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Notice: This boss received hotfix changes as of 5/2/2012. You can no longer out range Iron Wrath after she blinks, and you must do the little dance. Longshots now spawn near Rusila Dreadblade as well. The strategy has been updated as of 5/3/2012 at 1:00 AM EST. We expect to update this strategy again on 5/9/2012 if there are any hotfix changes. It is possible to line of sight the Longshots the whole fight, and bum rush a ton of bombs to the turrets within the first minute of the fight. We will probably try this strategy out next week depending on the hotfix.

Basic Information

• Difficulty level: 7/10
• Health: 7.8m
• Hard enrage timer: 3:45, timer does not start until Rusila becomes active (phase 2)

Ideal Raid Composition

• 3 tanks
• 5 healers
• 2 support (1 bard, 1 archon)
• 10 DPS

Strategy

Phase 1: Heart of the Dread (4.8m)

This phase is all about surviving and execution. You begin this phase by either attacking the boss, attacking the Longshots, or picking up a barrel towards the front of the boat. When you start the fight you will have five different adds spawn. Three of the adds spawn from the Deck Hatches on the first floor, the fourth one spawns from the Deck Hatch behind Rusila, and the Longshots spawn on the right and left stairs next to Rusila (they start spawned).

Hatch that adds crawl out of

Dreaded Fellblade - Melee add with minimal tank damage and has a cleave.

Dreaded Soulbinder - Melee add with a healing shield. Heals any adds close to him.

Dreaded Balemouth - Melee/caster add with a 15ish meter cone fire breath. When the add is sub 20%ish he will cast detonate for about 5 seconds which has a 10 meter radius. If you are inside you will die.

Dreaded Deathkeg - Melee add that will cast Splatter Slam. About a three second cast and if you are within the 10 meter melee radius it will kill any non-tank.

Dreaded Longshot - Ranged add that spawn on the steps next to Rusila. Two of them spawn per cycle, and they will aggro when attacked or by radius. If possible you will want a tank to aggro them first, but if that is not possible then whichever target they choose will need some good heals. They will fire one or two auto attacks at a target first (3-6k damage depending on armor), and then cast Dead Shot. When Dead Shot goes off it will kill the player. These should never go off, and the only way to beat them is by killing them fast enough as far as we know.

These adds can be slowed by abilities such as Wild Growth, so you should try to avoid using those abilities until the adds are in position.

At the start of the fight the ranged should get in position while the adds are spawning. The tanks want to spread out enough that they can cover all of the Deck Hatches without the adds smacking a player before it can be picked up. You want the tanks to pick up the adds, and bring them towards the Deck Hatch that they spawned from. You want to launch a bomb at those tanks so the hatches are destroyed and no longer spawn adds. Also, when a bomb hits an add they take 90% damage of their health pool and can be finished off by ranged DPS. Using this strategy you should only have to worry about the first set of adds, and maybe a couple more from the second set. We decided to destroy the hatches on the main floor first. After those were killed we had a tank run to the hatch behind Rusila and blow that up. After all of the hatches have been killed you only have to deal with Longshots.

After you get into the initial position it becomes very easy for the players on the deck. Ranged kill any adds they are in range of (Longshots take priority), and tanks simply tank adds next to their hatch until the hatch is dead. After all of the hatches are dead you want one tank to stay on the Heart and act as the target to blow up the Heart of the Dread. Ranged must keep those Longshots in check as they do continue to spawn even if all hatches are dead, and DPS the Heart whenever possible.

The way we deal with Heart of the Dread and the phase transition is probably pretty unique to to other guilds. You can spend as much time in Phase 1 as you want, so we have the ranged DPS take the Heart down to 3% health and have one bomb left. We use that one bomb to remove the Hearts invulnerability shield, and have the person who just shot the bomb run back to the raid. After about 15 seconds we kill the heart and begin our phase transition. The reason we do this is because Rusila will instantly kill the bomb runners if they are too far away from heals due to a raid wide AoE ability in phase 2.

Tanks pick up their add that spawns from the hatch and wait for a bomb. After the first hatch is dead that tank rotates to hatch #4. After the second hatch is dead that tank rotates to the Heart. After the third and fourth hatch are dead those tanks can help with Longshots.

Note: You do NOT have to use tanks. Any raid member can be targeted for bombs we simply chose to use tanks.

There are a few mechanics the boat/Rusila does throughout phase 1. One of them is Constricted. When the Barbed Chains are lit up with a purple circle around them it will constrict the first target to enter, and deal around 800 damage every two seconds or so. The constricts have 50k health and someone should break you out. Do not use the temporary ability it gives you. It will deal ~5k damage to the chain for about 1k of your own health which isn't worth the trade.

Barbed Chains

The second mechanic are the Buzz Saws that activate about half-way through phase 1. They only follow the path of the yellow lines in the ship, which makes them very easy to avoid. They deal ~2-3k damage per tick if you end up running into one.

Buzz Saws

The third mechanic during this phase is Rusila's Fist. She will emote ("Careful not to fall overboard, Ascended!") and place blue bubbles in the spots where raid members were standing. You must move to a spot where no raid members previously stood or it will explode for 3k damage and knock you back, with the possibility of flying off the boat.

