Ra-den Tactics and Strategy guide

Before you start reading the strategy, we advise you to look at the abilities of Ra-den, in our encounter journal pages.

• This is a two-phase fight.
  • Phase One has two alternating sub-phases.
  • Phase Two starts at 40% health and is a DPS and healing race.
• The fight presents several positioning challenges that require raid members to move correctly to handle mechanics.

• During Phase One
  • Perform a tank swap to deal with Ra-den's Nullifying Strike.
  • Pick up the adds that spawn during this phase and tank them next to Ra-den.
• During Phase Two
  • Perform a tank swap to deal with Ra-den's Decaying Strike — it is ideal to be quite low on health when hit by this (around 50% or even lower), as this will reduce the damage from the Decaying Wound debuff.

• During Phase One
  • When Ra-den becomes Void empowered, heal through the healing absorption shield placed on the entire raid.
  • When Ra-den becomes Vita empowered, be prepared for some raid-wide damage.
  • When players soak Void Collapse (during Void empowerment), they will receive 50% less healing for 14 seconds, so prepare accordingly.
• During Phase Two
  • Coordinate with other healers to chain cooldowns during this healing-intense phase.
  • Make sure Ra-den's tank is moderately low on health when they are hit by Decaying Strike, and then heal them up while they suffer the Decaying Wound debuff.
  • Be prepared to heal players targeted by Charged Bonds, as they may suffer additional damage.

• During Phase One
  • Each time the Void and Vita orbs spawn, make sure to kill the designated one before it reaches Ra-den.
  • Focus and kill both types of adds that spawn during this phase.
• During Phase Two
  • Use all available cooldowns to kill the boss as quickly as possible.

• During Phase One
  • Remain stacked up as a group unless otherwise instructed.
  • During Void empowerment, designated players (mostly ranged DPS) should intercept the Unstable Void projectiles, rotating who does so in order not to have a player affected by Instability Exposure be hit.
  • During Vita empowerment, rotate players located at opposite points of the raid in order to correctly handle Unstable Vita. Read this for more details.
• During Phase Two
  • Stack up near the boss to facilitate healing.
  • Avoid standing in any Void Eruption void zones when they explode.
  • If you are targeted by Charged Bonds, move away from the player to which you are linked in order to break the bond.

Phase One lasts until the boss reaches 40% health. This phase is split into two sub-phases, with the boss using totally different abilities depending on which Essence Orb he absorbs (Essence of Void or Essence of Vita.

For a full list of abilities used by Ra-den in this phase, check out our dedicated Ra-den Encounter Journal page.

To better explain the alternation of the Void and Vita sub-phases, consider the following.

• A few seconds after the start of the fight and every 60 seconds after that, two orbs (Essence of Void and Essence of Vita) will spawn from portals located on opposite sides from the boss.
• These orbs will move towards Ra-den and cannot be stopped.
• Both orbs can be killed, but when one is killed the other becomes immune to damage. This means at least one orb will reach Ra-den every time.
• Ra-den will become empowered by the orb that reaches him, determining what abilities he uses for 40 seconds. Ra-den can become empowered by both orbs at the same time, but this should be avoided.
• If the same orb reaches Ra-den twice in a row, the boss will gain the Overwhelming Rage buff that will likely cause a wipe. As such, the raid must alternate the orbs that they allow Ra-den to get.

Instability Exposure is a debuff that raid members can gain when hit by either Unstable Void or Unstable Vita, which increases the damage taken by these abilities by 300% for 30 seconds, and which effectively forces the raid to rotate the players that handle these abilities (and punishes you if a large group of players is hit).

Lastly, it may not be clear from the ability description, but the location where the projectile of Unstable Void will land, once it has been soaked and it bounces again, is determined by where the soaking player's character is facing. Thus, the soakers can roughly control where the projectile will land next.

Phase One strategy depends on whether the boss is empowered by Void or Vita energy. The raid will inevitably have to deal with both empowerments, and the order in which the two empowerments happen does not seem to matter, so it is up to you.

Before we look at the two different sub-phases, it is important to note that Nullifying Strike is a tank-swap ability the boss uses regardless of empowerment, whenever his Energy reaches 100. Tanks should simply swap after each cast.

We remind you that your raid has to kill one of the two Essences that make their way towards Ra-den each time, and DPS should focus the designated Essence down accordingly.

As far as positioning is concerned, the raid can stay stacked up throughout most of Phase One.

When this sub-phase begins, the healers will have to heal through the raid-wide healing absorption shield of Unleashed Void. Simply heal through this.

The projectile of Unstable Void must be soaked each time before it lands (since this would silence the raid for 8 seconds, which is quite devastating), and a different player (not affected by the Instability Exposure debuff) must soak it each time.

When a Void Hunter spawns, this add should be picked up by one of the tanks and brought close to Ra-den so he can be cleaved.

To deal with the Void Hunter's Void Collapse ability, all raid members (except the tanks) should stack up to soak the damage, even if this means that they will all be debuffed by Void Defilement. Alternatively, if the marked player has a way to soak the damage of the ability alone, they should get out of the raid and do so.

When this sub-phase begins, healers will need to contend with the raid-wide damage from Unleashed Vita. Simply make sure the raid is not low on health.

To deal with Unstable Vita, use the following positioning.

• Have most of the raid stacked up next to Ra-den.
• Designate two locations for Unstable Vita, behind the main stacked raid, one in each direction.
  • Unstable Vita will jump to the player farthest away from the currently affected player, so your goal is to have the two Unstable Vita locations be farther away from one another than either one is to the rest of the raid.
• Rotate the players standing in each Unstable Vita location so that there is never a player affected by Instability Exposure standing there.
  • As soon as a player has had the Unstable Vita jump from them, they should get back into the raid and a new raid member without Instability Exposure should take their place.

The Crackling Stalker add should be picked up by the tanks and kept close to Ra-den, so that it can be cleaved. Its Chain Lightning ability should simply be healed through.

Phase Two begins when Ra-den reaches 40% health. We recommend that the raid be careful with the timing of this transition: if the boss transitions just after Void and Vita essences spawn, the boss will benefit from the empowerment for 40 seconds of Phase Two, which can be very bad. Instead, you should aim to transition the boss before the next set of essences spawns.

For a full list of abilities used by Ra-den in this phase, check out our dedicated Ra-den Encounter Journal page.

Note that Decaying Strike replaces Nullifying Strike in this phase.

The boss will continue to gain increasing damage throughout this phase from the Lingering Energies self-buff. This, coupled with the constant raid-wide damage from Ruin, makes this a hard DPS burn phase with the aim of killing the Ra-den before the raid dies.

The raid should stack up at all times to make healing easier, and healers will need to coordinate cooldown usage towards the end of the phase. The only time you should not be stacked up is when Void Eruption is being cast, at which point all players should do their best to avoid the void zones before stacking up again.

Tanks should perform a tank switch after each Decaying Strike, in order to handle the Decaying Wound debuff that is applied. In preparation for Decaying Strike being used, healers should let the tank's health drop as low as they can safely do so, as this will reduce the damage they take from Decaying Wound.

When Charged Bonds is used, the two linked players need to run in opposite directions as quickly as possible to break the link, before returning to the raid.

This is when you should use Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp together with DPS cooldowns and potions.

Currently, it is not clear what the changes in Heroic mode are.