Edited and updated based on Live experiences
Tanking: Three tanks typically required. Usually one tank will be on the boss while two will take the adds. When the Slate Dragon is active Halfus gains the Malevolent Strikes buff, which means one of the add tanks will need to take the boss while the boss tank picks up the extra drake. This swap happens every every 6-8 stacks (or when your debuff falls off).
Healing: If the Slate Dragon is active one tank will have reduced healing taken, so be aware of that.
Until the Time Warden or Emerald Whelps are activated, raid damage will be very high.
Positioning: The boss and Drakes should be tanked on top of each other to maximise cleave damage.
The ranged should stay spread out so that splash damage from the fireballs from the Proto-Behemoth is minimised.
Buffs: Fire resistance will mitigate a lot of the damage from the Proto-Behemoth.
Key Debuffs: – Applied to tanks, reduces healing taken by 6% per stack.
HP: 115,000,000 HP (32,000,000 on 10-man)
Emerald Whelp: 8x 1, 867 000 HP (518,712 on 10-man)
Other Drakes: (4,149,700 on 10-man)
Enrage: 6 minutes
Halfus Wyrmbreaker is a pure melee boss, but gains additional abilities from the extra Drakes which are active at the start of the encounter. He is accompanied by a flying proto-drake, the Proto-Behemoth, which typically deals light splash raid damage from fireballs. The protodrake is not tanked or DPS’d.
Before the fight begins, Wyrmbreaker and the Proto-Behemoth will have a total of three randomly-selected buffs between them, which you can check by looking at their tooltips.
Activating a specific add from the five in the room will neutralise one of these buffs, so these three will need to be activated by talking to them and, depending on the specific strategy, killed or just tanked.
The appropriate drakes will be friendly and talkable to activate them, while the inactive ones have the Unresponsive debuff.
The other advantage of activating the adds is that as soon as they are activated they debuff Wyrmbreaker with +50% damage taken each, which is necessary for killing him within his enrage timer.
Phase 1
At the beginning of this phase the top priority is activating two of the drakes and killing one of them.
Wyrmbreaker should be tanked in the middle of the room, to let the raid spread out all around him.
Activating the Drakes has the following effects:
- Nether Scion – Neutralises the buff from Halfus Wyrmbreaker, which would otherwise increase his attack speed by 100%.
- Time Warden – Shows pulsing orange circles on the ground to indicate where the Proto-Behemoth’s will land. This dramatically reduces the raid damage taken.
- Slate Dragon – Stuns the boss periodically, allowing to fall off more easily.
- The Orphaned Emerald Whelps – 8 spawn on both 10 and 25-man. Activating these dramatically reduces the damage the Proto-Behemoth’s Flame Breath will do.
- Storm Rider – Activating the Storm Rider increases the cast time of the the from 0.25s to 1.5s, allowing it to be interrupted. is a 30,000 Shadow damage raid-wide AoE and knockback which is extremely harmful.
Which drakes we activate depends on the partcular combination active in a given week: the Storm Rider is massively disruptive and will always need to be activated as soon as the fight starts; the Time Warden and Emerald Whelps will decrease your raid damage taken significantly, so activating one of them will simplify things enormously; the Slate Dragon or Nether Scion are probably lower priority because they can be handled with cooldowns and tank swapping, unless you have both, in which case activating the Nether Scion will make the stacking manageable so activate him first.
On the pull, the two highest priority Drakes will be activated and pulled to the boss. The whole raid will burn down the first Drake. Once one Drake is down, the third Drake is activated and pulled in, and the raid will burn down the second Drake.
Once two drakes are dead, pop Bloodlust and focus DPS on the boss. The third Drake will just be off-tanked.
Phase 2 – 50%-0%
After 50%, and every 10% after that, Halfus will cast three times in a row. This is a short cast time raid-wide physical damage AoE and knockdown/stun.
The Drake tank will need HoTs and cooldowns to survive this phase, so either external cooldowns or tanks’ own cooldowns can be used in a rotation. Tank-swapping can help to keep cooldowns available.
The MT will not need any special help, because Halfus does not melee during this time.
Heroic
The add drakes also debuff players upon activation, as follows:
- Nether Scion – Applies a raid-wide debuff giving 15% less hit chance, 15% attack speed reduction and 25% less damage done.
When the Nether Scion dies, this debuff is applied to Halfus. - Time Warden – Roots the entire raid.
When the Time Warden dies the root is removed and the Proto-Behemoth’s fireballs move much more slowly, making them easier to dodge. - Slate Dragon – Casts , stunning the entire raid periodically for 12 seconds.
- Orphaned Emerald Whelps – Reduce all damage done by 50% [or by 2000, conflicting reports].
- Storm Rider – Casts a raid-wide interrupt every 0.5s, meaning that you are limited to instant-cast spells.
