World of Warcraft®

Halfus Wyrmbreaker is the first boss in Bastion of Twilight.

Tonight was Sacrosanct's first attempt at Bastion of Twilight and Halfus himself.

So pre-raid, I attempted to find helpful videos and boss tactics but a lot of information was Beta, or not very relevant to the raid setup/dragons that we had to work with so I am taking a stab at adding to the pool of information for any other people that wish to attempt this boss.

Our raid team was a 10 man.
Tanks x2 : Warrior, Paladin.
Healers x 3 : Resto Druid, Resto Shaman, Holy Priest
DPS x 3: Frost DK, Fire Mage, Fury Warrior, Enhancement Shaman, Survival Hunter

Dragons active -

Storm Rider
Nether Scion
Emerald Whelps

Dragon Abilities:
Activating Storm Rider first in this drake composition is essential due to Halfus' Shadow Nova which is a raid-wide AoE damage and knockback effect. Not only is it intensely hard to heal through, it also stops any casting that is occuring due to its knockback.
To combat this effect you must activate this drake first, which increases the cast time on Halfus' Shadow Nova, and makes it interruptable.

Emerald Whelps:
Mitigate 50% raid damage from the Proto-Drake's unavoidable flame breath.
Decreases damage on boss by 50% until all the whelps are dead.

Nether Scion:
Gives Halfus a frenzy effect which increases melee attack speed by 100%. Good healers can combat this effect adequately. Releasing this dragon was not a first priority to my raid.

Our best attempts and then eventually our kill was done using the following tactics.

Main tank pulls Halfus, Offtank releases the Storm Rider. One Shadow Nova is guaranteed to go off in the few seconds it takes the released drake to be mind controlled and turn hostile.

Have a melee dps that can consistently interrupt on Halfus at all times. Their role is to interrupt Shadow Nova without fail. Our enhancement shaman was on this, considering that Wind Shear has a 6 second cooldown, the shortest of all spell interrupt CDs.
It may work just as well with an interrupt rotation between another melee class and a tank.

The raid must remain spread at least 8 yards apart to ensure that Fire Orbs shot by the proto-drake are being avoided.

DPS /must/ switch to the Storm Rider the instant it is hostile. Considering this is a high damage phase with AoE damage all around, we used Shaman Heroism right here to combat how healing intensive this particular point of the battle was. Our dps was high enough that meeting the enrage timer (6 minutes) was not an issue.

With heroism, Storm Rider should go down fast.

NOTE: Most boss fight tactics note tanks getting a Mortal Wound/Mortal Strike debuff. Neither me nor my fellow tank saw any sort of debuff so any info from other tanks who have attempted this would be nice.

In case there is an actual existence of this elusive Mortal Wound debuff, now is the perfect time for the offtank to taunt Halfus, wait for the main tank stacks to drop while dps release the Emerald Whelps.

At this point, the main tank took the boss back, and I (OT) picked up the whelps and we tanked with whelps and boss stacked, allowing the dps to AoE the whelps down without losing a ton of dps on the boss.

Once the whelps were dead, I hung on to Halfus (he did not seem to be doing much damage to me at all) while the main tank released Nether Scion, and it was tanked and dps-ed down right away.

With the three active dragons down, we popped any remaining cooldowns and burned the boss to a crisp.

EDIT: At 50% Halfus Wyrmbreaker begins casting Furious Roar 3 times in quick succession. This is a stun, so you get stunned 3 times in a row. After the third cast he begins casting Shadow Nova again.

The most efficient way we found to prevent Nova from nuking the raid is to have the mage blink out of the last stun and counterspell the boss. Allowing even one shadow nova to go off is not a good idea.

(From tactics I researched Halfus was meant to go into an untankable whirlwind at 30%, I did not see any sign of this just as I had seen no sign of a Mortal Wound debuff)

Our designated video taker failed to record our kill so all I have is this documentation to help with any other guilds or raids seeking advice on a Halfus Wyrmbreaker kill.

We then ran to go poke at the second boss but this was more for fun than a real attempt so we did not get far.

Thank you to everyone who made this kill possible, I love you all.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, hope it helps.
Good luck to anyone going for this boss!

EDIT: To correct myself on the Mortal Wound debuff, it occurs only if you have Slate Dragon active.

With Slate, Nether Scion and Whelps (always active) it worked fine to get the Scion first, Whelps and then the Slate. That seemed to be easiest on the healers. It's a simple drake combo so unless you whisper me in-game for more info on them I wont post it here.

I don't mean to sound like I'm coming off as a total jerk, so you, and anyone else reading this will have to forgive me if this doesn't come off the nicest way....this post doesn't feel very classy.

If you wanted to help out the community, you can put this information up on places like Tankspot and whatnot to help out the player base as a whole.

Posted here where it's at, coupled with the comment, "Thank you to everyone who made this kill possible, I love you all." makes it feel impertinent.

I don't have enough info on different drake combos to post it anywhere official and make it 'classy'. I am doing what I can to give info on this boss to people in the realm who have not attempted him yet, how I come across to individuals is really a matter of opinion.

It's kill tactics, not an eharmony app so...its not important to me to sound 'classy'.

Alright, let me clarify, since I wasn't trying to hurt feelings. And again, I mean this on the most neutral of terms. I didn't mean classy like professional, I meant classy as it wasn't in 'best taste' to have done this.

Your post, while informative, looks more like a banner looking for attention from the local community more than a humble attempt to help the progression of Cenarion Circle. The progressive curve on our server is low when you see just how populated we are, and I think you are giving yourself and your crew a little too much credit if you think you found an easier way or added improvement to the mechanic of the fight, over some of the world's top notch players that are well renowned for their strat vids and teaching methods.

Granted, I could be entirely wrong in how I'm perceiving this...but I was letting you know that's how I see it, and chances are I'm not the only one who felt that way.

The older was bumped without my knowledge, we are in serious need of healers which is why I created the new one. The old one doesn't state our need for healers so, I wanted to be more specific.

Again, even tankspot gave information that just didn't exist in the attempts of the 10 man version of this fight so I posted what we did and what worked for us.

I didn't say our way was better or easier I said I NEVER saw a mortal wound debuff even though every tactic I read said it would be there. Addons were off, it wasn't addon confliction.

I also said I NEVER saw him whirlwind at 30% and I was standing in his crotch tanking him the whole time.

I asked another guild fighting him at the same time if they saw those things and I never got a reply.

So I answered my own questions and put the answers up here for other people who wonder where the Mortal Wound debuff is and whether he's going to whirlwind or not. If that shaves off even 1 wipe for another guild, great! My goal is achieved.

I don't want to sound professional because I am not Tankspot or attempting to recreate Tankspot. I recorded my experience and put it out there as easily accessible information. IF you don't want the information...don't read it?

EDIT: I agree about the dual recruitment, that is definitely overkill and a mistake on my part considering I wasn't aware the old recruitment thread got bumped.

12/21/2010 12:47 AMPosted by Nadìa

IF you don't want the information...don't read it?

Nobody said they didn't want it, all we're saying is it looks like you're patting yourself on the back in public.

I personally don't know what Lerr and Replica are talking about, I found this to be very informative and plan to (coupled with information from various other websites) but this plan into action and see the outcome. I appreciate you posting this on our forums. Grats on the kill by the way :)