Zigazaha

Although the fight wasn't to hard to figure out here's a little more help.
We all stood on the far south corner by sarth and the tank ran around and pulled from the mountains on the opposite side. He pulled tenebron with heroic throw/taunt.
Makeup-
Blood DK (didn't use army)
Survival Hunter
Arcane mage x2
HaT rogue
Ret pally (often holding the adds)
Aff warlock (didn't use doomguard)
Feral druid taunter
Warrior tank
Resto shaman healer

Paladin and priest buff bitches

We found whenever we got a middle wall someone ended up dying so we waited for RNG to be in our favor and get double outers. Bloodlust 40 seconds in burn cooldowns at ~35% health.

WWS- Wow Web Stats

As a hunter the best way to do it was stand at the outer wall furthest away from sarth so that you don't run into tail swipe to dodge outers (which is what i did at first)

Edit- just noticed i failed and was missing 10% AP the whole time.... Soooo idk how to fix that without running into tailswipe, I guess stand closer then just run back for outers.

 

popesaladin

My guild is failing on Sarth25+3. Some quick notes to bring you up to speed. We are very casual. Sarth25+2 is an absolute cakewalk for us. I realize +3 is a huge step up. But, it is what is left for us. We have solid healers, a few solid dps, and some good tanks. However, all of our quality tanks are warriors and paladins.

In our initial attempts, we had a warrior tanking sarth. He worked up a little gimmick build with some gimmick frost resist gear for more stam. However, managing the breaths were tricky with our very slow guild dps. Our typical wipe point was around 15% on Shadron. This made us feel like we were close, but after so many wipes in the same spot, we felt it was probably best to gear one our deathknights to tank. If we had a second healing priest, it would have probably helped. After shield wall, we moved to pain suppression. After PS, we moved to HoS + bubble. However, our tank didn't quite have the health.

So we have geared up a DK to tank, though he is nowhere near BiS type gear. His health is about 1500 short of the warriors, but his cooldowns obviously make up for it. So we are looking to get back to getting some attempts in. I have a few general questions about how to handle this fight with slow dps.

1. Our OT's have trouble containing the adds. We typically run a paladin and warrior. But, they have a DK throw on some tank gear to help contain. I feel the adds should be containable with two tanks. That seems like an unnecessary loss of dps when we are already dps starved. I know most strats run two add tanks. However, with the slow dps they seem to get overrun a bit easier. What works out better: Cleaning up adds more frequently, adding the third OT, or just telling them they should be able to do this with just the two of them?

2. To hand enraged lava blazes, we have a rogue running the anesthetic poison and FoKing when its called for. This is obviously another loss in DPS both him pulling off the target and losing his poison damage. I know tranq shot works, but seems like it would be less than desirable vs. multiple enraged adds. What would you suggest here?

3. I'm bloodlusting when we begin to work on shadron. Others have suggested with the slower dps to do it on tenebron to get him down quickly and give us some cleanup time to begin shadron with a clean slate. I think this is ridiculous since the crucial point of the fight is dealing with shadron and vesperon up at the same time. I'm pretty sure you would all suggest it during Shadron. The question is, do you do it when he lands, when we switch to him, or some other crucial moment?

Thanks.

 

mlanewal

It sounds like most of your issues stem from your add tank(s).

1) You really should only need one add tank (we use a paladin). When we were learning the fight, we brought in as many as 5(!) tanks, due to problems with raider availability and add issues. It took a couple nights for our GM to realize this was a bad idea and bring in more DPS in their spot, as well as use the one tank who could handle the job. More tanks = slower DPS = more things that can go wrong. As a healer, I do not quite know the ins and outs of add tanking on this fight, but one decent tank is enough. We had an initiate tank it in half blues and he was fine.

2) We didn't have a rogue for a few weeks, so we did use Tranq Shot hunters to dispell enrages. One of the biggest thing that can help here, however, is your add tank. If he is good about moving the adds and handling them at smart positions, he can drastically reduce the number of enraged elementals.

