Halfus - tips, suggestions, and VERY VALID POINTS!!

[Sempra]

Alright so seeing as tactics are preferred to be up in this section, here goes.

Two links here, they both have the same general theory of boss-kill.

http://marks-365.morynne.com/2011/05/st ... rmbreaker/

http://www.stratfu.com/strats/halfus-wy ... breaker-25

Extra info taken from these -

Each time a drake dies Halfus receives a stack of a debuff which increases the damage he takes by 100%.
More importantly for your healers, it also drastically reduces the incoming damage.
The quicker the raid can kill a dragon the greater your chance of downing the boss.
For this reason all DPS with the exception of the interrupter on Halfus should single target burn down drakes.
The only target suggested against killing first are the whelps. The whelps can easily be dispatched through splash damage from AoE.

The raid should ignore DPS on Halfus.It is important that the raid does NOT push Halfus below 50%
until all three drakes and the whelps have been killed.


If your raid got to this part the only issue is to beat Halfus's 6-Minute enrage timer.
With the 400% increased damage taken debuff it shouldn't be an issue for most geared raids.

Heroism is best used in the first 10 seconds of the encounter. As soon as the drake that you can DPS is active and the tank has threat
you should pop the buff. This helps with healing on the most difficult portion of the fight and pushes the raid out of the phase (the most damage intensive).
It is always a bad idea to save Heroism for sub-50% because you lose a lot of DPS/Healing uptime due to the Furious Roar.

Don't release all 5 drakes, leave the Slate Dragon chained the whole fight. The debuff is not worth the time to burn through the hit points the drake has.
Make sure there are no drakes alive when Halfus gets to sub-50%. The drake will continue to attack (and probably kill) the tank.

[Tusvor]

Looks like its worth a try...especially popping the heroism at start of raid makes sense to me, due to the roars below 50%

[Adamantite]

It's also interesting to see, how focus is placed on dps. Quick nukes on single drakes to ease the tasks of healers and tanks. We have so far been trying to focus on healing and tanking to see more of the fight, but the dps is the key with this tactic.
I wonder how high the dps must be on the 3 drakes and on halfus with the 400% debuf for us to make the timer. Anybody able to do the maths?

[Mjöl]

We´ll have a go next time when the raid is there and fresh (yesterday around 23ish seemed the raid was rather tired and the errorcurve went up in no time).

Anyway, i have the same toughts as Hans, the point i am sceptic is the dps needed and if the raid has that number. Its said in that tactic 3 drakes + whelps. Each of the drakes have 17mil as have the whelps combined. Thats all together 68 Million to burn through. No just to have a value, yesterday the raid needed to burn down 50-60% of one drake around 40 seconds. So, thats then around optimiscaly calculated 10 millon hitpoints in 30 seconds. So 20mil/min 40mil/2min 60mil/3min etc. Taken into consideration you would have heroism at the start and aoe effects on more drakes at once - i could see that you have to kill the 4 drakes in around 4 minutes longest, and have then 2 minutes to burn down a Halfus with full hp but with 400% increased damage. Or 3 min adds, 3 min Halfus.

However, even if that goes then so quick to burn down halfus. If the assumnation is correct that hes doing roar all 10%, the tanks/healers still need to time right to come over it. On the positive side however - you would have all that tanks to jump in if 1 dies. On the negative - the burning down might be so quick from 50%, that all healer "ohshit" abilitys to hold the tanks up are on cooldown after 1-2 roars.

[ellybelle]

Thanks so much for this info. When I look at tactics I always look from a healer pov now, but it's true we should discuss dps aspects as well.

I've analyzed successful Halfus 25 man heroic kills from 6 guilds on our realm. In all but one kill (see reincarnation below) all the drakes were killed except nether scion. In all but one kill (see pathfinders below) Heroism was used in the middle of the fight, with 6 of the 8 kills analyzed using heroism between 3 and 4 minutes into the fight. The minimum DPS needed seems to be between an average 45 and 50k from about 12 people (all the dps but the one interrupter these guilds use on Halfus, essentially). If we have someone pulling 80k or more we can afford two interrupters.

