halfus hm advice

[Deleted]

Hello,

seeking some advice for halfus hm, atm we are at 11/12 clearing 10 bosses in 3 hours and we raid 9 hours a week, so we have 6 hours of raiding for new bosses most of time.

im the raidleader and people really wanna try halfus hm tonight instead of killing the farm bosses, nearly 90% of the loot that drops goes offspec or got DE'd.
so i read up on how the approach halfus hm but still got some question for the eperienced raiders on here.

we run with a 12 man team and tonight the ppl that are comming and signed are:

Warr tank
pala tank

holy pala
holy priest
resto shaman

enchant sham
arcane mage
MM hunter / os SV
fury warr / os tank
feral druid / os boomin

358/359 avrg ilvl

now im thinking of letting the warr start off with halfus/nether and the paladin start with storm/time, we burn down storm with BL when it dies the pala will take over halfus and keeps tanking time and halfus till time dies aswell then we move on nether. (holy pala shields the warr tank in the beginning to reset the stacks, pala tank does the same when he is on halfus at the beginning)

when we only got nether active and storm/time died we want to release whelps and burn them down on top of halfus.

is this a valid strategy?
change the main spec of some ppl?
our mage is arcane and well he sucks in fire big time so its a big aoe loss can we overcome that?

[Styl]

Possibility of your druid going a tank spec for this fight? Basically you can use 3 tanks to learn the fight. We generally have the druid on halfus ( Higher dodge so less debuff gain) Warrior on Whelps and Time warden, paladin on Nether Scion and Storm rider

Basically on pull we release everything except for the slate, pop hero and aoe the whelps then kill time, when the druid gets to 8 stacks we just HoP her and she takes it off and continues tanking ( resets stacks).Then when she reaches 5 we have the warrior taunt halfus and tank it with a cd while the druid's stacks fall off, once the stacks fall off, she taunts it back. Once time dies we go whatever drake is lowest and continue to tank swap halfus ( We use a elemental shaman interupting halfus, so a enhance shaman could work fine too ). We tank everything ontop of each other and aoe/cleave whelps, then single target. Once the last drake dies, release Slate and dps on halfus. the stun is really useful especially if it procs during the furious roar. Note after the third tick of furious roar your mage should blink and interupt the following shadow nova because it has a potential to kill. Also use raid wall at the start to mitage damage then whenever it is up for the Furious Roars. ( Holy paladin can also bubble through furious rawr and interupt the shadow nova if you're having issues with the mage doing it).

[Deleted]

I really have no idea about how tanks and healers are handling the situation but as for dps perspective i can say that in 25man mode, 1 tank tanks halfus, another tank tanks the storm drake, another tanks the time-warden and another tanks the scion.

First we kill the scion, then the storm drake, then the time-warden and then we go full dps on halfus while we have released the whelps and they are dieing from splash dmg but while we have him on farming we have many wipes because a tank died most of the time, so it needs a hell of healing, especially on the tanks.

[Cyclops]

First and foremost, respec your priest to disc, for smite heals and barriers. Your arcane mage to fire for impact spreading combustion off the start and your feral to boomkin, hunter should probably be surv as well.

After all that, have the tank with the best aoe threat (player dependant) start with the 3 on the right, 2 dragons and whelps, have your hunter MD the one on the far left (nether scion) to your other tank who should be tanking both that dragon and halfus.

Stack all adds and bosses/dragons in front of the whelps cage, rotate tank cooldowns as much as possible, if you get 2-3 drakes/whelps down, its game over pretty much, healers are going to be needing to spam. Basically, release all dragons/whelps off the bat except for slate (which you can leave chained the entire time) have your mage hitting halfus, get up a awesome combustion and impact spread it to everything, your shaman should focus shear halfus have all dps aoe down the adds till the whelps die, while your single target dps kills the time/whateverdragonyouwant.

we personally kill whelps>time>storm>nether. But it really doesnt matter about the kill order. Also, for 10m if your only using 2 tanks, a Hand of protection/bubble with a cancelaura macro to clear stacks is pretty much mandatory.

