Halfus Wyrmbreaker

[stormsurge]

We had Nether, Slate and time warden also.
3 tanks - Prot Pali, Bear, DK
3 heals - Shaman + Druid tank heals - holy priest raid.
4 dps - Enh Sham, Rogue, Ret, Hunter (our dps makeup was not an issue)
We didn't get the boss down yet, but this is where we are upto.

You have to release Nether immediately because of the speed buff he gives the boss. If you dont the healing debuff stacks so fast it will be a wipe in under a minute. You have to release the time warden otherwise the fireballs will wipe you due to exceessive raid dmg.

We had 1 tank take Nether, Another take the boss and another pull time warden.
Pop Lust and burn Nether, while the tanks switch as required on time and halfass.
Nether dropped quickly, then we get the free tank from Nether to release Slate while DPS burn down Time Warden.
Once time warden was down we were switching to the boss and hoping to beat the enrage timer. I am not sure if this is possible with 4 dps. 3 of us were pulling 23k each and the ret was pulling 18k.
What was wiping us was the shockwaves and the tanks going down as a result.

So questions
Do we need the dmg buff from nether, slate and time in order to beat the enrage?
How is the best way to survive the shockwaves? I can't recall if you can interupt it so it doesn't happen? With enh sham, rogue on the boss that would not be hard to stop if that is possible.

[Ogri]

So questions
Do we need the dmg buff from nether, slate and time in order to beat the enrage?
How is the best way to survive the shockwaves? I can't recall if you can interupt it so it doesn't happen? With enh sham, rogue on the boss that would not be hard to stop if that is possible.

Shockwave cant be interrupted, tank(s) and healers need to be proactive (its on a fixed timer/30 sec) with HoTs and tank CDs.

If you only have 4 DPS yes, you will need all 3 dragons to manage enough DPS to beat the enrage. 3 tanks helps with the switching but you might consider using just 2 tanks. Fireball barrage is a pain with Time Warden not engaged but even so a lot of that damage can be avoided by moving when targeted, which every ranged DPS and healer can and should do.

Also remember that the unmitigated raid damage from Barrage only is a factor up until you release Time Warden so you wont have to endure it more then 90 seconds or so if you burn Nether fast enough. These first 90 seconds is ofc also when you make the most of your CDs.

I would suggest using 2 tanks, pull boss with MT, Nether with OT. Burn Nether (BL/Hero) and switch/bubble off the bleed debuff. Then pull Time warden and repeat. With 5 DPS you should easily be able to burn the two add dragons hard and fast, and then switch all DPS - including that of the "free" tank - to boss while the now free OT taunts off MT as soon as the debuff stacks too high.

[jestlolk]

Drakes: Time Warden, Slate Dragon, Nether Scion
Raid Makeup: MT: Warrior OT: DK
DPS: Hunter, Rogue, Lock, Mage, Balance Druid
Healers: Disc Priest, Holy Paladin, Resto Shaman

On our first Halfus attempt last week we had Nether Scion, Time Warden and Slate Dragon. We quickly realized that leaving Time Warden unactivated for any length of time was not an option, so we released him and Nether Scion together. We had our main tank pick up Halfus while our off-tank picked up both Scion and Time Warden. We lusted to burn Scion as fast as possible, while letting our tank build stacks up to 15. Upon reaching 15 stacks we had a paladin BOP our tank to remove the stacks, which was quickly cancelled and the boss taunted back to the MT. We released Slate Dragon as Nether Scion hit ~5% so that he would become active as Scion went down. Our OT taunted the Slate Dragon and continued to tank two of the drakes. We switched DPS to Time Warden and our tanks began swapping at 8 stacks (usually we would get at least one slate dragon stun that allowed the stacks to fall off). During the swap our OT taunted Halfus and our MT taunted only one of the drakes and vice-versa while the drakes were still alive. We finished off time warden and continued by burning down Slate Dragon. We found that with our DPS was high enough that we dropped Halfus with plenty of time left on enrage despite killing all 3 drakes.

Our DK would sometimes get bursted pretty hard when he was tanking two drakes at once but his plethora of CDs and some strong focused heals from a Holy Paladin and the smart heal from Atonement (disc priest smite spec) resulted in this not being an issue.

