Transcripts and details
WARNING: This post is chock full of spoilers. Spoilers like you would not believe. If you'd like to be surprised about the Ruby Sanctum and what is contained within, I wouldn't recommend continuing onward. If, however, you are clamoring for more information, read on! The latest push of the PTR revealed some new items and models that are exciting in and of themselves. What you haven't seen however, are the voice files that were released, including the sound files for General Zarithrian, Baltharus the Warborn, Saviana Ragefire and Halion the Twilight Destroyer, the bosses for the upcoming 3.3.5 raid instance, the Ruby Sanctum. Full transcripts of the bosses, as well as some other voice files involving the assault follow below.
More Ruby Sanctum information: loot, lore, and more
Today's announcement of the upcoming Ruby Sanctum raid, coming with Patch 3.3.5, was well-met, though it raised a number of questions as to the nature of the instance -- how will it work, what kind of loot can we expect, etc. Zarhym popped back into the original thread a few times to give clarification on a few points: While the instance has a similar layout to the Obsidian Sanctum philosophically, the three sub-bosses (Saviana Ragefire, Baltharus the Warborn, and General Zarithrian) will each be own encounter all their own. The "drakes-up" functionality of Sartharion will not carry over into the Halion encounter. Heroic difficulty is likely to be toggled in the same way that heroic difficulties are handled in ICC (a UI toggle). Saviana, Baltharus, and Zarithrian will each drop an Emblem of Frost, but probably not special loot. Expect loot in the instance to be "about the same item level" as the Lich King items on their respective difficulties. The loot from Halion will be offset pieces as well as trinkets and other items "of that nature." So, basically, Sartharion loot. The instance is intended to be a prelude to Cataclysm and should provide some advancement for the new expansion's storyline before the 4.0 patch, drawing on Deathwing's desire to weaken the Wyrmrest Accord prior to his emergence from Deepholm. Arthas is still considered the final boss of the expansion -- this is merely a complementary raid, like Onyxia with ToC, with ties to Cataclysm. Sounds like about what we were expecting. Keep an eye on WoW.com for more information on the Ruby Sanctum as it comes in, likely starting with the upcoming PTR.
Patch 3.3.5: Assault on the Ruby Sanctum
Just the other day we linked to a GameInformer article in which Tom Chilton mentions a new raid coming soon that would take place in the Ruby Sanctum. To make sure there is no confusion around this, Zarhym hit the forums to tell us exactly what this raid will be. A powerful war party of the Black Dragonflight, led by the fearsome Twilight dragon, Halion, have launched an assault upon the Ruby Sanctum beneath Wyrmrest Temple. By destroying the sanctum, the Black Dragonflight look to crush those that would stand in the way of their master's reemergence into Azeroth and to ultimately shatter the Wyrmrest Accord – the sacred bond that unites the dragonflights. The battle that is to come will surely deal a crippling blow to the Red Dragonflight, however, it is up to you to stop this unprecedented offensive and defend the Ruby Sanctum. First you must face the assault of Halion's servants, Saviana Ragefire, Baltharus the Warborn, and General Zarithrian, before squaring off against Halion the Twilight Destroyer, a new and deadly force in this realm. The Ruby Sanctum will feature 10- and 25-player content, Heroic difficulties and all-new rewards! Stay tuned for more information as we get closer to its release. From the text, it sounds like we're getting four bosses in the Ruby Sanctum, unless they've taken a Northrend Beasts gauntlet-style approach to the encounters, or perhaps even another council-style battle. Later in the thread, Zarhym suggest that this may only be the beginning of Deathwing's attempts at shattering the Accord, so we may see the other Sanctums open before Cataclysm's launch.
