Black Ring Citadel (BRC) in Keshetta is where you will find the Tier 2 Raid instances. Wing 1 and Wing 3 are the easiest of the three wings. Wing 2 is a nightmare even for the most experienced raiders (Chatha specifically).
Tanks – Holding aggro and being able to aggro swap is key for you guys. You must be able to survive BIG blows and still keep tanking.
Healers – Your primary focus will always be to heal and debuff.
DPSers – Pulling aggro off a tank is unacceptable. Sure, sometimes it can happen unintentionally, but know your damage, know how much you can do without pushing the limits. Don’t pull aggro off a tank.
Here are general descriptions of each boss fight within the Black Ring Citadel. If your head isn't spinning in circles when it's over, you’re a pro.
Wing 1 –
Exorcant of the Gargoyle Master – You walk into his room to find the boss standing alone, some pillars, some statues, a cauldron and an old trebuchet? It looks simple enough right? NOPE! While one tank and healer deal with Exorcant, the rest of the raid will be fighting off gargoyles – statues that come to life 2 at a time. There are a total of six. Ok – that’s doable – like the minions in Yakmar’s cave right? NOPE! While you fight the gargoyles, there is a great chance you will actually become stoned – you get a fifteen second countdown before you go swaying like a drunken sailor, unable to do a thing. This spell lasts for a solid five minutes. Each gargoyle that dies drops a pile of sand. That sand can be picked up by a mage or healer with ‘shatterstone’ (a quest item similar to the bane in Vistrix) to unstone people. The sand only lasts in your inventory for 60 seconds, so don’t pick it up unless you’re directed to by the raid leader. Once all six gargoyles are down, everyone that’s still alive or not stoned can circle the boss and burn him down, assuming you don’t get stoned during the swarm on Exorcant.
Phew – ok I think I’ve got it – Exorcant is the big bad guy – gargoyles suck, and people can get frozen in place….kill kill kill then PHAT LOOTZ right? NOPE! Once Exorcant dies, there’s a brief pause, and an even bigger gargoyle than the ones you’ve already been fighting appears from the Exorcant’s dead body. What’s next is the easy part of the fight – getting to this point is the challenge. Tank and spank but watch out for the fears. When he fears the raid – DO NOT DPS until the tanks have aggro again. Rince and repeat. No one will get stoned anymore after he changes form, but anyone still stoned will have to wait out their debuff and join the fight when they can.
Yaremka the Soul Eater – If you like watching tennis you’ll love this fight. It’s slow and painful. And can be quite boring for most. But it’s easy if people follow instruction. Key word – if. I’ve one-shotted this guy and I’ve been in raids that got called off cuz we couldn’t get past him. This is one where slow and steady wins the race. I will run things a bit different in here than the rest of the raid leaders on Wiccana – and this is because of how I learned on Cimmeria. I don’t think either method is wrong, just different. So if you’ve raided this place with others, you’ll want to make sure you listen up when I go over the strat.
But – here’s the run through – You walk in the room after clearing your way to it, and there’s this big ugly blue dude in the middle of the room, a pillar on either side of him, and an alcove beyond each pillar. The alcoves contain four orbs, there are some orbs hanging from the ceiling, sparks of electricity and ooo shiny. Reminds me of sticking a knife in an outlet. And it can be that painful too.
Four people will head to the alcove on the left. Ranged DPS classes preferred. There will be two tanks on Yaremka – the strongest/heaviest geared tank as the main tank, and the next best as the offtank. One will be receiving a DoT so it’s important that the two tanks are well prepared for the job. The healers’ jobs in here are huge – to counter effect that DoT and to keep the main tank alive. The rest of the DPS group – you guys get a cake walk for the most part.
Yaremka will be pulled to one pillar, tanks do their thang, healers do their thang. DPS sits there and watches. When called for, the ‘ball clickers’ will be told to click the orb – AT THE EXACT SAME TIME. Good thing is that we can test this before starting the fight. When it’s called out, the clickers click, and everyone runs to the other side of the room. Rince and repeat. Back and forth you guys go, from left to right pillar, from left to right alcove – get the tennis reference now?
DPSers – you’re probably wondering why this is a raid boss if so far only a few people are involved. Well here’s the deal. You guys are going to sloooooowly work your way into the fight, and here’s why. If aggro gets pulled off of the two tanks, the raid is nearly impossible to recover from. He will begin slamming his giant ugly fists down on people, like he’s playing whack-a-mole and we’re the moles. He can one shot anyone. So yeah – DPS will slowly work their way in as instructed.
Orb Clickers – you guys are probably falling asleep waiting to be told ‘3-2-1 click click click’. Well see you guys make or break the raid too. If the four orbs get clicked and Yaremka is where he should be when you’re told to click, a huge lightning spark will shoot out of the dangly orbs and light up the ground near where he’s standing. This will pacify him, initiating the switch to the other side of the room. If it goes wrong – either the orbs weren’t clicked right or Yaremka was in the wrong spot – he will enrage. When he enrages, he literally enlarges, and he begins to play whack-a-mole on the tanks again. If one of the two main tanks goes down – we’re pretty much screwed. Getting put back on his aggro table is tough, so those two tanks can never die.
One last thing to note in this fight. If you have a debuff USE IT. I can’t stress that enough – DEBUFF DEBUFF DEBUFF. If it goes on cooldown, pop it back on immediately. Well – wait til he gets to a pillar because there can be no DPS to him in transit, but if there aren’t like 3 rows at minimum of debuffs on this guy for the majority of the fight, that’s not enough. So yeah – DEBUFF allatime.
Sabazios the Insane – Once we’ve gotten past Yaremka, we’ve got a bit more trash to clear, thousands of annoying snakes (not letterally thousands but a lot) and then we get to go head on with Sabazios the Insane. Now – I have no idea why Funcom put this guy as the last boss in the instance, but hey, it’s an easy way to end the zone. This guy is a friggen piece of pie. As long as you don’t lag out. If you have any trouble with lag/particles/fps – turn all particles off. BEFORE getting to the snakes. This fight can lock you up for a good 10 minutes after the fight if your computer can’t handle it.
But literally it’s the easiest boss fight I’ve ever seen. We all ball up in a corner, tanks in front, spelleweavers in back. One tank pulls him in to us and then we go all out on him. From the get-go I mean all out – spellweave your arse off, blow the top off the DPS charts, kill that mo-fo. Cuz he won’t do anything but stand there and take it. What’s ‘hard’ about this fight is that he spawns more snakes during the fight, so we’re not just tanking and spanking him, we’re DPSing down tons of snakes with him. Assuming no one gets their life sucked out of them by a snake, most of us will probably never drop below 90% health during this fight. Very easy end to Wing 1.