Dunlop said:
Any good vids for 10 man out there? I could only find a tankspot for 25,we are attempting this on tuesday
We downed conlave last night as well, it was almost anticlimatical for me. I was the "tank"for Rohash due to my heals and levitate. It took about 6 attempts (we had 2 OS healers), the only time I get hit by the damn whirlwind is right before all DPS are about to converge on him for the kill. It nocked me to the center platform and I could not get back (bridges would not work).
So lonely....
videos for halfus are kind of sort of useless. not useless, but it entirely depends on your configuration of drakes. honestly there is no difference between 10man and 25 man halfus. either way you get three drakes, the only difference being hit points and damage.
storm drake - absolutely the first "must engage" drake of any configuration. with him locked up halfus' shadow nova is almost instant and uninterruptible. this means 10-25K (10/25man) damage and knockback for the entire raid every few seconds. engaging the drake makes the shadow nova interruptible. in 25man you need either two interrupters, or I think a shaman has a 6s interrupt and with school lock shadow nova is on an 8s CD. storm drake hits like a freaking truck, so basically whoever is tanking him is going to only be able to tank him.
time drake - usually second most vital drake. while he's locked up, halfus' dragon's fireballs are instant cast and you can't dodge them taking 20/40K damage. typically you will want at minimum three tanks at this point. afaik you CAN tank both time and halfus together (see below though). if so, you really want to get time up as soon as possible. once he's up, the dragon's fireballs show a ring on the ground that gives you about 3s to move out of.
slate - slate poses in a problem in that he needs a tank rotation on halfus. slate gives halfus a malevolent strike on his tank. you'll either need a pally that can survive and bubble out of MS stacks before this drake is engaged, or you'll need a tank rotation. typically not as critical as the first two, this is more of a mechanic than an actual DPS reduction or healer stress. releasing him kills the MS and stuns halfus occasionally for 12s.
nether scion - depending on your DPS output, nether scion might not be a big deal. he gives halfus a 100% attack speed increase, and when released halfus sometimes misses attacks at a slower speed and with less damage. if your healers can handle the load and your DPS is fine you're better off with spending the time on halfus instead (it's all a countdown to that 6m enrage). it's basically can your healers handle the 100% attack speed increase, and does your DPS benefit more from the extra time on halfus or the 50% damage increase from killing nether scion.
whelps - save the best for last. whelps are pitiful in damage and can easily be picked up by any tank as a second aggro. general idea is to pick up the whelps immediately and kill them with splash damage over the course of the fight.
at 50% damage (presuming all drakes are down) halfus starts casting a 3times stun on CD. he will also cast shadow nova immediately after the third stun. general strategy here is to have a mage blink out of the third stun and cast counterspell on shadow nova. shadow nova has a 25s CD and counterspell is a 24s CD, so with even just one mage there should always be an interrupt up for that one shadow nova.
that's about it. halfus is on a six minute enrage timer, so the general goal is to get the three drakes and halfus dead in less than 6m (or as little over as possible). general thoughts are to BL and burn cooldowns immediately before or just after the third drake goes down to take advantage of the 150% damage increase.
most of the problems we had are honestly the same problems we have on any DPS race.. about half of the raid DPS are not fury, survival, lock, DK, assassin or fire and in 340-345 ilevel. until that half of the DPS is geared up more our DPS will never be through the roof. the guild is mostly fine with that, which honestly I think it very cool of it.. let people play the characters they are having fun with, even if it's a shadow priest. it just means on these DPS races we're going to have to handle it taking a few wipes (and a few kills) to get people geared up to where their less efficient spec is strong enough to out-DPS the enrage timer.
TheYanger said:
The key to Halfus on either difficulty is releasing more drakes than you're going to kill. If you've got 2 tanks on 10 man for instance, Killing 2 and then offtanking the third, or one and offtanking the second, is a huge boost to your dps (they apply the 50% damage debuff to halfus as soon as they're released, along with debuffing whatever ability they do, at the only 'cost' being that your tank needs to live for the rest of the fight).
Beyond that it's simply figuring out what order of drakes you need to release. In general Storm Rider always has to be first if he's up, beyond that it can vary, strong arguments for time or nether both, probably just depending on what areas you're weak in.
this is incorrect. they don't apply the 50% debuff until after they die. I forget what the debuff is, but it happens during their dying animation and actually takes a second or two to apply. so if you are counting every possible second of the burn phase, you want to wait on trinkets, timers and BL until the last drake you plan on killing goes down AND his debuff is applied.
however you are correct in the rest. basically you never outright move to kill the third drake. get him released and damage him enough that splash can finish the rest (25%?) but the big priorities in this fight are the order the drakes are released in (depending on which drakes you have) and getting two drakes downed completely giving 100% damage increase to halfus, and preferably getting the third one down enough that eventually in the fight you will get a final 50% extra on halfus as well. the rest of the fight depends on which drakes you have and which abilities halfus and his dragon have as a result.
