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Comment by 532648

We're currently on this encounter and i can say, that this one is fun to play - however, depending on the combinaton of drakes you get, this can get hard, especially if your group is not equipped in heroic 5-man gear.

The Time Warden drake is needed in order for your group to survive the fireballs from the behemoth, but, if you have the storm rider active, too, you will have to do this one first, as this makes interrupting the shadow nova possible.

I recommend three healers, we're doing this with 2 pallies and a druid atm, but we're in terrible gear.

Edit: typos.

Comment by 255292

Tried this dude for a while last night. We had the Time Warden, the Storm Rider, and the Emerald Whelplings active. From our experience the only way that was even slightly possible to heal (gear was mostly 346s,) was to activate both the Time Warden and the Storm Rider right off the bat, pop lust, and burn the Time Warden as fast as possible. We'll be heading back in a few hours and I'll let you know how it goes.

Comment by 313558

Just downed this guy on normal 10-man with the guild. A few important things to note:

When he's at 50% he will start using an ability called Furious Roar. The ability will first hit at around 50%, and then after each third Shadow Nova. (Furious Roar > Shadow Nova > Shadow Nova > Shadow Nova > Furious Roar > Shadow Nova and so on)

Furious Roar is a raid-wide ability which hits for around 10k and stuns you for 2 sec each knockdown. This knockback will happen 3 times each channel and is usually followed by a Shadow Nova which can be really difficult to interrupt as you are knocked down.

Another thing that might be important to note is that fire on the ground will still hit, and you might be stuck in the range of one while the knockbacks are channeling, but between each knockback you are able to jump and move really fast to get out of the target area of the fire.

One thing we did to interrupt the first Shadow Nova after Furious Roar was to have our mage blink out of the last knockback stun and counterspell him, as this might save the healers from burning uneccesary mana.

Good luck!

Comment by 731711

My guild just killed this beast tonight on 10 man normal mode. We had the Storm Drake and the Time Warden awake, which is arguably the hardest combination. Our strategy was to release the Storm Drake and the Time Warden at the exact same time and whomever is tanking Halfus tanks and releases the storm drake.

We DPSed the Time Warden first and then the Storm Drake and then released the emerald whelps.

After that, burn all of your offensive cooldowns and destroy Halfus before enrage. You have to interrupt Shadow Nova or else the aoe damage is overwhelming. If you have a shaman, the cooldown on winshear is faster than the time between Shadow Novas.

Something to note is that Halfus does not do his whirlwind on 10 man either, so you don't need to worry about that. If you have the storm drake, he will shadow nova immediately after his furious roars so be ready to interrupt following that.

A tip for any restoration shaman out there as well, the talent Telluric Currents works wonders on this fight because after a drake dies, Halfus takes an increased amount of damage, which means a lot of mana if you throw out a lightning bolt.

Hope this info helped, Good luck!

Comment by pezz

After a couple different attempts involving the Time Warden (slows down meteors such that they become avoidable), the Stone Rider (slows down shadow nova such that it becomes interruptable), and the whelps (cuts damage from the deep breath-style attack from the behemoth significantly), my guild found that going with the whelps and the rider worked best for us this evening.

Right off the bat I have to mention, referring to kawakazzi's comment:

A) There is no whirlwind. Check the abilities tab on this page. It's not there.

B) The negative effects he mentions associated with each dragon might well be there on heroic (in fact I've heard that they are) but they aren't on normal.

We pulled everything at once and had three tanks. The reason we decided to pull everything at once is that the drakes give their aid as soon as they're active, not once you kill them. Basically, the Deep Breath on the proto behemoth and the Shadow Nova were tearing us apart and wanted to not have them happen at all right from the start of the fight.

We lusted, burned the whelps, then burned the Rider. All of the healers (myself included) went oom, but we bounced back once only Halfus was up.

We tried killing the Time Warden a few times, but found it wasn't worth it. Every one of those dragons hits the tank hard, and as long as you stay spread out the meteors really aren't as bad. We simply couldn't dps down the two big drakes and the whelps while all that and the boss were being tanked before the healers completely ran out of mana and started losing tanks.

Furious howl... sucks. I'll edit this post if we find a way to not wipe on the second round of howls and nova.

Comment by balduvain

do u have to kill all 3 or can u just kill 2 or 1?

Comment by Rohendar

We just killed this yesterday on 10man. We had Slate, Storm and Scion. The healing debuff on the tanks because of Slate dragon made this fight really really really really hard. It stacks unbelievably quick.

We managed to beat this fight by releasing both Storm and Slate at the same time. Storm gives his benifit straight away by letting you interrupt the aoe nova. We had a melee focus target interrupt that.

All dps went on Slate from the start, bloodlust nuked it down. After that it began stunning the boss every so often, which really helped on the healing of this fight.

Now to get past the healing debuff, we had our pally tank start on the boss. He took the debuff to 15, bubbled it off and retaunted the boss back. By the second time it had stacked to 15, the slate dragon was dead. Our OT tanked the boss off our MT and the MT picked up the Storm Rider off the OT. They kept doing this switch at 15 stacks for the rest of the fight.

We dps'd down Storm and then went on boss. We didn't even bother releasing the Scion. It is not necessary to release and kill all 3 drakes. Just left Scion standing and killed the boss.

Comment by 607391

Appearently it is different dragons every week, and me and my guild was extremely unlucky and got both 100% attack speed and the Malevolent Strike. We had to taunt switch extremely fast, and sometimes before the Slate Dragon was active, the Main Tank had 12 stacks.
We used this tactic, though we only got Halfus to 98% and the dragon to 40%:
Offtank unlocked the Slate Dragon and tanked him until Maintank had reached 6-7 stacks. Offtank would then taunt halfus, and maintank would taunt Slate Dragon. Though we wiped quickly because the offtank was undergeared and the stacks was applied way too fast. Sometimes reaching 10stacks before Off Tanks taunt was ready.

Edit: Just realised that appearently it is the same for everyone, so we were not the only unlucky guild :)

Comment by 697659

Downed this tonight with the Whelp Pack, Storm Rider, and the Nether Scion drakes.

We tried a few different combinations, but we found the best to be to start with the Storm Rider and Whelp Pack first. Despite what everyone has said, the Whelp Pack easily does more damage than any of the other drakes. We would probably kill it first if AoE tanking was trivial, but we just started nuking the Storm Rider and then cleaned up the remaining HP of the Whelp Pack which was around 1/2 HP from incidental damage.

Our Ele shaman remained on Shadow Nova duty, and performed flawlessly. We kept the entire raid relatively grouped up with everything together for maximum DPS and AoE healing all fight. Other than that this entire fight is really just a race to burning the very first drake, whichever you choose. The rest of the fight is just "doing it right". I'm sure any combination might work (except obvious dangers like Shadow Nova), even all three at once as some have said before. Unfortunately we used two healers and two tanks, and this was easily already overwhelming enough.

Good luck.

Comment by Pilvinen

Downed this boss tonight with guildies. We had Nether, Storm and Slate.

We found out that best tactic against Halfus with these drakes was releasing Nether and Storm at the same time and dps Storm first and after that Nether.

I, as a mage, did use earlier mentioned blinking when Halfus was under 50% and started using his Furious Roar (Blink just before the last knockback). Was rather easy when we got the tactics right.

Comment by Eroth

For those who had any problems with a combo of:

The Nether Scion
The Slate Dragon
The Storm Rider
The Orphaned Emerald Whelps

with The Time Warden asleep (or inactive, dunno how to name that)

As the boss is doing Shadow Nova's with a 0.25sec cast time it is a must to pick up the The Storm Rider which increases the Shadow Nova's cast time to 1.5sec. It will be really easy interruptable now. We had our warrior on the boss with DK interrupting the Shadow Nova all the time.

The other dragon we picked with the guild was at the beginning The Slate Dragon. It was giving a stun to the boss, but after like 10-15 wipes with our guild we had really big problems with the Mortal Strike-effect spell. We decided to do one try with The Nether Scion which didn't allowed the boss having the 100% attack speed. That really helped with the Malevolent Strikes (Mortal Strikes for those who don't know). As the debuffs were stacking way slower we hadn't any problems with changing the tanks for the debuffs.

So.. We picked The Storm Rider and The Nether Scion. Used Time Warp and nuked the Nether dragon first, while the dragon was about to die the tank had around 15 debuffs - one of our palas used a Hand of Protection on the tank which disspelled the buff. The tank has retaunted it back. After that we killed the second dragon, MT was about to have again 15 debuffs so he switched with the OT. MT was now on the last percentes on the dragon and OT was on Halfus. After gettin 15 debuffs second paladin used again Hand of Protection on the OT (which was not needed to be honest because the debuffs on MT were already gone and he could easly taunt it).

The 50% phase till 0% was a tank and spank (if there were of course interrupts on the Shadow Nova).

So that was a first try, and first kill with a combination of The Nether Scion and The Storm Rider

For those who are intrested we used in our 10man raid:

Tanks:
*Feral Druid
*DK

Melee DPS:
*Arms Warrior
*Assassination Rogue
*Retribution Paladin

Caster DPS:
*Destruction Warlock
*Frost Mage

Healers:
*Holy Paladin
*Restoration Druid
*Holy Priest

Comment by 102101

None of the drake abilities mentioned in these comments is accurate, though some have come close. I've downed him twice, and done a little research by checking the NPC abilities, and I think this is at least closer:

Slate Dragon:
Gives Halfus the "Maleficent Strikes" ability. Stacking mortal strike debuff, forces a tank swap, recommended at 6-8 stacks.
Releasing Slate Dragon causes the BOSS (not the raid) to be stunned for 15 seconds periodically.

