Halfus 10HC - what are we doing wrong?

[Deleted]

We still have Nefarian to kill on normal, but we figured out we'd give HC Halfus a couple of tries before clearing BoT and TotFW today since people have talked about HC Halfus being potentially easier or at most not much harder (and definately easier on tactics). Now, we didn't have many tries so I'm fairly sure that more trying could mean success even without asking, but hey, what does it hurt to ask?

Our comp is:
DK tank, Warrior tank
Assassination rogue, 2x Destro warlock, Elemental shaman, Shadow priest
2x Holy paladin, 1x Resto druid

Priest can play disc (he doesn't have atonement in spec but would probably spec into it)
Druid can play balance (and does have full epic feral tank gear from all the crap we've got, but we'd rather not swap him to feral offspec since we can't down Cho'gall without him being a moonkin or getting a new player)
Warrior has geared fury offspec

Theoretically any class can play any spec available to them but the goal is to not have to swap classes since as far as I know HC Halfus shouldn't need class stacking anymore.

Our tactic is:

Storm, Nether and Whelps released. DK takes whelps and storm while Warrior takes Halfus and Nether. We dps Storm down with BL (though we had him at 5% tops before a tank died so we didn't really get that far even though getting him down would've probably made all the difference in the world). At 10ish stacks (60% reduction) a paladin BoP's the halfus tank, he /cancelauras it with a macro and continues until 50-60%ish reduction when the DK taunts Halfus and Warrior taunts Storm rider. DK does the same BoP trick with the other paladin and hopefully after that point we're well into killing Nether and the dps tanks are taking is manageable enough.

Currently our DK has been dropping quite quick when it's his turn to tank, might be his self heals getting reduced by the MS debuff but I don't know enough about DK tanking. There's a couple of seconds of communication before Storm rider actually leaves him, but it shouldn't be it either as he tends to die after that.

We're all geared, mostly full or almost full 359 epic, so it should not be a huge problem.

I'm not expecting a very specific answer since I'm not giving very specific details, but in general is our raid comp or our tactic wrong in any way?

EDIT: To ask in the same thread, with that comp how doable is Nefarian P1? I'm thinking of giving moonkin kiting along with earthbind and shadowfuries a try, but am open to better ideas. Especially those that don't require swapping specs.

[Burlacher]

in some ways the fight is a gear check. its just all about medigating the damage and healers becoming super healers to make it through the 1:00ish burst healing.

[Azrok]

AoE the whelps first, they do the most damage

other than that you do it how we do it. once you AoE the whelps a good portion down, release time warden and misdirect it to the DK

[Dawkins]

Kill Nether before Storm Rider so your warrior tank isn't getting gibbed with a high amount of stacks. You pop bloodlust at the start and AoE everything down. Make sure everyone is relatively spread out to avoid extra damage from the Time Warden fireballs going around un-slowed. Have everything stacked up to take incidental damage. The whelps will go down pretty fast if they are focused first followed by Nether Scion. As soon as Nether Scion drops pop the Slate dragon right away for that lovely stun Halfus gets, which will really help with the tanking debuffs. But you guys seem to have gotten that far and are just having problems with the DK tank dying.

When it's the DK's turn to tank Halfus, have him pop his Dancing Rune Weapon for extra avoidance rather than something that mitigates the damage like Icebound Fortitude. He'll accumulate the debuff less frequently and be able to tank longer.

This is all under assumptions about what you've told us so far about gear and skill. It would help us have a better idea of how to help if you gave armory links or World of Logs to show your attempts.

[carrierz]

Get one more tank, proceed to oneshot lame boss. Seriously. Removes all the stupid stacks RNG and spreads the damage around more people. It's easy to beat enrage with 4 dpsers.

[jericho]

Get one more tank, proceed to oneshot lame boss. Seriously. Removes all the stupid stacks RNG and spreads the damage around more people. It's easy to beat enrage with 4 dpsers.

This is basically the best way to do it. If you have access to any other class with a tank spec (a feral druid is your best bet but anything with decent gear will do) use it. We have our normal Feral Cat go bear spec and tank Halfus while our DK and Paladin tank the 3 drakes until there is only 1 drake left and then she goes cat and dpses the rest of the encounter. This encounter is a lot more challenging than Normal Halfus, but it is the same mechanics. You just need 3 tanks to spread the damage out a bit more.

[Mendenbarr]

DK tanks suck for halfus. If it all possible, have your paladin tank the boss for longer. DKs lose a good chunk of armor and the ability to block in exchange for self healing. Also might be worth looking into releasing time warden at the start. Sure, your tank would take a lot of extra damage, but raid damage would be pretty much nothing, so he would get a lot more heals as well.

[Varyk]

Why aren't you taking the Time Warden first? We've started with Time, Storm, and Nether everytime for months now I believe. Pulling whelps after Time and Storm are dead. Aoeing the whelps as everyone continues to burn Halfus. The whelps die long before He begins furious roar, we pull Slate after whelps are gone and it's pew pew from there.

