Heroic Halfus Wyrmbreaker

[Jante]

Would you be as kind as to update this guide taking into account the latest patch change?

[klausi]

Halfus Heroic is a completly joke right now at 25s. Just free up 3 drakes (i'd recommend scion, stone and whelps) bomb whelps, free time warden shortly after (we waited roughly 30s for another md) and kill all drakes with cleave and multidotting. Druids, shadowpriests and affliction locks will really shine there. After that Halfus should be somewhere around 75%. Burn him without the hassle or any risk of tank death and proper cooldown management during roar and thanks to +400% damage you will finish him in just about one minute +-.

Right now he's only a dps check and nothing about stacking disc priests or perfect timing and well thought out tanking strategies any longer.

[Jante]

Why not just free one drake at a time and just be aware of the mechanics?

[klausi]

a) because multidotting kill them faster way faster
b) you want to free at least two drakes to make it possible to kick nova and don't have insane rampup time on mortal strike

But working with three tanks and freeing only two drakes in the beginning should work as well if you don't have another tank to spare.

[Jante]

Do you think it's important to take out whelps and the Nether Scion in the beginning? Which is more important?

[klausi]

Whelps only reduces aoe, Scion increases the tanks survivability by a lot. Did you even do the normal mode yet? Basic fight mechanics should be clear after Nefarian

[Indoril]

What seemed to work for my guild (after patch) was a 4 tanks and 7(or 8) healer setup.
We had a DK pet left at the entrance and a hunter MD halfus to him, while tanks freed, picked up and positioned the 3 drakes and the whelps (left Slate chained). By the time pet was dead, positioning was ready and the first tank would taunt him (had mages interrupting the first cast, an enhancement shaman taking over afterwards). This way, we avoided first tank stacking too fast and minimized raid damage taken.

The 3 tanks that tanked a drake each had 2 healers assigned on them and were taunt-swapping Halfus, using their and healer cooldowns. The whelp tank chained CDs at the beginning, since he had only beacon,hots and assist-healing (if another tank was safe/full). Don't be afraid to use all survival CDs and spend mana in this phase, since incoming damage becomes a joke afterwards.

We focus-fired down the dragons one by one, starting with the 3rd tank's drake (since he had more time to establish solid aggro). After the first went down, one of the "freed" healers focused the whelp tank, whereas the other assisted on raid healing.

After all 3 drakes were dead (and whelps aswell from random aoe/ignite spreading) we popped hero and easily killed him with more than 30seconds remaining for berserk. For ph 2, only 2 healers were on the current halfus tank, while the other 5 assisted on raid healing.

[demonsmoon]

Ty for UI, got it this morning, however having trouble with Kg

[Delacroix]

How do you manage the mortal strike debuff on 10m hc? The draketank will tank all enemies at once if he taunts halfus, and the MT can't really take the drakes for the duration since he still has the debuff. Is that the only (/effective?) way to deal with that?

[klausi]

Other way is to bring three tanks or having eg a dps kitty taunting some if needed.

[Fetzie]

We release Storm, Time, Nether and whelps at the pull. Halfus tank takes storm and boss, other tank takes the rest. The breath does negligible damage, the fireballs are dodgeable, shadow nova is interruptable and the mortal strike takes much less time to stack up.

On the pull (I, halfus tank) prepot an agility potion, use an avoidance use trinket and pull the boss from max range. I then run to the right side of the room where everything else is being tanked. This means that the boss is hitting me without the debuffs for max 1-2 seconds. He only stacks up the mortal strike if he lands the previous melee swing, so maxing avoidance for the first 40-50 seconds of the fight is a god send. at 12 stacks I use my 50% cooldown, when that is about to expire I hit divine shield. then it takes another 20 or 30 seconds to get 8 stacks at which point the other tank taunts the boss and I taunt one of his drakes. When he has 10-12 stacks I put a hand fo protection on him and he tanks the boss again until he has 10 stacks. then I taunt the boss back. By this time Nether, Time and the whelps have died. The other tank then taunts storm and we kill it. Then we simply nuke the boss, leaving slate tied up for the rest of the encounter. Hand of Protection/blink/iceblock for the two Furious Roars, on our first kill he died with 90 seconds to spare.

So to summarise:

Me (pala): Halfus + Storm drake
Warrior tank: Nether drake, Time Warden, Whelps.
Kill Time
First tank swap about now
Kill Nether, whelps died about now from splash AoEs
Kill Storm, second tank swap happens about now. Storm is at about 50% when nether dies.
Kill boss. He is at about 60% when the Storm Rider dies.

[Bouli]

This evening we are gonna try the Halfus Encounter for the first time on Heroic on 10 man mode.
So we are researching how we can best attempt this on 10 man mode for our guild.
Pyrea, I assume your post refers to a 10 man kill? Or is it referred to a 25 man kill?