Nether Scion:
Gives Halfus the "Frenzy" ability. Increases attack speed by 100%.
Releasing Nether Scion reduces the BOSS: Chance to hit, attack speed, and damage done by 25%.

Time Warden:
Activates the proto-behemoth's "Fireball Barrage" ability. This spell is what it sounds: a literal barrage of fireballs.
Releasing the Time Warden slows down the fireballs, making them easier to dodge, as well as placing a red fire circle on the ground showing where each fireball will land (it looks a little like Hellfire).

Storm Rider:
Activates Halfus' "Shadow Nova" spell (needs to be interrupted)
Releasing the Storm Rider reduces the cast time of Shadow Nova by 100%, making it possible to interrupt.

Orphaned Emerald Whelps:
Activates the Proto-behemoth's "Scorching Breath" ability (causes lots of raid damage, needs to be healed)
Releasing the whelps reduces the damage dealt to the raid by the Proto-behemoth (might also reduce boss damage, unsure)

Comment by 742341

Just tried this boss today, we got Nether Slate and whelps. How in gods name are we supposed to mitigate the tank damage? It was ridiculous. Maintank was getting hit for about 20k/second, offtank was getting hit for about 15k/second, PLUS the healing debuff. I don't know if we just had horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE, luck getting the healing debuff AND the attack speed increase at the same time, but that ^&*! was ridiculous. Any help?
(Raid comp was Discpriest Holypally Restodruid BloodDK Tankadin Furywar Rogue Rogue Elesham and Lock) Everyone was over 10k DPS, and heals were above 10k HPS most of the time. Help...

Comment by maayaa

Halfus Wyrmbreaker

Normal Mode

10 Man

DK Tank / Pally Off-Tank

1 Holy Priest, 1 Disc Priest, 1 Holy Paladin

1 Arcane Mage, 1 Survival Hunter, 1 Shadow Priest, 1 Unholy DK, 1 Warlock (don't remmeber spec)

We pulled the Slate Drake and Nether Scion Drake and Whelps

Slate Drake gave him the mortal strike debuff, which was 8 percent less healing done, stacks with each hit, and takes 30 seconds for the debuff to drop off

Nether Scion boosted his attack speed by 100%

What finally worked for us, immediately pop Nether Scion and the Whelps, we used our Mage for his Hero ability, Off-Tank picks up both the Scion Drake and the Whelps, DK picked up Boss

@ 10 Stacks, Off-Tank taunts the Boss while the DK Tank pulled the Scion Drake. DK pops CD's, waits 30 seconds, and pulls back the Boss. By this time whelps are dead, and Scion Drake almost dead. When Scion Drake dies, everyone sticks to boss.

We never released the Slate Drake. We continued to have each take bounce back and forth every approximately ~35 seconds, to allow the debuff to wear off after too many stacks. Approximately 10 stacks is magic amount, and tanks need to switch every 9 or 10 stacks.

We attempted to do this and release seperately the Scion and then the Whelps, but at 13 percent (we had lost our mage @ 50 percent on Halfus) his enrage timer kicked in and he wiped us. The key for us was popping Hero at the beginning and burning those whelps down immediately while controlling the Boss and Drake

You have to bounce the Boss and Drake when you have 'Slate Drake' in play because of the debuff.

Somewhere around 50 percent, I can't remember, he started doing some AoE roar in 3 bursts. Not too painful, but very annoying. Hits everyone in the raid. He continued to do this every so often until he died.

Debuff is 30 seconds for Malevolent Strikes to fade.

Good luck with this combo, hope you got Hero or Time Warp.

By the end, our top DPS'er was the Unholy DK with 29.5k DPS.

Comment by mykkenny

Hmm, just posted a comment but it vanished, weird.

Is the active/drake damage debuff on the boss additive or multiplicative? ie does it stack to give a total of 250% damage on the boss, or multiply with existing stacks (100% * 1.5 * 1.5 * 1.5) to give 337% damage?

Comment by GraveDiggerX

Strategy Guide:

Below, I have written a guide on the abilities and how we defeated this boss.

Our group:

Tanks - | Paladin | Druid |
Healers - | Paladin | Shaman | Druid |
DPS - | Death Knight | Hunter | Rogue | SPriest | Mage |

General Boss Information:

This boss is a tank and spank. The challenge comes from the 3 “drakes” in the encounter.
There are a total of 5 possible choices of drakes and only 3 will be available each week. (More on them below)
Each drake has a passive buff that it applies to Halfus throughout the duration of the fight, no matter whether it is active, inactive, or dead.
Once released, each drake will apply a debuff that will last for the remaining duration of the fight.
There is also a Proto-Behemoth flying off to the side. This cannot be killed and will remain throughout the fight. His whole purpose is to do constant raid damage.
Should you decide to take down any of the 3 drakes for the week, Halfus will gain Dragon's Vengeance and take increased damage, stacking for each one that is released.

Boss Abilities:

Slate Dragon: (Confirmed)
Passive – Gives Halfus his Malevolent Strike ability. This is a mortal strike debuff that reduces effectiveness of healing by 8% and stacks. It has a 30 second duration.
Active – Once released, the dragon will cast Stone Touch which stuns Halfus and NOT the raid for 12 seconds periodically.

Nether Scion: (Confirmed)
Passive - Gives Halfus his Frenzy ability which increases attack speed by 100%.
Active – Once released, the dragon will activate Nether Blindness which reduces Halfus’ chance to hit, attack speed, and damage done by 25%.

Time Warden: (Confirmed)
Passive - Buffs the Proto-Behemoth with Dancing Flames which allows him to cast his Fireball Barrage ability which needs to be moved out of.
Active – Once released, the dragon will activate Time Dilation which slows the speed of time which increases the time to avoid the fireballs.

Storm Rider: (Confirmed)
Passive - Buffs Halfus with Shadow Wrapped which allows him to cast his Shadow Nova ability which needs to be interrupted.
Active – Once released, the dragon will cast Cyclone Winds which increases the cast time of Shadow Nova by 500%. Up from .25 seconds to 1.5 seconds.

Orphaned Emerald Whelps: (Confirmed)
Passive - Buffs the Proto-behemoth with Superheated Breath his Scorching Breath ability which hits the raid for ~9k damage every second for 10 seconds.
Active – Once released, the whelps will cast Atrophic Poison reduces all damage taken by raid members by ~6000 since there are 8 of them.

Our Strategy:

Slate + Scion + Whelps:
When we engaged, engage both dragons. We blew Bloodlust on the start and tried to get the Slate down ASAP.
Once he was dead, have the MT free the whelps in order to reduce raid damage. Otherwise your healers will be OOM very fast. Burn the second drake. BoP the MS debuff off of the MT and keep tank targets until Scion is dead.
Once both dragons are dead... everyone go on the boss. Have the whelps tanked close to the boss and just have incidental damage kill them (They don't hit hard). Have the tanks taunt each time Halfus gets stunned to drop the debuff, and BOOM you have your kill.

Slate + Storm + Whelps
When we engaged, we released the whelps with the MT and had the OT tank Storm.
You MUST release Storm in order to interrupt the Shadow Nova.
AoE down the whelps and then get on Storm. Top everyone off after this and continue however you want to.
We released Slate in order to get the stun. It gives a lot of extra time to compose yourselves/lose the debuff when he's released. Kill it.
Burn the boss.

I wish you the best of luck, and feel free to critique my post and ask any questions.

Please uprate if this helped at all!

A link to our video on YouTube is here so you can see how it's done. Please rate and subscribe to see our upcoming videos!

And here is a link to our HEROIC KILL of this fight. I have also added a heroic addendum below, be sure to check it out and uprate!

~Wrex | Pseudonym | Executus-US

EDIT - Minor information corrections. Thanks bluering47 and Phydeaux.

Comment by homer115

how much dps do u need to down him in time of enrage?

Comment by poalgola

In our attepmts today the Bop strategy works fine to remove the healing debuff.

Edit: Grammar

Comment by BiggieSmlls

The drakes are taunted by Army of the Dead, so if you're having damage issues, just have a Death Knight pop Army of the Dead. I'm not sure if the whelps get taunted, but I'm pretty positive it would make sense that they get taunted as well.

Comment by rzzr

Scion and Time Warden

2 tanks, 3 healers, 5 dps

We pulled both at the start to get the benefits as raid damage is severe without pulling Time Warden and tank damage is severe if you don't pull the Scion! If you have a hunter I would probably release both at the same time and md the Warden to the Off tank. We popped Bloodlust at start and burned down Scion first, once he was dead the MT then released the whelps and the raid killed the Warden. Once both dragons dead we then killed the whelps to get the 50% damage increase.
Think it is worth doing Bloodlust at start because once these 2 dragons were released the OT is taking much more damage than the MT and you will need 2 healers on him. Also if you leave Bloodlust to the last 30% he does an annoying stun once he gets below 50% which would possibly waste some of your Bloodlust time.
Was a close fight, we tried without killing the whelps and couldn't make the enrage timer. Even with the whelps dead he enraged but fortunately he goes around killing players individually so you can still take him down.

