World of Warcraft Raid: The Ruby Sanctum

The Ruby Sanctum is the new raid instance introduced very recently by Blizzard. Located underneath the Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight, it is very similar to the Obsidian Sanctum raid. 

Like other raid instances, the Ruby Sanctum can be completed in 10-man and 25-man, normal or heroic modes. This guide focuses on the normal 10-man mode. 

The Ruby Sanctum, like the Obsidian Sanctum has only one boss, but it has three mini bosses which need to be defeated as well.

Trash Mobs in Ruby Sanctum

There are groups of trash mobs that roam around Ruby Sanctum, normally in groups of three, these can be killed very easily and pose absolutely no problem at all to a well-geared raid group.

Mini Boss Saviana Ragefire

The first mini boss in Ruby Sanctum is Saviana Ragefire, this mini boss is fairly simple to defeat, she does do AOE (area of effect) fire damage and players need to watch out for this, any extra fire resistance would be useful. This mini boss will also put a debuff on a random player who will have to move away from the rest of the raid to avoid damaging other players. Other than this, it is a straightforward fight.

Mini Boss Baltharus the Warlord

The next mini boss is Baltharus the Warlord, again this is fairly straight forward. Baltharus does a debuff which will affect other raid members, as long as players with the debuff can move away from the rest of the raid this should cause few problems. Baltharus does clone himself and the clone will need to be off-tanked, however all damage players must remain on the original Baltharus. 

Mini Boss General Zarithrian

The third mini boss does summon adds during the fight, as long as the off-tank picks these up before they get to the rest of the raid, there is little difficulty with this mini boss. Zarithrian does an AOE which sometimes can reset his aggro meaning he might go after a healer or a dps, if players can stay near one of the tanks they should be fine. Most raid groups will struggle little with these mini bosses as long as everyone is aware of the strategy of the fights and the abilities of the bosses.

Main Boss Halion

The boss of Ruby Sanctum is a good challenge and a significant step up from the mini bosses. The Halion fight has three stages to it: in the first stage he does a frontal fire attack, like other dragon fights, only the tanks should be in front of the dragon, other players should be at the side and also away from the tail. He will also put a debuff on random players which, when it ends will create a patch on the ground dealing damage to any players standing in it. In the second stage of the fight, Halion will portal to the shadow world, a portal will appear for the raid to go through and continue the fight. All the damage in this stage is shadow and not fire. In the shadow world, there will be two shadow orbs flying around which emit beams, if their beams merge they will do significant damage to any player caught in it, and cloth wearers especially could be killed easily by this beam. In the third and final stage of the fight, Halion will be in both the normal and the shadow realm, and the group must split up as evenly as possible. The damage dealt to Halion in both realms must remain fairly equal, if there is a significant difference he will begin to regenerate health.

Loot in Ruby Sanctum

Halion does drop a decent range of loot, from tanking items, healing cloaks, plenty of melee and ranged damage items too. The loot in normal 10-man mode is generally item level 258. 

The Ruby Sanctum is a good challenge and an enjoyable one with potentially nice rewards at the end. Even if raid groups struggle with Halion, the mini bosses drop Emblems of Frost upon death, so this raid instance is certainly worth trying.