I realize just how much we hate Halfus Wyrmbreaker. But bloody hell we've got to kill the bastard. Tanking the encounter with two tanks is doable, but we can actually increase our success with three tanks. I found a really nice guide that's meant for pally tanks, but it definitely has some nice pointers for all tanks and even a few for the healers. Credit for this guide goes to Matt Walsh from WoW Insider.
Here is a direct link to his guide: The Light and How to Swing It: Tanking the Bastion of Twilight, part 1
Here is a link to a nifty website that shows the drake combination that spawns with Halfus for the week: Halfus' Drakes Spawn of the Week
Below I will copy and paste the gist of the guide along with some helpful comments from other WoW players.
Halfus and his merry band of drakes
This is one of the first fights in a long time that gets easier the more tanks you add. Likewise, the onus for the success of your raid against Halfus will be left pretty squarely on the shoulders of your tanking corps.
When the fight starts, there will be three of five possible drakes available to be unleashed. Each gives a buff to the boss just by being conscious, while each will also debuff the boss when unlocked from their chains/cages. As each drake dies, moreover, Halfus will take a stacking debuff that increases damage received. These debuffs are the key to beating the enrage timer, especially for a raid group stepping into Bastion for the first few times.
Let's talk about the drakes and what each means to you:
Nether Scion If awake, it gives Halfus the Frenzied Assault buff; when unlocked, it debuffs the boss with Nether Blindness. Nominally, this drake increases the damage the boss will do to you, but that is heavily mitigated by its debuff.
Orphaned Emerald Whelps If awake, these give Halfus' Proto-Behemoth flying overhead the Scorching Breath ability; if unlocked, they debuff the Proto-Behemoth's raid damage with Atrophic Poison. These really are more of a concern for the healers, though you should use the breaths as an opportunity to weave glyphed Divine Protection and an equipped Mirror of Broken Images to mitigate the incoming magical damage.
Slate Dragon This is the most tank-centric of the five drakes. When awake, he gives Halfus the ability to use Malevolent Strikes, which is basically a mortal strike debuff. This necessitates a tank swap. Though, do note that using Divine Shield will purge these off you. Nonetheless, when unlocked, Halfus will be afflicted with Stone Touch and will periodically be stunned for 12 seconds.
Storm Rider When awake, this drake grants the Shadow Nova ability to the boss. If you're tanking Halfus, keep in mind you and some other lucky interrupt will need to alternate preventing that ability from going off. Also, don't tank Halfus by the edge, as hilarious as casting all the melee into an abyss would be. Anyway, when unlocked, it'll debuff Halfus with Cyclone Winds which basically makes Shadow Nova actually interruptable.
Time Warden When awake, this drake grants the Proto-Behemoth the ability to unleash a Fireball Barrage on the raid. When unlocked, it'll debuff the Proto-Behemoth with Time Dilation, making the fireballs much less infrequent. To frame this in tanking terms, you know what's a great way to be gibbed while tanking multiple drakes? Standing in one of the circles and getting hit by a fireball. Watch out!
Round 'em up and burn 'em down
The best way to handle the drakes, honestly, is just to release them all. The setup my raid usually uses is this: I'll tank two adjacent drakes, a second tank is on Halfus, and a third tank is on the third drake. Each tank unlocks a drake at pull or pulls Halfus, and the remaining one is unlocked by a hunter and immediately misdirected to its assignment.
Pile them all up in the middle, facing the drakes towards the door you came in from, while the raid is behind the mess and safely away from any breaths. Then, let the splash damage do a chunk of the work for you. Burn each drake down one by one, until only Halfus remains. The whelps (if up) can be generally ignored, since splash damage will slowly knock them off.
When you've got the pile engaged, I find it helps to generate initial -- and insurmountable -- threat on your assignment, and then target one of the whelps and start banging away with Hammer of the Righteous, spending Holy Power on Inquisition. Follow up with more HotRs, Consecration, Avenger's Shield -- any AOE you can throw at the group.
The reason you want to take the whelps is that because they are so low-level that your attacks' chances to miss or be dodged/parried are much lower. Once the whelps are dead (or if they weren't up that week), target a drake. Avoid targetting Halfus till last, since his raid boss, skull level will inflict painful miss rates on you.
If you find the damage intake is too much for the healers off the bat but you're well ahead of the enrage timer, you could always bring in a fourth tank (likely an off-spec DPSer) to tank a drake, thus reducing the amount of damage one of the tanks will be tanking. On the flip side of the coin, if you want to make things interesting, you can two-tank it (because Danger is your middle name, and so forth).
However, damage intake shouldn't be too rough with proper use of cooldowns. When the fight first starts, you might as well pop Guardian of Ancient Kings to remove the terror of those first few, deadly seconds. Follow up with Ardent Defender if things look especially hairy, while saving Divine Protection and Mirror of Broken Images for any magic damage spike moments (specifically if whelps are up and the Proto-Behemoth has those enhanced breaths). Also, not standing in the fireballs does wonders!
"Rawr."
At 50%, Halfus will enter phase 2, so make sure all the drakes you intend to release are dead before then. From this point on, he'll periodically unleash a Furious Roar that will knock down the entire raid three times.
The part where this can introduce problems is if a barrage of fireballs is descending upon the raid in the middle of a Roar. However, anyone can successfully strafe out of a flaming circle before the payload is delivered, even when punctuated by three tumbles. Just hold down your strafe key until you're safely out of danger.