3) We BL as soon as Tenebron dies for hasted AoE plus Shadron burn. It really works either way, though. If BLing Tenebron is what works for you, so be it. Either way, the point is to maximize your DPS time on Shadron.

 

Tel

I would suggest regarding point 1 that you have a word with your OTs and find out why they're struggling. Have they assigned areas of responsibility? Have they decided who will take the whelp wave? Do they have one guarding healers and one picking up strays? Do they know which positions they can safely move to at flame wave time?

All of that makes a big difference, so have the chat with them. I would suggest that you really don't need more than 2 OTs on it though, as an Unholy DK I can comfortably tank all the blazes and whelps (although I use lichborne, then IBF, then trinket and boneshield followed by AMS when they spawn to make it easier on healers).

Regarding point 2, you should never ben getting more than 1 or 2 enraged blazes at a time. Worst case scenario maybe 3. Any more than that and you need to have stern words with your OTs. I have a hunter with a macro to assist me and tranq for when I need one killed, so no need to waste a rogues single target DPS.

Bloodlust on Tenebron, really. Just do it a few times to try it out. Unless you're already clearing up all the Adds and whelps before shadron lands, you'd be better off having everything clear by then so you can burst straight into Shadron as soon as he hits the floor. Personally I call Heroism at 70%ish on Tenebron, as it means we have it all through the AOE and for the first 10 secs or so on Shadron too.

Regarding the number of adds up, you really shouldnt need to have everyone clear them up more than once. The way we handle it is to have them all on me (or another DK if I'm DPSing) until Tenebron dies, then switch and nukes them down. We then go on Shadron, and anyone who dips low on HP can AOE while they wait to get topped up (AOE doesnt proc torment). Once Shadron is dead, I have a hunter switch to full time add dps, while the rest kill vesperon really slowly. Once he is dead, everyone but me, my hunter, my healer, and the two MT healers go down the portal, clear up adds and come back up.

Having just one person helping may not be viable with a class other than Unholy DK though, I know I'm normally 5th or 6th on damage meters in 25 man from my ridiculous AOE dps on the adds.

 

Calgar

You have a lot of issues there man.

1. Sub-optimal tanking; Both in quality and quantity. 2 Adds tanks is over kill IMO, and 1 geared player should be able to do it themselves. That said, we usually have 2 on adds just as a safety net, and the standard add tank for us, a prot pally, is our weakest tank in terms of skill. He's assisted by an unholy DPS DK in tanking gear usually.

I assume you have main-tanking sorted, as you aren't going anywhere otherwise. Might be worth it to default some gear to the DK to give you some more wiggle room here. ATM, i find blood to be the best Sarth tanking spec, but that's just my opinion, and I'm not much of a tank.

2. DPS. Gets better as you get used to the fight. Yeah, the critical point is the Shad/Vesp overlap, that's because of torment + mega breaths on tanks. Our blood lust is popped right as the second drake lands. We finish Tenebron and start beating the hell out of the second one ASAP. We drag the blazes/whelps near the drake and have "collateral AoE DPS" thin them out at the same time. Cleave, whirlwind, heart strike, pest, FoK, multi-shot....whatever, helps cut down on the healing on the add tanks and doesn't really cut down on the second drake dps in a large degree and makes life easier for the healers when the third drake lands.

Your goal is to have as little over lap between drakes 2 and 3 as possible. The best guilds have none, we have only a few seconds, but you might have upwards of 30 seconds to deal with both, which is really rough. You have to make sure your DPS knows not to kill themselves while they finish the second drake. At this point we clean up any remaining adds and send 1 of the add tanks and the dps to the other realm to kill the Adepts. Pop back up and just burn down the last drake and win at this point. Once you are able to consistently get the second drake dead, the hardest part of the fight is over.

3. De-enraging adds; Ideally very few should be enraged to start with, but it does happen. Rogues are your best bet here, just make sure the add swarm is near to the drake you are burning down so your rogue isn't running around all fight.

