With the twilight torment change, any tips on tanking sarth+3 10 man as a paladin? Or is it plain not possible since we can't stack enough people with defensive cooldowns to survive the time shadron and vesperon are up?
Are you sure about the barkskin? If yes, I suspect the second line is because of the first. I'm not sure a single 20% mitigation ability would let a tank (even a druid tank) survive a fully-buffed flame breath, particularly in 25man. Possibly with an FR potion?
I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be replying to this, because I got disciplined for posting useless information (how we got our kill) but hopefully this is ok. I am pretty sure the first one was barkskin + survival instincts (aka last stand).
I'm checking to see if anyone's done some emperical testing on fire resistance vs Sarth's breath. I plan to experiment with this myself if no data shows up here. What has me thinking about this is the recent the change to spell resistance mechanics: from a "quantum" style reduction previously (chance for a 25% or 50% or 75% reduction... or nothing) to a more predictable "linear" damage reduction currently (a good example of this is putting on some arcane resist, as the tank, and doing the "Chaos Therory" achievement in Nexus).
I (prot warrior) Sarth-Tanked some initial learning attempts for a 10man 3D the other night, and noticed this same resistance behavior on his breaths, with just Mark of the Wild. So the question is whether anyone has done some testing to see just how much %-reduction to expect for varying levels of fire-resistance. The practical application of this might be the choice of, say, the 50FR Flask of Lesser Resistance -vs- the 650HP flask. I'm trying to theorycraft to the point where it might be possible to reliably survive a triple-buffed breath with just Last Stand (and a Nightmare Seed).
Starting off with known reductions (Warrior PoV):
-16% from Imp Defensive Stance
-02% from Effulgent Skyflare meta
-03% from a 2nd warrior's Vigilence (which we'll usually have in our group)
---
-20% breath damage (note: multiplicative reductions)
Now, if we could add a fairly predictable FR reduction on top of that...
Fully buffed with my current gear & 5/5 Commanding Presence, I can hit 41,700 with Last Stand and a Nightmare Seed, after Vesperon's 25% reduction. Now granted, using a Mighty Fire potion instead of a Seed makes this whole thing moot, however... Last Stand + Seed has a good chance to cover 2 breaths whereas the fire potion will only be available for one. (Though I suppose Last Stand + PW:S would be adequate as well, but I'm still curious to add this knowledge to my arsenal.)
A triple-buffed breath in 10man has a top-end of 59,063 damage.
With the 20% reduction above that comes to 47,160.
Assuming it's possible to have a regular 15% reduction from fire resistance, that brings it down to 40,090.
Which is below my health value of 41,700. Again, this is the *top* end of the breath damage.. the margin of survival will usually be larger.
That "15%" FR reduction is an arbitrary value though, and I don't know how much varience it might have from breath to breath. I haven't done any testing yet to see if that's a realistic %-value, which is what prompted this post.
The lack of prior discussion about FR has me less than optimistic, but I figure it's worth posting as a topic for discussion.
I also realize this is sort of "square peg in round hole", and the obvious answer is "You're not a Bear; I'm looking for a Bear (or a dead thing)." I'm confident though, that there has to be a way to make it work.
This might be relevant, Tenge. I've been tanking 3d with a FR set. So far, I've been able to manage the breaths without using cooldowns assuming I'm topped off - but it's very, very close. I run with 380 FR, an Effulgent SD, and have about 36k health under the debuff (so 48k with it). And I'll take hits of 35k. This is in 25-man. Average mitigation is 30%, though we have a disc priest so it's hard to tell exactly how much of that was mitigated by them.
In 10-man, I would think that would be reduced down to something manageable that a warrior could take.
This might be relevant, Tenge. I've been tanking 3d with a FR set. So far, I've been able to manage the breaths without using cooldowns assuming I'm topped off - but it's very, very close. I run with 380 FR, an Effulgent SD, and have about 36k health under the debuff (so 48k with it). And I'll take hits of 35k. This is in 25-man. Average mitigation is 30%, though we have a disc priest so it's hard to tell exactly how much of that was mitigated by them.
In 10-man, I would think that would be reduced down to something manageable that a warrior could take.
What FR gear have you been using? Level 70 stuff, or are there better level 80 equivalents? I didn't think there were, and a quick Wowhead search seems to confirm this. So my question is, how are you managing that kind of health using level 70 gear (and its subpar stamina)?
