Are there detailed posts about voidwalker tank strats somewhere in this thread (or elsewhere?) My 10 man's interested in trying it. The spec seems fairly obvious and videos gave me a good idea of the positioning, I'm just wondering if there's anything I missed.

Also, should I just gear for max stamina, or is there something else to prioritize?

For the benefit of every one who comes across this, I'll repeat what I said in guild about this.

1) If you are reading this in several weeks, It probably doesn't work any more, sorry, but I always hate searching for a post and finding a cool solution that doesn't work.

2) The entire idea is normal gear/spec based on the Demo/Destro build with several key talents

Improved Health Funnel, Demonic Resilience and Demonic Empowerment.

Combine all 3 of these with the other base talents in demo+ pet HP buffs results in a VW who takes near 0 damage from breaths, and you can kind of move him for waves or place him in an area where it doesn't matter. His Base Hp is roughly 50~k in pve gear and fully buffed, with 70+k using DE.

3) the warlock's main priority is to mitigate breaths as well as position the VW correctly, I haven't done it yet but from my understanding there are places to be to make waves a non issue. Then you just DPS as normal, and while it's not as great as an optimal warlock spec, it's more DPS than a normal tank would do period. So you get an extra 1/2 a dpser and a very very resilient tank.

You'd think that fire elementals would be immune to fire, but these are special elementals that sat at the back of the classroom during their "Spell Immunity 101" class and smoked eternal water and didn't pick up anything.

They're not immune to any form of magical damage as far as I know, being a fire mage I only really tried fire and frost though but I haven't heard anyone say they're immune to anything.

a question about 10 man 3D

did anybody try to stack priests (like 2 shadow, 1 or 2 holy) for this fight and an unholy DK for the whelps? Idea is that DK tank can pick up all the adds from the 1st wave, bring them to Tenebron and use pestilence on him, thus spreading devouring plague from all priests, also buffing it by 30%. plague from 2 shadow priests + DKs own abilities must be able to kill the 1st group of whelps before the 2nd one hatched.
if it works.. well it's an autokill all blazes and whelps in the area. As of our experience 3 tanks 3 healers, removing 2nd whelps spawn problem will trivialize the fight.

I'd like to add a easy way to reposition a pet (Voidwalker) that I haven't seen mentioned so far.

Naturally, if your pet is tanking sartharion it isn't easy to handle the waves. As it has been stated the damage from the lava waves isn't the problem - it's more about the knockback.

My way to reposition the pet (Note: I didn't tank Sartharion with a pet so far) is using the passive and defensive stance along with the "Stay" order.

Have your pet standing at the place you want it to be and order it to "Stay".
To make your voidwalker attack sartharion you switch him into defensive-stance and hit sartharion once with the wand or anything you like (Note: You probably want a tank to build up a small amount of threat for sartharions positioning then letting the voidwalker take over). Now, if your Voidwalker gets knocked back, you simply set him to passive-stance. He will walk back to the position you assigned him to "Stay" at. Switch back to the defensive-stance for the voidwalker to attack again.

With this small tweak the warlock won't have to pass any dangerous spots and can simply stay where the healers are.

I have to admit confusion on this, is the VW just standing there eating waves? Or is the lock moving it between waves?

On the topic of voidwalker tanking

Tried it with my guild last night on the 25man version, to see what's the deal about, and also for fun & giggles.

Also managed to fraps this - YouTube - Voidwalker tank 25man sartharion + 3 drakes If you watch in HD mode, you can roughly see the damage on the voidwalker. Did it on 19 Feb 09 night, so blizzard haven't nerfed it yet.

Healing on voidwalker ( using 2 pally healers on him ) is abit "different", albeit slightly easier. Comparing to a druid tank, voidwalker takes higher consistent melee damage ( melee spikes might occur during chain crits ), especially when each consecutive drake is down due to the mini-enrage per drake from Sartharion, but it takes away the flame breaths danger. I would also think that their mana-usage would be more as well.

In fact, you would wish sartharion breaths more on voidwalker because the damage is very trivial and takes away the meleeing instead haha.

Might have to practice on the positioning since my voidwalker seems to get punted by both left or right side firewalls. Thus the lock tank will have to do a pet recall and attack to reposition it after a punt.

In that video, there's a period whereby the voidwalker almost died due to being punted after a firewall and the 2 pally healers ( and me ) got tail-swiped because of the punted position.

In terms of gear for this, stamina gear ( 3 glacial cloths items, frostguard ring, PVP items etc - I got the tank cloak and staff from Heigan, that would otherwise go to DE ).

In terms of spec, you don't really need to further gimp your dps using 11/60/0 for improved CoW, you can still use meta/ruin spec, ie 0/55/16, but switch around with using improved health funnel and demonic resilience talents. Moreover, you will need to sacrifice a corruption/CoA glyph spot for the voidwalker glyph.

Well, I find this rather fun and it provided some relieving break from your usual dps role, to a tank and pet control role.