Comment by 259144

Building off DrakeWurrum's post, here's a breakdown with links/tooltips of Halfus/the Proto-Behemoth's every-week abilities as well as the drake-specific ones - puts everything in one place.

Halfus Wyrmbreaker:
° Below 50% health, will cast Furious Roar, a three stage raid-wide AOE/knockback stun.
° After six minutes, he will gain Berserk - your bread and butter enrage timer.

Proto-Behemoth:
° Casts Fireball on random players.

Each week in normal mode, you will have three of the five drakes/whelps active, and two will be debuffed with Unresponsive (drakes)/Unresponsive (whelps), meaning you don't have to worry about the abilities their presence empowers Halfus with that week, nor will you be able to release them. On heroic, all five drakes/whelps are available.
Whenever a drake/the whelps are released (not killed), Halfus is debuffed by Dragon's Vengeance, stacking to three times on normal and five times on heroic.

Halfus-affecting drakes:
Slate Dragon:
° When active, buffs Halfus with Malevolent Strikes, causing his attacks to stack Malevolent Strikes on the tank.
° When freed, debuffs Halfus with Stone Touch - this, alongside tank swaps, will let the healing debuff wear off.

Nether Scion
° When active, buffs Halfus with Frenzied Assault.
° When freed, debuffs Halfus with Nether Blindness, mitigating his attack speed buff.

Storm Rider
° When active, buffs Halfus with Shadow Wrapped , allowing him to cast Shadow Nova. Below 50% health, he will always cast a Shadow Nova after a Furious Roar.
° When freed, debuffs Halfus with Cyclone Winds, allowing interruption of Shadow Nova.

Proto-Behemoth-affecting drakes:

Time Warden
° When active, buffs the Proto-Behemoth with Dancing Flames, allowing it to cast Fireball Barrage.
° When freed, debuffs the Proto-Behemoth with Time Dilation, allowing Fireball Barrage to be dodged.

Orphaned Emerald Whelps
° When active, buffs the Proto-Behemoth with Superheated Breath, allowing it to cast Scorching Breath, a raidwide AOE.
° When freed, debuffs the Proto-Behemoth with Atrophic Poison (stacking to 8 for a total of 6000 damage reduction on each cast), mitigating the damage done by both the Scorching Breath and the regular fireballs.

Comment by 391662

Quick question:
Do you get the bonus from Dragon's Vengenance from merely releasing a dragon, or do you have to kill its? I know the link says its when they are released but I've read contradicting reports of this and wanted a confirmation from someone that has checked while fighting. Deciding whether to kill, OT or leave Slate alone withe Slate/Nether/Time combo.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Comment by 310125

Heroic 25-Player Difficulty Strategy
All of the drakes are active in heroic difficulty. Halfus' HP is also 184.7M

Setup recommendation: FIVE tanks (best geared tank drakes & whelps, worst two alternate between Halfus and the Nether Scion); 2-5 fire mages + warlocks; 2-3 disc priests

On the pull, the Nether Scion, Time Warden, Orphaned Emerald Whelps, and Storm Rider should be activated by separate people immediately. (either the tanks or misdirects) This will grant an immediate 200% damage increase to Halfus as well as trivialize every mechanic that makes this encounter deadly. Your better tanks should be holding onto the drakes with your worst two trading off between Halfus and the Nether Scion.

Because Halfus is taking 3x the damage, you can trivialize a lot of the tank healing by having your disc priests spec into Atonement and spam Smite on the boss. Your fire mages will be doing the most AoE damage with Living Bomb planted on the boss. It's the same with Warlocks and Seed of Corruption. The whelp pack should die from just these DoTs instead of requiring everyone to throw AoE down.

The Storm Rider should be the first to die, followed by the Time Warden. When the Storm Rider is nearly dead, you need to activate the to activate the final stack of damage taken by Halfus. You do not have time to kill another drake, and must rotate cooldowns to keep all your tanks alive after 50%. When the Slate Dragon is activated, Halfus will also be stunned periodically making tank damage and interrupting less of a hassle. Once two drakes and the whelps are down, you are only healing 3 tanks (Halfus, Nether Scion, Slate Dragon) instead of 5.

For interrupting Shadow Nova, you are inevitably going to get hit by one .5s cast at the start because of the time it takes for the Storm Rider to activate. Anyone who is not a main interrupt on the boss should anticipate this first one coming up and kick it. After that, your main interrupters should be focusing on the boss. It is either two rogues which alternate Kick or an enhancement shaman that has a short enough cooldown on Wind Shear. (The CD on Shadow Nova is about 7-8s) It is imperative that besides the first one absolutely no Shadow Novas go off. After Halfus hits 50%, he will start spamming Furious Roar. Your melee will not be able to interrupt the Shadow Nova in time and need assistance from the mages. Each cast is 1.5, and the resulting stun is 1.5s. When he casts the third stun, mages be ready to blink and spam Counterspell. If Halfus hits his enrage, you will not be able to interrupt Shadow Novas and must pop any vulnerabilities to squeeze in the remaining amount of time.

Comment by antiflag

This fight sucks when you have 3 drakes and no whelps. :(

What we're trying is to just leave the Slate Dragon untouched. Which kind of sucks as that healing debuff is killer.

I miss the whelp cages. :(

We ended up getting it all down once, but hit the enrage timer and the rogue evasion tanked us down to like 1mil health left. I really miss whelps for a quick aoe down, That extra 50% dmg on halfus would be nice. But we can't kill the 3 drakes in time for it to be better than leaving it up and only having the 100% dmg buff.

Comment by 756714

For those arms warriors out there, you can also BLADESTORM through his constant stuns, and be able to interrupt his shadow nova. I've tried it, and it's possible to do so, although you have to be on that cast time for the first stun.

Comment by ffcloud2000

Another good read

http://www.plusheal.com/viewtopic.php?p=82557&sid=727402ff43814c760a21b68d12f9ab2b#p82557

Key is understanding the drake abilities
Slate Dragon 4.1 million HP in 10 player
Stone Touch
Once you free the Slate Dragon, he will apply this debuff to Halfus, before the boss mind controls him.
Stone Touch stuns Halfus for 12 seconds, every 35 seconds. While it will not stop Halfus from using Malevolent Strikes, this debuff gives your tank healers time to patch up the debuffed tank, and also makes it easier for your tanks to swap duties safely. It will persist on Halfus even after the Slate Dragon is killed.

Nether Scion 4.1 million HP in 10 player
Nether Blindness
Once you free the Nether Scion, he will apply this debuff to Halfus, before the boss mind controls him.
Nether Blindness reduces Halfus’ chance to hit, melee attack speed, and damage done by 25%. It will persist on Halfus even after the Nether Scion is killed.

Orphaned Emerald Whelp pack 518k HP in 10 player (per Whelp)
Atrophic Poison
Once you free the Whelps, they will each apply a stack of this debuff to the Proto-Behemoth (for a total of 8 stacks), before the boss mind controls them.
Each stack of Atrophic Poison lessens all damage done by the Proto-Behemoth by 750. The debuff stack will persist on the Proto-Behemoth even after the Whelps are killed.

Storm Rider 4.1 million HP in 10 player
Cyclone Winds
Once you free the Storm Rider, he will apply this debuff to Halfus, before the boss mind controls him.
Cyclone Winds slows Halfus’ Shadow Nova cast drastically, making interruption possible. It will persist on Halfus even after the Storm Rider is killed.

Time Warden 4.1 million HP in 10 player
Time Dilation
Once you free the Time Warden, he will apply this debuff to the Proto-Behemoth, before the boss mind controls him.
Time Dilation slows the Proto-Behemoth’s Fireballs enough that players have time to react and move away from the areas targeted. The debuff will persist on the Proto-Behemoth even after the Time Warden is killed.

Comment by ttbloodlusttt

Hey! This post was extremely helpful to our group. First time we went in to 10 man BoT and downed Halfus within our 4 hour raid period with 30 mins to spare (had to clear trash a second time even). So thank you VERY MUCH! (NightLife guild on Nathrezim)

What I'd like to add is how we used this information:

Group make up:

Healers: Two Holy priests, resto shaman
Tanks: warrior, paladin
DPS: two rogues, mage, shaman, warrior (had to replace a mage with a rogue, so earlier we have 2 mages 1 rogue with similar results)

Drakes we got:
*Nether Scion
*Time Warden
*Slate Dragon

How we managed/raid layout:

We tried a few different things but I will skip right to the one that worked.
*First we had the paladin engage Halfus, he threw his shield and then ran back towards the stairs (avoiding the inital pull dmg as much as possible. Then picking Halfus up, turned him, and slowly kited Halfus back near where Halfus was initially standing)
*The warrior tank positioned before the pull by Slate Dragon and the dps warrior positioned before the pull near Nether Scion. On the pull they both 'activated' the drakes, the prot warrior picked both up at once. ( We did it like this because the Mortal Strike Halfus was putting on the paladin tank was TOO FAST w/o both oh these drakes active.)
*Shortly after the warrior tank got enough threat on the drakes we popped Bloodlust! The dps then BURNED hard Slate Dragon. When Slate died the warrior tank slowly kited backwards toward Time Warden (while the tank began kiting we had a rogue SPRINT over to Time Warden and activate it, the warrior tank taunted it and began tanking two drakes once again.) (Meanwhile dps burned Nether Scion)
*With Time Warden activated it was VERY easy to move out of Fire Barrage! When Scion died all dps burned Time Warden hard and switched to Halfus. From there on it is a VERY easy fight. There will be an emote that starts when Halfus hits 50% it says 'Halfus beings to Furiously Roar' (or something to that effect). Halfus then roars, a ring type animation will RING out from his body, aoe stunning the raid 3 times in a row. When tanks see this they should pop defensive cooldowns.
(*** If your paladin tank is timing cooldowns correctly he can bubble out of the stacks in coordination with his other cooldowns. HOWEVER, something that may work if you do not have a pally tank is when you only have the 3rd drake remaining have the tanks switch, so one tank can drop stacks and the other tank will take the boss in the mean time.)