We basically decided that Slate Dragon is seemingly RNG based anyway so we could leave him inactive while we burned Nether Scion. Our healers quickly became tapped when we tried to leave Time-Warden inactive, and obviously leaving Scion inactive with the MS debuff from Slate would have wiped us quickly as well.

We also found that when getting both Scion and Slate together, it's a good idea to have the MT stand opposite in the room from Halfus and have a hunter MD to him. If the tank body pulls Halfus he can quickly have 5+ stacks on him in the small amount of time it takes the drakes to become active.

[briarfox]

Given the way the drakes interact, I've seen the recommended 10-man drake release priority listed elsewhere as this:


1. Nether Scion: All cooldowns and Heroism/Timewarp/Lust should be used to burn the Nether Scion as fast as possible. Healers should help dps if possible. Halfus' attacks, when sped up, can easily overwhelm even a well geared tank. If the Slate Dragon is active as well, burning down the Nether Scion becomes even more important as the mortal strike stacks apply incredibly fast.

2. Time Warden: The protodrake's fireballs cannot realistically be avoided without the debuff releasing the Time Warden applies, and put a lot of stress on the healers having to keep up with raid attrition. Ignoring this dragon will pretty much cause a wipe.

3. Whelps: Similar to the Time Warden's ability, the raid wide flame breath puts a lot of stress on the healers, but in a much more manageable way. Depending on raid comp, the Whelp cage is the exception to the "don't try to go for all three drakes or else you might hit the enrage timer" rule of thumb. As mentioned in the OP, whelps die rather fast to incidental damage and, assuming your tank can pick them up and hold them all, there isn't really an issue with releasing the whelps with another drake.


4. Slate Dragon: Most raiding tanks are more then familiar with boss swapping and stack dropping mechanics. This fight is no different. Between 8 and 10 stacks is ideal. The 12 second stun this drake grants can help take stress off of healers and even aid in a kill. 12 free seconds of DPS on an enraged Halfus can mean the difference between a down and a wipe.

5. Storm Rider: The shadow nova is an annoyance at best, especially since Halfus likes to cast it immediately following a series of roars. It gives the tank a heck of a beating, but isn't too terrible beyond that.




Personally, I would bump the Storm Rider higher on the list, maybe even to 3. While the Shadow Nova itself isn't a big deal (hence the placement at number 5, I assume), the fact that it isn't interruptable until the drake is freed means raid wide, near constant interrupts and knock backs, wreaking havoc on even the most coordinated raids. Pair that with the scion or the time warden and stuff can get real bad real fast. From what I've seen/read elsewhere, most people agree that most raids should try to tackle one drake at a time, but I have to say the storm rider makes we want to break that rule. Getting tossed around trying to burn the scion can be disastrous, and the knock back makes the already delicate dance of "stay 8 yards away but still within heal range" the time warden demands that much more imposing.



On a side note, we found it best to keep our healers against the back wall by where you come into the room, and our drake tank with his back to the whelp cage. Helped to manage the knockback a little bit, should someone miss an interrupt.

[Gravy]

The order in which you kill the drakes is irrelevant as they simply melee tanks once they're active, the order in which you activate them however makes a huge difference.

The order of activation should always be Storm Rider > Nether scion (With slate dragon present) > Time Warden > Nether Scion (Without slate dragon present) > Slate dragon. Whelps can be activated anytime after Storm rider is active.

[briarfox]

The order in which you kill the drakes is irrelevant as they simply melee tanks once they're active, the order in which you activate them however makes a huge difference.

That's what I meant. Fixed.

And that's basically what I had, order wise, excepting the Storm Rider. The list itself is representative of several I've seen elsewhere, hence my commentary about the interactions with the Storm Rider. I also question the statement I've seen about that Slate/nether is the toughest combo. We didn't have nearly as much trouble with Nether/Slate/Time as we did with Storm/Time/Slate. Even without the Slate Dragon present, I would still likely go after the nether first. Halfus' melee swings still hit pretty hard (25-48k, post mitigation, on a DK and bear, per my logs). With the increased attack speed, I could see how that could very easily overwhelm a tank and the healers, especially since you'll have to deal with it, presumably, the whole time you're downing the Time Warden (which can be a few minutes). Comparatively, setting the scion free first, your healers are still stressed, but raid self heals (pots, bandages, various abilities) should help mitigate that some, at least until the Time Warden is free.

