- Oh this is pretty, I fit in with the trees (commence guildmembers trying to "plant" me)
- First few ninjapulls of trash went badly (not taking new content srsly?)
- The minibosses are a nice touch
- Wow, easy
Bearing in mind all of this is on Normal Mode 25Man. We will be starting Heroic next reset, which I hope provides more of a challenge.
Now, the first miniboss in the instance is cloning Baltharus the Warborn. Technically, you can start with any of the minibosses, but in our two runs he's easiest to get to first so he is always done first fairly simple. Now the trick with Baltharus is mostly with tanking, once that's down you're basically set. Every 25% of his health he spawns a clone and each of these have to be tanked seperately by a new tank (we very very messily did this on our first ever try not knowing what would happen, our main tank took all three of them and consequently had to be combat ressed three times, a bit like a Lich King kill we had this one time, but that's another story..). The only other thing you do with Baltharus is be careful with your debuff, every while (DBM should tell you, I don't really care about timers as this doesn't massively effect me) he casts Ennervating Brand on a number of people, these people run away from other raid members+Beltharus by at least 12 yards as it buffs his damage and decreases healing by 2% (fine at this point, bad when it stacks). Since I'm usually fairly spread out and far away anyway, the general rule is "everyone except healers must move", reason being because it's fairly intensive on tank healing, the 2% loss is much greater if you make a healer stop healing to move away. So, in brief, as a tree you must:
Start out healing the MT, stay kinda as far back as you can whilst still being in range. When the clone spawns try to throw HoTs on all tanks and continue this until the end, you should be throwing lifeblooms, rejuvs and regrows on all of them which means that you won't really have time to do any direct healing as you'll be busy keeping those stacks up.
Start out healing the MT, stay kinda as far back as you can whilst still being in range. When the clone spawns try to throw HoTs on all tanks and continue this until the end, you should be throwing lifeblooms, rejuvs and regrows on all of them which means that you won't really have time to do any direct healing as you'll be busy keeping those stacks up.
I'm sure some other guilds do it other ways, but this is easiest for us. Anyway, once Beltharus is down and you get your reward of 1 Frost Emblem, you clear a few more packs of trash (btw, you best put HIBERNATE on your bars as it is certainly useful here, unless some asdijasdijd keeps dotting your mob >:[ you'll probably be asked to use it quite a lot, usually on Invokers) and you get the choice to do Saviana Ragefire (the one we do next) or General Zarithrian. We generally find it's easier to do Ragefire then go up to General, so that we're as far as possible away from Halion when he spawns after they're all down.
Saviana Ragefire there's not much to know about. Fight starts and everyone spreads out (she does some cone aoe or something, not that I've ever really noticed it though) and does a dot occasionally. The dot is the most important part, she casts it when she flies up into the air, you can't miss it as a red arrow appears above your head a bit like the Frost Tombs on Sindragosa. People with the red arrow run their ass away from everyone else otherwise you explode into Conflagragation and it spreads (what I learnt when some ass didn't move far enough away). That's really it, other than that just heal and such, easy kill and one more Frost Emblem for you.
Next kill the two sets of two guards on either side of General's platform (to avoid pulling half of them when you engage him) and run up and engage. I'm gonna be totally honest and say that I didn't really care for General when we fought him, so... I don't have a lot to say, since this is basically directed at any resto druid healers out there, the fight is simple, but it relies on other people doing their job right. There's a lot of add handling going on but if one happens to stray tooo close to you popping Nature's Grasp (just in case) and moving away will probably save your ass. Oh and he does a fear (it doesn't actually seem to make you run away, just stand in place) where aggro resets, so perhaps linger on the side of caution directly after the fear, lest your heals be too keen and you pull immediate healing aggro from that regrowth you thought was a good idea. If everyone else has played their roles well, General will now also be down. Immediately after the last miniboss is down, there's about a 15second interval and Halion spawns in all his purple glory.
Saviana Ragefire there's not much to know about. Fight starts and everyone spreads out (she does some cone aoe or something, not that I've ever really noticed it though) and does a dot occasionally. The dot is the most important part, she casts it when she flies up into the air, you can't miss it as a red arrow appears above your head a bit like the Frost Tombs on Sindragosa. People with the red arrow run their ass away from everyone else otherwise you explode into Conflagragation and it spreads (what I learnt when some ass didn't move far enough away). That's really it, other than that just heal and such, easy kill and one more Frost Emblem for you.
