Disc and 4.06 Heroic Halfus question...

[Nianis]

With the change to the encounter with 4.06 is an AA/A spec still viable? Or is a bubble SoS spec more viable for the fight now?

[Docta]

Attonement will become very effective as the fight goes on, but is no longer super ridic in the beginning (when its really healing inteisve). Both are viable, it really depends on what you're wiping to (lack of heals/lack of output early on, or enrage timer)

[Nianis]

If i was to go in as AA/A spec what would the beginning of the fight spell wise priorities be?...Get my 5 stack right off the bat and utilize PI and AA on cds and focus on a "normal" disc priority system until towards the middle of the fight and then switch to smite mode?

---------- Post added 2011-03-15 at 01:31 PM ----------

Patch 4.0.6 changes (from Official Notes):
Halfus Wyrmbreaker
* The captured drakes in this encounter now apply Dragon's Vengeance when they are killed instead of when they are freed. To account for this change, the health and damage of the drakes has been reduced, and the damage bonus gained from Dragon's Vengeance has been increased.

With this change the value of AA/A spec becomes (imo) limited because the throughput provided was associated with the immediate Dragon's vengeance stacks provided when multiple drakes were released. The resulting change in the mechanic means AA/A priest healing will increase in tandem with the decreasing tank damage, the exact inverse of what your healing intensity should be. However, I'm not saying that Holy is better. In fact, I'll be trying a AA/A spec with direct healing spells (thank you Grace on multiple targets) during the first 1-2minutes (not to mention PW:B). Once we have three drakes dead I'll switch to AA/A healing to maximize healing and contribute to beating the enrage timer.

Thoughts?

[oatmealpoet]

Yeah in the beginning just do your best to get 5 smites right off the bat, then pop Arch when it gets crazy. It's only about a minute of madness where you'll be using PoH, Binding Heal, Greater Heal, Shields quite a bit. Once 2 drakes go down it's pretty easy and you can safely go all out with smite spam. Just be ready to drop a few PoH when he does his knockback.

[Deleted]

AA spec is still very strong. Even if the mechanic changed the fact remains that he'll get the damage increase debuff and when you've managed 2 drakes down Atonement is far superior than your other heals. SoS is in fact really weak still and remains so unless you're doing 10man. At the very start you'll want to avoid Smiting to get Evangelism up, I'd rather spend the time to use Greater Heal + PW:s in order to maintain tanks up.

As soon as 2 drakes drop I switch over to Smiting and having my raid staying near Halfus in order to get those strong heals, which will leave alot of ease for your other healers. And it's alot cheaper to smite at x5 stacks of Evangelism than spamming any other heal when you compare the throughput on that certain fight. Aside from that it's a very straight forward fight and it's the first minute that's hectic.

[Lilyana]

It's utterely pointless to go smite spec on halfus hc now since releasing drakes does not buff healing/damage on halfus in any way. They have to die first now. And by then its already too late. Plus the fight is significantly nerfed to the point where its better to just blow hero 10 secs in.

AA spec is still very strong. Even if the mechanic changed the fact remains that he'll get the damage increase debuff and when you've managed 2 drakes down Atonement is far superior than your other heals.

Not being offensive to you but there's a huge problem with the way you're thinking about this. The fight is HARDEST at the start when atonement spec is WEAKEST now. The fight's major risk is when all the drakes are up at the same time, at at this point, atonement spec is shit, and really, really gimping your healing team since it isn't buffed in any way and at this point in time everybody needs oh shit healing, and you're doing tiny little smite heals.

Pre nerf it rocked but honestly it has no place now for healing in any raid boss whatsoever. Use it for DPS instead if your raids dps is too low to meet enrage.

The moment atonement overtakes your normal healing is when there is very little risk as the fight starts rock hard and gets easy as piss the moment two are down, regardless of what healers you have.

The only reason for any disc taking this spec these days is if you have low dps in your raid or are pugging. A disc's contributory DPS can save the day in cases like this. Thats the REAL reason you'd want to take it, and I've witnessed saving the day on my disc in this spec from hard enrage myself.

[Maxpowr]

Lilyana hit the nail on the head with their posting. I remember on our first H halfus kill, we had an AA spec'd priest and he did about 2.2mil dam and we killed him 2 secs before berserk. W/o him, it would have been a very dicey kill or a <1% wipe. Even for that fight, you will be doing solid tank healing until all the drakes are dead and then DPSing for atonement .

[Deleted]

It's utterely pointless to go smite spec on halfus hc now since releasing drakes does not buff healing/damage on halfus in any way. They have to die first now. And by then its already too late. Plus the fight is significantly nerfed to the point where its better to just blow hero 10 secs in.


