Heroic: Halfus Wyrmbreaker

10-man heroic information/advice (I am a prot pally):

Changes from normal:

All 5 drakes are active. Halfus has 51.5 million health, up from 32.5 million.

General strat information:

Set up: 3 tanks, 3 healers, 4 dps. This is pretty much standard for this fight on heroic 10m.

- Your tanks need to set up a taunt rotation to make sure the mortal strike stacks do not get out of hand on any one tank. We usually tank swap at 4-5 stacks, and rotate through all 3 tanks until 2-3 dragons are down.
- Since your tank should not be hit-capped, you should have a DPS with a 10 sec or less CD interrupt taking care of the shadow novas. We have our enhance shaman do it; he puts Halfus on focus, then uses a macro that allows him to interrupt Halfus without losing his current target. The macro looks something like this:

/tar Halfus
/cast Wind Shear
/targetlastenemy

If you use such a macro, make sure you are facing Halfus while DPSing, or else you will get an error when you go for the interrupt and the shadow nova will hit the raid.

- Releasing Nether Scion and Storm Rider on the pull is mandatory. Slate is optional and should be left until last, and we do not even bother releasing him at all.
- If your tanks can handle 4 drakes (i.e. everything but Slate on the pull) then go for it, but we found releasing 3 at the start made healing more manageable and we still beat the enrage comfortably. We chose to release Time Warden since the damage from the proto-Behemoth's breath, while somewhat heavy, is predictable and not that hard to heal for the first minute or so. We found the fireball barrage damage from not releasing Time Warden was too unpredictable and spiky.
- Pop bloodlust at the start, and nuke down the first dragon of choice. After killing the first drake (doesn't matter which), we release the whelps, AOE like crazy, then focus down the remaining active dragons and nuke Halfus.
- Once you get two drakes down, the fight becomes pretty much identical to normal. The hardest part is the first minute, minute and a half. A mage helps quite a bit during the furious roar/shadow nova combo, but we did not have a mage, so we set up a bubble/BoP rotation (i.e. I bubble+interrupt the first, our holy paladin does the second, holy paladin BoPs a DPS for the third, and he should be dead by then.)

Prot paladin specific advice:
- I usually tank Halfus at the start. I use DP right off the bat, shield wall at 4-5 stacks, BoP+taunt+cancelaura at 12-13 stacks (this clears your MS stacks). This minimizes the need for tank swapping, and our first tank swap usually doesn't occur until after the first dragon dies.
- Since there will be a gap from the initial pull to the application of Nether Scion's debuff, I usually pull Halfus at max range with AS, then run straight back until he's about to hit me (almost to the back of the room). I turn around and tank him right before can start hitting me with my back turned, and the Nether Scion debuff is usually on by this point. If you try to tank him without the Nether Scion debuff, he will apply stacks very quickly (~1 stack/sec in my estimation) and you will be unhealable very fast. There is a long enough gap from the initial pull to the first shadow nova that you don't have to worry about the travel time of Storm Rider's debuff.
- I use DG in 2 cases: 1) when the proto behemoth breathes on us before we release the whelps and the raid is a little low on health, and 2) during the furious roars, again if the raid seems a bit low.

Hope this helps, and good luck.

Heroic 25-Player Difficulty Strategy
All of the drakes are active in heroic difficulty. Halfus' HP is also 184.7M

Setup recommendation: FIVE tanks (best geared tank drakes & whelps, worst two alternate between Halfus and the Nether Scion); 2-5 fire mages + warlocks; 2-3 disc priests

On the pull, the Nether Scion, Time Warden, Orphaned Emerald Whelps, and Storm Rider should be activated by separate people immediately. (either the tanks or misdirects) This will grant an immediate 200% damage increase to Halfus as well as trivialize every mechanic that makes this encounter deadly. Your better tanks should be holding onto the drakes with your worst two trading off between Halfus and the Nether Scion.

Because Halfus is taking 3x the damage, you can trivialize a lot of the tank healing by having your disc priests spec into Atonement and spam Smite on the boss. Your fire mages will be doing the most AoE damage with Living Bomb planted on the boss. It's the same with Warlocks and Seed of Corruption. The whelp pack should die from just these DoTs instead of requiring everyone to throw AoE down.

The Storm Rider should be the first to die, followed by the Time Warden. When the Storm Rider is nearly dead, you need to activate the http://www.wowhead.com/npc=44652 to activate the final stack of damage taken by Halfus. You do not have time to kill another drake, and must rotate cooldowns to keep all your tanks alive after 50%. When the Slate Dragon is activated, Halfus will also be stunned periodically making tank damage and interrupting less of a hassle. Once two drakes and the whelps are down, you are only healing 3 tanks (Halfus, Nether Scion, Slate Dragon) instead of 5.

For interrupting Shadow Nova, you are inevitably going to get hit by one .5s cast at the start because of the time it takes for the Storm Rider to activate. Anyone who is not a main interrupt on the boss should anticipate this first one coming up and kick it. After that, your main interrupters should be focusing on the boss. It is either two rogues which alternate Kick or an enhancement shaman that has a short enough cooldown on Wind Shear. (The CD on Shadow Nova is about 7-8s) It is imperative that besides the first one absolutely no Shadow Novas go off. After Halfus hits 50%, he will start spamming Furious Roar. Your melee will not be able to interrupt the Shadow Nova in time and need assistance from the mages. Each cast is 1.5, and the resulting stun is 1.5s. When he casts the third stun, mages be ready to blink and spam Counterspell. If Halfus hits his enrage, you will not be able to interrupt Shadow Novas and must pop any vulnerabilities to squeeze in the remaining amount of time.

Since Patch 4.0.6 this tactic is no longar viable because the damage debuff is applied after the dragon dies as apposed to when they're released.