Just to clear this up

We do 25man. 10 strat may differ. We also use 4 tanks. (2 DK, 2 Paladin)

[Mateng]

We just killed him for the third time on heroic 10 last night, we release everything but slate, and have our dps focus on storm while aoeing down everything else.. Time warden dies after storm which is then followed by scion. We release slate when scion dies and burn the shit out of halfus till he stops moving. Also, we bloodlust at the start and have tanks switch at 3 stacks. comp is dk tank, pally tank, fury warr, fire mage, demo lock (op for this fight), hunter, disc priest, enh shaman for interrupts, resto sham and holy pally. Pm me if u want me to be more thorough, typing this on my phone on the john

---------- Post added 2011-03-23 at 08:47 PM ----------

rereading your post, chances are you still have some whelps running around when the dk tank dies, even if there's only 1 alive at 2%, halfus still gets the speed buff. We were having similar problems untill we made sure all the whelps were dead

[Izzyotta]

[/COLOR]rereading your post, chances are you still have some whelps running around when the dk tank dies, even if there's only 1 alive at 2%, halfus still gets the speed buff. We were having similar problems untill we made sure all the whelps were dead

What are you talking about?

What do whelps have to do with a speed buff?

[Pokty]

Killing things does not affect Halfus in any way except giving him the debuff that increases his damage taken.

Get one more tank, proceed to oneshot lame boss. Seriously. Removes all the stupid stacks RNG and spreads the damage around more people. It's easy to beat enrage with 4 dpsers.

Exactly right.

[Cyclops]

Im guessing kicks arent a problem since they werent mentioned.

Release, storm, nether, time and whelpls, have your dk tank halfus and the nether at the start, do your HOP (hand of protection) trick at 7 stacks.
If you have good aoe classes such as demo locks/fire mages/rogues and such have them aoe the adds, if you have classes such as enhance shamans ferals and stuff have them focus the storm rider.

kill order should be whelps, storm rider, time warden, nether scion. Then release slate after they all die and keep him alive for the rest of the fight (for the stun on halfus for furious roar)

Pallys should spread on the tanks and focus on just them, 1 beacon on warr 1 on dk and heal tanks only. With the time warden active there shouldnt be TOO much aoe dmg going out if everyone is intelligent. In which case your druid can solo aoe heal the extra damage.

As a tank on that fight, (druid tank) I generally get halfus off the start and the nether, pull all drakes/whelps together in front of the whelp cage, then aoe spam. I generally dont use a CD until after i bop/cancelaura the first set of stacks, then rotate cooldowns until I am at about 7 stacks, (the dodge trinket from V+T is HUGE on this fight as halfus can only apply the debuff if he hits you.

The first minute should be by far the hardest part of the fight, have healers blow their load and after whelps/storm die proceed to regen with hymn innervates and cycle plea (so only 1 pally has one up at a time) make sure your tanks swap at or before 5 stacks and collect your loot

[Kultcher]

Somewhat unrelated question but something I've been wondering for a long time:

Does the poison that the Whelps use on the Proto-drake reduce the damage of just his Searing Breath? Or does it affect the damage from his normal Fireballs and Fireball Barrages, too?

[Harsesis]

We have 1 tank get Storm, Time, and Whelps. We focus down Storm then Time with the whelps dying to random aoe. In the mean time 2 tanks are taunting Halfus and Nether back and forth as MS stacks go up. Really intensive at the beginning but makes the fight quicker overall.

[Ttrain]

not enough zerging?

[Nume]

The pug I tried this with this week got him to 22 percent my first try (they had been wiping for a while before I joined) with everything dead except slate and halfus (we weren't releasing slate) and ~1 min left on enrage, and we died to his aoe stun+the nova bc our mage missed his blink/interrupt... then proceeded to wipe like 5 more times without ever reaching that point again before they called it :P. Depressing and yet encouraging at the same time heh. The strat they used was similar to most, but with 2 tanks only. Had 1 tank grab 2 drakes+welps, and other tank grab 1 drake+ halfus, and tank both til stacks got high, then bubble/cancel and keep tanking. DPS was on welps, then storm, then nether, then time. Most of our wipes werent actually caused by lack of healing or anything, but rather by tanks swapping too early (before debuff ran off....) or too late where healers couldn't heal through the dmg (11+ stacks). I could definitely see how 3 tanks would help a ton as they can focus on getting swaps right, and the dmg is more spread out. I'll probably try that later this week if I can find another group of decent ppl :P.

[Irony]

Depending on your dps, you can just 3 tank/3heal/4 dps this fight. Makes it a lot easier.

[Deleted]

Have your Locks go Demo and your Rogue go Combat.

Start DPSing the whelps (that's how most people do it).

[jbran]

ok this is how we do hafus heroic, and our composition is 3x tanks with me warior another warior and a druid, since we dnt run with a pala healer or a tank we realy get alot of problems with the ms debuff so we do our own strategy

we pull EVERYTHING at start including slate dragon, i tank slate,nether and a hunter mdz timewarden to me i tank them all around 10 secs outside of the centre stanck where 2 tanks are with halfus,whelps and storm to build some good agro on all 3 my drakes then move inside and then, blooodlust/aoe fukfiesta we kill netehr first by this time whelps die automatically of aoe then 1 by 1 all dragons and we ignore killing slate. Now the reason why we release slate is bcause of the stuns it realy helps in tank debuffs and also it helps truck looads in p3 when he is doing roars and suddenly gets stunned for 12 secs.

FOR nefarian p1 we either have the fury warior or cat in bear for tank onyxia for around 30 secs while i gather all addz and have em die in the same spot then i charge back in and taunt the boss off him before crackles, we never ever had any problem with this strategy,any plate wearer or feral wud work sice its maximum 30-40 secs of ony tanking and they can pop cdz to survie that , hope it helps and good luck.

[Cope]

If your rogue is combat he can attack Halfus once the whelps are dead blade flurry (I think that's what it's called) to the other drakes and eventually do 200% damage to 2 targets. I don't think that is too game breaking if you are wiping immediately, but it could be helpful later in the fight.