Halfus Wyrmbreaker

[Kerchunk]

However the benefit you receive from releasing Slate is so weak it is never worth it. The stun is random.

It's not random, and twelve full seconds of no melee damage + no debuff stacks is hardly minor.

[Quinafoi]

The stun isn't random, the benefit of the stun is. For example, it can convenently interrupt a Furious Roar. Or it can occur between them.

Particularly on 10 man (which is what the majority of the posts prior to the one where that quote is from were discussing) the longer you spend killing adds, the harder the fight is because the fight is harder to handle when there are multiple things to handle with limited people. The amount of effort spent killing Slate Dragon is generally ignored because it you already have to tank swap regardless and why bother killing it if you don't need to in the first place. In 25 man it becomes more trivial since more players can always handle more mobs easier simply because they have more people to assign to the task.

[Kerchunk]

We can agree to disagree. I personally love the effect the stun has on my raids. It stabilizes the fight, prevents a ton of outgoing melee damage and debuff stacks, lets healers regenerate a bit, gives tanks a window of opportunity for a clean and easy taunt swap, etc. Interrupting the roar is just gravy if it does happen. Couple that with the extra stack of Dragon's Vengeance which makes up for a large portion of the time spent DPSing Slate, and that's your "why bother."

Personally, I think Slate is "generally ignored" because generally people come to a forum like this, read "ignore him" and go do that without putting much critical thought into it, even when they are continually wiping due to debuff stacks or healers going OOM.

[Fetzie]

Don't forget that a lot of the "ignore slate" normal mode comments were made before the rather major change to the fight, when you got Dragon's Vengeance stacking up for merely freeing each drake. Halfus could very easily slip below 50% before you got the drakes down, meaning you got a furious roar while offtanking a drake, which can be extremely dangerous.

[Quinafoi]

We can agree to disagree. I personally love the effect the stun has on my raids. It stabilizes the fight, prevents a ton of outgoing melee damage and debuff stacks, lets healers regenerate a bit, gives tanks a window of opportunity for a clean and easy taunt swap, etc. Interrupting the roar is just gravy if it does happen. Couple that with the extra stack of Dragon's Vengeance which makes up for a large portion of the time spent DPSing Slate, and that's your "why bother."

Personally, I think Slate is "generally ignored" because generally people come to a forum like this, read "ignore him" and go do that without putting much critical thought into it, even when they are continually wiping due to debuff stacks or healers going OOM.

It isn't about time spent. It's about on 10 man you only have 2 tanks, and they are swapping the boss while also tanking the adds. The sooner you stop tanking the adds, the fight becomes trivialized. Tank swapping in general is trivial and well understood mechanic. However the problem is you still have to tank something while you have that debuff. That's the problem. And the longer this happens the more strain on your healers. Healers won't go OOM cause of the debuff stacking. They'll go OOM because they are still spamming inefficient big heals on a tank that has a debuff and is tanking an add. It's not just the debuff. But the fact they are still taking damage while they have the debuff. Once you switch into a mode where you are only really healing one active target with the debuff at a time, mana starts to stabalize in 10 man. I would think this would be an easy concept to understand. Healing two targets with a healing debuff is harder than healing one at a time. Once you are only tanking one mob (the boss) then there is only one active tank to heal.

Ask any healer about this fight and they will likely tell you they start regenning mana once you're on Halfus alone because the blow all their cooldowns and mana at the start of the fight where incoming damage to deal with is the greatest. Healers go OOM while you're dealing with adds, not when you're down to just the boss. As soon as all the critical adds are dealt with it is easier for your healers to simply switch to killing the boss than continue burning killing adds.

If you are talking about 25 man everything becomes trivialized because you simply have more people, meaning more healers and more potential tanks.

[Kerchunk]

The sooner you stop tanking the adds, the fight becomes trivialized

I find the fight is trivialized the moment the first drake dies personally, but that's just my experience.

However the problem is you still have to tank something while you have that debuff. That's the problem

Coordinate swaps with stuns and make use of cooldowns so one tank can hold both while stacks are low. Peel the add off only after ~5 stacks. We're talking about less than a minute here, a fair chunk of which Halfus will spend stunned.

I would think this would be an easy concept to understand.

It sure is. I didn't say I don't understand your strategy I said I don't agree it's the single undisputed ideal method. Bit of a difference.