Smartiepants

I’ve noticed a few closed threads about this, but I figure it’s about time to get things going. I’m going to assume that people know the fight already, and general approaches. We’ve been pushing this in both 10 man and 25 man recently, and a few things to share, or get feedback on.

10 man
Raid Comp
I’d say that 3 tanks / 3 healers is generally necessary, but I’m having some troubles getting confirmations of this, I would say you need one on, sarth, drake(s)?, adds, since the breath mechanics on the first 2 really limit moving them around, I think that would leave a dps tanking the portal guys. Can anyone think of anything different here?

25 man
Generally not too bad once people figure things out. What generally gets us is the breath when the second drake opens its first portal doing the +50% damage buff, how are people overcoming this? We generally have a warrior tank this, though from what I have seen druids seem to be a popular choice also, since they can stack the stam pool quite high, what are the opinions on this, truly necessary? On the same note, how would dropping avoidance to stack stam work here, since I would think towards the end the frenzy of +dmg +attack speed, could get hard, how have people dealt with this.

Thanks.

 

mako

As far as 25 man goes, surviving the breaths during the "hard phase" will generally require more than the cooldowns available to a single tank. For the breaths in this phase (when tank cooldowns are not up) you'll need to rely on other class's abilities to survive until your raid is able to remove one of the causes of the high damage breaths.

My guild uses a feral druid with very high stamina as the main tank. Trading avoidance for HP can be beneficial, however remember that as drakes go down the melee damage from Sartharion increases, so a balance of defensive stats is still necessary to successfully overcome the encounter.

<Bad> Dragonmaw US
www.damnwesuck.com

 

Douglas

This is probably obvious, but that sounds like the appropriate use of weapon/relic swaps as the fight progresses could be a part of a decent strategy, since you could reverse part of that trade-off as the drakes went down.

 

Silmeria

It has been done by many raids with two healers, obviously for the sake of getting an extra dps'er.

I know of one guild who has done it with two tanks (paladin as the drake tank). Our own experience with two tanks led us to believe that the dps gain was not worth the expense of control. We ended up with our kill using a three tank / two healer approach. It's really a question of how much DPS do you need, and how much control you need on the fight.

On the topic of breaths: you can mitigate the higher damage breaths using several cool-downs: blessing of sacrifice, guardian spirits, barkskin/shieldwall, bear/last stand+fire resist pot, etc.

 

Xei

I think this is an important point many people have missed. Sure X class has this when tanking when Y class can do this - but there are many other castable buffs that can be put on the tank to reduce incoming damage and/or increase healing taken. Combine this with the specific classes tank cooldowns and you can survive it (PvE use for Pain Suppression).

I really like this fight, because it finally combines the "insane tank damage along with tight DPS requirement" which I love so much.

"Being a leader is not a position of power. It is a position of service." ~ Barestomper

WTB Oceanic Horde PvE Players

 

Starfire

He's also tauntable. Which means you don't really need to rely on the cooldowns of one tank -- or DPSer.

 

Xei

I guess that depends on your raid makeup.

We have a Warrior MT, Druid tanking the drakes and Prot Paladin on everything else.

Each tank is more or less doing their job full time, so I do not see a time where they could go off and taunt+cooldown one of the breaths - and the DPS requirement is sufficiently tight at this beginning gear level that you could not afford a spare tank on your first few kills.

"Being a leader is not a position of power. It is a position of service." ~ Barestomper

WTB Oceanic Horde PvE Players

 

Nakari

Sartharion is suspectible to taunt, so it's possible to switch the drake tank with the Sartharion tank once the drakes are down, so one tank can focus on HP and some fire resistance without getting killed from the increased melee damage later on. Edit: Starfire beat me to it

During the super-fire breaths, Hunters can also use Roar of Sacrifice (provided they have a tenacity pet) to substantially lower the damage taken by the main tank, as they can't really do anything else with their pets as long as the reflect shield is up.