[Dragoncurry]

Hello Houbski,

Thank you for asking and posting your raid configuration. I believe I can help with a viable strategy used by our group to reliably down Heroicmode Hafus on the 10 player raid setting.

Our Configuration:

Paladin Tank (Odrade)
Warrior Tank

Resto Shaman
Holy Priest
Resto Druid

Mutilate Rogue
Retribution Paladin (Any Melee works, we have used Combat rogue/Fury Warrior or another ranged)
Marksman Hunter
Beast Mastery Hunter (Chimera Pet)
Fire Mage

As you can see, our raid config is extremely similar to yours and I sincerely believe your raid composition is fine as it is. Your mage should go fire, however.

Strategy:

The Paladin Tank starts off tanking both the whelps and the Storm Rider (the Storm Rider is misdirected to him).
The Warrior Tank starts off tanking Heroic Hafus and the Nether Scion (The Nether Scion is misdirected to him.) It must be noted that the warrior pulls Hafus from a distance so the tornado from the Nether Scion reaches Hafus before he strikes the tank with a flurry of attacks.

The tanks do not stack, to give our raid a clearer vision of the kill order. We kill the whelps with hard aoe and cast Heroism when the whelps are at approximately at 50%. When most of the whelps are down (a few up is okay), our rogue releases Time Warden, which is misdirected to the paladin tank. The kill order for us is Whelps, Storm, Nether Scion and Time Warden.

In order to handle the MS debuff, I (as a paladin tank) cast Hand of Protection on our warrior when he initially hits 8-9 stacks. He calls it out when he gets to 5, giving me time to cast the spell. He macros it off and continues tanking. Approximately when the Whelps go down, the warrior tank will be at about 5-6 Stacks again, at which point I taunt Hafus and begin tanking Hafus and a drake. At this point, the warrior tank will be tanking 1 drake and proceeds to taunt one off me. This means that one tank is always tanking Hafus and a drake, while the other tank is tanking 2 drakes. We maintain this balance until 4 drakes are defeated.

When Time Warden is released, the raid damage becomes very manageable, and we swap Hafus the second our debuff falls off. If, for some reason one tank gets a large amount of stacks, the other tank will stall by pulling everything but one dragon from the off tank. It should be noted that going above 10 stacks is not good and if that happens, your tanks need to be paying greater attention.

When all the drakes up are defeated, Slate Dragon is released and tanked near Hafus while all dps switch to Hafus. The tanks swap between Hafus and the Slate Dragon until the fight is over.

Healer Strategy:

Your healers are similar to ours. Our Resto Shaman heals the Debuffed Tank. This role could be easily substituted by your Holy Paladin. Your Priest can stay Holy, Disc is not necessary. Ours is holy. Your Resto Shaman can heal the raid. A critical note is that our resto shaman is responsible for interrupting via focus Shocks. He never missed a single Shadow Nova while healing a MS Debuffed Tank. If you require his spec, look up Maxisquid (Bloodscalp PVP US). He used telluric currents on Hafus to regenerate incredibly large amounts of mana.

Tank Strategy:

The Paladin tank initially Hand of Protections the Warrior tank at 8-9 Stacks and then taunts the next time the Warrior gets to 6 stacks. The formula is 1 tank tanks Hafus and a Drake while the other tanks 2 drakes. Maintain this balance and tanking should not be an issue. They will from this point switch every time the stacks clear. The Paladin Tank needs to use Divine Guardian before the first Furious Roar to help mitigate that damage. The Warrior tank can utilize a variety of tools against Hafus and can Intervene the Paladin Tank repeatedly, giving him a damage reduction for a large part of the fight.

DPS Strategy:

DPS hard without pulling agro. I notice that you have an enhancement shaman. He should be focus shocking Hafus if your healer is uncomfortable doing it, and never sit on Hafus. The Kill order is Whelps --> Storm Rider --> Nether Scion --> Time Warden --> Hafus.