Healing:
*It was VERY healing intensive while the off-tank (warrior tank in our case) was tanking the 2 adds. The paladin didn't get hit AS hard so we pretty much all watched the off tank. If he dies the group wipes typically. Both drakes were hitting him for over 20k a hit so it was spikey.
*Healers were vocal on vent, calling out cool downs. I myself playing one of the priests felt the coordination was so good that I was able to call for them to pick up heals while I used 'Potion of Concentration' (which i prefer because it returns a mass amt of mana and SHOULD be used if there is time and other healers can pick up w/o going oom)
*Both holy priests saved 'Guardian Spirit' for the off tank early on, since health was spiking so hard.
*With Bloodlust early on it seemed to work much better, but the group cut it closer to the enrage timer. That being said, once two drakes were dead and the OT was tanking Time Warden, the healing lightened significantly. The key is surviving until THAT point. When that last drake dies, you will be doing SO little healing that your mana will likely regen to full in the mean time.
*Even when the Halfus got to 50% and began to AoE stun, neither tank spiked hard enough to worry. All three healers began throw DoT's on the boss and helping the dps.

DPS:
- We had to continuously remind dps'ers to MOVE more frequently in the early stages. The Fire Barrage from the Behemoth Proto-drake seemed to be sporadic. The Behemoth seemed to sometimes FAN out the fire balls and other times concentrate them on one person. If the dps do not move, they can get killed pretty quickly thinking 'Oh its just one fireball' - don't do that.

Tanking:
*The tanks communicated A LOT! Communication between tanks is essential, so keep vent clear and free of panic.
*Cool downs ON THE PULL were essential! I personally told the off tank (whom i was focus healing on my holy priest - pop Shield Wall first, once shield wall ended (the Slate was nearly dead, he immediately popped LAST STAND and ENRAGED REGEN) After that he popped the minor cool downs frequently, but saved shield wall again for when he had to pick up the NEXT drake.
*The paladin tank coordinated his cool downs in such a way that he was able to bubble himself out of the stacks and keep the boss for the ENTIRE drake phase. Once the last drake died the tanks began taking turns tanking Halfus. They switched after every AoE stun regardless of stacks.

TIPS:
*Since we had two holy priests we kept Lightwell up AT ALL TIMES! Remind the dps and tanks during the fight to use it, it's a 6sec HoT and mine ticks for 6k+ a tick. I used it myself to save on heals since i always remember it's there.
*The elemental shaman helped on healing by dropping healing rain under the melee during the drake phase. But didn't do it enough to oom themselve.
*Keep vent clear, communicated cooldowns quickly. Ex. 'popping raid heal cooldown' 'shield wall in 10 seconds' things like that, keep it short.
*Don't give up! We had to clear trash again - no biggie! To say we downed it on our FIRST day in BoT is a testament of determination!
*KNOW YOUR COOLDOWNS! When the raid leader says CMON GUYS BURN HARD... DO IT! When the healer says oom, pick up their healing, drop mana tide... innervate! The drake phase it hard, healing intensive, and stress intensive.
*Make sure you read the description of what the drakes do. Our raid needed it repeated in about 4 different ways before everyone understood WHY we had to kill what drakes in what order, and which to have up at the same time.

Over all this boss was hard... :) for the first 8 wipes or so. Once our group found what worked for us, it became very easy. The last 4-5 attempts were a test of our limits. Getting as close as 600k to Halfus dying... wiping... then walking in to see trash! It's hard, but we didn't give up.

Thanks again for the details on the drakes, it helped us get an idea of what to do.

Comment by DrWaffles

Previously, guilds have relied on Free Action Potion or Living Action Potion to survive and heal the heroic Halfus encounter during the Furious Roars, However, now with an apparent Hotfix Blizzard has made level 85's unable to use both potions.

This hotfix happened around 2 days ago.

Comment by 59050

Dragons up: Storm Rider, Whelp Cage, Time Warden.
Raid composition:
Tanks: Blood DK, Prot Warrior.
Healers: Holy Pala, Holy Priest, Resto Druid
DDs (Damage Dealers): Surv Hunter, Fire Mage, Frost Mage, Demo Lock, Ele Shaman

On pull DK tanks Halfus, and we free Storm Rider (for the Shadow Nova to be interruptable) which is tanked by the Warrior.
The Elemental Shaman stays full time on Halfus and interrupts every Shadow Nova.
As soon as Storm Rider is freed and tankable we free the whelps and we stack all mobs (Halfus, Storm Rider and Whelps) in one spot with whelps mainly tanked by DK, Blow all DPS cooldowns and AoE them down.
As soon as whelps die Storm Rider should be at around 50% health and we kill it fast too.
When Storm Rider is at around 10% we free the Time Warded (tanked by warrior aswell) and kill that too.
After that Burn Halfus as he takes 150% increased damage we killed him with 40 seconds left on the enrage timer. Since we had 2 mages we used them to help on the interrupts in phase 2 as they blinked out of the 3rd stun from Furious Roar. The warrior tank (who was free for the rest of the fight) helped with taunts when DK got low on health.

DPS was 20k-23k for all except Elemental Shaman who was at the bottom with 6k because of the interrupts. Gear was around item level 348 (all 346 items from heroics and craftable 359 epics).

Comment by Chouki

Just wanted to comment on this post as well as add my own guild's experiences as to this specific combination.

We went in last night for the first time and got the Slate/Nether/Time combo, it took us three tries to down him (two if you don't count the first attempt when our holy pally had his tank set on...), but like many posts beforehand have stated, the trick is in figuring out which strat works; the actual execution for any of these different combos ends up being very simple for the most part. The above post was very helpful in giving us an idea of which drakes to release first so it definitely saved us a bit of time.

Our raid comp was:

Tanks: Warrior and Paladin

Healers: Druid, Holy Priest, Holy Pally

DPS: Hunter, Spriest, Ele Shaman, Destro Lock, Ret Pally

Everyone was pretty much in full 346 heroic/JP gear with a few epic exalted reputation pieces. This is important to note I think, as many guilds may be trying this boss in slightly less gear, which def will ramp up the difficulty level by quite a bit. In my guild's average ilvl gear, the fight ended up being extremely simple and while we ended up downing the boss with 5 sec left until enrage, the strat we ended up choosing was very straightforward and did not really rush in letting the drakes out.

As suggested by the post above with regards to this specific combo, we let out Slate and Nether right at the start, blew Bloodlust + CDs, and burned down Slate first, and then Nether. We had the prot warrior tanking the 2 drakes, and the prot pally tanking Halfus. After killing Slate and Nether, the prot war taunted Halfus off the pally and the pally released Time, who we then killed, then we killed Halfus last. This ended up taking us pretty much the full time limit, however I am sure we will have much more leeway next week.

Important notes:
Tanking Halfus - With both Nether and Slate released, the debuff on the tank will stack steadily, but not at a super fast rate. The important key here is to have the Halfus tank maximize distance from Halfus. On the initial pull, I would MD Halfus to the tank after releasing the drakes, and the tank would be standing way back by the door, giving us more time until Halfus reached him. Then every time the boss is stunned (due to releasing Slate), the tank would run to the opposite side of the platform, again maximizing time away from the boss. The stun time isn't usually enough to reset the debuff, so in our case, our prot paladin had to bubble once (while we were killing the second drake, Nether) in order to reset his debuffs, and then re-taunt Halfus. In guilds without a prot pally tank, the ideal thing would probably be to release both drakes at once, then have the 2 tanks swap Halfus and Nether once Slate is down. Once all 3 drakes are down, the tanks take very minimal damage, even during the AE stuns at <50%, the tanks were fine (and the boss does not cast Shadow Nova with this combo so you don't have to worry about interrupts)

DPS/Heals - Very straightforward here, only things to worry about are staying out of the fireball areas on the ground, they show up as a little hellfire graphic and do have splash damage so you spread out. Most important phase as has been noted is the initial stage of the fight, when you want to use all your cds to get Slate and Nether down as quickly as possible. The drake tank takes massive damage, so it is best to rotate through both healer and tank cooldowns until the first drake is dead.

All in all, a fairly simple fight to execute, does require a fairly decent level of gear across the board to get it done easily, but any guilds who want to be getting into raids should have farmed heroics for a bit anyways. Good luck and hope this helps a bit.

Comment by FaithLightbringr

Really disliking the random factor of which drake is up.