 

Starfire

You don't need a 4th tank, you just need a Damage-dealer of a tanking class that can taunt and pop cooldowns. Fury Warrior, Arms Warrior, Retribution Paladin, Unholy Death Knight, Feral Druid.

 

Eks

Fire resistance helps a lot too, our feral tank had 150 the whole time (totem + cloak enchant) and he resisted at least part of most breaths. As other people said, using cooldowns for each breath until the second drake dies is the way to go. I was disc for the fight so I had a ~5k PW:S ready for at least every other breath. Our order was something like:

1) Tank's Cooldowns (bear version of last stand + barkskin for us)
2) Pain Suppression + PW:S
3) DK Magic Reduction Bubble
4) Paladin Bubble + Sacrifice
5) Paladin Bubble + Sacrifice

After those 5, the 2nd drake was dead and cooldowns were no longer necessary. The fight wasn't really as hard as I expected initially, though we had a little more gear than the first wave of guilds that took em down. The biggest problem we had was the drakes randomly turning around and taking a breath on the whole raid. Someone in the raid was saying that when they go to spawn a portal they turn for a split second and can breath, not sure if that's true or not.

 

jozga

Tenebron seems to fly off to 'hatch eggs' once or maybe twice per fight, and can breath on the raid when he flies back. This fight seems pretty hard with a lot of melee as they get in each other's way when trying to see the Twighlight Fissure - turning spell detail down supposedly makes it easier to see them but we still struggle with melee dieing when they simply don't notice a Fissure.

Is there a mod that can time his breaths? DBM seems to do nothing.

 

coredumperror

Has anyone noticed how fire resistance seems to work a bit differently on Sarth's flame breaths than on most other fire damage. I was tanking him on 25man with my old illidan FR set, and with FR aura from a pally I was at the lvl 83 FR cap. I still NEVER resisted more than 50% of a breath. I was also resisting very odd %s of damage. Sometimes I'd resist 10%, or 20% of a breath, which from what I know about the resist system shouldn't happen. Did they change the system so that it's not 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% resist, and nothing else in between or something?

 

Ja7us

As has been posted elsewhere, resists now work on 10% granularity rather than 25% and are far more consistent in the amount resisted.

 

LucidityAxel

What worked for us was a 51k hp Feral and Hunters using pet cooldowns for the breaths. Going up to seven healers from six was also a good tradeoff; the extra raid healing really helped to to cut down on random attrition from fire cyclone.

Breaths from the drakes were not a big problem for us. It seems like you could solve this with positioning; just stay away from the front of the drake when it moves.

Learning to avoid the Twilight Fissures and the Flame Waves was really the core of the fight for our dps toons. We had melee call void zones whenever one popped under a drake, and the ranged dps tried to avoid stacking so they could see them more easily.

 

Whitebushido

After doing quite a few attempts on the 10 man version(me as prot paladin), I'm finding it very difficult to pick up blazes while waiting on the whelplings to spawn. The raid seems to panic as soon as an add is on a healer(we're attempting to 2 heal it) and do stupid stuff like earth elemental and run away from me and thunderstorm the adds as I'm gathering them up. A single tick of consecration won't keep all the whelplings on me through the healing that the 2 healers are doing, so I usually manage to only get 4 whelplings while the other(s) + a blaze cause panic throughout the raid.

Should healers just stand on/near the portal or me so when the eggs pop and the blazes come to hit the healers they're on my consecration? I just don't have enough ranged attacks to deal with 1-3 spawns and 1-2 whelplings passing my aoe. I've asked to use the DK for aoe tanking since they have more in the way of ranged tanking but they seem hell bent on me doing the whelps/blazes.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...itebushido.png

 

Copernicus

For us, we use four tanks (one on the drake adds, two on the fire elementals, one on Saratharion) and seven healers.

