What is your Strategy for Halfus this Week!!

[Beecham]

Ok so my guild and I have downed halfus wyrmbreaker before, however with this weeks drake options in 10 man regular we are currently struggling and slamming our heads against a wall. The drakes available this week are the Slate Drake and the Storm Drake, and of course the Whelps, we seem to be struggling with shadow nova if we don't activate the Storm Drake, but if we do we activate him we struggle with the healing debuff the tanks receive from Halfus due to the Slate Drake. Anyway any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Our dps is pretty solid with all of us above 12k and most closer to 17k. Is this fight just a battle for the healers or are we missing something in the strategy.

Thanks for all your help.

[Rogabr]

burn storm drake, dont release slate drake, taunt rotation on the tanks, burn adds burn boss.

All are above 12k WITH THE 100% BUFF?

If yes

WOW Thats low.

[Celdra]

Thats the drakes we had this week, and it was not really all that bad. We would start a pull by having our tank ranged pull (Heroic throw in this case) and then I would pop Storm Drake, while I was doing this our off-tank opened the whelp cage and the hunter MDed the Storm Drake onto our Offtank. We would Hero-AoE the adds while keeping a cool-down rotation going on the two tanks. After the whelps were down the MT would be sitting at around 50% health with the MS debuff nearly fully applied. At this point our OT would pick up the boss and use his cool downs to get threw this (This is the most damage intensive part of the fight). After the second drake dies it was a simple tank and spank.

Also to deal with the Shadow Nova Directly following a howl we used a mage that would blink out of the last stun and CS. (Well we would use that between human trinkets, but thats not available to the horde)

At the end of our fight, all dps was sitting between 17-24k.

Edit:

Slate Drake stayed inactive. We just kept tank swaping at ~7-10 depending on how fast the debuff was stacking up.

As healers on that fight you really cant afford to top everyone off all the time, especially the OT with the MS debuff that has enough health to live through the AoE. However we found that right before the tanks MS fell off, our healers were able to throw in un-MSed greater heals right before he taunted and that is what ended up making the fight for us.

Edit Again:

You need two kicks to keep shadow nova under control and that means to set up a vezax like kick/shock rotation. We happened to have a resto and an elemental shaman, a prot and a fury warrior, and a rogue so kicks were not a problem however I could very easily see them being an issue because Shadow Nova is both annoying but could potentially cause your AoE'ers to oom (Interupting a spell that costs upwards of 15k mana is never fun), also it breaks you out of potions of concentration (We ended up wiping one attempt because the only two fails we had were when I was hymning for mana and sleeping for mana...)

[shokter]

Thats the drakes we had this week, and it was not really all that bad. We would start a pull by having our tank ranged pull (Heroic throw in this case) and then I would pop Storm Drake, while I was doing this our off-tank opened the whelp cage and the hunter MDed the Storm Drake onto our Offtank. We would Hero-AoE the adds while keeping a cool-down rotation going on the two tanks. After the whelps were down the MT would be sitting at around 50% health with the MS debuff nearly fully applied. At this point our OT would pick up the boss and use his cool downs to get threw this (This is the most damage intensive part of the fight). After the second drake dies it was a simple tank and spank.

Also to deal with the Shadow Nova Directly following a howl we used a mage that would blink out of the last stun and CS. (Well we would use that between human trinkets, but thats not available to the horde)

At the end of our fight, all dps was sitting between 17-24k.

It's unclear to me at what point you activated the Slate Drake here. Clarify please if possible. This is also the combo I drew this week so I'm looking for some ideas.

[Deleted]

We had whelps, timeless drake and slate drake. Burnt down the timeless drake, killed boss.

One shotted it this way. Whelps 2000 damage debuff seemed unsubstantial and the increased damage from the proto behemoth was only a slightly scary during the aoe stun phase sub 35% or whatever it is

[Triston]

The way we do the drakes in general is pop one right off the bat, knock it down a good amount, then pop the second drake. Once both drakes are down you pop the whelps out and tank them. Do not kill the whelps at all (cleaves are fine), just focus on the boss. Once the whelps are out damage is such a joke that there's no reason to risk enrage timers by killing them. Once you get the fight the first time, every time is just as easy as long as you release the right drakes in the right order. Hope that helps.

[fangless]

Slate dragon is annoying just because it requires tank swapping :P But allowing him to remain inactive isn't really the worst thing in the world.

I'd say releasing Storm Dragon is required. If Slate is not present, Nether Scion can stay inactive. If the reverse is true, Slate can stay inactive. Whelps are a good 2nd kill, as it's free dmg resistance and dmg boost for raid. Have yet to get the Time Dragon, but a raid wide snare doesn't seem that bad TBH :P

[Callypso]

To handle this setup, you do the following:

- Have the MT range-pull the boss and 'kite' him for the first few seconds to stretch the time he has without debuffs.
- Activate and kill the storm rider (Not activating him at the start is NOT an option, no matter the setup).
- Activate and kill the whelps.
- Meanwhile, have 2 interrupters (preferably a non-paladin tank + a dps) on the boss.

