Reliquary of Souls is another rather interesting encounter, continuing the trend of difficulty that began around Gorefiend and increase dramatically both at Gurtogg and now this boss as well.  Reliquary will most likely take any newly attempting raid quite a bit of time to execute correctly, wherein it becomes something of a routine fight.

Abilities

2,300,000 HP(All 3 phases)

Melee – 1,000 – 1,500

Essence of Suffering – Phase One

Aura of Suffering – Reduces healing effects, regeneration effects, and armor by 100%.  Defense Reduced by 500.  This is applied to the entire raid and lasts until the boss switches phases.

Enrage – Somewhere around every 60 seconds(one minute) the boss will enrage and begin dealing somewhere around 3,000 – 4,000 damage.

Soul Drain – Randomly targeted spell draining mana and dealing damage, 2,500 – 3,400 mana drained/damage dealt every 3 seconds for a total of 30 seconds.  Dispellable.

Fixate – When cast upon a player they automatically gain irremovable aggro, cast every 5 seconds on the closest target.

Essence of Desire – Phase Two

Aura of Desire – 50% of all damage dealt is returned to the attack, healing is increased by 100%, and maximum mana is decreased over time.

Spirit Shock – Attack spell combined with a 5 second disorient effect.  Deals 9,200 – 11,000 damage to the primary target as well as the
double whammy of decreasing the cast time each time the spell is successfully cast.  5 second cooldown/1 second cast time.

Deaden – Increases damage taken by 100%, lasts 10 seconds/cast every 30 or so seconds on the primary target.

Rune Shield – Easily spotted self-cast shield spell lasting for around 40,000 damage and granting melee immunity.  Spellsteal(Mage)/Devour(Felhunter) to get rid of it.

Essence of Anger – Phase Three

Aura of Anger – Deals an ever increasing amount of shadow damage over time.  The initial tick will be 103, increasing by an additional 103 each and every tick thereafter, so 103, 206, 309, etc.  Also increases damage dealt by 5%.

Soul Scream – Large frontal cone effect spell, deals an initial 2,500 – 3,400 shadow damage as well as burning around 4,000 – 6,000 mana
or burning rage.  Each point of rage burned equals 100 damage, 10 rage will be an additional 1,000 damage and so on.

Spite – Randomly targeted spell, gives 6 seconds of immunity to damage followed up by a whopping 7444 – 7556 nature damage.

Seethe – Increases threat generated by 200%, lasts 10 seconds.  Cast whenever the boss switches targets via threat/taunt.

Essence of Suffering – Phase 1

Starting phase one you’ll likely realize that heals are completely nullified, making this a very interesting fight yet also doable due to the bosses unique threat mechanics/abilities.  To begin the fight you’ll move up closely and have all but a single player stand at maximum melee range, holding position on a single spot basically.

To make this easier you can designate a player with the raid target icons, skull for example, and have everyone group up on-top of this player.  The reason for doing this is that whoever is closest will become the bosses next target upon the next cast of fixate, this positioning allows easy switching of targets.

So, player 1 will move in at the start of the fight, taking the bosses aggro for one fixate, and moving back to the group of players once they’ve received the fixate, allowing player 2 to move in and the next fixate, then player 3, 4, 5, etc.

Additionally, to deal with the enrages you’ll need to have everyone aside from your designated enrage tank make certain to be out of fixate range.  Have the enrage tank, whether it be a bonafide tank, warrior, druid, paladin, etc.  or simply a rogue with evasion, move in and begin taking the harder hits.

Don’t underestimate the bosses ability to kill even well-prepared tanks, the utter lack of healing will truly change the way this works, use every trinket/cooldown possible to keep yourself up while tanking through an enrage.

Once the boss reaches 1%, most likely around the 2-3 enrage mark, it’ll return to its spawn point and allow you a brief rest period.

Ghosts

Within your breather period separating phase 1 and 2, several ghosts will appear at the three spots marked by lights at the edges of the room.  Gather them up and AoE the mobs down, each ghosts death restores all players to full health and mana.

 Essence of Desire – Phase 2

Once phase two starts have the tank run over and begin to build threat once more on the boss, for this phase in particular you’ll need a warrior to tank due to spell-reflect being a massive aid throughout this section of the fight.

The new fancy aura debuff is yet another tough one, as detailed above in the abilities section this aura will slowly reduce mana, taking around 2 and a half minutes or slightly more to fully drain the raids resources.

Additionally, all damage dealt is reflected 50%, a 2,000 melee attack will result in 1,000 hitting the attacker, therefore a few lucky criticals, especially from casters high-end nukes, can easily result in the player dropping themselves in a couple seconds flat.

As far as the tanking goes, spellreflect must be used to reflect deaden onto the boss, giving the entire raid a handy increase of 100% more damage onto the boss as well as keeping your tank from taking the doubled damage.

Rune shield will need to be removed either by a mage’s spellsteal or a warlock’s felhunter can devour it, this makes the shield basically negligible throughout the fight but it’s still worth noting.

Now, spirit shock, this is the real killer for phase 2 as allowing it be successfully cast even once is disastrous, this is why we have interruption rotations however.  Pummel, Kick, Counterspell, organize this before even attempting the boss or else your raid is done for.

Given that almost any raid has at least around 2-3 rogues and perhaps even a DPS warrior on hand, you can easily use them as your interrupt rotation group, just inform them to never waste a cooldown interrupting Deaden, as this only aids the raid when spell-reflected.

Healers have to be constantly aware as the DPS will be grinding away at both the boss as well as itself, the 50% is a real kicker for high-damage casters due to what are basically lucky/unlucky crits capable of hitting extreme numbers.

Despite the damage reflection this phase is most definitely a DPS race, when your mana hits rock-bottom you’re likely going to bite it very soon thereafter.

Yet again, once the boss reaches 1% they return to the spawn point and ghosts come out to play once more.

Essence of Anger – Phase 3

Have your tank run up and begin building threat as soon as possible, this phase is a DPS race against time and the boss also has a nasty soul-scream ability that should never be allowed to hit anyone other than the main-tank.

Turn the boss’s back to the raid to avoid the soul-screams rather large cone radius from affecting anyone else, additionally the tank must build threat at a immense rate to avoid chaining the raids DPS and therefore dooming them all, the aura of anger’s increased damage effect will make this somewhat harder.

Spite will likely never be cast should your tank be maintain aggro, however, should it get off somehow then have the affected player drop DPS/aggro generating abilities such as healing, etc. until within safe threat levels once more.

Once the tank has stable aggro from the boss have everyone blow cooldowns.  Bloodlust, Heroism, Potions, talents, trinkets, etc.  Unless everything possible is utilized you’ll be incapable of dealing the required damage within the limited time-frame available before the bosses aura kills the entire raid.

Healers will be pushed immensely throughout this phase, eventually the aura will reach unstoppable levels of raidwide 3,000 – 4,000 damage and more, making the remaining healers duty to keep the tank up as DPS pops everything possible to kill the boss.

Healthstones and Healing potions add valuable time to a players life when it comes down to the final percentages of the fight, at 5% or so this can be the difference between wiping and victory.

Finally, soulstones, druids battle rez, and Ankh’s can be used to bring up players if the boss is on the edge of death, this also resets the aura’s damage effect therefore allowing the newly resurrected players to last quite a bit of time more if needed.