Comment by Olehenrich

I have not seen it mentioned whether or not the ability the drake gives the boss- for example: Time Warden present adds the fireball mechanic to the mix -ceases once that particular drake is killed. Or would the fireball mechanic be present right till the end of the fight even if the Time Warden were killed early on, etc?

Comment by 426853

My guild just had a difficult drake combo for this fight tonight, and I figured I'd post a brief strat explanation for everybody.

We had the storm rider, time warden, and slate dragon for our drakes, giving Halfus quite a nasty repertoire of abilities to use together (fire rain, mortal strike, and shadow damage AoE with knockback/interrupt). Instead of a multiple release strat, we released one at a time, starting with time warden, then moving to slate dragon, followed lastly by storm rider. This made it much easier to manage, as we ignored interrupts and nuked the first two drakes (thus freeing our rogues to dps drakes as opposed to staying with the boss).

By having time warden first, the fires are easily avoided with no damage, lightening the load on heals. Slate is second because the random stuns will greatly reduce both damage taken by tanks and the number of stacks applied of the mortal strike. Storm was our last because while annoying, his ability doesn't really help as much as the other two, and interrupting it is not necessary if your dps can properly burn the drakes without sacrificing dps to interrupt halfus. The drakes should die quickly, with tanks swapping at around 7 stacks of the healing reduce debuff. If a pally tanks, they can bubble/cancel to remove the debuff.

Nevertheless, with this strat we managed to push the boss at the right time while handling drakes seperately, as opposed to any from of a two-drake strat where it will be not only healing intensive but also PIVOTAL to interrupt every single knockback since your healers won't be able to handle the extra damage. You miss more than one with a two-drake, and you may very well end up with a dead tank or worse. Try it out, let me know what you think. Obviously standard "don't stand in fire" rules do apply.

Comment by Iroared

A disc priest with attonement can just smite halfus the whole fight and enjoy huge hps due to his increrased damage taken.

Comment by 354238

I wonder if the composition of drakes will remain the same for the duration of lockout for all the raid groups in a realm? I assume that's the case so raids do not disband and regroup with different leader. Can someone confirm this please?

Comment by 385472

When he does are your pets affected too? We are gonna try him Friday and if pets are actually immune my pet could handle the interupt

Comment by 177480

If you're having trouble getting the blink and counterspell in on time, I made a macro for it. So I just mash one button over and over as soon as 3rd roar gets cast. Think the first counterspell is enough, but just in case.
/castsequence reset=5/target/combat Blink, Counterspell, Counterspell, Counterspell, Counterspell, Counterspell, Counterspell, Counterspell, Counterspell

Comment by 456402

We pugged this guy with a group from trade channel on Stormreaver EU in 10-man.

We got the combo Nether Scion + Slate Dragon + Whelps. Tactic used was releasing Nether Scion + Whelps at the start, killing whelps and then Nether Scion and after that we nuked boss, ignoring Slate completely. Got him on the third try with 10 sec left on the berserk timer.

First stack of malevolent strikes we removed with pala bubble and after that we swapped tanks for the rest of the fight.

Comment by bouchy73

has anyone tried using Empty Poison Vial or Curse of Tongues to slow the cast time of shadow nova? if it would be maintained then you could interupt the shadownova everytime right after the furious roar.

Comment by 768984

Killed this tonight with Storm Rider, Nether Scion, and Time Warden active. We released storm/time right away killing the storm drake first then time warden and then moved on to Halfus. Worked well although interupting the shadow nova during roar was interesting with only 2 paladins to do it but we managed to get it.

We tried releasing only one at first but with both Storm and Time drakes active it is a ton of raid damage and was much easier on the healers to release both.

Comment by Tularai

If the Nether Scion is killed, does it remove the Frenzied Assault debuff from Halfus?
I'd just like to have some clarification on this point as I've read it differently in a few places.

Comment by 774905

Actually Dragon's Vengeance is applied to Halfus 1 stack for each dragon that has been released. Killing the drakes does nothing. Except they stop attacking your tanks.

Comment by Halloseve

Raid difficulty: 25-man Heroic

Main Problems

No Prot. paladin, a 25% raid-wall means a lot on Furious Roar phases.
Too many Attonement priests; we had 4, normal strats suggest 2-3; you're going to be hurting if you bring any more than 2-3, because the healing style is incredible bursty, unsustainable, and random.
The randomness comes from both avoidable and unavoidable raid damage; during breath phases, Attonement is going to be forced to heal raid targets, but also when players get hit by flame circles.
Because most healing is Attonement-based, any raid damage directly decreases effective tank healing, and will cause tank deaths: All the more reason to avoid flame circles.
Our main issue was the Furious Roar phases, we used the cookie-cutter TankSpot strat, and as so, left the Slate and Nether up, so tanks were taking the pretty high Roar damage as well as unmitigated add/boss damage. Cooldowns are most important here.
On our kill attempt, we BoP'd our highest Attonement-HPS priest (usually the one with the most shadow gear) during the second Phase, left tank cooldowns to deal with the first, and Divine Guardian dealt with the third and last.

Hope this helps!

Comment by 362218

Our group had a lot of trouble with the fight when we faced down Halfus + Slate, Nether, Storm.

We tried the above strategies to release slate and storm at the same time to allow for the 12 second stun along with being able to interrupt the Shadow Nova.

Our setup:

Tank:
Warrior + Druid

Melee DPS:
Retribution Paladin, Unholy Death Knight

Ranged DPS:
Affliction Warlock, Fire Mage, Elemental Shaman (Interrupting)

Healers:
Discipline Priest, Holy Paladin, Restoration Shaman

We had our druid pull the boss to where the whelp cage is while our warrior tank activated the storm dragon and our mage activated the slate dragon then blinked over. We had the warrior tank both dragons in the center while the druid repositioned the boss near them (for aoe friendly incidental damage), however our tanks had to keep swapping due to the debuff stacking and the transitions were messy.

Instead, we decided to do everything exactly the same, only pull out the nether drake and the storm drake (instead of slate and storm). What we figured was that by replacing a possible proc 12 second stun with a constant 25 % reduced damage, attack speed, and hit chance, we would allow for far easier tanking.

This worked like a charm. Although it did make the fight rather RNG based for some things, as our tank might hit 15 stacks in 20 seconds or might have it fall off after only 8 stacks before starting to stack again, it made the damage much more manageable.

Our ranged dps stood near the sleeping time warden and started on Halfus, giving our warrior OT the time to position both drakes in the center. We ended up killing storm first, since it was closer, under bloodlust. Our paladin would hand of protection the druid as soon as she hit 12 stacks of the debuff, which she would click off and taunt. This caused the boss to run for our elemental shaman that was interrupting, who standing at 20ish yards, was easily able to not get hit (even still, the boss only hit for 25kish on mail, so not a big deal for a single swing) before the boss was taunted again. By the time the second drake was down we were ready for a tank swap. At best, this would have meant without a paladin to hand of protection, we would have needed 1 tank swap when the first drake was dead, and another when the second was dead. We feel that this was far easier than possibly two or three tank swaps due to stacking debuffs.

Once the two drakes were down, our mage let out the third drake while the tank who was on Halfus picked it up. Our warrior tank, who had been tanking drakes until now, took the boss. Again they were positioned on top of each other for easier incidental damage splash. Once the last drake was down, we pushed Halfus into phase 2 and went from there. We had our mage blink when the boss stunned everyone on the last stun so that he could interrupt the shadow nova, and just swapped out the tanks every 6 stacks, rather than 15 which was mentioned earlier. Our shaman stayed on full time interrupt duty. It was quite easy as it appears that the boss only casts shadow nova 6 seconds(ish) after it's interrupted, making for very easy counters every single time.

Hope this alternate method helps.

Comment by Mizetto

: : Tankspot's : :
Raid video on Boss #1 (Halfus Wyrmbreaker) within The Bastion of Twilight.
Link: http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.php?72579-Halfus-Wyrmbreaker

Comment by Ketris

The spawn cycle for the drakes has been figured out over at MMO-Champion. Now you can know what's going to be waiting for you before you even start the fight.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2168-Halfus-Wyrmbreaker-spawn-cycle-Al-akir-25-HC-Video-The-Daily-Blink

Comment by 489789

I didn't see this mentioned yet, apologies if it's been discussed already:

The Malevolent Strikes stack will not increase if Halfus misses a melee swing, or if the Halfus tank dodges/parries the attack. Only hits (including blocked hits) will grow the stack.

Comment by 141498

http://www.halfus.info/ can quickly show you which drakes will be coming up and their abilities.

Comment by gadeschaos

Is the first furious roar interruptable? We were arguing about this in the guild this evening

Comment by 18154

Anyway, point is, you need to have somebody with an interrupt with a cooldown as short as or only very slightly longer than the duration of the interrupt, or use two interrupters for the job. It really isn't fair - once again, it makes having certain specs or classes a much larger benefit, which is what Blizzard said they didn't want to do.

Actually the game for a long time meant that you should try to diversify your group makeup. Not just OP hunters, DKs and Palis. Now you may think twice about having a lock, mage, priest, rogue even if no one appears to be rolling these classes as much. The game is more challenging which is better than WotLK Welfare loot situation. Now you have to put a bit more thought into a raid which is why its a raid.