Good luck. Let me know if you have any further questions.

[Deleted]

@ Dragoncurry: our setup really look very simular so your reply is super usefull.
we are going to try it tonight just like you explained above, got really high hopes now. ill keep you updated

[takolin]

Step 1: tell the fury warrior to go tank.

Step 2: pull everything but the slate dragon.
Pala starts on Halfus, warrior tank takes time warden and the storm rider.
OS warrior takes the nether scion.
Whelps are tanked by everyone and released by the pala.

Step 3: keep the shaman on Halfus (or let him use a focus macro while dps'ing the kill targets if he's competent).

Step 4: Pop BL and nuke the time warden or the storm rider (either is fine) while the mages combusts the whelps, he really should spec fire for this fight. Druid should go moonkin and the hunter SV and they should AoE as well to burn them whelps.

Step 5: After the pala tank gets 8'ish stacks, he bubbles them off (with a cancelaura macro). After 5'ish stacks he should switch with the warrior who has the netherscion.

Step 6: 2nd tank should get a Hand of protection around 8 stacks as well and switch with the 3rd tank when he has 5ish stacks.

After that the whelps and the 1st kill target should be down and the 2nd one should be near dying as well.
Just keep up a tank switch rotation and start nuking halfus after the 3 drakes are down.


Just make sure the mage blinks after the 3rd roar to CS the nova and you got yourself a kill.

[Deleted]

make your rogue spec combat and switch to Halfus after first dragon dies, blade flurry and watch as he pulls tops dps and is almost 2X the next guy.

[Deleted]

make your rogue spec combat and switch to Halfus after first dragon dies, blade flurry and watch as he pulls tops dps and is almost 2X the next guy.

He dont have a rogue in his group

[Dragoncurry]

Just a fyi Houbski, we downed Heroic Hafus before Nef as well. So it's definitely possible. Gluck.

[Harradrane]

3 Tanks 3 heals strat makes this ez mode... also having a good amount of paladins enables you to set up a BoP (Hand of Protection) rotation which removes tank stacks. Make sure tanks have a cancelaura macro to get rid of the BoP as soon as it goes off.

You can also do 2 Tanks 4 Heals which helps but is not as effective as 3x3. If this is the case having a druid tank with lots of dodge helps the rng with the stacks. Hope this helps!

[Ratboy]

We use the strat takolin posted, with one addition. We have a Mage agro Halfus and run to the stairs then just before Halfus smacks the Mage in the face I taunt him and tank him. It helps to avoid the first few stacks of the debuff.

[Nume]

3 Tanks 3 heals strat makes this ez mode... also having a good amount of paladins enables you to set up a BoP (Hand of Protection) rotation which removes tank stacks. Make sure tanks have a cancelaura macro to get rid of the BoP as soon as it goes off.

You can also do 2 Tanks 4 Heals which helps but is not as effective as 3x3. If this is the case having a druid tank with lots of dodge helps the rng with the stacks. Hope this helps!

Agreed. If you have any way to have a 3rd tank, the fight becomes much simpler. I have killed it 4 times, with a pug, using 3 tank strategy.

[Astrobandaid]

we use three tanks and it makes it 1000000000000000000000000x easier on the healers

[Nume]

we use three tanks and it makes it 1000000000000000000000000x easier on the healers

Its 1000000000000000000000000x easier on the tanks too (ok maybe not that much but you get the idea) :P. I know its not that hard, but I've had tanks who simply cannot switch halfus at the right times if they have to tank more 1 mob at a time. This is why I make it easy on the tanks in my pugs. I have 1 tank grab storm/time/welps, and just hold those. The other 2 get 1 mob each, halfus and scion, and just switch those so they dont have to worry about the cluster by the other tank. This also makes it so healers never have to heal a ton of dmg on a tank who has a huge healing debuff, since the tank tanking most things has no debuff.