The two main things to learn are the rotation of non-tank saves on the MT when two Disciples are up (Guardian Spirit, Hand of Sacrifice, Pain Suppression, etc etc) and to time the DPS to kill the Shadron Disciple (on the first time around) just after it's supposed to spawn again. We keep the DPS on Shadron for as long as possible - tonight we got lucky and were able to kill Shadron before he spawned a second real disciple.

Dodging waves and fissures is the real key to the fight, but that is just something that takes practice.

---

I still don't understand how the Twilight Torment buff is applied and if it's possible for any non-Sarth tanks to remove it.

 

Frogmite

We've been trying the 3 drakes in 10 man (I feel like in 25 man there are so many different options that even though we're also struggling with that I'd like to engage more with the 10 man setup) and have been running with two tanks and two healers which has been working up until the second drake comes down and seems very fluid to us - only having two raids for a couple of hours so far due to the frustration of people still taking void zones and fire walls we've not really seen further.

So far we've been having one tank pick up the adds that spawn and then the Sartharion MT gets MDed Tenebron who we nuke down comfortably before the next drake (Vesperon) giving us some time to kill the adds that have amassed. It's at this point it seems to get a bit messy however, if noones taken a Void Zone/Fire Wall someone will probably overaggro the adds as we try to get them down fast enough to get into the phased zone.

I guess my biggest question is - can we keep going? We've not really seen further then that but so far have been making some visible progress. Or should we be making those DPS benchmarks (Tenebron & Adds down before the second drake spawns their first portal) with another tank and/or healer? If so what would they be tanking?

Other than that the fight seems extremely formulaic which is nice - feels more about execution (at this point in the fight at least).

 

Maje

Our problem with 25m is the MT healers positioning, they seem to be getting tailswiped/breathed upon and the recent development is that since they are quite a way from the raid during the drakes uptime, if they get unlucky volcano strikes and a blaze spawns they usually get killed or distracted enough for the MT to die.

Where do you usually position the MT healers?

 

dukes

For those struggling with people dying on Sarth +3 in 25 man who will not own up to what they died to / deny that they were hit by the tsunami or void zones, I highly recommend the mod Failbot (available on Curse). I'd also recommend going into the LUA and changing "raid" to "guild" if you're particularly vindictive.

 

PitiChatMignon

On heroic mod :
We found it is not necessary to go kill Shadron add, the breath will not exceed 32K or 33K when he is there, with me as MT (31K pv with -25% debuff) I can survive all the breath with just a Power Word: Shield casted during the breath cast (disc priest + palading healing the MT). With our new stamina druid (36K hp with debuff) it would be just easier.
You can AOE all the whelps + blazes when Tenebron is dead and after just rush the DPS on Shadron.
When Vesperon arrive, all the dps must go in the portail when he pop and kill the add ASAP. Just use shieldwall / pain sup / spirit guardian for the ONE breath sartharion could cast before add is dead.
Shadron will be dead within 2 or 3 vesperon's portal, after that there is no way you can wipe.
This week we had something like 5 dead men after Shadron's death and manage the kill.

In 10 men :
We did 2 tanks + 1 dk for blazes/whelps and 3 heals.
The fight is a big DPS race to kill shadron before you are out of CD to help the sartharion tank to survive 50K flame breathes.
The healers can help dps Tenebron as heal is very easy in the beginning.
Don't bother with any portals, just kill Shadron before you are out of cooldown on the sartharion tank's.
Having two paladins speced in divine guardian help a lot, -30% on the whole raid keep Twilight Torment under control and this plus hand of sacrifice will secure the tank for 2x12s (barskin + last stand for the 1st breath under twilight torment then DS + HoS => around 40-50s to kill Shadron after 1st Vesperon portal)
After Shadron is dead no tank could die any more, just let your 4 dps and a heal go kill the two adds in the portal.

As a side note, yes partial resist on breath help a lot and can save you on a mistimed shield or if you are low life, 15FR on cloak is great, and FR aura a must have.

French cow.
Meuh !