Rusila's Fist

Phase 1: Bomb Runners

Bomb runners only run bombs for all of phase 1. When you run a bomb you pick up a bomb from the front of the boat and make your way to the back of the boat and up the ramp where you will see turrets (there's one turret per ramp). When you get there you want to click the lever next to the turret, and a couple seconds later you will gain a new temporary ability. To use the bomb you must target a friendly player (for our strategy we use the dedicated Heart tank) and launch the bomb at them by using the temporary ability. When a bomb hits a player it will deal 90% of their health in damage. When a bomb hits the Heart of the Dread it will take off the invulnerable shield if it is up, and the shield will reapply itself after about 30 seconds. If the shield is not up it will deal 20% damage to the heart.

We used six players to run bombs for us. 3 assigned to right side turret, and 3 assigned to left side turret. All of them were dual wield warriors or rogues with run speed buffs. At the beginning of the fight all six players pick up bombs and run them to their turret. Once you are at the turret you need to assign the bombs to tanks to blow up the hatches. The turrets have an internal cooldown of about 10-15 seconds it seems, so once you launch a bomb head back to get another one. In a perfect situation the bombs should hit these targets:

Bomb 1: Deck Hatch #1

Bomb 2: Deck Hatch #2

Bomb 3: Deck Hatch #3

Bomb 4: Deck Hatch #4

Bomb 5+: Heart of the Dread

You only get about one minute to run those bombs up to the turret, or you will explode in a 10 meter radius around you for 100k+ damage. Make sure you don't pick up too many bombs because you will not be able to unload them after the Heart dies. Rusila will fill that ramp with fire about 15 seconds after she becomes active, so the last bomb runners need to get out of there asap.

You want one DoL cleric to be positioned at the chains where the bomb group has to run through. Reason for this is for heals when a runner needs to soak the chain which you can see in the video section of this guide.

Note: Chains will not target you if you have a bomb!

Phase 2: Rusila Dreadblade

The boss finally becomes active and fights you! A couple seconds after the phase starts she will light a grate up with a red pulsing bubble which means it is about to turn into a pool of lava. The first pool of lava is always where the Heart died, and then it can be any random grate on the boat. With our strategy the positioning doesn't change much. Have the tank pick up the boss and position her. Longshots still spawn during phase 2, but we position the boss far enough way so that Longshots do not aggro at all during this phase.

One of the new abilities is Dreadshot which will target a random raid member and deal damage to that player plus the raid until the channel ends. The targeted player will gain a temporary ability that allows them to dodge Dreadshot and survive. You can only use this ability while moving, and it only lasts 5 seconds. Make sure you use this temp ability when the cast is about the end because the last tick one shots. Earth resist will help, and at 99 stacks with max earth resist will deal about 2600 damage per tick (starts at 800 per tick).

Two more abilities are Iron Wrath which is a 40ish meter radius instant kill AoE around Rusila, and a 5 meter radius AoE called Savage Edge. When she casts these abilities she will blink to the furthest target and cast one of them, and then the other right after. So it is blink -> savage -> wrath. To survive wrath you must be inside the safe yellow circle at melee range. To survive savage edge you need to be 5-10+ meters away from Rusila. This is very similar to the T2 earth rift boss. You can see this ability used in the video. Both mechanics are one shot including tanks.

The next ability is Rusila's soft enrage. Every second she will gain a stack that increases her damage dealt. It caps at 99 stacks, and when you hit 99 stacks you should be trying to pump out as much DPS as possible because you are probably about to hit the hard enrage. The soft enrage is pretty brutal.

The last ability is Thousand Cuts. Rusila will unleash buzz saws outwards from her body which damages the melee almost instantly, and anyone they reach. They fan outwards in eight different directions. North, North East, East, South East, South, South West, West, and North West. You can dodge them fairly easily as ranged, but is a little trickier as melee. When Rusila starts reaching 60+ stacks of her soft enrage I suggest melee run out for thousand cuts to avoid the possible RNG death. On top of this, when thousand cuts finishes casting she will hit the tank for ~18k damage. This damage is ramped up with the soft enrage, and at 80+ stacks will hit the tank for 40k damage. You'll need a battle rez chain on tanks, cooldowns, and pray to god your tank blocks. Our MT warrior blocked a hit with max earth resist and still took a 20k hit just to give you guys an idea of the damage.

Summary

On Pull: Tanks assigned to a Hatch and pick up adds (Hatch #4 add must be picked up by Hatch #3 tank). Longshots can also be tanked initially if the tank is good. Bomb runners pick up bombs and run to their turret.

Phase 1: Bomb 1 on Hatch #1. Bomb 2 on Hatch #2. Bomb 3 on Hatch #3. Bomb 4 on Hatch #4. Tanks must rotate appropriately to make this happen (using non-tanks to target bombs with is perfectly fine if you choose to do so!). Longshots continue to spawn even if all hatches are dead which ranged make priority. Bomb 5+ are used on Heart of the Dread. Phase 2 begins when Heart dies.

Phase 2: Longshots still spawn. If they are aggro'd kill them asap while Rusila is moved in position, but after you are in position you should be far enough away that they will not aggro. This phase is fairly simple. You will see all of the abilities within the first 30 seconds of her activating. Damage will ramp up as the soft enrage increases. Boss is very similar to the T2 earth raid rift boss. You will need tank cooldowns, brez chain, or anything after 50-60+ stacks of the soft enrage.

Video

Watching videos will help tremendously for this fight. The bomb runner and bomb chain breaker videos are taken of our first kill, and the strategy has been changed since then. The full video contains our most recent kill (not in yet, currently uploading).

Full video

(Looks best viewed in full screen at 1080p)

Bomb runner

(Looks best viewed in full screen at 1080p)

Bomb chain breaker

(Looks best viewed in full screen at 1080p)

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