Halfus Heroic - What are we doing wrong?

[Deleted]

Hey guys.

My guild is currently doing OK, we raid purely 10 mans and are 12/12 on normal, and just starting Halfus heroic. Now, I know what everyone's saying about how important it is to have class stacking and that the fight is poorly tuned and very damage spiky, so no need to tell me about that

Our raid setup is as follows:

Protection Paladin
Blood DK
Feral Druid (he's offspec but still has 167k health and 36% dodge in bear form)

Restoration Druid (me)
Disc Priest who is Smite spamming
Restoration Shaman

Unholy DK
Demonology Lock
Fire Mage
Survival Hunter

Our strategy is:
- At the pull, the Prot Paladin picks up the Storm Rider & Nether Scion is Misdirected to him. Feral picks up Halfus, DK picks up all the whelps. We rotate CDs on the Prot Pala to keep him alive during this time (Guardian of Ancient Kings, Power Word: Barrier, Pain Suppression, Divine Protection) and the DPS focus on AoE'ing down the whelps, which usually die quite quickly. i'm using Tree of Life during this time to roll Lifeblooms on all 3 tanks and for the healing bonus, Wild Growth hitting almost everyone is very helpful as well. Our Disc is just smiting (everyone is supposedly within 15 yards of Halfus) and our shaman is healing the DK tank, with me focussing on Pala + Druid.

- When druid gets 6 stacks of healing debuff he is HoP'd and cancels it / taunts back. When he gets 6 stacks again, Prot Pala taunts Halfus and Feral taunts Storm Rider. When whelps die DK taunts Scion.

The problem we are having is that after our CDs have all been blown in the first minute and a half we have real difficulty keeping everyone up. Storm Rider dies at about the 2 minute mark which is just too long I feel, and because we don't have any CDs left after I blew ToL / Tranquility the raid gradually dies to the huge 80k flame breaths and unavoidable fireballs from the Behemoth. I know we should probably free Time Warden after the whelps die but I just don't feel like we could heal through his damage :/

Any suggestions / tips are really appreciated :/
Thanks in advance

[Deleted]

This isn't a problem if you don't have a problem with tanks dying.. But if you have a priest smite spamming then that attonement heal would probably be best hitting a tank.. but seeing as you have everyone stacked up within 15 yards of the boss other players from the group will be taking those heals.. Also if you are to stacked up multiple people are gonna get hit by the fireballs...

We were only using 2 tanks a prot pala and a feral druid.. The tank would take halfus + whelps wile the druid took Nether + Storm.. The pala would then let his stacks reach around 6-8 stacks and then start using CD's untill he got to a point where he had 11+ stacks where he would then bubble the stacks off.. Around that time we would have storm rider and whelps down and they could then swap and we would release time warden.

Also another note - some might like this spec others might not - but what kind of spec is your shaman using? and are you having mana problems?
I'm currently using 8/2/31 to get the 3 points in elemental precision.. For 2 reasons...
1. I was mainly doing the interrupts (I'm the resto shaman)
2. I was guarantied to hit every time i would cast a lightning bolt to get man with Telluric Currents (i was getting between 9-15k mana pr lighting bolt minus the cost)

We were using Holy pala, resto shaman and disc priest. The disc priest would be smite spamming like yours. He would also help on the raid when there was time for it.
I as a resto shaman was healing the tank that was tanking Halfus (also helping on the raid when ever i could)
And the paladin would keep an eye on the feral druid and the raid.

I'm not allowed to post links as i don't really write on the forums often :P But you can search for Tectum at Grim Batol and Halfus Wyrmbreaker to find our video if you want to see our first kill.. Its Holy paladin and resto shaman PoV

Hope some of the information was usefull it is kinda late :P
GL & HF

[Belloc]

As soon as the whelps die, release the time warden and watch your raid damage disappear. Now your healers can focus entirely on tanks.

Also, if you can swap a tank with another healer, you can two tank/four heal it. Makes the damage even easier to manage.

Best if luck -- Halfus Heroic is a bitch until you figure out what works for your group.

[Deleted]

Or just release time warden aswell, that's how we do it = no raid damage.

[deviancee]

Switch hunter with another disc

[curveslol]

Switch hunter with another disc

Or switch a tank with another disc. And I've also seen that many guilds have more success 2 tanking + 4 healing (even with one disc).

[wordup]

Personally I'd go with releasing Rider, Warden, Whelps all at once. Nuke the time warden down while cleaving whelps, don't focus on AoE. When Warden is down release Scion, when Rider is down release Slate, Leave those 2 up, whelps should be just about dead, if not then focus aoe them down and then focus on Halfus who should be roughly 70%~ from the cleaves.

