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To face Halion, you must first defeat all three mini bosses that reside in the Sanctum - Saviana Ragefire, Baltharus the Warborn and General Zarithrian. Once they're dead, Halion will spawn in the charred middle ring of the Sanctum.
Shortly after engaging him, a wall of fire will spawn in a circle around Halion. You cannot leave that area throughout the encounter, which doesn't give you a lot of room to work with.
You'll need two tanks, 2-3 healers and 5-6 DPS for this fight.
Like most dragons, Halion possesses a flame breath and a tail lash with a two second stun, so you want to position your raid on both sides of the dragon. No one but the tank should be in front, and absolutely no one should be close to his tail.
Throughout the whole encounter Halion has an aura active called Twilight Precision, but really we can just call it Ruby Radiance, since all it does is make tanks a lot less likely to dodge attacks much like the ICC and Sunwell debuffs.
The fight is split into three phases. In phase 1, you fight Halion's physical, fire-based form. His main abilities in this phase are a flame breath, Meteor Strike and Fiery Combustion.
You can see Meteor Strike in action here. Every 35 seconds, Halion will mark the ground below a random raid member and a firey X will spawn below them. After a couple seconds, four lines of fire will extend from the X all the way to the flame walls at the side. The mark deals damage, so does the fire. Don't stand in them.
Fiery Combustion is a debuff that's also placed on a random raid member. It deals a few thousand damage to them every couple seconds, and every time it ticks it'll add a stack to the debuff. When the debuff is dispelled, it'll turn into a fiery circle at the feet of the debuffed raid member. The more stacks the debuff had when you dispelled it, the bigger the circle will be.
It deals damage and knocks players back, so it's important that a raid member that gets the debuff placed on them immediately runs to the side of the area away from other raid members and then gets dispelled or decursed, both remove it.
When Halion hits 70% health, phase 2 starts. His physical form will disappear and a portal will open. Everyone but your phase 1 tank should enter the portal.
In phase 2 you're faced with a raidwide aura damage, two orbiting spheres that I'll explain in a second, a Dark Breath and Soul Consumption, which is the exact same mechanic as Fiery Combustion, except the void zone that drops will draw anyone nearby in instead of knocking them back.
Make sure your shadow realm tank is the first one to enter the portal and get threat on Halion, or you'll have dead melee.
The main mechanic in this phase are the two shadow orbs that float around the outside of the circular realm. They're always 180 degrees apart, and 30 seconds after phase two starts as well as every 30 seconds after that, the orbs will be connected by a shadow beam that stretches through the whole area.
The orbs will keep moving around while the beam is active, so it's imperative that your raid moves with the beam without standing in it. You never want to get caught in it, as it basically kills a raid member outright. The beam lasts 10 seconds, and then is inactive for 20, rinse repeat.
You also definitely don't want to stand in the Dark Breath like I keep doing here. While it probably won't kill you, it's added stress for your raid healer.
The Soul Consumption void zones you see here are pretty badly placed. You want to make sure to keep them at the outside of the area, so make sure to yell at a debuffed raid member if they don't start moving right away.
You CAN continually keep moving with the spheres like we're doing here, but if your raid's communication is good, it might be easier to just move whenever the beams are about to come up. Your tank needs to lead the way, as no raid member should get close to either head or tail of the dragon.
As you can see, our communication wasn't the best.
At 50% health, Halion hits phase 3. Now you have to split up your raid cause Halion's physical form is becoming active again. Make sure that the tank healer in your group takes the portal out of the shadow realm right before phase 3 starts, so they're ready to heal the tank that stayed outside.
You also need to send some DPS back into the physical realm. In this phase, Halion gains a buff called Corporeality. If you deal equal damage to Halion in both realsm, Corporeality will not give Halion a buff. However, let's say you deal significantly more damage in the shadow realm, then Halion will deal and receive a lot more damage in the physical realm while the shadow realm's Corporeality will deal and receive a lot less damage.
Simplified, your goal here is to keep damage done to Halion roughly equal in both realms. Casters will do better in the physical realm, melee shine in the shadow realm. Split your raid so neither side is overpowered. All other mechanics in both realms remain the same in phase 3.
To sum it up: Make sure debuffed people get dispelled out of the raid. Stay out of breaths, tail lashes and flames. Use auras or totems to reduce elemental damage. Stay out of beams in the shadow realm. Divide DPS up equally for phase 3, so Corporality remains equal.
Your raid healer should remain in the shadow realm, as there's significantly more damage going out. Make sure to have a dispeller in both realms.
When Halion's shared health pool reaches 0, you win.
