The first boss in the Bastion of Twilight is the second easiest raid boss currently in the game. Halfus is a fairly straight forward fight where the key points are to mitigate his special abilities while beating his enrage timer.

When you walk into Halfus’ room you’ll notice a bunch of dragons lying around. Two of these will be ‘beaten senseless’ and the other two will have full health and be active. Which drakes are active is completely random, but they determine which special abilities Halfus will have.

The Dragons

• Storm Rider – Activates Halfus’ Shadow Nova ability. Releasing the Storm Rider reduces the cast time of Shadow Nova and makes it possible to interrupt it.
• Time Warden – When released it roots player periodically, including the fireballs from Halfus’ protodrake. Causes fireballs to move much more slowly.
• Slate Dragon – When Slate is active Halfus gains a debuff that reduces healing taken by 5% each time he hits a target. This ability stacks. When Slate is released it stuns Halfus periodically for 12 seconds.
• Nether Scion – Halfus gains massive attack speed when this drake is active. Releasing the Nether Scion will reduce Halfus’ attack speed, hit chance, and damage by 25%.
• Orphaned Emerald Whelp – These are never an ‘active’ dragon but the whelp cage can and should be opened immediately.  Killing the whelps significantly reduces Halfus’ damage and increases his damage taken.

Setting Up

• Tanks: 2

 

• Healers: 2-3
• DPS: 5-6

Some drake combinations are more dangerous than others and you can get away with 2 healing this fight sometimes. It’s just not likely that you will need to have 6 DPS to beat the enrage though so the 3 healer setup is usually preferable.

Tactics

As you can see, how you proceed will be dictated in large part by what abilities Halfus happens to have. As a general rule of thumb you’re going to always release the whelps and at least one drake. Most of the time one drake and the whelps will be sufficient to lower Halfus’ damage enough to make him manageable.

The most important drakes are the Storm Rider and Nether Scion. The Time Warden is practically irrelevant on normal difficulty and Slate’s stun is not as valuable as the other two. Storm Rider is by far the most important. Shadow Nova, the special ability Halfus gains when Storm Rider is active, does a ton of damage and must be interrupted using two players since he will cast it about once every five seconds. This ability must not be allowed to be cast freely because it will wipe your raid.

When you begin the fight you’re going to want to have one tank on Halfus and have the other tank immediately activate one of the drakes and tank the drake. The Whelp Cage should also be opened at this point and the tank that is tanking the drake can pick up these whelps (misdirect and tricks of the trade really helps for this). At this point you can stack Halfus, the drake, and all the whelps and AoE them straight to hell. The whelps will die extremely quickly and after they’re dead all the DPS should switch to the drake and kill it. The only exception to this is if the Storm Rider is activated in which case the tank on Halfus is going to need help interrupting from one of your melee DPS.

Once the drake is dead you can begin an all out burn on Halfus. Once he reaches 50% he will start casting Furious Roar which is cast 3 times in a row and stuns the raid and deals damage. Unfortunately, when Halfus has the Shadow Nova ability he will follow up the final roar with the Shadow Nova which will be impossible to interrupt due to the stun. The easiest way to deal with this problem is to have a Mage blink the final stun and counterspell the Shadow Nova. If you don’t have a Mage then Icebound Fortitude and PvP trinkets can be helpful here.

Slate Dragon Reminder: If you get Slate remember that you’re going to have to have the tanks periodically trade aggro because of the stacking anti-healing debuff that Halfus will put on them!

Once you’ve mastered dealing with this issue there’s nothing more to the fight. Beat down Halfus and collect your loot.

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