I would suggest giving the run a bit more thought prior to start and not just try to pug anyone with a gearscore to pummel it. I personally like the new level of difficulty and respect having to wear my new epix even more.

Comment by DELDijkstra

Regarding Nether Scion and the buff and debuff he puts on Halfus:

Bear with me here, this all has a point.

Attack speed modifiers are applied multiplicatively according to the formula Attack_speed = "current attack speed" / (("Percent increase or decrease" / 100) + 1 )

If X is Halfus's base attack speed, with his 100% buff, his swing speed will be

X / ( (100 / 100) + 1) = X / 2

With the 20% attack speed reduction debuff from the tank, his swing speed will be

(X / 2) /( ( -20 / 100 ) + 1) = (X / 2) / ( 4 / 5 ) = 5X / (2 * 4 ) = 5X/8

Then, with the 25% attack speed reduction debuff from the drake, his swing speed will end up being

( 5X / 8 ) / ( -25 / 100) + 1) = ( 5X / 8 ) / (3 / 4) = 20X / 24 = 5X / 6

With just the 20% attack speed reduction from the tank, we'd have him swinging at 5X/4 seconds between attacks

This means that Halfus attacks (5X/4 ) / (5x / 6) = (1 / 4) / (1 / 6) = 1.5 times as many times while under the effects of both Frenzied Assault and Nether Blindness as he does when the Nether Scion is not available, and thus presumably does 150% of his normal damage.

Damage reduction is applied multiplicatively , so a 25% reduction in that value will result in a value of 112.5% of the boss's normal damage.

By now you may be thinking that this looks like an odd value, because we still have another debuff effect to consider. 25% miss. The combat hit table is, to put things simply, additive in nature. Assuming a base 5% chance to miss and 20% avoidance from dodge + parry (Chosen more to make the math simpler than for any hope for relevancy) . Ignoring block and crushing blows (Both a major factor, though crushes will be pushed off the table first), we can see that the tank will receive 75% of the attacks Halfus sent at him. After the debuff, however, the tank will have a 30% chance to be missed and retain the 20% avoidance, additively giving him 50% total chance to avoid an attack from Halfus. This means the tank will take 2/3rds as much damage as he would have normally, meaning after all things are considered, Halfus does

112.5% * 2/3 = 75%

of the damage he would have done if Nether Scion were not available that week. If we assume a vastly overgeared tank with 45% avoidance from dodge and parry, he'll end up with a 75% total chance to avoid an attack from Halfus, making him take

112.5% * 1/2 = 56.25%

of the damage he would have taken if Nether Scion were not available that week.

And this does not take into consideration tanks with blocks, who will push crushing blows and hits off the table more easily with this 25% miss increase.

Thus we can see that Halfus will do considerably LESS tank damage on weeks when he has the Nether Scion. Provided you release the Scion, of course.

Comment by sean13128

As a tip, Pull him straight onto the stormrider off the bat, the missile time of Stormriders ability will be 0 and you can get the first interrupt off easy. 50k damage and a knock back prevented.

Comment by 361803

One thing a warlock can do is put your Demonic Circle at the corner of the door outside of Halfus' room. So in case your groups about to wipe, you can grab aggro, run within range of the circle and port. But, that doesn't reset Halfus, so keep running until he turns around and runs back. It will save you and maybe others if your fast on the pickup.

Note, you might die while running, so this isn't foolproof, and also don't use it every time something goes wrong, check if the raid can down Halfus, even without certain people, if it looks like you can down him, down him, use this with restraint.

Comment by jchamp87

Any other feral druids (cat) besides me have problems feral charging the drakes during this fight?

Comment by Sevok

Strategy: Heroic 10-man

Our Raidcomposition

2x Prot-Pala
1x Blood-DK
Survival-Hunter
Fire-Mage
Demo-Warlock (me)
Disc-Priest
Resto-Shaman
Holy-Pally
Muti-Rogue

(we tried it with only 2 tanks and one of the pallys playing retri, but it did not work out, tank damage was too high)

We activated right from the beginning:
Storm
Nether
Whelps

Everything was pulled together, and whelps where aoe'd down as fast as possible. I had somewhere around 120k+ dps on recount in that phase, along with the mage, that was ridiculous.

Then we freed Time-Warden.

All of the Drakes where then focused down, the order does not really matter i think, as the debuffs gets applied as soon as they where released.

Essential in P2 was our mage, which interrupted the shadow-novas with blink/counterspell.

We had no problems with the enrage at all in our kill.

hope this helps other 10 man guilds ...

and to blizzard: 10 man is harder for less gear ... good job guys

Comment by 764410

10 man tactic

On 10 man heroic, the boss has around 51 million hp, and each drake as around 5.1 million (with the exception of the whelps, who have around 900k each).

Set up:
A variety of raid set ups can work for this fight. This fight can easily be done with four DPSers, so you can afford to take 3 tanks and 3 healers (as we did) or 2 tanks and 4 healers. An extra dps could work just as well.

We didn't use a discipline priest. We had a holy paladin, a resto shaman and a holy priest, with a little bit of extra healing from our shadow priest.

The Pull:
On the pull you should activate Time Warden, Nether Scion, Storm Rider and the Whelps. You will leave Slate Dragon chained for the ENTIRE fight.

Tanking: We found this fight much easier with 3 tanks, as one tank could take two drakes and the whelps, and the other two could switch Halfus and a drake (in our case Nether Scion) between them. It doesn't matter which drake you have switched between your tanks, as they all hit for roughly the same.

We found that a warrior tank was best on the two drakes and whelps, as a warrior tank can kill all the whelps with his own AoE abilities, allowing your whole raid to single target down the drakes.

As for the two Halfus/Nether tanks, they should switch at around 8 stacks of the debuff, or whenever the debuffs goes off the respective tank.

Kill order:
We had three of our four dps kill Storm Rider first (see below), then burn down Nether Scion. We used Bloodlust reasonably early - when Storm was on about 80% - as it benefitted not only the dps but the healers as well. After Nether Scion dies, your warrior tank should have killed all of the whelps, and you can have him off tank Time Warden whilst your two other tanks rotate Halfus between them for the rest of the fight. Alternatively, you could rotate Halfus between all three to reduce the stacks each one takes - it really shouldn't matter at this point, healing is very easy from here on.

IMPORTANT: Leave 1 melee dps on Halfus at all times. This is to interupt the shadow nova.

Note: We had our warrior take Halfus when his CDs were up before furious roars, just to ease healing slightly. It wasn't strictly necessary.

Once the first two drakes and whelps are down, this fight becomes very easy. Healers simply need to keep the raid at as full health as possible before the furious roar. It's handy to have a mage to interupt the shadow nova after furious roar, but not necessary. Nobody will die from one tick of the shadow nova, so long as your tanks are topped up you can not worry about breaking the stun. We did use our paladin bubbles to do so, but shadow nova doesn't hit that hard.

Good luck and have fun!

Comment by 30218

As or 4.0.6, the Shadow Nova cooldown has been changed so that you only need one person interupting now. You do not need two people taking every other.

Comment by 84600

I am surprised this hasn't been brought to light prior to this.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/841742-Theory-Halfus-is-not-Random
MMO Champion user Simca (NOT ME) did this amazing job of figuring out the rotation of the non-heroic adds for this fight.

Summing it up:

US:
Storm Rider, Time Warden, Whelps
Nether Scion, Storm Rider, Whelps
Nether Scion, Slate Dragon, Whelps
Slate Dragon, Storm Rider, Whelps
Nether Scion, Slate Dragon, Time Warden
Slate Dragon, Storm Rider, Time Warden
Nether Scion, Storm Rider, Time Warden
Nether Scion, Storm Rider, Slate Dragon

EU/KR/TW Drakes by Week
Nether Scion, Storm Rider, Time Warden
Nether Scion, Slate Dragon, Storm Rider
Slate Dragon, Time Warden, Whelps
Nether Scion, Time Warden, Whelps
Storm Rider, Time Warden, Whelps
Nether Scion, Storm Rider, Whelps
Nether Scion, Slate Dragon, Whelps
Slate Dragon, Storm Rider, Whelps

Once you know where you are in the cycle, you will know what to expect and can figure out raid comp from there.

I HIGHLY suggest you follow the link above and see the original post, Simca did a great job figuring it out.

Comment by 795589

I have few questions about this encounter. I'll do 25 man normal with my guild this evening and I dont know almost anything about it.
First of all, in this week we'll get Nether Scion, Storm Rider and Slate Dragon. I know about debuff which reduces healing, so I'll need to swap with the other tank, and Shadow Nova, which has to be interrupted. But, for example, if Slate Dragon dies, will boss lose the ability to debuff us with reducing healing? And what is priotity of freeing the dragons, who should do it and when? Also, when I'm not tanking Halfus at the moment, the only thing I'm doing is tanking the rest of the drakes which are freed? Plase answer me, this is so important to me.

Comment by StormGarrus

This is how we have handled Heroic Halfus 25-man:

We completed the fight (post nerf) with 3 tanks, 7 healers and 15 DPS.
Released at the beginning: Whelps, Time Warden, Nether Scion & Storm Rider. Never released the Slate Dragons.

Tank #1 - Warrior - picking up both Whelps & Time Warden close to the whelp cage. AOE classes (Fire Mages, Demo Locks, Surv Hunters) on Whelps; rest on Time Warden. Both went down at roughly the same time.