I mean, it's a value/playstyle judgement, but I would rather rely on raiders to be doing something they should be doing anyway (self-healing of some sort) than have to have healers and tanks burn cooldowns and excess mana fighting to stay alive right off the bat. I dunno about you, but I'd rather try to raid heal thru 20k fireballs then tank heal 30k melee strikes every second or so.

[smep]

We attempted and failed last night, and I'm only posting about it because it's a combo that wasn't mentioned before, and some might find it useful if they stumble across it.

We had Slate Dragon, Storm Rider, and Time Warden. Here are the minutes from the meeting with those drakes.

1) We activated Storm first every time. At first, we let Time Warden be, but the fireball damage overwhelmed the healers, so we had to activate Time Warden too and tank them both. The healing was easier to focus on the tanks than the raid and the tanks together.
2) When we activated both Drakes, the tanks took a boatload of damage after the first switch with the Halfus tank, so we changed the tank swap from 10 stacks to 5 stacks, and as the second switch happened, Storm Rider was close to dead when the second switch happened.
3) We had an elemental shaman on the boss, which is pro. He interrupted every cast, including, on some attempts, the first "uninterruptable" Shadow Nova.
4) We never got to the point where we had Storm and Time Warden dead, but the plan was to leave Slate dragon alone.

Again, like I said, we failed. so any pointers from more experienced people would be great, but I just posted so others got to see what did and didn't work for us.

Raid comp was: feral tank, DK tank, Rdruid, Rshaman, Hpriest, ele, fury, fire, survival, and frost DK.

[gregpower]

Hi guys!

We tried halfus with Storm rider and Nether sycon. Our problem is the drakes are hit increddible to the tanks. Are we doing something wrong ?
Tanks are full hc (dungeon) geared, and they are unhealable. Have no idea what we doing wrong. They got almost 30-40 k dmg /sec.

Any1 can help with this? pls help us out. ty.

[Tsy]

We attempted and failed last night, and I'm only posting about it because it's a combo that wasn't mentioned before, and some might find it useful if they stumble across it.

We had Slate Dragon, Storm Rider, and Time Warden. Here are the minutes from the meeting with those drakes.

We had this same setup of drakes last night on 10 man, and this was the first time we were able to defeat the encounter. It took us several tries to get the initial pull and strategy down, but in the end we found a working solution.

Log is here: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/cvy5wct0k7ugwld8/

We decided to to use the 3-tank strategy and trust our dps to be able to push at the end.

We had a Prot Warrior, Blood DK, and Druid tank.
For healers, Resto Sham (me), Resto Druid, Disc Priest
DPS was Survival Hunter (I think Survival ?), DPS warrior (Fury/Arms - I dunno), Fire mage, and Enhance Shaman.

There's nothing great about our gear - some 359 Rep items and crafted pieces, a couple of Magmaw/Omnitron drops, and the rest is Heroic Blues.

One side note is that I respecced my sub spec into elemental, to get 100% hit chance to help on interrupts. In addition, and I'm not sure how, but our mage was able to interrupt that very first .25 second cast Shadow Nova, which really helps out on the initial setup.

What we found worked the best was to release Storm and Time Warden at the same time.

The DK grabbed the Time Warden, the Druid grabbed the Storm Rider, and the Warrior picked up Halfus.

As soon as we were in position, we used heroism.

When the warrior got to 9 or 10 stacks of the healing debuff, the druid taunted halfus, and the DK taunted the Drake. The left the warrior free for interrupts and to let his debuff clear. From this point on, the Warrior and Druid would taunt Halfus back and forth as soon as one's debuff cleared.

Like I said, the DK who was tanking the Time Warden grabbed the Storm Rider. I don't know how low the first drake was when he grabbed the second, but he only had two drakes on him for a short period of time. Defensive CD's were used aplenty in that time frame though.

After both the Storm Rider and Time Warden were down, we released Slate Dragon. In our previous attempt, we DPS'd and killed the slate dragon, but we ran into the enrage timer on the boss. However, during that failed attempt, we realized that as long as Nova's are interrupted and people dodged fireballs, there was very little damage going out whatsoever, and hardly any need to heal. Unfortunately, even with we three healers doing what DPS we could, the boss still enraged.

