Lucinde

Ah thanks for the warning :-)

We did indeed kill Shadron for obvious reasons and while I'm not too worried about the wall of fire, the fire elemental adds are a concern. What I notice is that often they spawn right before a wall passes through and then instantly enrage. In Sarth +2 what we do is just ignore them and the whelps altogether while we burn Tenebron down with a heroism and then melee jumps into the portal to kill the Acolyte while everyone else AoE's the collected adds.

With at least 3 enraged fire elementals hitting our prot pally tank by then. I don't think it's very feasible to ignore them, but directing DPS to get rid of them just prolongs the harder part of the fight (and spawns more of them anyway) and I don't think getting a third wave of whelps is very much in your favor.

What it boils down to, I guess, is how do other guilds deal with the fire elementals or rather, how do you prevent them from enraging? I hold our paladin tank in very high regard when it comes to positioning mobs, but he tells me it's sometimes impossible to prevent them from getting the waves.

 

TimeOut

1) Twilight Torment is a visible debuff, although you get no message in the combat log (or scrolling combat texts) when it is applied. I haven't found a timer for the debuff yet, but all people in the raid gain it. It can not stack, but the damage dealt is a portion of your own damage that is reflected + a static component.

Some unlucky FFB mages have nearly critted themselves to death while the buff was active.

The buff can be applied while the Flame Breath is already casting. Since the cast time is 1.2 seconds, the reaction window for reactive abilities would be very very small (considering that you need to call out the debuff manually).

Edit:
Since it is an enrage effect, you can dispel it. Rogues with [Anesthetic Poison II] can use Fan of Knives to dispel many elementals at once. Our tank usually calls out the enraged elementals and our rogues run over and FoK them.

 

KamPa

I was checking our WWS and that buff doesn't apply to Shadron, only to Sartharion. And seeing that you don't really damage Sartharion, it shouldn't matter.

 

Andrast

The debuff is visible but there is no combatlog entry on application or removal. My theory is that since it is cast by the Acolyte of Vesperon onto random targets that aren't in the Twilight Phase this means the entire raid is out of range of either the source and the target. It does appear in debuffs, however, you can watch for it.

It is far more common for guilds to use a bear tank on Sartharion himself due to they large HP pool and their good magic damage mitigation. If your dps is sufficient you should be able to burn down the adds in the order they arrive and really only have a few dangerous breaths.

For reference you can easily kill the drakes in the order they join the fight and this seems to be the most logical way. You don't want to leave Tenebron alive since you'll get swarmed with whelps and as soon as you kill Shadron your MT is fairly safe. You can leave the Acolyte of Shadron alive until you've finished Vesperon and doing so will increase your dps on the drakes.

 

james

When Shadron's Disciple spawns (there's a raid warning), he buffs Sartharion with Gift of Twilight - ignore the description, it increases fire dmg - hence those 40k breaths.

As people have said, the trick is to ignore Shadron's portal and use your cooldowns. The Flame Breath has a 2s cast time, we've used Pain Suppression, Guardian Spirit, Hand of Sacrifice (remove the buff after the breath), Shield Wall, Last Stand + Shield, Anti Magic Zone, etc. to survive it. Of course, a Deathknight tank can rotate Bone Armor, AMS, IBF, etc.

After Shadron (second drake) is down, 1 healer and our melee burn down his disciple and then Vesperon's. Vesperon died around the time his disciple did, so we only had to be in there once.

Twilight Torment comes from Vesperon's disciple.

 

khel

Sorry Andrast, I edited my post to fix the error. Tenebron lands first, then Shadron, and finally Vesperon. Tenebron dies within 10s or so of Shadron joining the encounter for us, but Shadron has a lot of hp when Vesperon lands. At this point, with both drakes up, I think that we will also skip taking Shadron's portal and just plan for the big fire breaths until Shadron is dead. My question was if most people agreed that this was the appropriate strategy, or if they are taking the portals before Shadron dies.

Is it really beneficial to take any portals before all drakes are dead? Once Shadron dies then the Power of Shadron buff should disappear and then the breath damage on the tank becomes manageable again. Only after all 3 drakes are dead do we need to drop the invulnerability buff that Shadron's Acolyte places on Sartharion.