Tank #2 - DK - picking up Storm Rider from the beginning and tanking him in the whelps, to take damage from AOE. Third drake to go down (after Whelps/Time Warden). That tank taunts Halfus from Tank #3 when he reaches 8 stacks of Malevolent Strikes.

Tank #3 - Paladin - picking up Nether Scion from the beginning and tanking him near the bottom of the stairs, last drake to go down after Storm Rider. He's far from Tank #2 to reduce the amount of stacks taken, since the boss has to walk up to his target.

Once all drakes are dead, it's pretty much win, unless you reach berserk timer like we did on our first kill, but we had a couple DPS down early :)

I've attached a video of our kill: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VrJ72_cKKo

Comment by 788158

Everything I have read about this fight states that the Proto-Behemoth only gets the capability to use Fireball Barrage if the Time Warden is active. However, we recently took down Halfus with Nether Scion, Storm Rider, and the Whelps active yet we were still taking damage from Fireball Barrage. You can find complete logs of our fight here: Our kill of Halfus on World of Logs.

Has anyone else run into this before? If the Proto-Behemoth can cast fireballs regardless of whether or not the Time Warden is active, what does having the Time Warden active do?

Comment by 762231

10-man Normal Storm Rider - Nether Scion - Whelps

I wanted to make a post since I feel our Guild had to do some unique things to get Halfus down for this last week that might help others get past their struggles. .

Group Composition(That completed it): DK+Warrior Tank, Four healers(You heard me) - 2xPriest 1xDruid 1x Pally, then for DPS we had 1 Hunter, 1 Lock, and 2 Warriors. That means no Time/Bloodlust cooldowns, which I'm sure did not help.

Average equipment item level was between 346-352(Gearscores 8600-9000).

One issue I wanna point on below as videos seemed to explain otherwise.

Halfus + Scion - When we tried to have a tank deal with Storm Rider + Whelps(DPS and kill the whelps first), our tank(no matter which we used) could not stay up too long with just 1 healer on the Scion-boosted Halfus. I would argue this was not a bad-tank issue, feel free to disagree. It wasnt that healer mana couldnt keep up necessarily, but the spike damage from Halfus was to the extreme considering aviodance RNG and his attack speed + Damage with Scion.

What finally worked for us:

I only saw 4-healers recommended as a possibility once, but it made a huge difference and allowed us to switch strategies a bit.

Unlike the youtube vids recommending whelps first, we did the following.

DK tank on Halfus, pretty much interupting on every mind freeze cooldown without backup interupt.

Warrior Tank activated and tanked Storm Rider.

Hunter Activated Scion, misdirected to Warrior Tank whom eventually tanked both drakes.

1 Healer was on the DK who can handle the non-Scion halfus easily(Healer began healing raid mid-fight).

2 Healers were assigned to keeping the Warrior tank alive from the 2 drakes + Whelp-boosted AOE.

4th Healer was assigned to raid-healing as the whelps were caged.

It was slow as we only had 4 DPS, but we released the whelps after BOTH dragons had died (which was coincidently when the raid-healer ran out of mana), at this point there was very little damage left in the fight!

Now, obviously the problem with 4 Healers is lack of DPS, and the boss has an enrage timer.

After the whelps were down, just DPS-burned the boss. We were only able to interupt 1/3 post-furious roar shadow novas, but we were able to easily heal through the ones we missed. We were highly worried about the enrage timer, but managed to kill him with 30 seconds to burn.

So yea, that was fun ;)

Comment by 798023

Just wondering, what are the hardest/easiest drake combos people have faced so far?

Comment by 792650

Don't be intimated by having to deal with up to two drakes as well as the boss at once, the time in which the drakes are up is incredibly short and the fight as a whole is rather quick fight.

Comment by 803745

We did Halfus (10-man) and filmed it, we had NS, whelps and TW, so we did TW and whelps at start and then killed the NS afterwards.
The video is from start to Halfus including kill.
go to youtube and type: watch?v=74RsNWa2g80

Comment by 34072

The drakes change from week to week but follow a set rotation so you'll always know what the next week's will be:

Nether Scion, Slate Dragon, Time Warden
Slate Dragon, Storm Rider, Time Warden
Nether Scion, Storm Rider, Time Warden
Nether Scion, Storm Rider, Slate Dragon
Slate Dragon, Time Warden, Whelps
Nether Scion, Time Warden, Whelps
Storm Rider, Time Warden, Whelps
Nether Scion, Storm Rider, Whelps
Nether Scion, Slate Dragon, Whelps
Slate Dragon, Storm Rider, Whelps

Source: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/841742-Theory-Halfus-is-not-Random

Comment by Rikkard

I have a question regarding the whelps and the debuff they put on the Proto-Behemoth: is that also affecting his Fireballs (and Fireball Barrage) or does it just lower the damage of his Scorching Breath?

Comment by Eldente

We did this fight on Heroic 25.

What we did was essentially:

Tank 1 alias prot pally pulled Halfus,
Tank 2 aka prot warrior pulled Storm Rider,
Tank 3 - a blood DK - pulled Time Warden and
Tank 4, feral druid, pulled Nether Scion.

We burned Storm Rider under Bloodlust, while our pally tank reset stacks once through Divine Shield. After that, the pally and the warrior swapped constantly to remove stacks.

Then we downed Time Warden. After his death, our DK tank released the whelps, and our bear tank took Nether Scion into the whelp pack for extra damage from AoE. We decimated the whelps, and carried on to burn Nether Scion.

When Scion was dealt with, we burned Halfus without activating Slate. Almost hit the berserk timer (had about 6-7 seconds left).

Our healing comp was 3 holy pallies, 2 smitin' discipline priests, a resto druid and a resto shaman.

An ele shaman was interrupting with two rogues backing him up. Everyone was involved in interrupting, actually.

The log can be found here (w/ Russian player, NPC and skill names). Fairly easy kill, but the healers really have to be on their toes.

Comment by 806926

We just killed our first hc kill for this guy tonight and this is how we did it on 10man

Tanks:
Pala Tank
Dk Tank
Feral Tank (offspec)

Healers
Holy Pala
Resto Druid
Disc Priest

DPS
Unholy Dk
Fire Mage
Sv Hunter
Boomkin

Drakes to kill
Nether, Storm, Time, Whelps (leave slate we tried many a time with slate and proved to be useless in all tries)

For the start of the fight we postioned the unholy dk's pet near the entrence to the room and leave him there. The feral tank is on the nether scrion, pala tank takes halfus but starts by releasing the storm drake. The dk tank is on time and taunts the storm as well at start.

We used misdirect to pull halfus and send him to the dk pet way over the other side of the room, this gives all the tanks time to relase all drakes we using and position plus gives extra time with no stacks on tank. This also makes tank switching later on better with tanks droping stacks and cd's, it made for much smoother tank swtich. The mage had boss focuses to interupt first nova while hes doing his running around. As halfus makes his way to the pala tank all should have moved there bosses to the middle in a lil traingle where the disc priest pops barrier to negate first set of aoes and any nasty stuff going on while your group gets into place

First target for dps is nether pop hero soon as halfus finaly gets to the tank after his nice lil journey round the room. Burn down nether very fast with no aoe, all single target dps. While this is going on the mt was gaining his limit to stacks (5 is more than enough more is to much of a strain). When hits 5 stacks he bubbles himself and uses macro to instant drop bubble and retaunt, like magic stacks are gone. By the time he gains 5 more nether should be down especialy since you gave urself an extra 10 second with the dk pet trick at start. The feral tank taunts the next target for the dps which is the storm and the dk now takes halfus off the pala. Depending how much health your pala has and how much damage your dk tank can handle your pala might need to take the storm off him. Once the dk reaches his 5 stacks he will call for hand of protection from the holy pala and use same macro to drop this bubble to reset his stacks. This should be enough time for the mt to lose his stacks and retake halfus

Soon as you are down to 1 drake and boss which ever tank is sitting doing nothing goes to relase the whelps (You may have to send a dps to relase sooner depending on how well you manage healing the breath from behomoth), he builds some aggro and moves them into middle of the group for some cleaving. Last drake should go down and all dps move to boss, no one focuses on whelps or commits to dedicated aoe you let the cleaves of your group take them out while you hit boss.

So finaly just boss left now as you enter phase of furious roar you must have a set order for removing the 3rd stun and interupting the shadow nova. We did like this:

1st pala tank bubble and interupt
2nd dk tank uses icebound fortitude and interupts
3rd pala healer bubbles and interupts
4th mage blinks out of last stun and interupts
5th(if needed) unholy dk uses icebound fortitude and interupts

This pahse is simply avoid the fireballs and nuke, Communicate well on vent as to who is breaking stun and interupting next so no mistakes and he goes down smoothly.

Here is our log for the fight

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/pkshle3g4q8j8eac/dashboard/?s=6903&e=7211

Comment by 439762

ROGUE TIPS ON HEROIC HALFUS:

As a rogue it is possible to interrupt the first Shadow Nova. With the right timing you can easily Garrote a few seconds after the pull. Raiding Rogues are best off as Assassination spec for most fights, but Combat is the winner for this fight. Have a separate expertised capped, more haste than mastery set if possible. Here's some proof of why, it's in the statistics: http://stateofdps.com/

If you want to pre-pot and are the rogue in charge of the garrote you might want to make a vanish, garrote macro. Garrote effects only last for 3 seconds so you want to time this properly.

