Rift: Expert Darkening Deeps

Last night we did Expert Darkening Deeps for the Expert Dungeon Daily, and it was our first time. We have no idea what to do, but here are our experience. Our party setup consist of:

Rogue Tank
Chloromancer
Saboteur/Bard
Cleric
Necro-Lock/Pyro

Darkening Deeps is a dungeon at around Gloamwood [4892,2430]. This instance is quite trash heavy as you will have to fight your way around to get to the first boss. But after the third boss, there’s not as much trash mobs afterwards. When you first enter the dungeon, there will be a long spiral staircase. The way to get deeper is to go downstairs. However, you will also have to clear the top first in order to get rid of some annoying barrages and adds. So clear the top first, then when you hear a voice saying something about destroying his minions, go back down and clear out the place until you meet the first boss.

Alchemist Braxtepel

Alchemist Braxtepel comes with two henchmen, Mursh and Squersh, that you have to dispose before fighting him. He will not be able be attacked until the two of them dies. Whichever order you decided doesn’t matter, so put a 1 and 2 on them and take them down. Occasionally there will be a glowing red circle of doom as I would call it since it appears everywhere. This is your cue to get out of the circle and continue pummeling down those two until Alchemist Braxtepel decided to take care of your group himself. The tank should head to him and taunt/provoke it off right away since it may go straight for the healer. The tank should face Alchemist Braxtepel away from the group and the fight is a basic tank and spank. Occasionally there will be a green debuff on the group, I forgot if you can remove that or not but it’s nothing serious.

Fight some various trash mobs after this boss and watch out for stealth mobs around the waters. There’s a nasty pull near the watery area that can wipe the group if not too careful.

Michael Bringhurst

Michael Bringhurst is a pretty easy fight. Like almost all bosses, everything is easy once you know how it goes. What Michael Bringhurst does is gain a stacking buff whenever he is near the beam of moonlight. So what you do is tank him on the shaded area. However, there must also be someone within Melee range otherwise he’ll do a howling move that can wipe everyone. Since we have a riftstalker tank, whenever he walks back to the moonlight then fears everyone, he can easily Phase shift back to him immediately, stopping his nasty howling move. How do Warrior or Cleric tank then? Easy, when Michael Bringhurst runs back towards the moonlight, just have Melee DPS or the Tank be near him. OR if they have some way to break out of fear, use it and just tank and pull him back out of the moonlight. You DON’T want him to get the stacking to be too high. The funny thing is my necro-chloro can Consume the debuff off him and giving me almost infinite mana. You also DON’T want to pull him and run off too far without people near him since it will trigger the howling and wipe the group. Tank, Spank, Repeat.

Tenegar Deepfang

Tenegar Deepfang has a couple abilities that may or may not be a problem. Before encountering Tenegar Deepfang, you will have to clear your way towards the lair. This compose of many, many spiders that pops few at a time from these mound. They don’t have too many HP, and can easily be AoE down. However they can become a problem when there’s a lot of them coming in at once. There is also a set amount of spiders that can come from a mound so you can take your time killing them and then the mound. The mounds has around 60k-ish HP.

Back to Tenegar Deepfang. Another really easy boss. The Tank can just tank Tenegar facing the wall, while the healer and DPS just stand on the back of the spider. That’s it, you don’t even need to worry much about moving around. Tenegar has only 3 abilities. They are: a poison spray move, cocooning a player, and summoning spider adds. The poison spray move is easy to counter, don’t make Tenegar face the group or don’t stand in front of it. Only let the tank get sprayed solo. The cocoon may pose a slight problem if it gets the main healer but it’s not too hard to counter just either use all the CD on it if it’s on healer or just break it if it’s on anyone else. The third ability is summoning adds, which isn’t too bad since everyone is stacking behind Tenegar, the tank just need to AoE taunt and DPS can AoE them down.

