Tel

This is exactly what we do in terms of portals. Ignore it all until Drakes are dead.

We have our retadin specced into Divine Guardian and he uses this on the second breath (barkskin used for first - yes we know there's a chance our Bear gets one shot with just barkskin, but hasn't happened yet ), this gives the healers a bit of leeway to catch up on healing. With me on blazes I rarely need help from the DPS to kill them, and if we DO get a second lot of whelps then the first bunch are generally at around 30% from my UB and DnD. Then AOE go all out as soon as Tenebron dies.

Yeah, we all eat a full shadow breath when Vesperon lands if we don't manage to get out of the way. No idea why we didn't think to move Shadron :P

I'd suggest going with 3 tanks and maybe 2.5 / 3 healers. If you can get Tenebron and the whelps down before Vespron lands your DPS is sufficient to tackle the encounter.

 

Vaccine

(10 man)
We went back the following night subbing out a 3.8k dps player with a 4.8k dps one and the whole fight fell into place. Tenebron died at the same second Shadron became targetable, we burned Shadron for about 10-15 more seconds then went onto whelp AoE. Shadron died very shortly after Vesperon's add came up, I took two "super" breaths then we lost the 100% fire aura so his breaths become pretty ignorable even with the adds up (about 28k with no resists/shield), at this point we had previously wiped but we took it slow, tanks didn't attack at all and the ele shaman offhealed. We did toy with going down the portals but it didn't seem worth it, Twilight Torment is a pain but with the holy priest split between drake tank and raid and the ele shaman chain healing every 3rd attack to top us up, it wasn't a problem. Going down we'd have had to have someone tank the adds when we were all ranged, and rely on the shaman to full heal it with a clothy having aggro. Seemed more risky to just finishing the last drake then going down with the drake tank and killing them.

Next challenge is kill him with a full melee group to get them the achievement.

 

Etrius

Do you happen to have a wws of that?

 

Schnappi

I am pretty much in the same situation. We have done the 2 drakes version and it felt very repeatable (though we haven't repeated it yet due to trying 3 drakes when we had time).

A 10 man guild brings another issue. You probably can't stack the raid because you don't have the extra people. Going for 3 drakes with a balanced raid in mostly ilvl 200 gear feels very close to impossible. There simply isn't enough synergy between a rogue, an enhancement shaman, a mage and a warlock to get your dps high enough. We tried with 2 tanks and an extra dps warrior, but then we lost control of all the adds and we cant zerg it fast enough to overcome that problem.

 

Celebrindal

We did almost all of the different heal/tank setups with a melee group with little luck, but when we went 3heal/3tank in a stacked caster group we ended up doing the same thing: Twilight torment did'nt really make much of a difference with me and a holy priest healing dps when our tanks did'nt require attention, even after the 3.0.8 change so just kill off the drakes and take the portals when everythings dead (drakes and any leftover adds). In a melee group it tends to hurt alot tho so unless your melee does alot more dps it's probably easier to get a first kill with a castergroup at this point.

From what I've seen from the limited tries we've had with each setup theres no reason to not go 3healer+3tank unless you end up having problems with whelps or run out of CD's on your sarth tank. Depending on your setup you might have enough aoe to let Tenebron hatch twice (if your lucky you avoid it even with 4dps).

Doing it in 10man gear you're back to the "early kill" gear level so it's probably alot harder than when we streamrolled it one tier later, and I guess you might have to drop atleast one tank or healer, thus loosing the "safety-net" of outgearing it. The 3.0.8 twilight torment might hurt these setups tho making it even harder.

 

wighti

Just out of curiosity, has anyone tried the ye olde paladin taunt + bubble to tackle one breath and then have the tank taunt Sartharion back? From what I've seen, not tried it with any of the drakes up yet tho, is that Sartharion is tauntable.

 

Hond

Sartharion 25-man

Yesterday we managed to kill Sartharion + 3 finally! We tried bringing another healer bringing the total to 7 (!) and 4 tanks. We found out the best thing for us was to stick to the following kill order:

Tenebron > Shadron > adds > Vesperons disciple > Shadrons disciple > Vesperon > adds > Sartharion

This means we opposed Blizzards new preferred tactic a.k.a. killing the Shadron disciple multiple times to reduce incoming damage at MT. You need a bit of luck by doing so but it reduces the number of possible bad firewall-timings when coming out of portal.

Also: we used our bloodlust right after the first fire-wall coming after Shadron has landed. Don't use it the very moment he lands because when you do and the fire-wall comes right after it you loose precious bloodlust-time.