We had a bit of an odd issue last night on sarth 3d.

We had Shadron to about 5% when Sarth turned and breathed on the raid. The MT swears that there was no aggro switch; he just turned to the side, breathed, and then turned back.

Any ideas why this would have happened?

I actually checked your server to make sure you werent on mine. (your character profile is wrong btw, no such character on armory. Please fix it)

I had someone from another guild on my server ask me the exact same question last night. Shadron on 5%, sart turns and flames the raid. No kind of taunt/agro switch.

Seems like a new bug, as I had never heard or experienced something like this.

Did you have any unholy DKs die right around then, or possibly someone get brought back by Raise Ally - Spell - World of Warcraft? I've seen this same behavior of Sarth turning towards the raid for a second when a DK comes back due to Shadow of Death - Spell - World of Warcraft.

The issue I believe also exists with Reincarnation.

He does indeed turn towards players who come back to life by anything except a combat res, it's only for about a second though, so pretty unlucky to have that collide with a breath.
However, Sarth targets said person when he turns like that so it's pretty easy to spot.

We've got a pretty good way of getting Sartharion to the right spot when you have the void on the island on the left front side.

~First have your warlock sit the pet right there on the little rock and in position.
~Have 1 of your hunters put MD up on the Void.
~Have one of the tanks body pull and drag Sartharion to be almost even with the void. A good marker is just before Sarth's feet reach the lava.
~Hunter uses the MD attacks to put the threat straight onto the Voidwalker.
~Sarth is pretty much along the side now and the tail is straight back, not interfering at all.

Some notes though.
~Nobody can do ANYTHING during the pull. No hots, no attacks, no buffs. The body pull gives 0 threat to that tank and that tank cant really do anything to get aggro as MD really averages only about a 4-6k threat transfer.

~Sarth can possibly breathe early as your body pull tank is still pulling it back. You can either MD the attack then and having him slightly out of position or if you body pull tank had a bubble on prior to the pull, just eat the first breath.

~After all three drakes are dead, let a firewall happen before you reposition him for a normal tank to take over. Have one tank Taunt from his tail and drag him back then have your true MT Taunt him into the normal position.

A few of the cream of the crop of my guildies and myself are hoping to do reg 3d this upcoming week. We're gonna pass up on any exploits (VW tanking etc.) and do it the good ol' fashioned way. From what I understand from this thread, we should go for a 3 tank/3 healer/4 dps comp. We were going to do:

Sarth Tank: Pally (Wearing almost full best-in-slots, 34k hp unbuffed)
Drake Tank: Warrior (31k hp, very high avoidance, almost in very nice gear
Adds Tank: Druid (Not sure of his stats tbh but he add-tanked our 25 man run quite nicely)
Heals: Geared druid, pally (specced into Divine Guardian), shaman
DPS: Me, shadow priest. Ele shaman. FFB mage. Unholy DK. We're all tried-and-true able to dodge lava/void zones and pull 5k dps and thereabouts on patch.

Now, is this a good comp? The DK in question has a half-decent (mostly i200) tanking set so if adds (and aggro controlling them) become a huge problem I'd consider subbing out the druid for him to tank and bringing in a warlock(?) to dps. We cover all the buffs--Fort, Commanding Shout, MotW, Int, Kings, Wisdom/Might/Sanc, ToW, Elemental Oath, Imp Scorch, Misery, and Ebon Plague.

We would tentatively save Lust for Shadron and not do portals until they're all down.

Hoping to not wipe for 3 hours then QQ and run Naxx to feel good about ourselves. Could any experienced Black Drake farmers give me some tips on leading this correctly?

EDIT: Talked to the druid tank, and we think we can get his HP about 50k. In that case, it'd be better to have him tanking Sarth and the pally on the adds, correct?

I'd definitely switch the druid and pally roles. The druid needs to actively be IN place for when the whelps spawn whereas the pally can drop a consecrate and move if necessary (say a lava wave or void zone). In all our experience a pally on the adds has been more effective than a druid.

My advice would be to get the DK to tank Sarth, even at low gear levels, if he specs correctly he can pretty much mitigate all the breaths by himself leaving a lot less room for error as well as having the other members of the raid focus more on healing or DPS.

This is not to say that a druid can't tank it but we found it significantly easier with a DK tanking which was only my undergeared alt. The ideal solution would be to have your druid then spec balance to cover the 13% buff, if he hasn't collected a good boomkin set you could replace him with a lock.

I believe it does.

Confirmed, it does and it still counts them as the diseases of the players that initially cast them.

The pally tank actually has a DK better geared to tank Sarth than the DPS DK is, so if we move to DK tanking Sarth we'd probably go that route and have the druid tank the drakes, then? So our setup could either be:

Sarth-Druid
Adds-Pally
Drakes-Warrior

or

Sarth-DK
Adds-Warrior
Drakes-Druid

Thoughts?



