Halfus Wyrmbreaker impossible drakes.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

So our 10man guild went to try out bastion of twillight. we're all above 342 gear level and people have done raids in worse gear.

We saw Halfus Wyrmbreaker had 3 buffs from 3 active dragons.
100% attackspeed.
Knockback gimmick.
stacking healing reduction.

With those 3 dragons we could not even get the drake down to 95%, reason? tank died because of low heals.

Im a holy paladin and ive talked with my companion healers and they've also had insane difficulty with it.
the stacking healing reduction reaches 90% (max) in 15-20seconds depending on dodges, i would assume without the 100% attackspeed the stacks would reach 90% in around 30 seconds more or less.
The knockback interrupts every single Divine light, Greater heal and healing touch. spamming flash of light, flash heal or regrowth would OOM us really fast and tank would still stack insane amounts of healing reduction. We tried to rotate tanks but the debuff doesnt wear off fast enough.

Anyone else got the same set of drakes this week or is it just our bad luck? Also if anyone have done this fight with 100% attackspeed + Stacking healing reduction + non interruptable raidwide knockback it would be awesome for some tips and clues. We've read up on the abilities and we know what they do and how much they do it, it just seems impossible for a bunch of blue geared people to overcome that amount of interrupts and damage on tanks.

-Huntingbear, Grim Batol.

[Ulkesshern]

Dont activate 3 drakes

[Odayaka]

I recommend the tankspot video on youtube about Halfus. It details pretty good strats for dealing with the drakes.

Sounds like you activated all the drakes at once. I wouldn't recommend doing that. Activate one or two at a time, and kill the drakes off. Two tanks to taunt off of each other is also a good idea when the healing debuff gets too high.

[Deleted]

I wrote this in another thread earlier today;

Halfus can surely slaughter you with the wrong setup. Yesterday we had Time Warden and Whelps asleep, just like you, OP.

We've downed him twice now, and both times we felt that freeing the Storm Dragon was mandatory. Our healers found it impossible to heal through the Shadow Nova. Problem was we both did the stacking debuff and hit us tanks at 100% attack speed; we stacked 10 debuffs in less than 15 seconds which is completely unmanagable, since the debuff has a 30 second duration.

Our solution was to have me (Protection Warrior) pull Halfus and pull him towards the Nether Scion, which our Pally tank freed. Our Hunter also freed the Storm Rider and MDed him to the Pally. The raid immediately popped Heroism and nuked the Nether Scion. Our Shaman was now able to interrupt the novas with a focus macro, and tank swapping was managable. (When I had 10 stacks, the Pally taunted Halfus and I taunted the Nether Scion. The Paladin then cleared his stacks at 15+ with Divine Shield and took another ~10 before we switched again. As my stacks wore off, I taunted the Storm Rider and we burnt it.)

Then all we had to do once the dragons were down was to survive his aoe shout, which was cake with 3 healers.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

we activated 2 drakes at the same time.

How is supposed to work?
Boss looses buffs when drakes die or when we activate them. Whatever we tried the boss allways had the buffs on him and while our dps crew was able to get 1 drake to around 20% (without bloodlust/heroism/timewarp) the damage on the tank holding Halfus Wyrmbreaker is still the reason we wipe.

Thought the fight was straight allright untill we saw the damage on tanks - from healers perspective. And we did watch Tankspot's video but they got the whelp cage, time drake and the knockback.
We got 100% boss attackspeed, Stacking Healing Reduction + knockback. Just wondering wtf to do.