If your MT get's too high stacks (10+ was our mark) give him either hand of protection (with cancelaura macro to instantly remove it) or lacking that, have the OT taunt & tank the boss for a while. I'm not sure if you were doing 25 or 10m, but in our 10m we were able to kill the first drake easily before any taunting was neccesary.

You could activate and dps the whelps in the start like someone above me suggested, but i'm not really sure why you would want to. (the times we got the whelps, we killed them last and activated them AFTER we got the 1st drake down, which seemed to be simpler and easier on dmg for the healers).


you DO NOT kill or activate the slate dragon. Reason for this is simple: It doesn't do anything (aside giving him 50% more received dmg after the kill, but that hold for the other drakes as well).


Activating and/or killing him will NOT remove the stacking debuff being applied.

[Colwyn]

We downed the boss with the same drakes this week on 25.

We had one tank take the slate and storm immediately the fight started. Burn cds to kill one drake asap. The healing on tanks on this is rough, but you have the boss stunned every so often from the slate and the cast time slowed from the storm. Doesn't really matter which one you kill first if you release 2 at once. Once the 2draeks are dead, bring whelps to boss and aoe on boss til they die then full burn on boss. In regards to tanking, as one tank gets around 50%, tanks obviously need to swap. This may be harder to do on 10man, but worked nicely for us as we had an easy 1 shot on the boss.

[Celdra]

T
You could activate and dps the whelps in the start like someone above me suggested, but i'm not really sure why you would want to. (the times we got the whelps, we killed them last and activated them AFTER we got the 1st drake down, which seemed to be simpler and easier on dmg for the healers).

Because its easier to heal one tank then the entire raid, so long as your tank is appropriately geared I would think you would not run into any problems. Their benefit is obviously applied as you release them so there really is not any reason to delay setting both free as long as your tanks are not getting globaled and your heals are not running OOM. We only kill two drakes and slide in just under the enrage, but we also use our hero for killing the drakes. (As we can have one entire set drake/set of drakes dead before the tanks need to swap)


Also I do not know if this person is a healer, but the whelps (Atleast IMO) do SIGNIFICANTLY reduce the amount of healing required, to the point where the small increased single tank damage is more then bellied in under a minute. (Assuming you hero, paper math wise)

[Beecham]

Hey thanks for all of the tips everyone, we are going back in tomorrow night and will let you know how we do.

[Sidorenko]

pop both drakes, burn slate, pop whelps and AOE em down, pop storm and collect l00ts

[kliffharry]

I guess people seem to forget that Slate dragon also stuns Halfus for 12 secs every now and then and you also get 50% more damage.

[Jostin]

Hey thanks for all of the tips everyone, we are going back in tomorrow night and will let you know how we do.

As a raid leader who for 3 weeks killed halfus under 4 attempts each time and have had 3 of the arguably hardest combination's Storm/Whelps/Slate Slate/Scion/Whelps and Storm/Scion/Slate.

Release the Scion and MD whelps bloodlust burn scion switch at 6-9 stacks pop cooldowns on the whelp tank have dps heal themselves lightwell healthstones abilities bandages soon as scion is dead aoe whelps let healers mana up then depending on how confident ur interrupt team is for p2 (mage lol win) release the drake if u have no counters to the smashes to help dps halfus and for his 20 second stun don't worry about enrage timer due to the fact he can be stunned during his enrage.

[Sockgoblin]

Storm, Slate, Whelps

Opened Storm and Whelps off the bat and busted out AoE. Once MT (Warr) had his eight stacks, I (OT, Blood) taunted and grabbed Halfus as well (already had whelps and Storm). MT was BoP'd and grabbed Storm drake. Our other Death Knight then popped Army to finish off the remaining whelps while I was gaining stacks with Halfus, Once I was at eight, we swapped again. At this time Storm was about 500k from dying. Finished that off, became tank n spank with a taunt swap and interrupts. Also ran with three healers this week as well. GG.

[Jaraxxus]

Honestly if dps is the issue...Get better dps. I'm far from a great guild. We just killed him for the first time last night with this combo.
3 healers, 3 tanks, 4 dps.

2 tanks on halfus, 1 on adds.
Popped storm+whelps, stacked them on halfus. rogue/retadin focus interrupting halfus while killing the dragon and cleaving whelps. Once that was all dead we pulled slate and killed him, then boss.

[Furbul]

People seem to be making this fight far more complicated than it needs to be. After doing it for 3 weeks, every week its the same exact simple strat for 10m. If storm is up, kill him, pop whelps, burn boss. No need what-so-ever to kill a second drake. If for example the scion/slate is up. Kill scion, burn whelps, burn boss. Only ever need 1 drake to die for 10m and still finish far ahead of enrage.

[Deleted]

You should always activate all 3, just offtank the 3rd one to get another +50% dmg on the boss.