Ancient rock wraith

Background
A very resilient demon of dwarven legend.

Involvement
After Bartrand leaves you to die in the deep roads Hawke encounters the Ancient Rock Wraith guarding the exit to the Primeval Thaig, along with a large amount of valuable treasure.

Whether the Hunger demon's proposal is accepted or not, Hawke will have to defeat the Ancient Rock Wraith.

Skills

 * The Creature has two forms: One wields two rock blades and a Shield form.
 * In the shield form, the Creature transforms to a ball and will roll towards party members, doing damage aswell as causing knockdown.
 * The Creature moves to the middle of the room and casts a form of chain lightning. The lyrium pillars shield party members from damage.
 * The Creature is immune to attacks during its chain lightning attack.
 * The Creature creates a vortex drawing your party towards him. Your party will lose footing, but can attack him after the stagger animation has finished.
 * Additional Profanes will spawn during the fight after chain lightning.

Strategy
It is important to note that the Rock Wraith has two forms: a Dual-blade style and a Shield style. When you first encounter the Rock Wraith, it is by default in its Dual-Blade style. Each style has its significant differences and will require a shift in strategy to keep your party alive.

The Dual-Blade form has the following abilities and attacks:
 * Default Attack: Swings blades and shoots lightning bolts. Both of these do damage and can hit separate targets.
 * Spike Attack: The Rock Wraith crumbles back, transforms into a spike that lunges into a party member. Causes Knockback and heavy damage. Nearby non-flanking party members will stagger.


 * Teleport: The Rock Wraith can teleport to any position in the map.

To counter this style requires heavily on your tank, while your archers and mages are out of the wraith's attention. If you can, make sure that the tank receives both forms of this damage by moving vulnerable members out of the wraith's view. The Spike attack can be avoided by strafing the tank to the side of the wraith. This requires close monitoring of the wraith's attack patterns, which is more difficult than it looks. The signature animation is the wraith's disassembly. If the Wraith crumbles back, and NOT straight down, you know a spike is incoming.

Once you've chipped its health down to 90%, the Wraith will teleport into the centre of the chamber. This attack is widespread and can only be avoided by moving your party into any of the four corners. Once this attack is finished, the wraith's core is exposed, only to be surrounded by weak Profanes. These can be easily handled with Hail of Arrows and AoE spells. When the Profane are dispatched, hit the Wraith with everything you've got.

The wraith will reassemble into a new form: the Shield form. The shield form attacks are:


 * Default attack: Swipes a target for damage. Deals damage to party members nearby.
 * Heavy Swipe: Has a wider angle than the default attack, causes stagger for all caught in range. This goes through the columns.
 * Rollin' : Forms into a ball and rolls into party members. Fun.
 * Explosion: Charges and explodes, dealing 360-degree heavy damage. When you see this, run.

If you do not have a solid tank and damage dealers in your party, this fight becomes one of attrition. Dual wielding rogues aren't helpful against the shield style and are better off with equipping a bow to join with the casters. Tanks are essential, and making sure they don't drop should be key. Since the shield form can not teleport, but will rather choose make your party a chainmail pancake, there is time to move your archers and/or mage away from the rolling attack's trajectory. If you're lucky, the wraith will roll into one of the pillars and keep on rolling while your tank can dish damage safely.

After the roll animation, the wraith will usually follow up with a swipe attack or an overhead which causes more damage, but with a smaller attack radius. If your tank is low on health, don't follow the wraith, but instead use this opportunity to heal them instead.

There is a glitch you can abuse which seems to work with Aveline. If the wraith turns into a ball and starts rolling, make Aveline shield bash the wraith. She may be in front of it, but does NOT get knocked back by the wraith's attack as you normally would.

Keep maintaining a safe level of health for all your party members and look after your tank. Spells like Barrier will help in the tight spots. The wraith can change its form anytime it wants, so keep changing your tactics. If you're confident, rogues can go dual-dagger against the blade form.

At the instance of dealing enough damage, the wraith will do its teleport and widespread attack again and Profane will show up. In each round, more Profane show up, or less, but stronger Profane will spawn. Dispatch them and focus on the core.

All of this was from Hard difficulty with a dual-dagger Hawke, Varric, Aveline and Anders. None of them fell in battle and needed to be revived. However this fight took 45 minutes (excluding the angry reloads), a record for boss fights from Bioware.

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In normal state, the Rock Wraith will use normal attacks and is like any other creature you've engaged in battle - however, every now and then the Rock Wraith will curl up to a ball and start rolling at you in best Indiana Jones style - avoid the ball by simply stepping out of its way. The Rock Wraith has the ability to become invulnerable and cast lightning at you, at which point you want to run behind one of the pillars located in the room you're in, taking shelter. Make sure your allies are behind the pillar as well, as they are NOT immune to this attack. When the Wraith has recieved enough damage, the boulders that surround it will fall to the ground, exposing the "heart" of the Wraith, becoming very vulnerable and it is adviced to use heavy damage dealing abilities on this part and saving up stamina/mana for it.

Throughout the fight, The Profane will spawn and keep coming at you until the Rock Wraith is dead.