 

TimeOut

Sartharion's Flame Breath (Flame Breath - Spell - World of Warcraft) seems not to be on a fixed timer. From my combat logs so far it has a variance of 9 seconds at the minimum and 42 seconds (I checked twice) at the maximum.

Usually a Flame Breath is casted about every 12 seconds, but my data is still to unreliable to include any specific timer.
(Sample: 18s, 11s, 12s, 12s, 42s, 13s, 11s, 9s, 13s, 12s, 19s, 12s, 11s, 12s, 15s, 13s, 12s, 20s, 12s)

For the other stuff... I wrote a DBM module specifically for the Heroic: Sartharion 3D fight.

Features:

• Landing timers for the 3 drakes
• Egg timer for Tenebron (next eggs, eggs hatching in...)
• Lava Wave (cooldown) timer, for those that can't see the BIG EMOTE
• Warnings for: Drake landings, drake kills, Tenebron eggs and hatchlings, Lava Waves, Flame Breath
• Warning for shadow fissures
• Special warning if you are affected by Twilight Torment
• Health frame for all 3 drakes (experimental)

Download (requires DBM r535): http://timeout.prima.de/wow/raid/DBM...rOfAspects.zip
Download Full DBM + My Sartharion Mod: http://timeout.prima.de/wow/raid/DBM...5-BadTaste.zip

Please report all incorrect timers / announcements to me. If you have additional ideas please PM me.
One guild mate reported a huge FPS decrease while running the Boss Mod, but I have not experienced any issues. If you have problems, please contact me.

 

Lucinde

My guild just killed Sarth with 2 drakes last week after about 9 or 10 attempts. How big is the step up from 2 to 3 drakes? From what I read here, once your dps is smart enough to avoid the big wall of fire and void zones, the only added challenge is keeping your MT alive through the massive fire breaths.

Or is there something I'm missing here?

 

spartakos

You must also be careful when you kill the adds in the portal so you wont get hit by a wave when you come back. But this will be nerfed.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL.../spartakos.png

 

TimeOut

If you have killed Shadron first (kept Vesperon and Tenebron up) then the step to 3 drakes is like running into a concrete wall headfirst.

The +100% more fire damage is deadly. The MT is the most visible person that is affected by it (59k flame breaths) but everyone else takes more damage. Elementals deal more damage, up to 8k per hit while enraged, and the Lava Strikes from the sides are also increased. Touching a fire wall means nearly instant death unless you are actively healed by 2-3 healers.

We usually have 7 Healers, 4 Tanks for this fight. We kill him without any deaths with Vesperon + Tenebron but die to the Flame Breaths with 3 drakes up. We nearly killed him last ID as Shadron died and Vesperon went to 50%, but then I died, and got battle-rezzed into the cleave.

 

khel

Is Twilight Torment a visible debuff that you can look for and burn cooldowns when applied? I had the understanding that Vesperon's acolyte randomly placed this debuff on people (not sure how many, maybe 5 at a time?), so instead of chaining all of these survival abilities on the MT, he could watch for the debuff and use his own abilities and call for others to be used as needed.

After our first look at Sarth with 3 drakes and having our tank die from exactly this, we are planning to have a DK tank Sartharion (a number of personal cooldowns to burn), with Pain Suppression, Guardian Spirit, and Hand of Sacrifice ready to use in between cooldowns. Himself having Bone Shield, Anti-Magic Shell, and Anti-Magic Zone makes him the perfect MT for this encounter.

I think that it is ideal to have a Prot Warrior tanking the Drakes just because they will keep sunders up at no damage loss, where a warrior or rogue keeping the debuff up, or a hunter bringing a worm, just feels like wasted dps. Our prot paladin would tank the fire spawns and hatchlings, and our feral druid would tank the Acolytes and dps the rest of the time.

After Tenebron is dead, should all other portals should be taken and Acolytes killed? Or would it be better to rotate survival cooldowns on the MT in order to kill Shadron as soon as possible? Taking the portals drastically slows down dps on the drakes, so I am still unsure about which is the best strategy.