 

TimeOut

Thanks. Our WWS shows that too. I corrected my posting above, so the fight is even easier as I thought.
I can easily survive a Breath with the buff from Shadron on Sartharion, only the Vesperon disciple kills me every time.

 

Lilija

You write that killing Shadron is the dps race - do you keep Bloodlust for him or rather use it to burn Tenebron fast? So far we used heroism for Tenebron and he usually was at about 5-15% when Shadron landed. However I think we can push more if we take into account that we can ignore Shadron's portal - not sure tho if enough to cover for lack of heroism if it has to go for next dragon.

 

Xelopheris

I tank Sartharion until all 3 drakes are dead (we transition him to the feral who's been tanking drakes up to that point for better physical mitigation). A proper rotation of cooldowns and I never die from breaths.

For any unholy DK's wondering, Bone Armor pre-inc, save the cooldown until Shadron lands. ~5 seconds after Shadron lands, put on bone armor and pop Lichborne to help keep it from being used up by melee attacks. I usually still have 1-2 charges by the time Vesperon lands. When vesperon lands, real CD's start -- AMS, IBF, AMZ + HP Trinket, BoSanc, Guardian Spirit. Only ever had to get to GS once or twice -- if the fight is stretching on for that long, it's going to be hard.

One key thing about the fight is you need really good DPS. If Tenebron can be burnt down before Shadron joins the fight, you're in good shape. If not, he soon after creates a second set of eggs and you're screwed. On the same subject, the sooner Shadron dies after Vesperon is down, the better. Obviously AE and kill the disciples after each drake is dead.

 

Andrast

The Acolyte Vesperon add will continue to chain cast Torment of Twilight on your tank if you leave it up. Go and kill it and you'll have far less random tank one shots.

The dangerous part of this fight is after you have killed Tenebron but before you have killed Shadron. The extremely dangerous part of the fight is when the Acolyte of Vesperon is up. Construct your strategy around this, get 25 people who can avoid flame wave and void zones and the fight is yours.

 

khel

It's not this debuff alone that causes the 1-shots, but its combination with Power of Shadron. Once Shadron is dead, then it makes the most sense to me for dpsers with the debuff to be careful not to kill themselves and burn down Vesperon. You should be able to ignore the ports since the tank is no longer taking the huge breaths.

 

Redcape

I am currently running a guild doing only 10 mans and downed Sartharion with 1 add up. I am curious if anyone has managed to defeat Sartharion + 3 with 10 only using gear available in 10 man content. I am confident with full 10s gear and good execution we can do + 2, but I don't know if our gear will allow for 3 drakes to die until we get higher ilvl stuff from Ulduar and beyond.

How much of that fight is about pure numbers and gearing and how high is that bar?

 

Hoffski

My guild is very similar to yours. We are comprised of around 11 or 12 friends who have played together for a long time, so we only do 10 man raids and only have 10 man gear (for the most part). Two weeks ago we did Sartharion +1 pretty easily. Last week we did Sartharion +2. We ended up killing him after about an hour or two of attempts. Probably going to try with all 3 drakes up this week, but I really don't expect us to kill him. The biggest problem I see us having is just not being able to dps the drakes down fast enough. Pretty much all our raiders are in full epic gear from heroics, badges, 10-man nax, and 10-man malygos.

I'd also be really curious as to how many guilds have done 10-man Sartharion +3 without any 25-man gear. If the 10-man is balanced around having heroic raid gear than that just isn't fun at all.

 

ajthebest

I've heard speculation that tanks can "clear" twilight torment (the debuff applied by the Vesperon Acolyte on random Raid members). We've noticed the debuff disapearing off raid members as well.

From what I've seen / heard you can clear the debuff if you take some twilight torment damage (basically hit something). I've also noticed that everyone whos killed Sartharion have their MTs stop attacking Sartharion once Vesp lands and wait for him to cast flame breath. The only explaination in my mind would be that the tanks clear their twilight torment debuff, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

I play a druid and I have ~51-52k hp buffed pre-debuff. Post debuff I'm sitting at around 36-38k hp. I donot need any special bubbles etc when Shadron is up and IF I can clear the debuff by attacking Sartharion, it would seem that I would not need any cooldowns at all.