After all this fight showed me the learning-process (avoiding) and rotation a.k.a. communication between players was most important. I want to thank you all for all input.

 

LittleHamster

The fusion strategy suggests not entering shadron portals. I believe it must be the most used guide for guilds learning this fight. The only difference I see you did is killing vesperon's disciple before shadrons when you first enter the portal.

 

• constantius

Actually, we kill Vesperon's disciple first to get rid of Twilight Torment. As soon as Shadron himself dies, your tank is out of reasonable danger, so you can afford to get the Vesperon disciple / acolyte dead first to remove a huge source of raid damage.

I'm not sure what Kyth's movie shows, as it was before the change to TT-dancing, when we approached the fight slightly differently.

And yes, to the above poster, Sarth is most definitely tauntable. Skipping a breath through taunt+bubble might be a valid tactic, but the positioning is funny, and I know we, at least, have never used it. Too much danger of the bubble causing him to turn and breathe the MT (or the raid).

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

crafty

My guild completed our first kill with 3 tanks / 3 healers. I'm surprised that there hasn't been more discussion on this composition - I view it as extremely stable, controlled, and repeatable. Most posts I had read on EJ and Tankspot indicated that Tenebrom(Drake 1) should be killed quickly enough to avoid a 2nd wave of Twilight Whelps. We took a 2nd wave of whelps on every attempt and experienced no additional problems.

The difficulty in the 10 man/3 tank/3 healer fight seems to be keeping threat on the tanks and keeping the tanks alive until the whelps are killed. Tank and raid damage becomes intense with Tenebrom, Shadron, lava spawns, and one set of whelps. The second set of whelps comes around the time AOE on the first set is occurring so people need to be careful not to draw threat (we used Fade/Iceblock/Divine Guardian/Divine Hymn for the 2nd set). Raid damage during twilight torment was easily healed by 3 healers.

We felt like the fight was over after Tenebrom and his whelps were cleared. BOD's on the MT and Twilight Torment presented a small risk, but our group was designed to be able to handle these mechanics without breaking a sweat. Our DK was poorly geared (10 man epics + 2 blues) but we had a Disciline priest on him (Grace, PW:S on every breath) which made his gear go a lot further. We view the discipline priest as required because we don't have a DK or Feral tank with the gear required to survive breaths on their own. If the DK ran out of cooldowns we had Pain Suppression and Divine Shield/Hand of Sacrifice available but we never had to use them. There was also the potential of a 12 second breath edging out the 13 second break between shields.

Our kill details

WWS: Wow Web Stats

3 Tanks (Cooldown-specced DK, Prot Warrior, Prot Paladin)
3 Healers (Discipline Priest, Resto Shaman, Resto Druid)
4 DPS (Shadow Priest, Shadow Priest, Retribution Paladin, Mage)

The discipline priest was on our DK 100%. The resto druid HOT'd all tanks. The shaman healed the raid.

The Prot Paladin picked up Tenebrom and dragged him to the DK for Icy Touch (Ebon Plaguebringer, 13% spell dmg) and threw consecrate on the portal to pick up whelps. The Prot Warrior picked up Lava blazes early then switched to Shadron and Vesperon.

DPS on Tenebrom was slow an steady, and we AOE'd when he was done. The most dangerous point in the fight was keeping threat on the tanks when the second wave of whelps spawned and keeping the tanks topped off with the whelps + drakes.

Our two shadow priests kept Vampiric Embrace up for the entire fight. The raid damage during Shadron and Vesperon was laughable so we didn't take the portal until Vesperon was dead.

Just to reiterate: Everything I read (and experienced in 25 man) indicated that the most difficult part of the fight was Shadron + Twilight torment. I feel like these parts of the fight were completely negated by the group we used (3H / 3T with Disciline and DK, 2 Vampiric Embraces).

 

tangent

They've done one better, Strategy Obsidian Sanctum Sartharion (3 Drakes) - TankSpot

TL;DR With 30 yard taunt range you can taunt every breath and then back up a few steps, no one takes the breath and then the sarth tank taunts back.
Personally it seems broken just like it was on brut, and I'd guess it will be fixed but who knows, twins on the ledge felt the same way.

 

bludwork

intervene only absorbs melee attacks not magic, but placing yourself infront of his breath is problematic although having charged sartharion a few times to get rage before tenebron lands I've noticed I can stop the charge halfway through and not even be near him

 

LittleHamster

Feels like a cheat to me. It's like doing heigan at the door without dancing. I hope blizzard hotfix this soon.