A triple-buffed breath in 10man has a top-end of 59,063 damage.
With the 20% reduction above that comes to 47,160.
Assuming it's possible to have a regular 15% reduction from fire resistance, that brings it down to 40,090.
Which is below my health value of 41,700. Again, this is the *top* end of the breath damage.. the margin of survival will usually be larger.
That "15%" FR reduction is an arbitrary value though, and I don't know how much varience it might have from breath to breath. I haven't done any testing yet to see if that's a realistic %-value, which is what prompted this post.
The lack of prior discussion about FR has me less than optimistic, but I figure it's worth posting as a topic for discussion.
I also realize this is sort of "square peg in round hole", and the obvious answer is "You're not a Bear; I'm looking for a Bear (or a dead thing)." I'm confident though, that there has to be a way to make it work.
A big problem with going for any fire resistance gear is simply the lack of any good fire resistance gear to use. If you use fire resistance greens or outdated Burning Crusade items, your other defensive stats will suffer a lot. Sartharion melees for non-trivial amounts, so simply being able to survive the breaths through resistance gear may make you very hard to heal through his melee damage.
Resistance doesn't work reliably either. Unless you get an extremely high resistance, 0% resistance breaths will still happen often. You'd be leaving surviving to an uncomfortably large amount of random chance. Personally I view fire resistance as very nice to have for the fight, but not something you can rely on. Are you remembering to count in the -25% health aura from Vesperon? If you have 41700 health before it, you'll only have 31275 health after it.
We killed the 25-man version of the 3 drakes just recently. We ended up going with 5 healers to minimize the amount of time we have 2 disciples and Shadron up, and switched from Tenebron bloodlust to a Shadron bloodlust. Shadron died about 20 seconds after the first Vesperon disciple appeared in the end. After that we took our time killing Vesperon killing the disciple each time it appeared to make the healing easier. After you get Shadron and his disciple down the fight gets a lot easier even if you have a few people dead.
What FR gear have you been using? Level 70 stuff, or are there better level 80 equivalents? I didn't think there were, and a quick Wowhead search seems to confirm this. So my question is, how are you managing that kind of health using level 70 gear (and its subpar stamina)?
I'll try and log out in my sarth set, but a lot of it comes from non-70 gear.
I got lucky on a 46-stam green neck from Northrend. It beats the phoenix neck. I also got lucky with a ring with similar stats. I'm using the wyrmcultist cloak and a cloak enchant. The majority of it comes from the arcanum and from the leatherworking FR bracer patch; that adds 85 FR right there. I believe that's the entirety of the gear. Then I use a flask of chromatic wonder, get the FR aura from a paladin, and that's it.
I doubt seriously that it's a reasonable possibility for a non-LW unless you get very, very lucky on the AH; you simply have to give up too much to get FR otherwise. Still, at that level as far as I can tell the chance to have a 0% resisted breath is removed from the table.
Resistance doesn't work reliably either. Unless you get an extremely high resistance, 0% resistance breaths will still happen often. You'd be leaving surviving to an uncomfortably large amount of random chance. Personally I view fire resistance as very nice to have for the fight, but not something you can rely on. Are you remembering to count in the -25% health aura from Vesperon? If you have 41700 health before it, you'll only have 31275 health after it.
The 41k is after the -25% from Vesperon, but with Last Stand and a Nightmare Seed active.
What prompted me to investigate this is that I haven't seen (m)any 0% reductions lately with even a smaller level of resistance... something on the order of mark + a flask, and/or a totem or aura. It seems like every attack is reduced now by a regular percentage instead of the 0/25/50/75 method that was used through classic and BC. This has just been a casual observation though, and I haven't formally looked into it. I may ask a caster guildmate to duel me tonight and collect some data with varying levels of resistance.
I'm also speaking only of using consumables and buffs to obtain the FR, and to see just how much could be predictably reduced by just that level of resistance. I agree with keeping the full Tank gear on, as the FR gear isn't really there to support it currently.
What prompted me to investigate this is that I haven't seen (m)any 0% reductions lately with even a smaller level of resistance... something on the order of mark + a flask, and/or a totem or aura. It seems like every attack is reduced now by a regular percentage instead of the 0/25/50/75 method that was used through classic and BC. This has just been a casual observation though, and I haven't formally looked into it. I may ask a caster guildmate to duel me tonight and collect some data with varying levels of resistance.