Next kill the two sets of two guards on either side of General's platform (to avoid pulling half of them when you engage him) and run up and engage. I'm gonna be totally honest and say that I didn't really care for General when we fought him, so... I don't have a lot to say, since this is basically directed at any resto druid healers out there, the fight is simple, but it relies on other people doing their job right. There's a lot of add handling going on but if one happens to stray tooo close to you popping Nature's Grasp (just in case) and moving away will probably save your ass. Oh and he does a fear (it doesn't actually seem to make you run away, just stand in place) where aggro resets, so perhaps linger on the side of caution directly after the fear, lest your heals be too keen and you pull immediate healing aggro from that regrowth you thought was a good idea. If everyone else has played their roles well, General will now also be down. Immediately after the last miniboss is down, there's about a 15second interval and Halion spawns in all his purple glory.
I'm gonna be honest and say I basically winged it on Halion and I'm sure a lot of precision is required from the other roles, but as a tree inside the portal (in the Physical realm is appears to be a lot more taxing on healers) this fight is really quite basic. You should still swap to your 4set tier 10.5 if you can and have it, reason being because you'll be moving around quite a lot you won't have time to really cast anything other than hots so this really has to be treated as an aoe fight as damage can be dished out at random so hots on as many as possible help.
The fight begins entirely in the physical realm, people will occasionally gain a debuff. The debuff is probably going to be your duty and it's vital to the survival of the raid. It continues in the twilight realm after P1. The debuff begins as Mark of Combustion (in the Physical Realm) and continues as Mark of Consumption (in the Twilight Realm). You have to let the person gain a maximum of three stacks before debuffing it, if you leave it to four or more you risk killing the person cursed. The person in question should run to the edge of the arena and stay there until decursed, immediately moving out of the area once it has been. You'll also be relying on your other healers to throw heals on the person while you're decursing, but if you can immediately after or immediately before (think 1 or 2 stacks) pop Nature's Swiftness and throw a Regrowth onto the target. You can do this for the first one anyway, the others you'll have to usually settle on a Rejuv, though you can chance a Regrowth immediately before they gain any stacks. Reason being is because they'll be taking 12k damage on initial ticks then once you decurse it 12k again followed by 2-4k every few seconds they stay stood in the patch of fire it leaves behind.
If you are not on decursing duty, you are very much in luck. Healer-wise this fight is totally directed toward tree prowess as we are the class least effected by having to move whilst heal. The reason you'll have to be moving a lot is because of the beams that spawn every while, these beams you can judge the position of by the two Swirly Shadowy Things that rotate opposite each other, they create a beam which if you are caught in you're dead for sure. So you want to be running preferably just behind one of the beams, bearing in mind they only rotate in a clockwise manner. Be careful as your running and healing though, as behind him there is occasionally a tail lash, stunning you for 2secs and dealing minor damage and in front, if you're really unlucky there can be a cleave and a dark breath in front of Halion, in which case you're basically dead, cause cleave can kill and dark breath is an extra 26-33k damage on top of that on 25man. (NOTE this entire writing is assuming 25man, I'm not one to care for 10man raids). Anyway, though cleave is somewhat expected you can avoid this by running as far against the wall as possible as you should be just out of range of it if the positioning is correct, whereas Dark Breath has a 2second cast time so target Halion and if you see him casting it shift your ass into cat form and dash.
After what seems like a long time (the encounter is mostly based on balancing the damage done inside and outside the realm) Halion should eventually go down if everyone else plays their roles right. As for the start of the fight (pre-portal) there's no beams so really unless you're decursing just stand to Halion's side (so you can't get Tail Swiped or Cleaved). For just about the entire fight, unless you're on decursing duty, you don't really have to do an awful lot and the encounter is easy, people on decursing duty have a stressful time and really have to stay on their toes.
After what seems like a long time (the encounter is mostly based on balancing the damage done inside and outside the realm) Halion should eventually go down if everyone else plays their roles right. As for the start of the fight (pre-portal) there's no beams so really unless you're decursing just stand to Halion's side (so you can't get Tail Swiped or Cleaved). For just about the entire fight, unless you're on decursing duty, you don't really have to do an awful lot and the encounter is easy, people on decursing duty have a stressful time and really have to stay on their toes.
First reset we got him down on the second try, second reset we got him down on the first try, it says we're really leet (which I'm not feeling so much after more nights of dying on LDW 25man Hc progress...) or Halion is underpowered. I'm hoping Heroic provides more of a challenge and I look forward to seeing such (as it drops a reallllly badass Trauma-esq trinket which I want and a nice ring too). Happy healing!