 

Pyros

Considering it requires 2tanks instead of 1, one of which is doing nothing 95% of this phase, it seems ok to me. It was to be expected when they kept increasing taunt range though. I mean, I'm happy I get 2long range taunts, but there's so many situations where it'll be exploitable if the boss is tauntable. You could easily have one boss just run around the whole fight and not hit anyone with a solid taunt rotation. They'll probably just end up increasing the breath range later, but it doesn't require immediate hotfixing, most guilds will still use 1 tank and cooldowns because it's easier to deal with.

 

Centarion

Which part of "let's avoid the only dangerous thing" seems to be ok?
I mean, the only real reason to burn Tenebron fast is, that you can take down welps before Shadron lands, so that the phase, where your tank is about to be one-shot, is as short as possible.

Thing is, that the "2tank"-point doesn't even count, as you can as well use a cat/fury/arms/dk for Tenebron and beginning of Shadron, and order them to cut away those tankkiller-breaths.

To add a bit of content here: my group is working von Sartharion+3 at the moment, and it is really great to see how learning the fight over trys helps to cope with it. Beside that, as you can kill the Vesperon-acolyte, it's not really neccessary to put down Tenebron before Shadron lands (we even use heroism here), we managed to bring Shadron to 5% and die there because of sloppy cooldown-rotation on our Sarth-tank.

 

wykedtron

This strat caused a solid group of players who wiped for 3-4 weeks strait to 3 shot this encounter (25 man). I too think it will be adressed because after it was over i had the "it was that easy?" feeling. Worth trying if your guild is at a brick wall though.

 

Mikari

Patch 3.0.8 was supposed to change the following

Is this actually working? Because doing Sarth today we lost multiple people to Tsunami coming out from the Twilight Realm.

 

Pyros

It's probably already explained earlier in this thread, but it only makes you immune to shadow(void zones), you still have to wait walls.

 

eldercain

My guild has been working on 10man 3d for about a month now (we started maybe a week or two before 3.0.8) and we seem to be consistently running up against problems at various points in the fight. Our best attemtps we usually end up wiping with Shadron somewhere around 60%. We got the 25man version down after one night (~3 hours) of serious attempts, so we know the ins and outs of the fight and all the particulars of the abilities, so either we need to change up our roles, or train ourselves to approach aspects of it (healing especially, I think) in a different way.

Our comp:

3 tanks: DK, Feral druid(can get to ~36k post debuff), Prot Warrior
3 healers: Holy priest with GS (myself), Holy paladin, Resto Shaman.
4 DPS: Shadow Priest, Elemental Shaman, Enhance Shaman, Mage.

We have some flexibility about our DPS classes, I have a lock, a moonkin, and a rogue that are all geared and skilled enough for this (at least as far as our guild goes), but from what I've read as I've followed this thread it seems like we should be fine with what we have.

We've tried different approaches to tanking and healing, including using our druid and our dk on sarth (dk seems a safer bet), and although we leave the holy paladin on the sarth tank regardless, we've gone between having myself and the resto shaman on the add tank/raid. It seems that most of our attempts go downhill when a) second set of whelps spawn (happens about 50% of the time) and our aoe pulls aggro and dies or b) some combination of events leads to a tank death, usually the drake tank or c) one of our healers gets killed by TT-damage blazes and boulders. If it were one thing it would have been easier to identify and I wouldn't be asking here, but it really just seems like it all falls apart once we get past tenebron and the whelps.

For reference, we generally keep beacon on the whelp tank (and it usually doesn't stay up after whelps because our paladin is busting his balls keeping up the sarth tank), and we don't currently have him spec'd into Divine Guardian because it hurts his throughput and the 12s it gives doesn't really seem like it'd help us that much because our good attempts usually go to shit ~30-45 seconds after the first large breaths. Sarth breath rotations are causes of very few of our wipes overall, and although we end up having any number of wipes due to random annoyances such as whelps instantly killing me or a void zone killing our mage because he thought he was a mirror image, most of the time we don't die to the average gimmicks.

Any thoughts or advice for me? I'm most curious about what role I should give each player, as I can tell we're very close to stabilizing for a kill, but it seems like something is off. Maybe it's as simple as our dps being too low or something, but our server still hasn't seen this encounter completed so it's not like I have anyone to ask about it.

WWS for our attempts tonight.

 

Jalhar

You may want to get a full caster dps group, ie SP, elemental shammy, lock, mage, for the synergy.