I'm definitely getting occasional 0% resists with either Mark of the Wild or Fire resistance aura always active. There does seem to be something funny going on with the resists for Sarth's fire breath though and maybe for resistance in general. Sometimes I resist 8%, other times 16%, 18%, 21%, 35% or 40%. The resists definitely aren't following the old method of 25% leaps, but it is still possible to get fully unresisted breaths at 130 resistance.
Ok. Good to know, thanks.
That kind of removes this theory from any real consideration, given the RNG element affects it more than I was hoping. Of course, the resistance will still help to provide more of a buffer after the breath, so it does have some merit in that regard. Just can't depend on it as part of a survival strategy.
Even more fun when the tank is a blood DK. Yesterday I had a 4k breath, with like 30k absorb(spell deflection counts an absorb, and wotn might too unsure).
Can you confirm that Spell Deflection works on AoE abilities like breaths now? Previous testing had led me to believe that it only works if the spell is cast directly at you (ie, KT's Frostbolt). Things that hit multiple targets (like breaths) didn't work. But if it DOES work now, I'll be very happy.
Some people have reported, that the kill order Tenebron-->Adds-->Shadron-->Akolyte-->Vesperon would be unlikely to pull off post patch due to the increased raid damage caused by Vesperon's Akolyte.
We managed to get our first S+3 nonheroic kill yesterday (a bit ridiculous, 7 weeks after our clear of the heroic version) with a 3 Tank / 2 Healer Castersetup with an Elemental Shaman switching to healing once things got critical (i.e. Vesperon showing up) and we found that entering the portal as soon as the Vesperon Akolyte spawned and killing him just didn't work out for us. Something always seemed to be going wrong and by extending the time in which both Shadron and Vesperon are active (which you obviously do when portal dancing) you also run a higher risk of getting your drake tank double-breathed.
So, after about two hours of trying we changed our strategy from Heroism on Tenebron and killing Vesperons Akolyte as soon as it showed up to heroism on Shadron (most of the time we managed to avoid a second set of whelps) and suffer through the raid damage until Shadron is dead before entering the twilight zone. It was really rough for the healers, despite having two paladins pop bubble with Divine Guardian one after another and our Moonkin throwing in Tranquility after bubbles went out, but ultimately it worked out and we managed to get the kill. As soon as Shadron dies the fight is pretty much over.
As someone asked to include a postpatch WWS of the fight in the 10 man version, here you go:
We adopted the exact same strat last night with a similar setup. We found it better to use Bloodlust on Tenebron though as things are less hectic, the DPS still adds up as you get to start on Shadron eariler.
We did find though that the fight is not over when Shadron died, we wiped 2-3 times when we got to just Vesperon as the drake tank damage seemed to be significantly higher than when he had two on him. I'm not sure what happened as I couldn't see it but I suspect the drake tank was going to town on Vesperon and getting smacked for all the TT damage every second. Also the increase in physical damage from Sartharion isn't trivial. It is unfortunate we only got to that poitn so late in the raid, going back tonight to kill hopefully.
We didn't bother killing the portal adds after Shadron though, there doesn't seem much point when he spawns them so fast anyway. Maybe we will try that tonight but I doubt it for all the extra trouble it causes.
Originally Posted by Shadowed
The best part is, not only were you late in linking it, that's an April fools topic from 6 months ago.
With the twilight torment change, any tips on tanking sarth+3 10 man as a paladin? Or is it plain not possible since we can't stack enough people with defensive cooldowns to survive the time shadron and vesperon are up?
First, what is your buffed health using your raid composition while under the effect of Power of Vesperon?
Second, do you have any trinkets which can boost your maximum health for a short period of time, ie. [Repelling Charge]?
Third, here is a list of life-saving measures possible (probably non-exhaustive):
Divine Protection: -50% damage taken for 12 seconds without T7 4-pc bonus.
Diving Guardian + Hand of Sacrifice from another Paladin: -30% * -30% (or -51%) damage taken for 12 seconds.
Pain Suppression + Power Word: Shield: -40%(?) damage taken for 8 seconds.
Roar of Sacrifice from a BM Hunter's Tenacity pet + Discipline Priest's PW:S: 30% damage transferred to pet.
Guardian Spirit: Spirit dies for you and heals you for 50% of your maximum HP.
