The race for the World First Kills currently occupies many fans of World of Warcraft. However, the best guilds in the world are stuck on one boss: Halondrus. He consistently beats top players down into the dust. He even withstands nerfs.
Update 6:30 PM: After 357 attempts, Liquid has finally defeated the boss worldwide as the first group. Other guilds, however, are still struggling with Halondrus.
Which boss are we talking about? Halondrus is one of the 11 bosses in the Sepulcher of the First Ones, the new raid in Patch 9.2 of WoW. He is usually defeated as the 7th boss in order, before groups move on to Anduin.
In the ongoing World First Race of the new raid, Halondrus is regarded as “the wall” for professional guilds. So far, no group worldwide has been able to defeat him on the highest difficulty “mythic”.
This is how guild progress looks: So far, only 9 guilds worldwide have managed to reach Halondrus. Counting all the attempts from these groups together, the boss has already been attacked 1,862 times and has still defeated the players every time. And the number of pulls is increasing.
Halondrus is “the wall” – But why?
This is what Halondrus can do: The boss is divided into 3 phases. In each of these, he essentially uses the same abilities:
- The boss shakes the ground with various abilities – players must dodge.
- Balls appear and move towards the boss. If they reach him, they explode. They must be stopped by players.
- Tanks must hit certain protected orbs with a beam to be able to stop them.
- In mythic mode, bombs must be repeatedly picked up and dropped to prevent them from detonating.
In the third phase, the abilities come continuously and it’s a race against time: will the healers’ mana run out first, or will the boss die? Or will a mistake inevitably lead to death? So far, Halondrus has (almost) always won.
What makes him so dangerous? The number of mechanics is already quite high. In addition, these are also extremely dangerous. A single mistake from any player generally leads to their death or the death of the entire group.
Such mistakes cannot be recovered from, leading to wipes. The moderators of Liquid’s stream have already stated that Halondrus is the hardest “non-endboss” in the entire game. He is even harder than many endbosses.
Even a big nerf via hotfix during the World First Race hasn’t helped. While Liquid and Echo, the leading guilds, are making progress, it’s still not enough for the kill.
Halondrus is so exhausting also because groups must remain fully focused at all times. Not even in the last seconds can one afford a mistake. The professional guild Method has also bitterly realized this:
Wipe at 0.0 %: Boss in WoW offers tough resistance to one of the best guilds in the world