Not being offensive to you but there's a huge problem with the way you're thinking about this. The fight is HARDEST at the start when atonement spec is WEAKEST now. The fight's major risk is when all the drakes are up at the same time, at at this point, atonement spec is shit, and really, really gimping your healing team since it isn't buffed in any way and at this point in time everybody needs oh shit healing, and you're doing tiny little smite heals.

Pre nerf it rocked but honestly it has no place now for healing in any raid boss whatsoever. Use it for DPS instead if your raids dps is too low to meet enrage.

The moment atonement overtakes your normal healing is when there is very little risk as the fight starts rock hard and gets easy as piss the moment two are down, regardless of what healers you have.

The only reason for any disc taking this spec these days is if you have low dps in your raid or are pugging. A disc's contributory DPS can save the day in cases like this. Thats the REAL reason you'd want to take it, and I've witnessed saving the day on my disc in this spec from hard enrage myself.

You sir completely miss the logic and quite counter your own arguement. I am well aware that the fight is the hardest at the start hence why I stated that I avoid using it until the point 2 drakes are down. Atonement healing is crap at the start, but that doesn't devalue it's use for the whole encounter itself. So yes, at the start you're gimping if you use the Atonement.

I have to completely disagree with your second statement. Atonement shines when 2 drakes are down, Your example of " That's the REAL reason you'd want to take it" is the lamest excuse you could have. Even if 2 drakes are down it doesn't change the fact Dragon's Vengeance is applied and more damage smite damage = more atonement healing. And Atonement is far superior even if the danger isn't on the brink as it was in the start it's still better to make the better use of it. Than using your one Greater Heal.

Note that Smite deals about 38-40k per smite resulting in a 38-40k heal ( unless the tank have Malevolent Strikes ). Smite have approximately a cast time of 1.6+ whilst Greater Heal have a cast time of 2.0+ - How isn't Smite the better here? It also provides Archangel in case some shitty dps miss their interrupt and you'd need to assist the raid. But for the most Atonement will cover most of the healing at that point.


So I don't see your kind of arguement. To me it's like you're thinking it's only useful on this certain fight and that it contribute a small amount of DPS. If you'd read my whole post you'd understand why but you only seemed to cover your one quote instead. Atonement is king, far more superior than actually dropping them into SoS.

[YankeePhan1234]

I don't see it effecting halfus and the AA spec at all, if anything it'll be less boring, instead of pressing smite over and over again it gives us a semi rotation.

[OverClokx]

You sir completely miss the logic and quite counter your own arguement. I am well aware that the fight is the hardest at the start hence why I stated that I avoid using it until the point 2 drakes are down. Atonement healing is crap at the start, but that doesn't devalue it's use for the whole encounter itself. So yes, at the start you're gimping if you use the Atonement.

I have to completely disagree with your second statement. Atonement shines when 2 drakes are down, Your example of " That's the REAL reason you'd want to take it" is the lamest excuse you could have. Even if 2 drakes are down it doesn't change the fact Dragon's Vengeance is applied and more damage smite damage = more atonement healing. And Atonement is far superior even if the danger isn't on the brink as it was in the start it's still better to make the better use of it. Than using your one Greater Heal.

Note that Smite deals about 38-40k per smite resulting in a 38-40k heal ( unless the tank have Malevolent Strikes ). Smite have approximately a cast time of 1.6+ whilst Greater Heal have a cast time of 2.0+ - How isn't Smite the better here? It also provides Archangel in case some shitty dps miss their interrupt and you'd need to assist the raid. But for the most Atonement will cover most of the healing at that point.


So I don't see your kind of arguement. To me it's like you're thinking it's only useful on this certain fight and that it contribute a small amount of DPS. If you'd read my whole post you'd understand why but you only seemed to cover your one quote instead. Atonement is king, far more superior than actually dropping them into SoS.

So, I re-read Lilyana's post, and then yours, and I'm convinced you're assuming that the accusation of AA spec is 'weak' for this fight, as where Lilyana is only specifying that until later points in this fight, AA/Atonement is near useless, until approx 2 dragons are down. Once the second dragon is down, you literally have a freed up tank for the rest of the fight, making tank healing less dicey, and more about raid heals for the aoe breaths and misc random damage incoming to the raid, where smite healing shines best.

Granted, AA/Atonement is no longer as powerful on this fight as it used to be, it's still very, VERY good once the second drake is down, and probably a much better investment for your mana as compared to spamming GH/etc, unless you're trying to actively maintain the uptime for your 4pc cooldown as disc, and I think that's what Lilyana was referring to.

[Deleted]

I just killed hHalfus10 as disc not using A/AA nor SoS but rather by proccing rapture/penance/GH/PoM/IF PoH and by coordinating the cooldowns with our 3 tanks, we ran a 3 healer, 3 tanks, 4 dps(combat rogue, assa rogue, demo lock, BM hunter for bloodlust) and we downed him on our 8th try with 30s to enrage.

As Jesse from OMFGcata says : If I can do this, so can you. No need to make it harder than it is.