Here's the info I used to make this analysis - I only looked at facts and figures mentioned in the above post, which did not include issues of tanking or healing:

Pathfinder's log for their halfus heroic kill wed, June 1, a rogue using blade fury did over 105k dps. a warrior with 80.5k dps and a shammy with over 74k dps. They killed nether scion, time warden, whelps and storm rider. Basically, everything but slate dragon, which they released, because it was at about 50% health when halfus died. They used heroism 14 seconds into fight. The fight took 4:15

Reincarnation's log from May 25 for their halfus 25m kill. Two Dk's, a sdw priest and a retri doing about 58k-60k dps each. They used heroism 4 mins into the fight, when they started on halfus as it looks. They also left the slate up and they killed nether scion, time warden, whelps and storm rider. The fight took 5:28.

Reincarnation did it again on May 27. On that go a rogue was top dps at 60k, with instant poison his main damage. 12 players did over 40k dps average for the entire fight. Again they saved heroism for a time between 3 and 4 mins into the fight. They killed welps, storm rider and warden. They did not kill nether scion (but damaged it) they did not release slate. So although they killed one few drake then two days before, I was surprised to see that the fight took longer, 5:43, which seems to suggest that this idea of killing all the drakes for the debuff is essential at a lower gear level.

Asylum (eu-bronzebeard) killed Halfus 25 on May 15 in heroic. They have a hunter who did almost 85k dps, a dk at 71k and a lock at 68k. They killed all the dragons but slate. They used heroism 3:45 into the fight. The kill took them 5:36.

On May 25, Asylum killed Halfus H25 again. The hunter was again their top dps at 82k, with 8 players in total doing over 44k dps. They used heroism at approximately 4 minutes. The kill took 5:44. They killed time, nether, whelps and storm, they popped open slate, but didn't kill it.

On May 8, Echo has a halfus 25m kill on WoL. Their top two dps are rogues, one at 87k and one at 67k. 8 dps are above 50k. They also used heroism 4 mins into the fight. They killed everything but slate (who had only 2 million of his 16 million health left when halfus died).

Chimera killed halus 25H in 5:07 on June 1. Their top 9 dps did between 48 and 68k dps, top being a fire mage who did 17k more dps then the arcane mage. They used heroism 4 minutes into the fight. They killed storm, nether, time and whelps and left slate active and up but did not kill it.

SoL hilled halfus 25h in 5:44 last night, June 8. Their top 6 dps did more then 50k dps, with a shammy as top dps at over 54k. They used heroism 1 minute into the fight. They killed storm, time, nether and whelps. They released slate, but did not kill it.

[Cogwhirl]

...a rogue using blade fury did over 105k dps

On that go a rogue was top dps at 60k...

Their top two dps are rogues..

Permission to stop interrupting and go and hit adds please!



Cog

[Mjöl]

Thanks for the research Elly, very good info.

Seems the majority is using heroism on halfus, but are killing a good part of the drakes before. And we learn that our dps wasnt high enough.

@Coggy: Sure ! Immidatly when you bring me another class/player that interrupts all Shadownovas !

[Cogwhirl]

@Coggy: Sure ! Immidatly when you bring me another class/player that interrupts all Shadownovas !

As I understand it, Warriors and Paladins have an interrupt the same as Kick with the same CD. They can't all be terrible at interrupting That said, I don't know where they stand in the dps stakes compared to Rogues.

Cog

[Sempra]

Even offered last night to be the sole interrupter, timing is perfect, but that runs risk if there are lag spikes.

The only reason I'm shit at interrupting, is due to this wonderful land we call south africa. where the internet connectivity is so fantastic, you can do absolutely anything at any time right WHEN you want it!!

Anyone sence the sarcasm?

[Laraht]

the dps on the guys is on all of the fight i guess? So on Halfus with 400% buff?

[ellybelle]

or is it 300% but ya 60k should be single target do-able with that buff