Our idea was to release Time and Storm at the pull, and group them up in the center of room (like this video also shows). Nuke them down fast and clearing the stacks of the Halfus tank by Hand of Protection cast on him. By the time the tank has reached the 2nd time of high stacks we should have Time and Storm down and busy with killing Nether and Whelps. So this would make the stacks go up more slowly and then we start the taunting game. Let the 2nd tank take Halfus when first tank has his stacks too high and when 2nd tank gets high stacks Hand of Protection on him to clear stacks. By that time we should have the drakes + whelps down (we ignore Slate dragon) and we should be focussing on Halfus nuking.

Summary:
Tank 1: Halfus
Tank 2: Storm + Time (bloodlusting both drakes down asap).
Tank 1: clears stacks when they get too high with Hand of Protection
By this time we should have Storm and Time almost down.
Release Nether and Whelps when Storm and Time are down.
Tank 2: taunts boss from tank 1 because of the 2nd time he has high stacks.
Tank 1: taunts nether of Tank 2.
When tank 2 reaches high stacks for first time Hand of Protection on him.
When tank 2 reaches the 2nd time high stacks the Nether and Whelps (died from AoE splashes) should be down.
And then we should have boss a major part down and all start nuking the boss.


Do you think this idea is a valid idea to make the Halfus encounter into a kill?


We haven't tried on Heroic yet, so we are not sure if we should stick to this idea or if we should try 1 of the other idea's posted in this topic.
Maybe some can give advice on what would be the best options for this encounter.
Any help is appreciated.

The idea of Pyrea sounds also good, seeing we have also a Paladin tank and Warrior tank in our setup. If our idea doesn't work we would try the idea of Pyrea, but isn't tank damage insane on that with your method, which could lead into tank deaths.

[Fetzie]

yes my post was for ten man.

Halfus' damage is pretty low, you should easily be able to have a drake on the boss tank at the same time. This also means you have to spend less time killing it as it will be at about 60% just from AoE damage by the time you get around to killing it.

you will be clearing the stacks about 20 seconds into the fight (I let it stack to about 15ish), and swapping the boss tank about 30-40 seconds in, or when the boss tank has about 8 stacks.

The whelps do negligible damage, and reduce the incoming raid damage from the behemoth's breath considerably (from 40k down to about 6k) They should die on their own from splash damage by the time drake 2 is dead.

[Bouli]

Thank you for the response.
Because I didn't know how hard / low the boss would hit it was safer to first ask before trying this without having it asked.

Perhaps it would be wiser for us to follow your tactic then if you say the boss itself hits quite low.
Will be trying your tactic this evening and will let you know afterwards if we were able to down the boss with the use of your tactic for 10 man.

[Icewing]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx8wi2H1H7k

I made a quick guide video for heroic Halfus 4.0.6, feel free to check it out. its my first video so sorry if its not as pro as tanks spots videos.

[Daimon]

We're trying this fight very soon, which of the 4 drakes you say hits harder? or is all the same.

[Kershak]

Wouldn't make a lot of sense if one of the 4 big drakes hits harder than the others, would it? But someone may correct me :P

[Icewing]

Slate hits harder than the other 3 FYI. But unless you plan to leave someone off the halfus rotation it does not really matter.

[androzog]

Our setup was 4 tanks, 7 (1 disc) healers and 14 dps.

But still need to have better dps's with us. We got him to 4-5% all the time, I don't see why 9 healers are necesarry.

[snifit]

Looking at our heroic Halfus logs from tonight, I can confirm that Time Warden, Nether Scion, and Storm Rider all deal the same amount of damage. We didn't release Slate Dragon for our kill, so I can't confirm whether that drake's damage is different or not.

Incidentally, here's how my 10man group handled the fight:

Our bear tank pulls Halfus, then wakes up Storm Rider and has Nether Scion MD'd to him. A Disc priest and a Resto shaman heal the bear. I (prot paladin) release the Whelps and Time Warden and tank both of them. Another Resto shaman heals me. We had potent AoE (demo lock and fire mage), so we focused on burning down the whelps first. When the bear gets to 6-8 stacks of MS, I HoP him. He immediately cancels it and continues tanking his 3 targets. When he gets back to ~6 stacks, I taunt Halfus. The whelps die shortly after I take Halfus. DPS moves on to Storm Rider (one of the bear's drakes). When I get to ~8 stacks, I bubble and immediately cancel, continue tanking Halfus and Time Warden. When it's time for the bear to take Halfus back, I taunt Storm Rider. At this point the tanking looks like this:
Bear (no stacks of MS): Nether Scion, Halfus
Paladin (~6 stacks of MS): Time Warden, Storm Rider (near death)
Once the Storm Rider's dead you've won the fight. It's normal mode from there on (although if your raiders don't move out of the flame barrage during furious roar, they may die).

The bear's healers were taxed pretty heavily, but my healer had a few free GCDs to throw around. The damage spread would probably be a little more equal if I took Halfus+dragon+whelps at the start and the bear had 2 dragons, but then you'd have at least one healer splitting his attention between two targets. That may be better, depending on your healers.