any spell will do, including bloodboil or icy touch(which with virulence would probably have a higher chance of landing than any o your melee attacks).
I'm not 100% sure about DK talent mechanics, but just chiming in that mobs cannot block/dodge/parry while casting, so it's basically 8% miss to deal with for chucking Torment with melee abilities during a breath cast.
Of course, in accordance to Murphy's Law I've actually rolled a double miss for Maul/Mangle with 4% hit while stacked in stamina gear.
I'm not 100% sure about DK talent mechanics, but just chiming in that mobs cannot block/dodge/parry while casting, so it's basically 8% miss to deal with for chucking Torment with melee abilities during a breath cast.
Of course, in accordance Murphy's Law I've actually rolled a double miss for Maul/Mangle with 4% hit while stacked in stamina gear.
You sure about this? Last time I checked, players can't avoid during spellcast, but monsters can still dodge fine even while casting. To be honest however, the last time I actually tried to test it was back in AQ days when I was playing a prot war, so things might have changed, but back then mobs could dodge during spellcasts. I'm hit capped anyway so runestrike never miss.
So we finally stopped being lazy, got a group of 10 together and put in 3 nights of attempts (about 5 flask timers in all). Our kill was in pretty typical fashion (like last attempt, everything hits the fan, it somehow ends up happening.)
We actually stacked a caster synergy and ran with this setup:
Tanks: Unholy Death Knight on Sartharion / Protection Paladin on Drakes / Protection Warrior on ADDS
Healers: Discipline Priest / Holy Paladin / Elemental Shaman healing after Tenebron dead.
DPS: Destruction Warlock, Frostfire Mage, Balance Druid, Elemental Shaman, Shadow Priest
Basically on our kill, we actually just went in without Bloodlust (Due to trash respawning in a few minutes). Goal was to get Tenebron down before a second set of whelps, he was at about 30% when Shadron landed. From there, we burned on Shadron and AoEd the adds down.
As soon as Shadron died, we basically AoEd the elementals on our Protection Warrior down, and then had him taunt Vesperon off of our Protection Paladin. We took our first portal after that transition and killed ONLY Shadron's Disciple. Our 2 healers and Elemental Shaman stayed up top to heal, and I used a tranquility down bottom while our Protection Paladin tanked.
Post that, we just burned down Vesperon and went back down once more to kill the Vesperon Disciple. Once that's done, it's all easy from there, but we still managed to have our Death Knight die (because the two healers ran out of range on a flame wave) and had our warrior taunt it to save the kill.
The biggest tips I can give from our experience:
- Divine Hymn is amazing. Using it on whelps makes for a massive assist on the Whelp tank.
- A Warrior with vigilance on your Sartharion tank is amazing. They have the best mobility and utility for the job.
- Vigilance on your Sarth tank is huge post 2 drakes down.
- We had some small things like Divine Guardian with our Holy Pally to assist with damage towards the end.
- Bloodlust helps a lot, especially if you're lacking gear / DPS. But on our kill, we didn't use it till Sartharion, and we had our mage down post Tenebron (due to adds). As long as you keep control it's a very manageable fight.
For our 25 man kill, we had 7 healers, including 3 holy pallies. A ret pally made up the fourth paladin for our strat.
Following Vesperon landing and his acolyte spawning, we had our pallies chain pop divine guardian and hand of sacrifice on our Sarth tank for a good 48 seconds of -30% raid dmg and Sarth tank mitigation from the breaths while we killed Shadron. Once Shadron was dead, DPS DK and 3 casters entered the port and killed Vesperon's and Shadron's acolytes. A holy priest popped down every ~15 secs for some aoe healing. By the time we finished them off and got back upstairs the melee and hunters had Vesperon to ~20%.
Chaining divine guardian and hand of sacrifice took the guesswork out of getting mitigation up on our Sarth tank during the intense part of the fight, and was quite effective.
What clicked for us was taking only 6 healers. Not by choice at first, only had six online. With this lower number you obviously need to kill Vesperons Acolyte fast. The small overlap period for both acolytes whilst Shadron is still up is tense for Meteor raid damage, but nothing that can't be handled with some healthstones/spreading out/solid healing. The current no-cooldown WG/COH didn't account for as much of the total healing done as i'd expected, so hopefully the incoming changes won't shake things up there too much.
We had prior reviewed the results of others in this thread and indeed concluded first hand that killing Tenebron (without heroism) before the second set of whelps, then using heroism on Shadron was the best option for us. Naturally this may not apply to other raid setups and guild preferences. I would say that if guilds are using heroism on Tenebron (but would rather not), at least let your raiders know that you would prefer to use it on Shadron: But it's a useful crutch in the meantime until the DPS improves all round.
We had prior reviewed the results of others in this thread and indeed concluded first hand that killing Tenebron (without heroism) before the second set of whelps, then using heroism on Shadron was the best option.
I don't really understand why this keeps coming up, because there is no 'best option'. In the previous 8 pages there are two seperate "sections" that deal with "BL on Tenebron vs. BL on Shadron" and the conclusion is that both versions have their advantages and disadvantages. People seem to think that "omg Shadron is dangerous" whereas it's actually "Shadron + Vesperon is dangerous, but as long as Tenebron isn't out of the way you can't DPS Shadron anyway". The three drakes are essentially one mob when it comes to health.
Regardless, both ways result in Shadron dying at the same time and since Vesperon is on a timer, the length of the "hard period" will be the same. Until guilds can kill Tenebron before Shadron lands *without* the use of heroism there will be no 'best option'. Once guilds can do just that, the fight becomes trivial, as you can then pop heroism to get Shadron out of the way before Vesperon even lands. But that's completely irrelevant for killing them now.