Glubmuk

Another easy boss that pose no threat if you’re not new to expert dungeons. Glubmuk is a water elemental boss that has a few ability that shouldn’t be much of a problem. The room is rather small, but it is manageable. Glubmuk have a frontal move so the tank should tank it away from the group. Best way to do this is to tank it to a wall. It also have a move that place a water pillar sprout thing under someone’s feet. Move away from it, and a Fetid Spawn will spawn there. Have the tank grab it and focus the DPS on the add. If you want the achievement, just drag the fight longer and kill 5 Fetid Spawn then the boss.

The Gedlo Council

The Gedlo Council consist of 3 bosses: a Healer (Nuggo), a Mage (Gerbik), and a Warrior (Swedge). That is the order you should do it unless you want achievement for killing them last on different runs. The healer, Nuggo will cast 2 different spells. One is a barrier type spell and the other one is a HoT spell. Someone purge them away. The tank can just tank where they are and the rest can spread a little for when Nuggo dies. After Nuggo dies, Gerbik will gain a ground red circle of doom ability and Swedge will charge into someone. Swedge charge is rather weak so focus on Gerbik and avoiding the red circle of doom. After Gerbik dies, just kill Swedge.

Scarn

Now if you thought all those bosses are easy, you haven’t meet Scarn. He is one mean dragon. What this encounter consist is this nasty Heat Index that does DoT to everyone. You cannot dispell it, you can only try to prevent how much DoT damage you take by not igniting too much Bone piles. It will increase in damage the more bone piles is ignited so don’t ignite too many. Since we have a Riftstalker tank, it is rather easy to gather people around and igniting less bones piles when it goes to phase 2. In phase 1, the ground phase, Scarn will do breaths and tail lashes so under no circumstance should anyone be directly behind Scarn. The tank should pull Scarn towards the wall where he initially is at, but not on top of a bone pile because it will be ignited. The healers and DPS should go to the middle, and once again try not to stand on bone piles because it may get ignited should Scarn breathes fire towards that area. To make this fight simpler, have all DPS go ranged specs. After awhile, Scarn will do a Flame Breath move that has about 2-3s casting time and then does AoE around him and flies to the air. Since our tank is a Riftstalker, he placed his Memory Capture right on the other side of the wall on top or near the bonepile there.

Tips for Phase 2: Before actually aggro-ing Scarn. PRACTICE synchronized walking on the back wall. Have a designated person be the leader and place a number on him/her and have everyone follow/stack on him as you move. Keep practicing until everyone’s response time is fast enough to prevent getting spat by the fireball. If you have a bard, for phase 2 have him/her use Anthem of Competence for the running speed. It makes a HUGE difference for not getting hit by fireball.

Below is the positioning for Phase 1. The bigger red circle indicates Scarn and the arrow indicates the direction he’s facing. The black dot indicates a bone pile where you will be heading. The tank should be positioning in between two bone piles.

Phase 2 begins. For Phase 2, everyone runs to the Memory capture/bone pile that is situated on the back wall (When first taking down the elevator down to Scarn, Scarn is facing that wall). This is about the right timing and what the healers should do:

1. Chloromancer count 1 sec when you see the text saying it lift ups in the air. Use Wild Growth.
2. Cleric healer should AoE heal (or use your best judgement) when you see it lift up in the air.
3. You will see the red circle on the ground, everyone move to the next spot immediately and AoE heal and Flourish if need to.
4. It will do this again for 2 more times, after the 3rd time it will go back to the ground, and Phase 1 starts all over again.

NOTICE: It will ignite the bone piles over there and increases the Heat Index, thus increasing the damage you take over time. 10 Stacks is about 1000 damage DoT. So if able, the Chloromancer should use and try to force a critical Flourish near the end as well. Rinse and repeat until you take down Scarn. The bone piles will start to diminish after awhile since it won’t stay lit up forever so when it goes back to Phase 1, the Heat index will be lowered again.