Also, if there's a Shadow Nova to interrupt, Furious Roar can faciliate one of those getting off. Make sure you have contingency plans for those moments, like a mage blinking through the last tick of the Roar and then counterspelling. You can also put Hand of Protection on someone so they can get an interrupt off, or even use Divine Shield to retain your footing.
Very shortly, the big guy will be reduced to 0%. All in all, the fight isn't terribly difficult. The hardest part of the whole thing is keeping all the abilities straight the first time you go in there.
Lastly, don't forget: There's an achievement for knocking all your melee DPSers into the chasm behind Halfus' veranda with a Shadow Nova.
Here are some tips from other WoW players:
In normal mode, 3 drakes are "awake" regardless of 10 or 25 raid size. In Heroic mode, all 5 drakes are active on both sizes.
There are a lot of different options for how you can release drakes in 10-man. You can bring a 3rd tank if you have a plate dps with an off-spec and acceptable gear, but you can 2-tank it just fine. Overall, I suggest letting out two drakes right at the start on 10-man. We have one tank hold both drakes while the other takes Halfus. Or one tank can have Halfus + drake while the other has just a drake. Feel free to try both to see what works, but I personally recommend 2 drakes on one tank, Halfus on the other.
Either way, letting two drakes out at the start means very heavy damage on the tank that has two mobs, especially if that tank has Halfus and stacks of MS. (I really recommend just Halfus on one tank if there is the MS debuff.) You want to use your cooldowns early. Plan with your healers what order you will use cooldowns in so you don't overlap too much. If you can survive long enough to kill one drake, the fight will get much easier.
As for which 2 of the 3 drakes to let out, I suggest this priority order:
1. Storm Rider
2. Time Warden
3. Nether Whelps
4. Nether Scion
5. Slate Dragon
You always want to release Storm Rider right away. You NEED to be able to interrupt that Nova or the extra shadow damage every 10 or less seconds plus the knockback making it harder to heal will destroy your raid. (I've seen a few rare raids leave Storm chained for a while, but this is a crazy idea and NOT recommended!)
The only time you need to release Nether Scion is if the Slate Dragon is active. If both are active, the MS buff will stack up very fast. Releasing Nether is the best way to mitigate this. You MUST release Nether at the start if Slate is present. It might seem weird that Nether is so far down the list because of this. Yet if Slate and Nether are present, then only one other drake is. Thus if you follow the list, you'll find that Nether is always one of the two drakes you release if Slate is present.
Time is very useful to release since he allows the raid to dodge the fireballs. This vastly reduces raid damage. In fact, if your drake combo is Time/Slate/Nether then there will be NO raid damage if your raiders dodge the fireballs! (Until 50%.) Releasing Whelps also reduces raid damage taken, but does not eliminate it. Both are great to release. The only combo that complicates this is Time/Whelps/Storm. Since you need to release Storm, you can only release one of the "raid damage" drakes. In this case, Whelps is possibly the better release choice. Though you can't dodge the Fireballs, releasing the Whelps still reduces their damage plus the damage of the Breath. On the other hand, releasing the Time essentially eliminates one source of damage. With just the full power Breath, damage is much spikier, but also more predictable. Try both to see which works better for you.
Finally, releasing Slate is not important. The other four drakes are much better at mitigating the buff effects than Slate is. The stun is nifty, but won't necessarily let you drop MS stacks. Look at it this way: Slate's debuff is only present 12 seconds of every 42 seconds. (Stunned 12 seconds, active 30 seconds.) It's effects are felt for less than half of the fight. The other four drakes debuffs are active 100% of the time. Do you want something that's active 30% of the time or 100%?
Should you release the 3rd drake after the other 2 die? For the Storm/Time/Whelps combo, I say YES. Things can get out of hand during the sub 50% Shouts for a group that is new to Halfus if Whelps or Time is not killed. The reduced raid damage is very nice. For all the other combos, it's not necessary at all. Releasing and killing that third drake makes tanking and healing this fight easier and also lets the DPS get higher numbers on Halfus, but if you can kill 2 drakes you've all but got the fight won anyway so it's just a luxury.
There ya go, some tips for 10-man! They work really well for my raid group, but you might need to tweak them for yours. Oh, one other note: Hand of Protection. If you (the paladin) is tanking the drakes, you can use HoP on the other tank to clear MS stacks off. The other tank needs to cancel the HoP aura right away so Halfus doesn't smoosh a healer. Using HoP or Divine Shield to wipe of MS stacks is highly recommended!
I would recommend using three tanks for Halfus if the MS debuff is present (two tanks on Halfus, swapping to drop stacks, and the other tank on the drakes and whelps). Between Vengeance and the stacking debuff Halfus gets as the fight goes on, it's not uncommon to see each tank averaging 25k DPS or more on Halfus, which is enough to down him comfortably without straining the healers.
Also, paladin tanks can make a macro to cast Hand of Protection followed by Hand of Freedom to drop the stacks, then instantly dispell the bubble before Halfus runs to a healer.
/cancelaura Divine Shield
/cast Divine Shield
In our guild as prot pally it makes it easier for me to take Halfus first when Nether is up, we usually only pick two drakes and two tank it, OT picks up one, hunter MD's to him and I bubble after my stacks reach about 11, but that number depends greatly on your gear and heals. By the time he has to taunt Halfus off of me the first drake is dead and we taunt off eachother at about 6 stacks through the fight. The bubble macro gives us some time to kill the drakes and makes switching much easier.
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