Runic Descent (Expert)

Runic Descent (expert) is an instance in the Moonshade Highlands.

It is designed for level 50 players as a Tier 2 Dungeon.

=Achievements=

= Bosses =

Rictus

 * Melee Fight
 * AoE Pull

Strategy
Rictus is a simple fight. There is a small wall just prior to the pull on this boss that all players can easily stand behind while the tank pulls Rictus to the bottom of the steps in front. The reason for this is Rictus does an AoE pull on all players and does high damage to players in melee range. If your melee DPS have a ranged offspec it is best advised to use this as it makes the fight much smoother.

An alternative positioning is the tank stands against the pillar before the boss, and ranged can stand at the posts back and off to the sides, this also keeps you out of range of Rictus's AoE pull.

In addition to all this, Rictus put a random DoT on a player or player's pet. So you need to ensure you debuff pet's otherwise they can wipe the party. It's safer to not have pet's out for this fight.

Wormwood

 * Melee Fight
 * Spawns AOE knockback mushrooms

Strategy
Tank and spank while avoiding the spawned mushrooms.

Warden Falidor

 * Ranged Fight
 * Large AoE Knockback
 * Glacial Shield which damages attackers

Strategy
Warden Falidor is for the most part, a tank-n-spank fight. Similar in nature to normal however when he casts Glacial Shield it will damage the attacker, melee or ranged. So either purge shield if you can, or wait until it disappears. The other thing to watch for is Cursed Wave, this is the AoE Knockback which throws anyone in Line of Sight a fair distance back. The best option is for the healer to LOS the boss while keeping tank in view to avoid this, as he will summon a bunch of adds afterwards, they die easy so any ranged AoE is sufficient here.

When Glacial Shield is up, the tank either needs to take Warden Falidor off target focus to avoid auto-attack hit, or move back a short distance out of immediate melee range.

Strategy
This guy is easily the simplest mechanic fight i have seen so far in the t2 expert dungeons. Have your tank engage and pull him to where the two stone braziers are, then dps/heals grp up on one side of them while your tank stays in the middle, there will be a screen notification of him 'channeling the powers of darkness' or some such nonsense - this is your cue to line of sight him around the braziers, everyone needs to do this although i would suggest having your tank LOS at the opposite brazier to everyone else as he has a nasty cleave. While he channels this, he will gain a death aura that will cause him to charge a random party member then charge the tank (if you are not los'd) it will also cause him to stun and dot the poor party member who doesnt los in time and this tick will kill you. About halfway through the fight he summons two adds who will do dmg and put a stacking cadence on everyone that reduces their dmg by around 60% at 2 stacks, just push through it. Now you can either kill the adds, or if you are an achievement-whore you can leave them up and get a nice achieve for it, the adds will usually spawn in the group nowhere near the tank so if you have someone that can mesmerise them or aoe stun until the tank picks them up go for it, or if you have a beast tank then just heal the one or two hits someone will take before the tank gets them - they dont hit hard. This fight is not difficult, its just laborious as you have to stop dps each time you line of sight or you will die and thats just annoying. I would recommend at least one dps class with good dots, also a warden healer for the h.o.t.s to keep the tank up during the los phase as well as your other usual heals/dps makeup. My grp downed him with a full necro, two clerics - one warden one sent, an ele/stormcaller and a pally/warl/void tank.

Strategy
This is basically a rift event with 4 stages.
 * 1) Just show up
 * 2) Three elite mistresses spawn which will summon specific beasts during the encounter. The summoned beasts only have about 5k health but swarm around and do some damage. Just group up on the tank and AoE everything down.
 * 3) Here is another set of 3 elites which spawn non-elite flying fairies who randomly target someone and shoot on them. There will be more and more fairies if you don't kill then, so have one of your ranged burn them down. The elites are fauns so basically bards and they will target someone (sometimes two at a time) and put them in a drunken haze which is a 6 second stun. They will also cast healing that can be interrupted.
 * 4) In the last stage you will engage the boss, Eliam. This is a major dps race. Beat on the boss until he goes immune. He will spawn a group of adds (2 at first, 4 on the next phase, then 6, 8, and so on). Do not pull the adds together, as they will receive less damage (down to no damage at all) if they get close to each other.

Eliam
Eliam will use some special abilities during the fight.
 * He casts "Blinding Darkness" which has a short cast time and stuns/fears everyone who looks at him. Simply turn 180 and you won't get hit. Immediately after that, Eliam will grow in size and start punishing your tank, tank needs to kite as soon as blinding darkness is done casting (Eliam runs very slow).
 * During the immune phase with the adds, he will be channeling "Final Strike". If he finishes casting that before you kill all adds, he will hit everyone in the group for 13million dmg. This is why you need to kill the boss as fast as possible, before he spawns too many adds which you cannot kill in time. As a general guideline, you should hit him for more than 20% before each immunity phase (this prevents him to spawn 10 adds). Also, the adds are death touched creatures, you can hit them with the damage consumables dropping from rifts. Use them on phase 4 (8 adds).
 * Alsbeth is randomly targeting a player to cast a debuff. It will deal no damage, but after some time it spawns a fire AoE on the ground that dots for 1000+ and also slows. Everyone close to it will get dragged inside, so stay away from each other (splitting up also helps to kill all the adds).

Eliam cleaves so if you are melee be careful. Melee dps also need to be careful not to aggro the boss when the tank is kiting him.

Group Setup
For the dps race on stage 4, you will need as much damage as you can get. The tank is gonna get hit for a decent amount in this fight so you can either go cleric/chloro if you have some mega dps outputters or you can 2 cleric it, although this can be dangerous due to Final Strike.

My progression group downed him with a half necr/chloro, full sent, shaman, ele/stormcaller and void/pally/war tank.

= Loot =