[BoT] Halfus Wyrmbreaker

[Caireann]

Okay, I know that we have only a test run today, but just in case we make it past trash it'd be good to actually know more or less what should we do with the first boss there. I've watched some vids, and one thing is scary when it comes to Halfus. We'll have three drakes to choose every week, however - available drakes will change every week (?!) so that the fight will be more interesting.

Four friendly drakes and a pack of whelps are imprisoned in the area where Wyrmbreaker is engaged, but only three of them can be engaged. The exact combination of available drakes is randomly selected. When freed, each drake or whelp pack will put a debuff on the boss.
The drake composition of the fight is randomly selected and, like classic Nefarian, getting a difficult combination of adds means you must deal with it until next week.

The Nether Scion
Pre-fight, applies a frenzy buff to Halfus Wyrmbreaker (+100% attack speed). When freed, reduces raid damage dealt, but will also cancel out Wyrmbreaker's frenzy attack.

The Time Warden
Slows down the speed of the protodrake's fireballs, but, but also roots players.

The Slate Dragon
Gives Wyrmbreaker his Malevolent Strikes ability, which causes a stacking healing debuff. Once freed, periodically stuns the whole raid for 15 seconds and does the same to Halfus.

The Orphaned Emerald Whelps
Reduces raid and boss damage dealt by 50%.

The Storm Rider
Gives Wyrmbreaker a Shadow Nova ability which deals AoE damage and knocks people back.

Strategy guides have covered mostly the Storm Rider/Time Warden/Whelps combination, and the one from Tank Spot imo has the best desciption, so it's no use pasting the other ones:



Have found a comment on the other combination tho:

Last night we had Storm and Nether up and this fight seemed 100x easier. We 1 shot it and healers had 60% ish mana left when he went down. The time-bound really is the nastiest raid damage drake. Oof.

With Nether/Storm we popped whelps and Storm at the start, burned storm with lust, then popped nether to negate the melee buff on Halfius. We burned Nether and then it was cake. The whelps were mostly dead from incidental AoE and tank damage, and halfius was hitting like a kitten with no real AoE to speak of. Definitely a nice combo compared to having the massive raid AoE to deal with. Just don't miss those kicks.

All in all, we'll see by ourselves how it looks like, but probably it's good to remember about:

For interrupters:
+ have to set up a interrupt rotation for Shadow Nova (if we have Storm drake up)
+ have to use cooldowns to break the third Furious Roar stun to interrupt the immediate Shadow Nova

For healers:
+ tanks should have a cooldown used on them before Furious Roar
+ start of the fight is intensive, so pop Shadowfiend on pull, and it should be ready again 60s to the enrage
+ bug everyone to click on the Lightwell after a Shadow Nova if there is one!

For all:
+ stay out of the fires!

[Fungi]

I've been doing some reading, cause I can't believe that the encounter should be THIS hard (the way we tried it). The thing I questioned mostly is why we would release the 2 dragons at once. Healers couldn't keep the tanks up while spamming their most powerful heal, so I figured something had to be wrong with the tactics we used.

I found another movie of a Halfus kill and they basicly release the adds 1 after another (they don't have the same setup we had, but still). To me this sounds like a good idea to try. Burning down 1 dragon while keeping the other grounded frees up room for a tank swap (the healing reduction on tanks can be negated this way) and there will be less incoming damage on a tank (probably a bit more raidwise damage, since 1 of his abilities isn't countered).

I'm still not entirely sure why didn't give this at least a try, but I definately think we should next time.

A.

[Templaar]

The healer problem last time was that we all started running in, the drake tank released the drake, drake tank starts taking damage, and healers start casting their now-horribly-slow heals. Then we get a shadow-blast-knockback pushing us OOR, so we have to run in again, and re-cast, and by the time we're done the tank was down or nearly down and we couldn't recover.

Healing was supposed to have changed to give healers the chance to react, to triage and to select which heal was most appropriate. Tanks (and players in general) were not supposed to take massive 1 or 2-shot strikes which led to the continual spam style of healing. My experience of that fight in particular was the complete opposite

[Sarri]

Factor in Mortal strike debuff he places on the target. I couldnt remember the name for the life of me but I knew there was some reason why we should be tankswapping the boss, sadly I couldnt articulate it well enough to convince Xil. Remember that if you go there tonight!!

[Fungi]

Pssst... Sarri... wrong instance...we're not going there tonight...

[Sleetza]

Fungi: Never say never

Factor in Mortal strike debuff he places on the target. I couldnt remember the name for the life of me but I knew there was some reason why we should be tankswapping the boss, sadly I couldnt articulate it well enough to convince Xil. Remember that if you go there tonight!!

Yeah, we missed that one. I talked about the fight with a friend of me in Avanta. We should tank-swap, or the stacks can be bubbled too. This is the ability: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=39171

[Sarri]

Pssst... Sarri... wrong instance...we're not going there tonight...

Fungi, I know, hence the phrase... "if you go there tonight".

[Fagan]

Bump. Read up/watch for tonights raid

[Caireann]

It seems that there is a set rotation of what drakes we'll get, and not a totally random one.. and.. em, tonight would be the Storm, Slate and Time drakes. That is, the worst combination.
I do hope it's not true...

[Garfunkle]

I'd always read that it was a random combination that reset every Wednesday.

But we've not really done it enough to see any emerging patterns.