Even if you have other interrupters you want to put your combat rogue on Halfus the whole time. If you haven't done it on heroic mode, then you don't understand why staying on Halfus is recommended. You may be the primary interrupt, so you may have to stay on Halfus. Regardless, more importantly, once drakes start dying and you get the damage buff to Halfus, perma-cleave will allow for the increased Blade Flurry damage to the remaining drakes thereby killing them faster than if you were on the drakes solely.

Step 1: Stay on Halfus
Step 2: Have blade flurry up
Step 3: Profit

By staying on halfus your bandits guile never prematurely resets. This is a major component to getting optimum dps. Also your raid has to tank the dragons right next to halfus or none of this works. Keep your Feint on CD to keep your agro low on drakes.

In phase 2, uninterrupted Shadow Novas are deadly, especially those immediately after Furious Roar, have a mage use Blink to get out of the last roar and counterspell the cast. A human Rogue can break out of Furious Roar early with Every Man for Himself and still get a kick in time.

EDIT: It appears there is a change with the first interrupt, seems like Halfus is now immune to the effects of Garrote on HM. >.< I believe the interrupt can still done if you are very fast! Some rogues claim to still get it every time but I was having trouble last week.

Comment by DukeDoom

My guild just killed him tonight as our first HC. We had trouble with phase 2 since we have no mage (10man), and the damage from Shadow Nova directly after Furious Roar was too much to handle. We handled this by having our two paladins use Divine Shield and Blessing of Protection to avoid getting stunned and interrupting the Shadow Nova.

Comment by seikatsu

Useful tip for you priests out there, If you are having trouble with your tank dieing during the stun bit of the phase.. You can cast Guardian spirit in the short time period between stuns and it will save your tank. And probably your raid :)

Comment by 478981

A tip for hunters on heroic.

if you go BM and use a nether ray, you can give it the Lionhearted talent to reduce furious roar stun duration and use the nether ray's Nether Shock to interupt shadow nova every time.

Comment by Kedemonos

Heroic Halfus Wyrmbreaker 10man Heroic Configuration
3 Tanks
3 Healers
4 Dps
Strategy: The Storm and Time dragons are released at the same time with the whelps. One tank will have to tank the Storm, Time, and whelps. One of the other tanks will be tanking Halfus and the other one Nether Scion. The two tanks with Halfus and Nether will taunt off each other at 9 stacks. The dps will be killing the Storm, Time, and Nether in this order. After that the whelps can be ignored or should have died from cleaves. Burn Halfus Wyrmbreaker and after the third Furious Roars use any cooldowns or abilities you can to become unstunned and interrupt Halfus's Shadow Nova.

Comment by Alien93

guys is there something special with halfus? :P because i notice that when i do him ppl have around 30k - 40k dps >.<

Comment by 561565

4 manned it on 10 man nornal this afternoon with:

- an Elemental Shaman
- a Restoration Shaman in PvP gear
- a Protection Paladin
- a Blood Death Knight.

Drakes included were:

Comment by genasi

solo'ed on 10m as a 565 BM hunter with tank pet. I released welps and time warden and popped everything on halfus. It was still a pretty close call, my pet was at 72% reduced healing and I was nearly dead from fireball barrage+stun

Comment by 1135007

Halfus? More like Halfass seeing the minimal amount of work blizz put into this boss

Comment by AtrumDeus

10man Heroic solo-able Ret Pally IL560. Release whelps, bronze drake and then burn boss while walking backwards in a circle around the boss platform.

Comment by holypalaswe

25man Normal easily soloed as a warlock, did it on my 495 ilvl first try. I used Voidlord to tank with Soul Leech to get absorb which isnt affected by the healing-debuff.

Only killed the Nether Scion and then dps'd Halfus down.

Comment by Greyvax

25m HC soloed by 576 fury war. Second wind will keep you alive.

Comment by Ottokar

Solo'd with a 640 Combat rogue. This was an interesting one. Release the Slate drake first, then the whelps. Kill 'em, then release any of the others. You may have to blow Evasion to get the Mortal Strike debuff off you, but then Leeching Poison will get you back up pretty quickly. And of course, always keep moving so the fireball barrage doesn't kill you.

Comment by romansamurai

Soloed 25m HC as 670 combat rogue. Leaching Poison is your friend. Ignored everything, just burned him down, np.

Comment by eric0707

Halfus Wyrmbreaker 25 heroic solo ilevel 670 --> https://youtu.be/AQR82ssMRYY

Comment by HeKol

On an average of 10 runs Halfus Wyrmbreaker 25HC rewards 166 gold, 12 silver and 44 copper after vendoring dropped gear.

View in 3D Links

Halfus Wyrmbreaker

This NPC can be found in The Bastion of Twilight .

The Bastion of TwilightHalfus WyrmbreakerValionaTheralionAscendant CouncilCho'gallSinestraHalfus WyrmbreakerThe Bastion of Twilight

Encounter Journal

Heroic		Mythic
Deadly		Important
Tank		DPS
Healer		Interruptible
Magic		Curse
Poison		Disease
Enrage

Halfus Wyrmbreaker

Each week a random three of Halfus's five captured dragonkin awaken. Each awakened dragonkin empowers Halfus and his enslaved Proto-Behemoth with an ability.

On Heroic difficulty, all five dragonkin awaken and empower Halfus and his enslaved Proto-Behemoth with all possible abilities.

Malevolent Strikes – Halfus's melee strikes wound his current target, reducing healing received by 8% for 30 sec. This effect stacks.
This ability activates when the Slate Dragon awakens.
Frenzied Assault – Halfus permanently increases his attack speed by 120%.
This ability activates when the Nether Scion awakens.
Shadow Nova – Halfus unleashes dark magic, inflicting 49 Shadow damage and knocking back all enemies within 50000 yards.
This ability activates when the Storm Rider awakens.
Proto-Behemoth – Halfus's enslaved proto-dragon flies nearby, raining down fire upon those who threaten his master.
Like Halfus, awakened dragonkin empower the Proto-Behemoth with abilities.
- Fireball Barrage – The Proto-Behemoth fires rapid volleys of fireballs at random enemy targets. Each Fireball deals (100% of Spell Power) Fire damage within 4 yards of impact.
  This ability activates when the Time Warden awakens.
- Scorching Breath – The Proto-Behemoth unleashes waves of flame across the entire platform, dealing (100% of Spell Power) Fire damage to all enemies every 1 sec, for 8 sec.
  This ability activates when the Orphaned Emerald Whelps awaken.
- Fireball – The Proto-Behemoth lobs single fireballs at the location of a random player. When the fireball lands, it inflicts (100% of Spell Power) Fire damage to players within 4 yards of the impact.
  This ability is only active when the Time Warden is dormant.
Furious Roar – When Halfus reaches 50% remaining health, he periodically emits a Furious Roar. This terrible roar inflicts 20 Physical damage to all players and knocks them to the ground, stunning them for 2 sec. Halfus roars three times in rapid succession.

Imprisoned Dragonkin

Halfus has imprisoned a Slate Dragon, a Nether Scion, a Storm Rider, a Time Warden, and a pack of Orphaned Emerald Whelps. They surround him on his platform, wearing bonds of servitude. If freed they will each turn on their master and weaken him, but Halfus then dominates the dragonkin and forces them to fight against the players.

In Normal Difficulty three random dragonkin awaken each week, while the other two slumber. Only the awakened dragonkin may be freed.

Nether Scion
- Nether Blindness – Upon being released the Nether Scion shrouds Halfus's eyes with a thick fog, impairing his vision and reducing his chance to hit, attack speed, and damage done by 25%.
- Dragon's Vengeance – The Nether Scion curses Halfus as it dies, causing Halfus to take 100% increased damage. This effect stacks.
Orphaned Emerald Whelps
- Atrophic Poison – Upon being released each Emerald Whelp poisons Halfus's Proto-Behemoth, reducing its damage dealt by 3. This effect stacks 8 times.
- Dragon's Vengeance – The last of the Orphaned Emerald Whelps curses Halfus as it dies, causing Halfus to take 100% increased damage. This effect stacks.
Slate Dragon
- Stone Grip – Upon being released the Slate Dragon afflicts Halfus with a creeping paralysis, causing him to occasionally petrify for 12 sec. While petrified, Halfus cannot move or attack and players inflict 100% more damage to Halfus.
- Dragon's Vengeance – The Slate Dragon curses Halfus as it dies, causing Halfus to take 100% increased damage. This effect stacks.
Storm Rider
- Cyclone Winds – Upon being released the Storm Rider envelops Halfus in a cyclone, slowing his casting speed by 500%.
- Dragon's Vengeance – The Storm Rider curses Halfus as it dies, causing Halfus to take 100% increased damage. This effect stacks.
Time Warden
- Time Dilation – Upon being released the Time Warden warps the flow of time around Halfus's Proto-Behemoth, reducing the velocity of its deadly fireballs.
- Dragon's Vengeance – The Time Warden curses Halfus as it dies, causing Halfus to take 100% increased damage. This effect stacks.

Halfus Wyrmbreaker

Encounter Journal

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