In our next attempt, we decided to do everything the same, except when the first two drakes were down, we would release Slate, tank him, but leave him alone - use him for his buff and heal the damage he inflicted. It would get spiky during the Furious Roar, but with some preemptive HoT'ing and Shielding, nothing unmanageable.

We beat the enrage time by about 15 seconds with this method.

TL;DR Version:

3 tanks, 2 heals, 4 dps
Release two drakes
MT on Halfus, OT on 1 Drake, OOT on 2nd drake
When the MT gets 9-10 stacks of MS debuff, the OT taunts Halfus
The OT who now has Halfus gets their drake taunted by the OOT
MT and OT tank swap as needed
Kill both drakes
Release 3rd drake, tank but do not kill
Burn, baby, burn

[smep]

Really really good info there Tsy, thanks. And I'm glad you provided the WoL. Even for those without this setup, it's good for people to see how much damage you needed to get it down with 15s left. I wish we had tried with 3 tanks.

[Kilroth]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it be a great idea to have a sort of priority placement on what drakes should be dealt with first just to clarify things further? Kind of like when setting up a priority rotation for a class (E.G. Unholy DK= Diseases up>Dark Transformation>Death and Decay/Scourge Strike>etc...etc....) except with the drakes ([input most menacing Drake here]>[Input second most menacing Drake here]> Etc. Etc.)

[Tsy]

Really really good info there Tsy, thanks. And I'm glad you provided the WoL. Even for those without this setup, it's good for people to see how much damage you needed to get it down with 15s left. I wish we had tried with 3 tanks.

Sure, no problem. As informative and helpful as the Tankspot community is, I struggled to find out some of the more specific information and step by step tasks that people were doing to complete the encounter. It's probably just my learning disability kicking into high gear, so just in case anyone else is like me, I wanted to be as thorough as possible.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it be a great idea to have a sort of priority placement on what drakes should be dealt with first just to clarify things further? Kind of like when setting up a priority rotation for a class (E.G. Unholy DK= Diseases up>Dark Transformation>Death and Decay/Scourge Strike>etc...etc....) except with the drakes ([input most menacing Drake here]>[Input second most menacing Drake here]> Etc. Etc.)

I believe post #46 in this topic addresses your question.

[Baba]

Doing Halfus tonight on 25. We have Storm, Time, Nether. We will be using 3 tanks, activating storm and time right at start, and activating Nether as soon as first drake dies. My question is, do you think we can just offtank Nether until the end (that's 12 million damage that can be done on Halfus instead with 150% buff)? Raid damage is negligible once storm and time are active, and much more stable on MT when Nether is active. My biggest concern is that the OT might get killed during furious roars. I'm hoping with careful timing of tank cooldowns to be running during the stuns, he might be ok.

[Myrokin]

So we tried Halfus last night on 10man, and after a bunch of research, here's what we had happen.

Drakes: Storm Rider, Nether Scion, Time Warden

Tanks: Warrior on halfus, Bear on Drakes

DPS: Me (Unholy DK,) Ret, Arcane Mage, Elesham, demo lock, and destro lock.

Healers: Holy Priest, Resto Shaman

The warrior pulled Halfus with heroic throw and then backed up, while the ret and me released Storm and Time at the same time, which the druid promptly picked up. Since the elemental shaman could solo-interrupt the novas while DPSing (unless one came up while he was in the middle of a cast and couldn't get it cancelled fast enough,) he stuck to the boss to get a head start on his health while we hero-ed and burned the storm rider (which apparently melees for about 2x what the time warden does unless my recount bugged,) and then wrecked into the time warden, and we then burned the nether scion before switching to halfus. Problem was wiping to his enrage at about 3% health. I have a couple questions that I think I SHOULD know the answer to, but I'm not positive.

First, was this the right order? Healing seems INSANE until the first drake dies, at which point the OT was in no imminent risk of dying, and then lightens up severely once the scion was released, since Halfus misses the tank like a boss at that point. Neither healer went OOM though, and unless a cooldown was screwed up or overlapped, neither tank died.

Secondly, what's the general time frame for the drakes dying? It was taking us about 2:30 to 3:00 to kill the drakes, and I'm wondering if that was too long.

