1^st a bit about the trash before Halfus. Yes, all the cc-ing in the heroics has served you well. Your assigned cc-ers each take care of a target. Pull and start the cc at the same time. The cc targets end up pollied feared sapped mind controlled in around the same area, while the tanks get agro on the rest of the trash and you are free to cleave them down.

In the encounter area you have Halfus and 3 dragons. You are supposed kill Halfus with the help of some of these dragons. After you start the encounter simply speak to them to free them. Unfortunately they get instantly mind controlled against you. So I should rather say speak to them to fight also against them. The thing is, while each dragon that you fight against improves your damage done on the boss or your survivability against certain special attacks, you also have to tank these dragons or spend dps to kill them. Once a dragon is dead you retain the bonus he had given you.

This is a very interesting encounter especially because of these dragons which make so that it can be approached and tackled in lots of different ways depending on which or how many dragons you free and if you tank them or kill them. The encounter is completely different from the beta, with most of the mechanics changed, nevertheless RISE managed to take him down in the 1^st week of cataclysm but a bit of a trial and error was necessary to discover the fight.

We tried without freeing any dragons. Who needs to waste dps on dragons when you got a boss to kill? That didn’t work out, we were dead in seconds.Then said a-ha free 2 dragons and tank them, but don’t dps them. That didn’t work out either, we died at 50%.

We then tried with freeing only the time dragon. That gives players enough time to spot meteor strikes on the floor. Ranged were spread out on the edge of the room. Melees were dodging as best they could. That failed because of the pushback that halfus does. That pushback hurts casters and healers most as it interrupts their cast.

Then we tried freeing only Storm. With Storm freed, that pushback that I was talking about becomes an interruptible spell on Halfus. With 2 assigned interrupters on Halfus we had no more pushback. Unfortunately because the time dragon wasn’t freed anymore, the meteor strikes became too much to handle.

Finally this was the setup that got us the kill: we freed both time and storm at the start of the battle. We piled them up on Halfus. We cleaved them all but main kill target was Time Dragon. After that we took out Storm and then we focused all dps on boss.

After we took out Storm we also freed a 3^rd dragon, the one from the left as you enter the room, called Nether Scion. We only tanked him, we did not dps him.

A great problem in this fight is the Halfus roar. Halfus starts doing his furious roar at 50% and then periodically after. The whole raid gets stunned for 6 seconds or more. This is what kills the melees and the Nether Scion tank. For the melees, that are clumped up on boss, it’s really important to avoid meteor strikes as much as possible during this stun. You are not going to be dpsing anyways because you are stunned, might as well take a step back just before the stun so you make life easier on the healers. The Halfus tank has a decent chance of surviving since Halfus isn’t damaging him as much while he is stunning, it’s the Nether Scion tank that you should be worried about, he is the one taking high damage. It is a necessity to use lots of cool downs on him just before each stun. Either that or use 2 tanks for him. Just before the stun one tanks taunts off the other, and during the stun the Nether Scion is walking from one to the other and thus he isn’t killing.

This is where this guide ends, I hope you enjoyed it and you will give me the thumbs up on facebook. That being said, I will leave you with the ending the 1^st RISE kill of Halfus, in the 1^st week of cataclysm, watch, as he reaches enrage timer and kills us all just as we barely manage to take him down