[Xirony]

We started this fight last week. We tried the 3 tank 3 heal strat. NO GO. Then with the raid week ending we tried 2 tanks 4 heals but we didnt have the right healcore and a offtank that wasnt all that geared "But keep in mind we did better with the gimped tank 2 tank 4 heal strat"

Regardless. I have Ilvl 355ish " Hpally loot never droops for me" But i was ooming. Even tho im Judging every CD "When i can IE if the tanks are not getting smacked around so hard" So i made a few changes and read some more strats Etc etc.

On tuesday I will be running this comp.

2 tanks- Prot war/Druid

4 Heals - 2 Hpallys/1 Disc~smite priest/ 1 Holy priest.

2 Hpallys are ideal. Each pally gets 1 healing target and beacon the other tank. That would be 150% healing. The issue is each tank needs a dedicated healer to attend to there beatings. With tanks out of the way.

The disc priest should be raid healing using smite. "IF YOURE TANKS ARE NEVER TOPED UP UR DISC PRIEST WHO IS SET TO RAID HEAL WILL SPEND MORE HEALS ON THE TANKS" So if the tanks are not toping off the disc priest isnt healing the raid.

The Holy priest is there to give the rhealing group a hand. Assisting the tanks with HOTS etc. And aissting the disc priest who is raid healing via Smiting.

Also we have 100% taunt/cool down rotaion built that will eas the healing core. This isnt sumthing that can just be told u have to have a good Tank core to buckle down to do this.

[wordup]

We started this fight last week. We tried the 3 tank 3 heal strat. NO GO. Then with the raid week ending we tried 2 tanks 4 heals but we didnt have the right healcore and a offtank that wasnt all that geared "But keep in mind we did better with the gimped tank 2 tank 4 heal strat"

Regardless. I have Ilvl 355ish " Hpally loot never droops for me" But i was ooming. Even tho im Judging every CD "When i can IE if the tanks are not getting smacked around so hard" So i made a few changes and read some more strats Etc etc.

On tuesday I will be running this comp.

2 tanks- Prot war/Druid

4 Heals - 2 Hpallys/1 Disc~smite priest/ 1 Holy priest.

2 Hpallys are ideal. Each pally gets 1 healing target and beacon the other tank. That would be 150% healing. The issue is each tank needs a dedicated healer to attend to there beatings. With tanks out of the way.

The disc priest should be raid healing using smite. "IF YOURE TANKS ARE NEVER TOPED UP UR DISC PRIEST WHO IS SET TO RAID HEAL WILL SPEND MORE HEALS ON THE TANKS" So if the tanks are not toping off the disc priest isnt healing the raid.

The Holy priest is there to give the rhealing group a hand. Assisting the tanks with HOTS etc. And aissting the disc priest who is raid healing via Smiting.

Also we have 100% taunt/cool down rotaion built that will eas the healing core. This isnt sumthing that can just be told u have to have a good Tank core to buckle down to do this.

Sorry but our Hpaladins are more than competant and on most fights they perform extremely well, however on Halfus they are never up top. Priests are high but Resto Druids are amazingly strong in this fight. Being able to seamlessly switch between raid healing and tank healing without losing any throughput is extremely useful on a fight where there are phases between high raid damage and high tank damage. By the end of the fight you will be struggling without this because Furious Roar is pretty nasty on heroic.
Also a mage to blink out of the final stun and interrupt the nova after this is really useful.

Regarding taunt/CD rotations though you absolutely WILL need one of these. It pretty much requires vocal tanks and co-ordination to make absolutely sure that everyone is aware when the tanks will switch and how much damage they will be taking.

[Xirony]

Sorry but our Hpaladins are more than competant and on most fights they perform extremely well, however on Halfus they are never up top. Priests are high but Resto Druids are amazingly strong in this fight. Being able to seamlessly switch between raid healing and tank healing without losing any throughput is extremely useful on a fight where there are phases between high raid damage and high tank damage. By the end of the fight you will be struggling without this because Furious Roar is pretty nasty on heroic.
Also a mage to blink out of the final stun and interrupt the nova after this is really useful.

Regarding taunt/CD rotations though you absolutely WILL need one of these. It pretty much requires vocal tanks and co-ordination to make absolutely sure that everyone is aware when the tanks will switch and how much damage they will be taking.

If you have 2 Hpally you can chain bubbles ~ with tank cooldowns for the roar. Even with that the holy pallys can use HR while stunned. And yes u will have to have a Mage blink the 3rd stun. Or you can have a shammy wear a stun meta to reduce the stun. ether way if you are having tank issues 2 Hpallys healing each tank VIA 2 tanks then that wont be an issue. Also having 2 Hpallys means you have 2 AM which for the beginning while the whelps are still in the cage will help with the fire damage that you will have. 12k Heroic a tick. With the whelps out its 6k. So AM x2 is good.

Also a holy priest can easily change from raid to tank via chalkra. and the smite priest can solo raid heal if his/her heals are not focused on the tanks.

And if ur hpallys are not topping the charts for this fight and they are assigned to tank healing. Don't expect them to.