As for healing, you could try to use the priest as disc to heal the Sartharion tank, disc priest talents and cooldowns paired with the DK ones reduced deaths to breathes to 0. Furthermore, the paladin is probably better used on the drakes tank , with the beacon on the whelps / blazes tank, raid will benefit a lot from the holy light glyph during twilight torment, as you don't have a resto druid to hot everything. If the paladin is divine guardian specced, making him use his bubble during the critical phase (2nd wave fo whelps and / or vesperon disciple) helps a lot to reduce the damage on the raid until whelps are killed. The huge difficulty of the 3 / 3 / 4 setup is indeed to handle the 2nd wave of whelps, once it is down and fight stabilized with only 2 drakes and sartharion up, it's very straightforward. The third healer makes twilight torment very easy to handle. You may want to read Sartharion and Company (3 Drakes) - Discussion that describes quite well how to do it with this setup.

On this subject, we got our first kill in 10 men with a 3 3 4 setup very simiar to yours, very casters oriented, with a disc priest on the Sartharion tank (DK) and killed him again this week with a 2 tanks (DK on sarth, pala on drakes / whelps / blazes) 3 healers (paladin on Sartharion, resto shaman on the prot paladin, resto druid on raid + hotting tanks) and 5 dps (DK hunter SP pala warrior) setup. Only 3 of the players on the first kill were in the 2nd, and the second setup was a lot easier to learn and felt a lot more controlled and repeatable: not having to deal with 2 waves of whelps, even without heroism, reduced the pain for tanks and healers by a huge amount. We only had to learn how to drag blazes into the prot paladin consecration, with running / taunts / misdirects, and job was done in roughly 2 hours.

 

kaerlic

Going from 3 to 2 tanks + 3 healers + 5 dps is what we did, and it ended up with a kill 2 weeks ago. Yesterday we changed one healer and one dps, and all tries looked quite repeatable, with final kill after 12 tries or so. Not dealing with second wave of whelps is great bonus, which allows to bring shadron quite low before twilight torment. This setup also allows to having less synergy in your group.

our first kill was:
- feral - sartharion
- warrior tank - drakes + adds
- holy paladin - mt
- holy priest - group healing
- shaman heal - ot
- warlock
- warrior
- dk dps
- rogue (on last kill we had a mage in here)
- hunter sv

Still what U need is quite good dps, great OT with eyes on the back of his head , replenishment, all available buffs + stats, and strong AOE.

 

Marduk

Our setup varies but here is what we can use:
Tanks: Prot warrior, DK, prot paladin.
Heal: Holy paladin, 2xHoly/Disc priest, resto shaman
DPS: Aff. lock, fury warrior, 2xSV hunter, 2x frost mages, 2x DK, ele. shaman, ench shaman, retri paladin, shadow priest.
(We are 15 guildmates/friendss. Not all of us can run them every week. Some of us have almost full 25man geared alts and/or gear and skill for other spec. I listed them all.)

What makes it random and possibly causes wipe:
1) Flame elementals- some trys we had up to 8 of them coming out of nowhere. While adds down they are no more problem.
2) Flame wall dance- flame walls come every time in different cycle.
3) Divine plea nerf- at the end I just run out of mana.

Now I'd like to hear your ideas. What do you think? What could be the setup?

 

Thornfallow

We were able to pull off 10-man +3 with a Voidwalker tanking Sartharion.

I had to max out in Stamina gear and spec correctly, but he can be placed outside the island so he doesn't take lava waves and he will not be targeted for Pyrobuffets.

This way you can take your time DPS'ing through Torment as the pet will not take obscene flame breath damage. However, he can still be crit.

After Shadron died I had to almost Healthfunnel constantly to prevent crit gibs. Once Vesperon died we had a tank taunt Sartharion because the physical damage was growing to ridiculous levels.

Edit: Improved CoW on Sartharion is also a huge benefit. We only ran two additional tanks with 3 healers. The minimal DPS I was able to output was actually a large help in downing Tenebron and Shadron quickly. The damage on the VW is pretty spikey, so your Sartharion healer is going to be one haggard guy at the end.

 

Kazanir

This is one of the most awesome things I have heard of in a while.

'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. I told you. This is bigger than a war. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.

You can come with me. I can protect you.

 

Talid

The most difficult part of the fight with a VW tank is the pull, we had to position him with our feral druid then pump misdirects in to the pet.

It's pretty annoying as the Sarth healer because the voidwalker can spike and there is little you can do outside of beg the warlock to pop a health funnel. I used an innervate and 2 clicks of the Darkmoon Card: Illusion and 2 potions (died after the VW ate a massive spike once 3 drakes were dead, got BR'd)

It was really fun but I kind of expect this to get fixed soon.