Health Trinket + Mighty Fire Protection Potion + Nightmare Seed + Power Word: Shield (Here, I need some insight on whether Power of Vesperon reduces the health granted by the boosters listed. I assume it does but want to be sure.)
I apologize for any minor errors in tooltip descriptions here. I'll fix this post up once I leave work today.
....
We did find though that the fight is not over when Shadron died, we wiped 2-3 times when we got to just Vesperon as the drake tank damage seemed to be significantly higher than when he had two on him....
We didn't bother killing the portal adds after Shadron though, there doesn't seem much point when he spawns them so fast anyway. Maybe we will try that tonight but I doubt it for all the extra trouble it causes.
There is your reason for your drake tank dying. The respawn on portal adds is something between 45 and 60 seconds, I believe, and they die reasonably fast to make portal hopping worthwhile. If you just ignore them, your Vesperon tank will be taking +75% shadow damage from the Vesperon akolyte, your MT will be taking +75% fire damage from the Vesperon akolyte, +50% fire damage from the Shadron akolyte (which wouldn't even be respawning after you kill it) AND considerably more melee damage from Satharion due to the +50% increase in both melee damage and attack speed. In addition to this, your raid will be taking +75% fire damage from meteors and shadow damage from styles (Vesperon akolyte). All of this for 60-75 seconds until Vesperon is down - quite honestly, I don't see how your healers are supposed to keep up. I was healing the Satharion tank yesterday, and if we hadn't killed the akolytes after Shadron we would have beend overwhelmed by the total damage that was going around, that is for sure.
Edited above post to show the non-split version of the kill in wws log.
I'm definitely getting occasional 0% resists with either Mark of the Wild or Fire resistance aura always active. There does seem to be something funny going on with the resists for Sarth's fire breath though and maybe for resistance in general. Sometimes I resist 8%, other times 16%, 18%, 21%, 35% or 40%. The resists definitely aren't following the old method of 25% leaps, but it is still possible to get fully unresisted breaths at 130 resistance.
Those curious about resistance might want to check out some of the data in the druid thread. I got curious enough about it to do some fairly rigorous resistance tests, and will try to keep things updated in "Resistance Mechanics in WotLK".
Resists only occur now in 10% intervals. You're seeing what seem like other amounts, because all "damage taken" reductions (or debuffs) like defensive stance occur only on the unresisted portion. It's actually far more reliable than the BC system, because hitting even moderate amounts of resistance completely pushes certain possibilities off the table.
For example, the data so far indicates that vs. an 83 mob, 104 resistance eliminates the possibility of a 0% resist. On the higher end, 415 resistance eliminates the possibility of anything less than a 40% resist. I warn that these numbers are still quite preliminary, the actual testing was done for level 80, with some plausible assumptions for the level difference.
I imagine plate wearers might be giving up a bit more for FR gear, but if you can attain a decent amount w/o too many sacrifices, the results are definitely beneficial. At the very least, enchants and consumables have a very high value.
Those curious about resistance might want to check out some of the data in the druid thread. I got curious enough about it to do some fairly rigorous resistance tests, and will try to keep things updated in "Resistance Mechanics in WotLK".
Resists only occur now in 10% intervals. You're seeing what seem like other amounts, because all "damage taken" reductions (or debuffs) like defensive stance occur only on the unresisted portion. It's actually far more reliable than the BC system, because hitting even moderate amounts of resistance completely pushes certain possibilities off the table.
That's very interesting, and resistance being counted first definitely explains the weird damage amounts it was reducing. Looking back at our Sartharion kill, I had 2 completely unresisted breaths out of 29. I can't be 100% certain I had Fire Resistance Aura active for those though. Since unresisted breaths would still be possible at Mark of the Wild level resistance, it would still fit into the data you've collected. This definitely makes the possibility of using a resistance flask interesting, as you could guarantee at least a 10% resistance on each breath with just that and mark of the wild.
So just a fire resist totem and a +50 FR flask will knock 10% resists off the table, and give you a long-term average resist of 30%. Beyond that, it will take a bit of enchants/gear to go further, but each 10% that is resisted is up to 6k damage avoided in the 25 man, thus worth the loss of quite a bit of stamina in terms of breath survival. Obviously the tradeoff still exists with making sure you don't end up hammered too hard by the melee.