 

mako

I'm surprised that you'd have trouble with adds. With two tanks (one being a paladin, no less) do you have this issue on 2D as well? I would strongly advise against adding a 3rd tank to deal with adds, although if you could field a decently geared/skilled unholy death knight instead of the warrior it may be easier.

If the add tanks are playing properly, few blazes should be enraged over the course of the fight. A hunter should be able to help if it's just a single blaze or two that got clipped (personally I only waste the gcd to tranq enraged blazes who are not on the tanks) but a rogue with anesthetic poison is good to compensate for clumsy add movement. It may be advantageous for the rogue to keep a spare garbage weapon with anesthetic on it, and switch to it only when blazes need the enrage removed.

With low DPS I would suggest you lust on Tenebron. Killing him faster may prevent a second whelp spawn (if you're getting two), and should give more time to ae the adds (whelps mostly) before Shadron/Vesperon land and things get crazy. People also tend to have all their cooldowns up for Tenebron and allowing everything to be stacked with lust is ideal. Delaying the cooldowns until Shadron is a loss, and using them on Tenebron means they will not all be ready for Shadron.

If you have not tried it already, see if having your main tank spec blood (for will of the necropolis) to ease healing a the super breaths a bit.

<Bad> Dragonmaw US
www.damnwesuck.com

 

Gmd1020

I end on add duty whenever my guild goes to Sarth25+Drakes. I was lucky enough to get some decent tank gear as we had been clearing Naxx. We normally only had a Warrior Tank and a Druid Tank going through, so I got all the tank stuff I needed for my Tank set that the Warrior Tank didn't want/need. Therefore, I get to be the lucky one to respec to tank adds for this fight, normally I am a dps DK.

Occasionally we run with two add tanks, myself and a Prot Paladin. But the Prot Paladin is also on breath cooldown assignment for our Druid MT. Honestly I prefer to tank the adds myself, cause when there are two add tanks, I see some adds over there attacking something and not me, so I try to get them on me, only to then realize I am fighting the other add tank.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
This is the build I use when I am on add duty. I find Unholy Blight very helpful. Usually I am just kiting the adds around picking up other ones. I always make sure Unholy blight is up. O drop DnD whenever it is off of cooldown, except I try to time it right so I can drop it on the portal when the whelps are about to spawn. After that, It usually goes down anytime it is off of cooldown. Also I pestilence like crazy. Most of the time, Pestilence will pull an add that just spawned off of what it was attacking and bring it to me.

When we were working on getting out first Sarth25+3 kill, I discovered I was having difficulties staying alive once I got quite a few fire lava blazes on me. So I talk it over with my GM/RL and we figured it best for me to get some FR gear. With resistance flask and Fire Resist Aura up I sit at about 350 fire resist. Also during twilight torment, I just run around and keep Unholy Blight up and taunt and death grip and blazes that spawn to me.

I am not really sure if this will help at all, but thought I would share my experience. The fire resist gear really isn't needed, but it was something to help us get over the hump and get our first S3d25 kill.

P.S. Please don't look at my horrible spec. I was trying something for Malygos last night.

 

popesaladin

Is there a fixed time when the lava blazes spawn or is it random?

 

• Relwin

With 28 pages of discussion thus far you are sure to find your answer in the thread. No sense in excessive rehashing of continued failings.

If you aren't killing the drakes fast enough, do more DPS.
If you have trouble controlling adds, either smack your healers for running around like ninnies or get better add tanks.
If breaths are one-shotting your tank, be more timely with your cooldown usage for them.
If your DPS is dying to fissures/waves, get DPS that is capable of doing something other than drooling on their keyboards.
If your drake tanks are dying somehow, get them more gear because the drakes themselves don't hit that hard. (also refer to 'Do more DPS' if you are making them tank more than one for an extended period of time)

Congratulations, I've just gone over every solution to the common problems with Sarth25+3. Sarth10+3 can have many of the same issues, but it also requires committing to a strategy in your tanking (either FrR geared feral, DK, or voidwalker) and having DPS that can play off each other (physical or magic stacked, mixing generally leads to slower overall DPS).