EDIT: Okay nevermind, the Paladin got Gkicked. So we're gonna have the Unholy DK add-tank and I was thinking that for last dps we could bring in another good shadow priest? I was thinking pestilence + devouring plaguex2 would help oodles with the adds, as long as the DK made sure ebon plague was up on the drakes at all times too.

It does, and it works fantastic. We did it just today with 4th pull and 7(!) new titles.

2 SP, mage, elem on dps
druid on sarth, warrior on drakes, DK on adds.
holy pal, disc priest, shaman on healing.

Here is WWS: Wow Web Stats
Just look at SP devouring plague damage

Elemental shaman was healing DK after Tenebron death until all the adds are dead also.
Our mage died on double fire cyclone+twilight proc very early, but still we managed to finish it.

Adds needed a bit of mind seer, but they were at quite low HP when tenebron died. And our holy priest forgot to use his plague, so that could make a difference.

I'd say this was our easiest ever kill, 100% recommend to try it.

We had our second night of 25 man Sarth +3D last night. Overall I was pleased with the progress we made, but we kept falling apart at the same juncture everytime last night in our transition after we killed Shadron to handling Vesperon, and I'm at a bit of a loss on how to solve the problem.

We are currently running a Feral MT (54k life raid buffed, pre drake debuffs), a warrior tank on drake 1, 2 (3 after Shadron is dead), a warrior tank on the elementals, a DK on the whelps and Vesperson until Shadron is dead. We are running 6 healers, and I feel that our healing is sufficient. We are not losing DPS or Tanks unless a healer bones it.

We are blood lusting after the first lava wave after Tenebron lands, and he is dead or very close to dead by the time Shadron lands. After Tenebron is dead we are having our whelp tank place the whelps on Shaddron and our AE is downing them. During this time our elemental tank drags the elementals through the AE storm to remove a few of them from the mix, which does successfully get a fair number of them off of her. We are also putting a rogue and a hunter on the elementals full time (post Tenebron) to deal with enraged elementals and keeping them under control.

A good number of times in our attempts last night we successfully got Shaddron down with the entire raid alive, and were just left with Vesperon, Sarth, the adds and the acolytes. Should be easy, right? We made it past the hardest part! But we were continously failing in the transition from Shadron to Vesperon. Upon Shadron's death the Shadron tank taunts Vesperion to free up our DK to assist with elemental round up; we send a melee hit squad plus one healer to deal with the acolytes and our ranged work on Vesperon. (We even succeeded in getting the current portal acolytes dead last night).

Where we fell apart every single time last night was in our elemental control after Shadron died and I am at a loss on how to solve this. Invariably between the time we can put some AE on the elementals the tank runs them through a lava wall, they enrage, and she is dead before our rogue and hunter have time to dispel the enrage. We are trying to encourage her to utilize intervene and charge as much as possible to get into safe spots for the flame walls, but it seems no matter what she does the elementals invariably hit a flame wall, and by the time our DPS is done with the Shadron they seem to be out of control. We've tried to AE them down on Vesperon to get them under control, but have not had success employing this strategy and I am having trouble pinpointing if this is a tank failure or sloppy DPS.

Through everything I've read, I have seen very little regarding elemental control post Shadron's death. How are other people handling the transition from Shadron to Vesperon on the surface?

As a side note, we are repeatedly losing our ret pally during Tenebron due to elemental agro as a result of divine storm and consecrate nicking adds and our add tank not having time to get them from him before he dies. After much (heated) discussion and solution searching, we have decided to have him hold his consecrate, which will be a dps decrease for him (but better than his DPS as a corpse on the floor). While the easy answer is for him to just bubble them off, we are using him as cooldown on our Sarth tank, so need him to save his bubble. Has anyone found a better solution to dealing with this issue that would not result in a DPS loss?

We usually AOE everything down on top of Shadron after Tenebron is dead. (After pulling Shadron to Vesperon's spawn point, since we use the same tank for all three drakes.) You shouldn't be getting enough elementals between Tenebron's death and Vesperon's to really be a critical issue in 99% of attempts. Just have your add tank focus on avoiding fire walls. In your case, you might profit from sticking a Rogue or two on Fan of Knives duty to dispel enraged elementals after Shadron is dead.

Really, though, once Shadron is dead, there's nothing that should be particularly dangerous about the fight. You're probably having people get too excited about Shadron dying. It might be helpful to just say "keep fighting" or "focus" or something over Vent as Shadron gets low, just reminding people that the fight isn't over then, just the difficult part.

Are your holy paladins using Righteous Fury? It makes a huge difference if the adds are all initially locked onto a holy instead of spread all over meleeing everything. The add tank has to learn to get to safe spots, but you can also use frost-traps to buy more time to dispel the enrages. You're almost guaranteed to get a few of them however, and your healing will need to cover that. My take from your post is that you're having issues healing then non-predictable damage of the encounter, and I'd recommend taking an additional healer (We've settled on 8). The fight is no longer a dps-burn as it was before the TT changes, and the only real hard dps check is the 2nd whelp spawn, it sounds like you're not quite in control of everything.