Our guild done some tries on Sartharion 10+3 this week and im still not sure what setup we should aim for. We will use casster group, but im not sure about the number of tanks and healers. We tried it with 2 tanks and 3 healers, didnt go very well (probably because we had crap raid setup). Another day we tried it with 3/3 and havent made any progress at all I´d say. We had some nice control on adds and drakes, but we failed to DPS down Tenebron fast enough. Correct me if I am wrong, but getting Tenebron down before he pops second whelps is essential ?.
I was thinking about going 2/2 for the next time. The DPS gain would be huge, but I´m more worried about twilight torment healing when Shadron is still up. will it be possible for 2 healers - probably Holy Paladin and either druid//priest to outheal the big raid damage and huge breaths on tank ?
My opinion is that it's not essential to kill him before Whelps #2, we
actually rarely do it in our caster setup (hi@RNG). 3/3 is perfect imo.
I know that some do it with 2 healers but it's really hard.
Maybe you could post the classes and their assignments so that I and others could help you more.
My opinion is that it's not essential to kill him before Whelps #2, we
actually rarely do it in our caster setup (hi@RNG). 3/3 is perfect imo.
I know that some do it with 2 healers but it's really hard.
Maybe you could post the classes and their assignments so that I and others could help you more.
If the gear of your group is good enough and you stack buffs properly, you should always manage to kill Tenebron before he can spawn a second set of whelps (without Heroism/Bloodlust). Once Tenebron is dead your tank can reposition Shadron to Vesperons landing spot while dps clears the adds, then pop your Heroism/Bloodlust and kill Shadron. Once Shadron is almost dead one of the caster hybrids (Moonkin/ele Shaman) starts to help out on healing.
So when you actually need it you'll have the 3rd healer. Seems to be one of many advantages of doing this with casters instead of melee.
Yeah, finally after a long time after we did the 25 man version as well, we killed him with:
DK Tank on Sarth ( 44/11/16, which is imo the perfect sarth tanking spec =p )
Warrior tank on Adds
Prot Pally on Blue Drakes
Holy Priest
Resto Druid
Elemental Shaman ( Healing once Vesperons Acolyte comes up )
Demon/Destro Lock
Moonkin
Shadow Priest
Surv Hunter
We tried quite some time, had some horrible deaths, like pally getting instakilled from the breath and shit, as we used the druid on raid healing...
Eventually we did an attempt without Bloodlust ( we normally use this after we aoe the adds and dps Shadron ), and we managed to get Ahadron down without using Bloodlust, was kind of hectic then as our priest was out of mana, he got a soulstone, went in front of Sartharion, got his by the breath, healed me for 15 more seconds, used his SS, healed more, then 3 adds hitted the druid, but me ( as sarth tank ) taunted 2 while being constnatly on the verge of dying, was very hectic =p.
About rotations:
When Vesperons Acolyte comes up I used:
Anti Magic Shield
Icebound Fortitude
Vampiric Blood + HP Trinket + Seed which put me at 42k health
Anti Magic
Icebound
Raise Dead ( saved my ass there =p )
Then Shadron was dead
What we realiesd was, that the fire elementals have little health, around 25k
So next week we will try this with a melee group consisting of 2 tanks, 2.5 healers and 5.5 DPS. We will instantly nuke the fire ellies when they come up. They die so fast single targetted so it's no problem at all, the DK has 2 taunts and the warrior has another taunt, so healers should be fine.
To sum it up, I really like this fight 10man, it actually is a good challenge, the 25 man version isn't even fun, we burn shadron too fast, and the Twilight Torment debuff is easily outhealable. Whilst the 10 man version is alot different, and the funny thing is, we didn't even use Divine Guardian on 10 man, which we have 2 times on 25 man.
Unfortunately we still haven't managed the 25 man 3D kill. Apart from the usual voidzone/flamewall deaths we still had some issues with the portals. When Vesperon landed we went in portal and killed shadron acolyte followed by vesperon acolyte. The shadron acolyte however was respawning about 5 seconds after we killed it. Is it on fixed timer or 45~ second after he got killed?
The shadron acolyte however was respawning about 5 seconds after we killed it. Is it on fixed timer or 45~ second after he got killed?
You actually answered that question yourself. The spawn of the acolyte seems to occur in intervals. So if the one you killed, instantly re-spawns, just kill it another time and you should have some time from then.
But I would recommend not touching the Shadron acolyte before Shadron is dead.
Pro's and con's have been discussed here before, so I won't repeat them now.
01/28/09, 8:23 PM
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