[Reg]

lol Our group released all 3. I tanked Halfus and the Whelps, and the OT (Feral Druid) tanked the Storm Dragon and Time Warden. We burned the Storm Drake and then all out on the boss. Whelps died from residual AoE and Time Warden was stacked up as well. It took us a few times, but we got it. By activating all 3 drakes, we made raid damage very minimal so healers could just focus on tanks. I am also a prot paladin, so I used my self healing spec with all the Word of Glory talents I could grab and came out with like 5K hps on myself lol

[Millennía]

Having same problem as OP. Got those 3 exact buffs this week and last week and struggling to figure it out. Is pretty hard in blue gear and I tried healing it as holy pala with ilvl 348 and he beat tanks into a pulp. :<

[Deivid]

There seems to be a small bug on the encounter, the boss is supposed to lose the buff when you release the corresponding dragon, however sometimes it seems he controls the dragon before he can help you and you are screwed. This happened once to us with the storm rider.
So, in your case, i would release the storm and slate dragons to get rid of the MS and make the nova interruptible, he will probably get to cat one nova but after that you should have no problems interrupting it (you will need more than 1 interrupter), halfus doesnt hit too hard even with the 100% speed buff.

[Deleted]

There seems to be a small bug on the encounter, the boss is supposed to lose the buff when you release the corresponding dragon, however sometimes it seems he controls the dragon before he can help you and you are screwed. This happened once to us with the storm rider.
So, in your case, i would release the storm and slate dragons to get rid of the MS and make the nova interruptible, he will probably get to cat one nova but after that you should have no problems interrupting it (you will need more than 1 interrupter), halfus doesnt hit too hard even with the 100% speed buff.

The buff is still displayed, but it does dissapear.

[Dannz]

yeah... those 3 drakes in 10 man is fucking retarded, we're doing it now, and my god it hurts :l

[Deivid]

The buff is still displayed, but it does dissapear.

I know, but it did happen like I said, when you release the storm dragon the boss recieves a debuff called gale winds wich increases his casting time by 500% however there was one attempt in wich we realsed the dragon and he never got the defuff and he was still casting the novas at 0.5s, so it does bug out sometimes, however this happened only once so IDK.
From what i saw, the dragon casts a small whirlind at the boss and that applies the debuff.

[Salaction160]

Just downed it 25 man

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

well at all of our tries we released 1 drake, 2 drakes. Halfus Wyrmbreaker himself never lost any of his visual buffs or got slower attacking, didnt stack mortal strike or got the shadow nova interruptable. Shadownova also hits like every 4-5seconds. Im starting to think this is unintended or a huge bug.

[Elamahpla]

I recommend the tankspot video on youtube about Halfus. It details pretty good strats for dealing with the drakes.

Sounds like you activated all the drakes at once. I wouldn't recommend doing that. Activate one or two at a time, and kill the drakes off. Two tanks to taunt off of each other is also a good idea when the healing debuff gets too high.

Hey, I'm in that video, h3h3

[fangless]

We had storm dragon, nether dragon and whelps. We ended up not even bothering with the frenzy effect, and just took on the one dragon and whelps.

Didn't seem too hard to heal through tbh :P

Pretty sure the part where he's supposed to lose abilities and whatnot are beta mechanics, and this is how it is now. Sort of like his whirlwind he did at 30%, that was replaced with furious roar.


Fairly simple fight, if you have the right drakes, and a bit more complicated for other combinations. I sort of enjoy that, since it'll be a new fight for a lot of people each week, until you get familiar with dealing with the more annoying dragons.

[Deleted]

Pull storm dragon right away and BL him to death, we had 3 tanks rotating debuffs, then free Nether and nuke him. We had Slate as last drake and then free'd him and then nuked boss to death.. had 3 seconds in enrage timer left though.

[ChildeRoland]

Activate the Knockback Drake and the NEtherdrake. 2-3 sec casting knowckback is easy to interrupt, and with a 50% reduced dmg in melee the 100% debuff ain't that dangerous.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Can anyone claryfy how the buffs/debuffs are supposed to work? i know the drakes buff him and they're supposed to disappear once the drakes are dead. when they're alive, are they supposed to give us any help at all? cuz we aint getting anything.

[Millennía]

Can anyone claryfy how the buffs/debuffs are supposed to work? i know the drakes buff him and they're supposed to disappear once the drakes are dead. when they're alive, are they supposed to give us any help at all? cuz we aint getting anything.

Some do i believe. Like the drake that slows his casting (nether scion or storm rider?). It will slow his cast time when he is active. The Time Warden does slow the fire balls. I also think the whelps reduce boss and raid dmg when active also