Heroic Halfus 25 2.0

[exiledknight]

Did anyone do this encounter yesterday? How much health do the drakes have now, and how hard do they hit?

[inthedrops]

Here's a log from yesterday. The fight felt easier overall but our kill was sloppy. We didn't change a thing about our strat. We even left a drake alive while we killed Halfus just like we always do. The kill was a few seconds slower than normal but wasn't a problem.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rs2m4zyrf6udmjd8/dashboard/?s=1464&e=1801

Maybe you can find answers in those logs.

Edit, just as a quick comparison to a prior kill (same tanks, same basic raid setup, same basic strat) here are some differences on the Time Warden (too lazy too look others up):

Average melee hit prior: 64860
Average melee hit now: 53806

This drake isn't tanked by any tanks with Malevolent Strikes so should be a decent comparison.

As far as damage taken by the drake before it died:
Prior: 20,754,133
Now: 16,593,394

So maybe about a 4 million decrease roughly. That's easily 15-20 seconds of saved DPS time (per drake) on a fight where people are dodging fire and what not.

[Meloree]

We killed a third drake, instead of leaving two up, in order to get the extra buff up on Halfus. It amounted to very little extra damage, because that drake took so much cleave/AoE damage anyway - all told, about the same amount of "single target" dps to drakes as killing 2.

The fight did seem a lot easier, though.

[exiledknight]

Got it, thanks for the replies just going to kill an extra drake, which should be extremely low due to the 4 mil less health.

[Boèndal]

We did exactly the same as Meloree, just killing the 3rd drake (Nether Scion) which is allready low due to cleave dmg. Killed him with 1 minute left til enrage und using 4 tanks, 7 heals on our 2nd pull. I think its doable with 3 tanks & perhaps 6 heal.

[Shanjer]

We went there for the first time last night and killed it 25man on the 6th pull so im presuming it was fairly nerfed.

We did have good tactics - 3 tanks, 7 healers (2 of which Disc), 3 drakes and Whelps released from the beginning

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/nsmr ... 070&e=2390

Execution:
Everyone AoE's the Whelps - those with no effective AoE dps'd the Nether drake directly

Healing was a bit hairy to start with, but we used PW:B, Tranq and raid wall, combined with Bloodlust to get us through the early all drakes up time.

I was Feral MT and I was BoP'd at 8 stacks from Halfus, when i restacked to 8 the Nether was dead and me and the Nether tank swapped so i took Storm and he took Halfus - he stacked to 8, BoP'd and carried on.

Whelp tank took time drake as well. Nether tank started with Storm as well. I rotated with Storm tank on Halfus after Nether died.

When Storm died I released Slate for the extra stuns.

We killed Time and then tried to rotate HoS/Pain Sup through the roars in the burn phase.

I would reccommend releasing Slate now even if you dont kill as the stuns are very useful for the final. phase, and we had no issues with enrage timer. Also a useful tip is to stand at the door and have Halfus MD's to you to start with - this means he loses his attack speed by the time he gets to you to stop him super stacking Mortal strike on you early requiring an early BoP.

We are relatively well geared, however this was our first night of attempts as we got stuck for far too long on Nefarian 25man. Hopefully somebody will find something useful in our logs.

[exiledknight]

We did exactly the same as Meloree, just killing the 3rd drake (Nether Scion) which is allready low due to cleave dmg. Killed him with 1 minute left til enrage und using 4 tanks, 7 heals on our 2nd pull. I think its doable with 3 tanks & perhaps 6 heal.

We ended up doing the same, the scion was at like 20% when the storm died, the nerf was a lot bigger than I thought it would be, no reason to really drop a healer and a tank and risk deaths.

[warden]

We did this last night, popping Storm and Time on the pull. We burned Storm, popped Nether as he died, and then popped the whelps up as Time died (IIRC). I don't remember ever releasing slate. Whole thing was done with 3 tanks. We tested just healing without stacking smiting discs, and it worked pretty well despite having some people along that hadn't seen the fight. I don't have the log link handy at work, but its public on WoL.

[Thark]

I feel a bit silly.

We had worked on this a little bit pre-patch, and Tuesday I wanted to try it again. After seeing claims of downing it within just a few attempts I left with the impression it was a fair bit easier.

Instead, I kept fighting with interrupters claiming that it's impossible to interrupt the first Shadow Nova. By the end of the hour they were getting it with a bit of consistency through luck.