I havn't had the chance to really try this out because we just got through the *I can not walk out of red glowly circles* phase.

 

TimeOut

You can clear the debuff by hitting something with a style. You will reflect some damage after about 1 second (depending on your latency). This clears the debuff, until it is casted again.

Since it is dependant on a style, you must not be inside the GCD and have enough time left on the cast to remove the debuff successfully. Threat should be no problem, only latency.

Edit for clarification:
A "style" is a spell or ability that deals damage. Common term here on german servers, sorry.

 

ajthebest

I don't understand your reference to a "style". Thats pretty much what my feeling was. I think with a 37-40k hp feral tank, there is no need for Cooldowns. Just have your druid clear his/her debuff in time for the breath and you should be fine.

 

TimeOut

I'm sorry. A "style" is a spell or an ability that deals damage (to trigger Twilight Torment). I changed my post above to clarify this.

As a feral druid it is pretty easy to survive the Breath even with the debuff by Shadron. With a discipline priest shielding it is even easier. To clear Twilight Torment you will need good hit rating and expertise and remember to keep Maul switched off, so that the debuff doesn't trigger at bad times.

Of course, that strategy depends entirely on luck, as long as the druid in question is not hit and expertise capped... A bad latency or a (common) lag spike can also lead to a wipe.

 

ajthebest

Thank you for the clarification.

In that regard, everything to avoid the breaths seems pretty luck based. We had a priest GS me before a breath and I still died. Both the priest and I saw the buff on me and the graphic, but it was obviously latency.

If you have your dps go into the other realm and kill the acolytes, you still need to be lucky and not get breath while they are travelling. God knows I've taken a breath as soon as he gets his Shadron buff multiple times.

So, TimeOut, and others, do you feel that it is a viable strat to have a druid with 36-38k hp + a disc bubble (7k) tank Sarth the whole time without the use of other CDs?

 

spartakos

If we keep in mind that a tank uses an that deals damage every 1,5 sec,worse case, you must be really unlucky to get a breath with both aura and debuff. Except if I didn't understand anything about the 2 previous posts.
P.S. Maul resets debuff?

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

 

ajthebest

Basically, when you take damage the debuff is reset. The reason you wanna stop attacking until hes casts flame breath is that you don't want to not reset the timer / be on a GCD when it really counts. I would use something like Mangle / Lacerate to reset the timer myself. Anything that is instant.

The way I saw it, if we can do this w/o any cooldowns, it would allow me to take a wide variety of players i.e. resto druids and resto shammies rather than stacking pallies and priest with only certain talents.

 

dukes

Originally it was put forward as Sarth+3 to be Ulduar+ gear. Assuming the progression is such that both the 10 and 25 man go forward one "tier" of gear for each set (i.e. 10 man ulduar is 213) then it certainly wouldn't be surprising that it's effectively balanced for Naxx Heroic gear, however "unfair" that seems right now. Remember that Malygos, Sarth+2 and KT all drop 213 gear however, so you should be able to get a fair smattering of ilvl 213 across your 10 man group anyway.

 

TimeOut

It is a valid strat, but it is luck based. With only Shadron's buff on Sartharion it is survivable. I usually survive with about 3 to 8k hp left.

If Twilight Torment is active it is not survivable without other methods. Breaths with both effects (Shadron and Twilight Torment) hit for up to 70k.

If your feral druid removes Twilight Torment at the right time, it should work. Maul removes the debuff, as does every other attack. White damage does not remove Twilight Torment.

Remember that Twilight Torment has apparently no cooldown or fixed interval, so it could be applied again nearly instantaneous. Also, as far as I know, the debuff is only removed about a second after the attack dealt damage (at the moment you receive the reflected damage).

 

ajthebest

Flame breath doesn't have a set timer right? Does it have an internal CD? Something like - can not cast flame breath until at least 5 seconds after the previous breath?

 

• Bazazu

Appears to be a 10 second ICD. It can range anywhere from 10-30 seconds

 

andastra

Blizzard actually said on Blizzcon that Sartharion +3 drakes may not be beatable with the gear available on release. It looks they balanced it around Ulduar+ gear and underestimated part of their player base.