Last, was I right in having the elesham tunnel the boss to lower his life while interrupting? Should I have had him on the drakes and focus-shearing? Should we even kill the third drake? Or will the OT live during the roar phases? (Basically, same two questions Baba asked up there.)

Any advice would be much appreciated. Our dps is still mostly in 346 gear, with the only 359 being rep epics (we've only downed magmaw so far due to an 11% wipe on Omnitron to a healer d/c. Screw RNG.)

[Amethystine]

We had the same drake setup this week, Myro. :O

Similar to you, we burned the Storm with Hero and switched to Time... however, we did -not- burn or even release the Nether. We instead switched straight to the boss. Tank damage, even without the Nether's debuff, was largely negligible, considering that with Shadow Novas interrupted and fires easily avoided, once the boss was alone all three healers could focus entirely on that one tank.

Killing the third drake in this scenario seems to not be worth the time you could otherwise be spending doing double damage on the boss.

[PriestMLH]

My guild is going to be attempting this for the first time this weekend and has the same set up as the post above - Storm Rider/Time Warden/Nether Scion. We decided on the same strat Amethystine mentioned: Release Storm, burn with Hero/TW, then switch to Time Warden.

However, the above poster recommends ignoring the Nether Scion and burning Halfus after the first two drakes go down. Would it not be more beneficial to release the Nether Scion and have the OT hold it for the damage debuff of 150% to Halfus?

[Kinch]

(Again, this is a 25 perspective.)

My guild's general strategy revolves on getting that 150 percent damage buff for the boss. Take a look at the three drakes you have, figure out which two to release first, kill one, release the third, kill the second, switch to boss (OT 3rd drake), burn to a crisp. We hero shortly after the switch to the boss because everyone should be alive then, the damage buff is maxed, and the mass stun isn't on the table yet.

[Odok]

Can anyone suggest some general dps benchmarks for the fight? For example, how far into the fight (or until enrage) the first drake should be dead, the second drake, how much health halfus should be at when you start on him (particularly with storm up), etc.

[Loganisis]

I've only seen the fight once, but for normal, the numbers seem to be pretty straight forward.

Here's a look at the numbers (they are rough, I know there's some factors, like tank DPS on Halifus being multiplied everytime a drake dies, which I didn't factor in)...

At 70k raid DPS, each drake, when you subtract out the tank's, would die in roughly 65 seconds. That would be 130 for two drakes. Roughly. This leaves 230 seconds of 2*raid DPS (~140k raid DPS at that point) on Halifus. This would take roughly 232 seconds.

So for a 2 drake fight, you're looking at 70k as probably the minimum raid DPS to have a realistic shot of downing him. 2 drake seems the most forgiving in terms of DPS (though this leaves one unmitigated raid boss buff)

4.15m drake HP / 65k (accounting for 1 tank only on Halifus, which may not be feasible for interrupt needs), each drake dies in ~64 seconds.

So to be safe, and give yourself some wiggle room, assuming 3 heals, you have 2 tanks and 5 DPSers on 10man. DPS should be ~12k minimum each, with hopefully a few greater than 15k to be safe.

****

So, based on my very limited experience and rough math, each drake should idealy die in less than 60 seconds. If you can do that, you probably have a good shot at taking him down.


*****

To give you an idea of burn time, 1 drake + Hal is ~36.65m HP. At 70k raid DPS (70k per drake, 70*1.5=105k for Halifus) the length of the fight, with no down time, is about 368 seconds. Missing the enrage.

2 drakes + hal is ~40.8m HP at 70k raid DPS (70k per drake, 70*2=140k for Halifus) the length of the fight is about 350 seconds

3 drakes + hal is ~44.95m HP at 70k raid DPS (70k per drake, 70*2.5=175k for Halifus) the length of the fight is about 368 seconds.

The more drakes you down, the easier the fight will be, but you will need a little more time (i'm guessing the curve is do to the amount of unbuffed damaged needed and 2 drakes is the 'sweet' spot, maximizing buffed damage while minimizing the unbuffed damaged needed to deal).

Feel free to correct. This is all rough.

[briarfox]

I believe post #46 in this topic addresses your question.

And well. I stand corrected about the storm rider. We had Storm, Time, and Nether and ended up completely ignoring the Nether.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkJJeXTpLVk
Logs:http://worldoflogs.com/reports/zmzvn...?s=6909&e=7274