AoE in Halfus Wyrmbreaker Encounter

[Firetruck]

I lead a small guild that only raids once a week. Tonight, we are doing Halfus Wyrmbreaker for the first time together, and I have a question. Since the Time Warden is not active, can we just stack up on everything and AoE it all? We'll certainly need to make sure the Shadow Nova is interrupted consistently, but other than that I was curious if people had tried it stacked up or not this week.

[eternalwhitemoon]

If Time Warden is inactive, there is no harm in stacking. Just make SURE that Shadow Nova gets interrupted.

Edit: You should still single-target the drakes. They're causing needless damage on your tanks.

[Herecius]

Remember that the damage boost does not go out until a drake is dead, rather than when it is released, so the damage on Halfus isn't necessarily helping unless your group's AoE is really that powerful.

EDIT: Actually, do not stack. That's a terrible idea. The fireballs still do a small-radius AoE, and they will decimate your group.

[Madlax]

If Time Warden is inactive, there is no harm in stacking. Just make SURE that Shadow Nova gets interrupted.
Edit: You should still single-target the drakes. They're causing needless damage on your tanks.

You shouldn't stack even if Warden is inactive. Those fireballs aren't homing on a person, they are targetted on ground and doe aoe splash to everyone.

[skylla05]

We've killed him three times and we always stack. If you have Fire Mages and Rogues (forget the spec), not keeping them stacked is actually a terrible idea. Stacking allows you to completely leave Whelps out of the kill order and disregard them as a specific target, as residual AoE DPS from your Mages and Rogues will take them out, very likely just as, or just after the first drake dies. We actually got the "kill 2 drakes within 10s" achievement last week on Heroic.

Fire Mages can essentially stay on the first drake (since staying on Halfus no longer provides a damage boost until they die) and cleave all their DoT's to the drakes and the whelps. It helps a ton, trust me. Once a drake or 2 dies, they can stay primarily on Halfus and start cleaving huge DoT's to all the drakes. After 2 drakes, Mages will start doing more DPS to ALL the drakes, than they would by staying on one.

Just as a note, we release Storm, Scion and Whelps first. Kill Storm, then release Time (we don't kill Slate). We've also had success releasing time right off the bat with the other 3, which will result in a lot less damage taken from the meteors (provided people move).

You shouldn't stack even if Warden is inactive. Those fireballs aren't homing on a person, they are targetted on ground and doe aoe splash to everyone.

Tell your melee not to be terrible then. There's plenty of room during stacking to avoid melee clustering and all getting hit by the same meteors.

[Fedexkilla]

Thats generally how we do it based up on the configuration for the week, with the drakes/whelps near or on top of Halfus the tank and off-tank can smack on them as well bringing them down quicker.