Halfus: Malevolent Strikes-Mechanic

[Deleted]

The Malevolent Strikes mechanic states: "Halfus' attacks wound the target, reducing the effectiveness of any healing on it by 8%. Stacks."

What troubles me is the ambiguity of "attacks." Does this mean actual physical contact with the player? I ask because in both cases (normal and hard) this debuff is being stacked when the tank dodges, parries or blocks an attack. The thought, initially, was that the tank(s) with the highest avoidance would be best to have Halfus, but this appears to be incorrect as the debuff stacks even when the attack is avoided.

There are some (esp. warrior) tanks on my server who state that block-tanks are predestinated to tank Halfus because every time they block an attack Malevolent Strike cannot stack. By my experience and after evaluation of several combatlogs I doubt this. The only thing the combatlog says is that the attack can only miss. It seems that the attack cannot be dodged/parried/blocked.

It may be possible that Malevolent Strikes is a separate ability from a normal swing, though that is purely speculative.

The tooltip claims the strikes to stack from his attacks, but if there is indeed a separate attack without an animation that can still be avoided, I assumed that this would be documented.

I am not especially troubled by it but I am really interested to hear more opinions on this.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure what the technical info is regarding malevolent strikes, but it blocks can and will prevent the strikes from being applied. (witnessed myself several times on both heroic/normal)

[Tyleiran]

Considering how fast it stacks on our paladin with over 60% block I don't think blocks prevent it from being applied.

[Infort]

Our palatank gets stacks very quickly, whereas I as a feraltank, can go twice as long as him before reaching 8 stacks.
I have no idea why it's like this, but it's been confirmed by our healers.

[Deleted]

Here's a strat for 25hc I wrote, shows how to properly deal with the MS mechanic:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...0#post10552780

[furriusmurrius]

Blocks have a -chance- to prevent the MS debuff from applying, just like dodges have a -chance- to cause you to dodge all incoming damage from a single attack. If EVERY mitigated block prevented the debuff, lol. It'd be a worthless mechanic.

[Deleted]

Our palatank gets stacks very quickly, whereas I as a feraltank, can go twice as long as him before reaching 8 stacks.
I have no idea why it's like this, but it's been confirmed by our healers.

It's weird, and I kid you not, but we use a paladin tank (myself) and a feral druid aswell, and it's the exact opposite. I seem to take stacks waaaay lower than him.

[Sahjar]

Our palatank gets stacks very quickly, whereas I as a feraltank, can go twice as long as him before reaching 8 stacks.

My 10man group sort of experienced the opposite this week. Last week we had our normal Paladin tank, and a guest DK tank (our Bear was out for the day), and we didn't have any issues, even with the Slate+Nether Scion combination.

This week our Bear was back, and he seemed to stack the debuff much more quickly than the other two did last week; and this week we didn't have Scion. This lead me to be curious if maybe Parried attacks didn't apply the debuff?

[Cloud8690]

Blocking just reduces the damage. You're still taking the hit.

Also, Malevolent Strike seems to have a double roll mechanic where the first roll determines if the attack lands, then it rolls again to see if the debuff is applied. Dodging/Parrying the first roll means the second roll will NOT stack the debuff since the attack has to connect in order to do so. I believe after the attack lands, you can also dodge/parry the debuff but I'm not sure.

Avoidance is definitely really good for that fight. I naturally stack avoidance on my DK tank, but our pally tank reforges everything to avoidance for that fight just because it's so good.

[Mammoth]

Block definitely doesn't work, otherwise he wouldn't be able to stack it on me.

Avoidance however does work, you can see the debuff stay away when the tank gets a lucky dodge/parry streak.