As part of the above, the interrupters were claiming they can only interrupt if Halfus is tanked on top of the Storm Drake for the first few seconds. So our first Halfus tank is starting the fight with a BOP after just a few seconds, and we had 2 tanks with forbearance and 5-8 stacks of MS before the first drake was dead. Partly because of poor play on our part, but what are groups doing with Halfus? I had assumed two dedicated Halfus tanks with a BOP rotation would be able to handle him for most of the fight. The other two tanks were each taking a drake at the start (Time/Storm).

Every attempt had a tank death pretty quick, and that was with 2 tanks for Halfus, and the other two tanks only having a single drake. We previously were using 4 tanks and releasing 4 adds off the pull.

My questions would be what/how many drakes do you release and when?

Any tips for interrupting the first Shadow Nova and keeping the Halfus tank(s) from quickly stacking debuffs.

[Belloc]

You could have the Storm Rider tank pull Halfus to the Storm Rider area and then have the Halfus tank taunt when he arrives. This should allow the cast-speed debuff to hit him and prevent a large amount of stacks.

Also, I see little reason to do this fight differently than the 10-man strat at this point (storm, nether, whelps at the start, time warden when whelps are dead).

[baleogthefierce]

My questions would be what/how many drakes do you release and when?

We release everything but the Slate Dragon on the pull and release Slate after the first dragon is killed. We use 4 tanks, 3 of which rotate on Halfus. We rotate tanks on the Drakes so that no tank is ever tanking Halfus + a Dragon, and we kind of split the whelps across all 4 (although I usually end up with most of them since our rogues like to TotT me).

Any tips for interrupting the first Shadow Nova and keeping the Halfus tank(s) from quickly stacking debuffs.

If you pull Halfus correctly, you can get the cast time debuff on him before he throws out the first nova. We have the Halfus tank stand over by the whelp cage and misdirect pull Halfus over there. Right on the pull, I spam click Storm Rider to ensure that he gets released. The cast for the release is a bit strange, as it will continue to cast even if your cast bar disappears as long as you remain stationary (which it usually does if you're spam clicking him). Right as Halfus runs past the Storm Rider he applies the debuff so it should be up in time for the first cast.

[Senador]

We just started work on this last night. It seemed extremely frustrating.

First, we originally were only releasing two drakes (Storm and Nether), one tank on each. I start on Halfus to bubble off the MS debuff, and then grab Time as it is released. The Storm drake tank then grabs Halfus off of me. I normally have about 8 stacks at this time. Almost always, this is where I go down right before forbearance drops off.

Our healers were insisting it’s impossible to heal if you have 7 or more stacks and on a drake, and that we should swap Halfus around at 5 stacks, but with the timing, and the posts I see here, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Also, our interrupting shamans were terrible resulting in Shadow Nova’s going off throughout the fight (We had A LOT of issues on Nef phase 2 as well).

I’m going to compare the log you provided to ours to see our damage as well. Our damage felt really slow as well. We were bloodlusting off the bat to get the first drake down, but it wasn’t falling until right after Bloodlust was ending.

[exiledknight]

Sounds like your best bet is to 4 tank it. Have two on Halfus and whatever drake is being burned first, and one on each of the others, keep them stacked up for cleave and splash dmg, the Halfus and single drake tanks should be popping a CD as they taunt the drake to give the healers a buffer to switch for the dmg, we call for taunts at 5 although sometimes they dont line up perfectly, this is what I save my bubble for as it seemed to help smooth things out. In additon make whomever is tanking halfus with you make a cancel aura macro for HoP, this way you can use that to clear their stacks if they end up having to take more than 5. We don't lust until after the first furious roar to speed the tail end of the fight up at this point, as its a higher rdps increase. If you get the tank swaps etc down and have a raid wide cd rotation running for breaths without the whelps the healing shouldnt be an issue with 4 tanks.

[Thark]

Thank you for the suggestions.

We went from 4 tanks, 6 healers, releasing 2 drakes at the pull - to 4 tanks, 8 healers, 3 drakes at the pull and I think it took 3 attempts for a kill.

We released Storm/Nether/Whelps at the pull, Time Warden after the first one died, and Slate just before 50%. We were hitting enrage around 25% the first attempts, so we shifted Bloodlust from the pull to after all whelps were down and enrage was no longer an issue.