The general requirements for all raid rifts include a Tank and an Off-tank with at least 100 Toughness, and ideally two Cleric healers and an off-healer, with the rest of the raid filling out with balanced dps of ranged and melee with 100 hit/focus. This content is made for 10 people to complete successfully but you can bring up to 20 in the raid and they will all still be eligible for loot, including the inscribed sourcestone.
The lure to open this rift can be obtained from the Students of the Vale vendor in either Sanctum or Meridian. As of 1.2 you can either purchase an uncharged husk for 500 planarite and charge it with 10 corrupted souls or you can purchase a ready to go Lure for 3500 planarite, however this second method requires Honored notoriety with the Students of the Vale faction whereas the former method does not require any faction notoriety level.
Once you have the lure in hand and are ready to go you will want to head out to Stillmore and find a Raid Tear. Bring the lure to the tear and use it to open the Rift. Once open you will want to position the raid spread out a little at the 6 o’clock position, where 12 o’clock is where the NPCs are standing. Send someone in to start the talking event and then stage 1 will begin with the spawning of a wolf named Caine the Wild.
Stage 1: Caine the Wild
Caine is a big bad wolf. The first thing you will notice is that he stacks a debuff on the tank through this phase. If your tank is taking too much damage due to the debuff, have him switch on and off with your off-tank.
The next thing you will notice is that the raid takes damage through this whole phase. This damage will hit the entire raid for about 900-1000 damage every 3 seconds, so raid heals are very important. Also during this phase 4 smaller wolf adds will spawn occasionally, two from the right and two from the left. You will want your off-tank to pick these up and bring them together, or to the boss, and AOE them down. The biggest thing about this phase is keeping everyone’s life topped up and watching the debuff on the tanks. If there are any adds left alive at the end of this stage AOE them down and pull the raid back.
Stage 2: Bilevenom Sentry x2
Now we get two spiders. Have your main tank and off-tank pick one up each and face them away from the raid. During this phase you will get random knockbacks to the raid, however it doesn’t hurt very much and doesn’t seem to effect the tanks.
Each of these spiders will spawn 2-3 ranged spiders, they will come right after a Bilevenom Sentry says, “Arise my child it is time to feed.” These largely can be ignored until you kill one of the Bilevenom Sentries.
When a Sentry dies it will spawn 5-6 smaller spiders, AOE the ranged spiders and the small spawns down and then move to the second sentry and do the same as the first. Pull the raid back and AOE down any remaining spiders.
Stage 3: Storyline
This Stage is just a story event as Earl Aelorwin attempts to come out to fight you, but his father Marquis Valone pulls him back and calls forth Vinsula Deadgrowth.
Stage 4: Vinsula Deadgrowth
Vinsula is a very large treant, this phase is timed you will have about 8 minutes 30 seconds to finish this stage. You will notice at the beginning of the fight that four idols (each called Empowering Growth) have spawned around her. These must be killed before the boss can take any damage.
Each idol will spawn an add called a Gnarled Sentry. Have your tank pick this up and dps it down after the idol. Every idol you will want to do this. Idol then add, idol then add, idol then add. During this phase seeds will be spawning around the rift on the ground. These seeds have around 8000hp. Have some of your ranged killing these as they spawn, if the seed is not killed before it hatches it will spawn a smaller tree add. If too many of these seeds hatch you will have a large number of adds running around.
When you get to the fourth idol and kill it, have your off-tank pick up the add and have your main tank grab Vinsula and make sure it is not facing the melee as she will cleave. Have all your dps max damage Vinsula at this point; if you are successful you will kill her and advance to the next stage, if not she will resummon her idols and you will have to go through the process of killing them all off again including all the adds they spawn.
All of the adds in this phase die when Vinsula does so no need to worry just back out when finished and get ready for the next stage.
Stage 5: Earl Aelorwin
The Earl, a shambler type mob, is a timed phase, you will have about 7 minutes 30 seconds to finish this stage. Earl only requires one tank as there are no adds, but have your off-tank ready in case he needs to pick Earl up. During this phase Earl Aelorwin will “glare” at a player and that player after a few seconds will be trapped inside an Engulfing Spore, dps needs to switch to the spore to get the person out. After about 5 seconds an AOE will drop under where the Spore is located and if the player isn’t freed from the spore they will die to the AOE. Thus it is important to get players out of this spore as fast as possible and then have everyone move out of the AOE.
Continue avoiding AOE and killing spores off people until this phase is over then pull the raid back and get ready for the last stage.
Stage Six: Marquis Valone
When Marquis moves to the center of the rift he is ready to be attacked. When the fight begins he starts off as himself with no special abilities.
- At 95% he will change to a wolf and gain the AOE damage from Caine the Wild, however the raid damage will only tick approximately once every 12 seconds now.
- At 80% he will change to a spider and gain the Bilevenom Sentry raid knockback. Note that each ability he gains will be retained through every phase of this fight. At this point “Glowing Spore” will start coming in from 8 o’clock. These need to be killed before they reach the boss or he will gain a stacking buff.
- At around 40% he will change to a treant and gain the ability to glare at random raid members and trap them in Engulfing Spores like Earl Aelorwin did, he will also gain Vinsula Deadgrowth’s cleave, so hard heals on the tank are required.
The ground AOE associated with the earlier Engulfing Spores is no longer present here though. At this point you will also start getting Glowing Spores from both sides, from the 8 o’clock position and the 5 o’clock positions, you will want to have either ranged or a couple dedicated high dps melee peel off and kill these.
It should be noted that these Glowing Spores can be snared thus giving your team more time to kill them before they reach the boss. Continue to kill Engulfing spores off raid members, kill Glowing Spores before they reach the boss and keep maximum heals on the tank until the boss is dead.
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