I would say that if guilds are using heroism on Tenebron, at least let your raiders know that you would prefer to use it on Shadron
Why is that? I personally very much prefer using it on Tenebron because that means she's out of the way before Shadron lands. That means we have the adds cleaned up long before Vesperon lands giving us a decent amount of time with nothing but Shadron to deal with effectively increasing our DPS on her. The clean playground is infinately more useful for us than some hasted healing, especially as the benefit of hasted healing, with our healing setup, is insignificant.
A much overlooked side effect of having less adds around (as a result of killing Tenebron with heroism) is that your add tank isn't taking tons of damage, freeing up some healing to compensate Twilight Torment.
It really depends on your DPS. If you have enough to remove Tenebron before Shadron lands then save BL for Shadron, if not though I find it vastly easier to remove Tebenbron before Shadron landing, if that requires a BL go for it. Having a completely clear playing field when Shadron lands is priceless.
It is the nature of the fight and all control based fights that the sooner you can remove one element from the equation the easier it will become. Gear will likely go a long way to trivialising the encounter especially with the step up to Tier 8.
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.
I personally very much prefer using it on Tenebron because that means she's out of the way before Shadron lands. That means we have the adds cleaned up long before Vesperon lands giving us a decent amount of time with nothing but Shadron to deal with effectively increasing our DPS on her. The clean playground is infinately more useful for us than some hasted healing, especially as the benefit of hasted healing, with our healing setup, is insignificant.
[...]
Use what works for your guild. It's quite simple.
In regards to the add cleaning, we found we could get Tenebron to about 300k health when Shadron lands without Bloodlust (our DPS isn't anything special). When Ten died, popped, Mages/Locks/Hunters et al use the first 10 seconds or so for hasted AOE. Cleans up the whelps and Elementals very quickly then switch onto Shadron. You lose some hasted DPS on Drakes obviously, but we were still getting Shad down to 40-50% when Vesp landed. I agree getting the adds down is vital but it just seemed a lot more controlled for us this way.
Like quite a few we ran with 6 healers, 3 tanks. Although we did use a Feral to help OT Whelps in the transition from Tenebron to Shadron. Just for a bit of extra control.
Oddly enough the most frustrating problem for us was tanks dying shortly after Shadron, most likely a panic thing. We do however switch 1 healer and the majority of the DPS to clearing both Vesp and Shad's acolyte once Shadron dies.
So was this a 2 drake kill or 3? And if 2 which 2 drakes did you leave up. If Vesp was killed then the drakes and sarth all had 25% less HP.
Vesperon's debuff lowers every player's health by 25%. Will of Sartharion, the buff that adds 25% health to Sartharion and the drakes, will be present with any of the drakes left alive. It does not come from Vesperon.
It really depends on your DPS. If you have enough to remove Tenebron before Shadron lands then save BL for Shadron, if not though I find it vastly easier to remove Tebenbron before Shadron landing, if that requires a BL go for it. Having a completely clear playing field when Shadron lands is priceless.
It is the nature of the fight and all control based fights that the sooner you can remove one element from the equation the easier it will become. Gear will likely go a long way to trivialising the encounter especially with the step up to Tier 8.
We did use heroism for the first drake, but after a while we switched to using it for the 3rd, because it is the most critical phase of the whole encounter (2nd and 3rd drake up). My guild did several kills with this so far (most of the time bringing 7 healers) and I must admit that our raid dps is f*cking awesome these days.
If you manage to save your bl/heroism, use it to kill the 3rd drake (right after clearing the 1st portal i think).
I would say it's better to use Bloodlust as soon as DPS are solidly on Shadron, before the third drake lands - the more DPS you can get in before torment, the better.
So we're currently working on the 10m version, making very good progress (2nd drake down), we've gotten over flame walls and void zones and the initial DPS race of Tenebron and his possible 2nd add wave. Now we have hit a brick wall.
I'm a feral druid with around 45k health unbuffed in bear form. In my 10 man buffs I think I get up to around 50-53k. I keep dieing when Vesperon gets his disciple up. I can take the flame breaths with Shadron's disciple up, it hurts but I make it out with a few thousand health, but Vesperon's Twilight Torment seals the deal, no way I can withstand 44k breaths after the health debuff.
I know that any melee damage will remove the Twilight Torment debuff, but it just doesn't seem to be working. I sit there, auto-attack off and wait for breath to start casting. In that 1.5 second window I queue maul and throw up Mangle but I still seem to be getting 1 shotted.
Am I just not getting my melees off in time? Should I have barkskin/survival instincts up (This will risk the loss of a GCD and thus loss of a chance at getting rid of Twilight Torment)?
We tried with rotating cooldowns, too. Holy paladin specced into prot for improved bubble, priest with guardian angel, paladin hand of sacrifice, survival instincts, barkskin. We always seem to fuck up sometime or another.
Any other tanks struggling with this aspect of the fight as much as I am? Or is this just an element of the fight that all guilds endure and after hours of practice master? Maybe I just suck.
Group Comp:
Holy Paladin
Prot Paladin (Add Tank)
Unholy DK (Drake Tank)
Feral Druid (Sarth Tank) NOTE: ignore my current armory spec, it is a test, and it sucks
Shadow Priest
Unholy DK
Resto Shaman
Warlock
Mage
Rogue
2 Healing hasn't been much of a problem. We pop BL as soon as Tenebron is engaged and usually kill him within a few seconds of Shadron landing.
Oh and fuck 10 minute bloodlust cooldown. Having only one shaman we waste probably an hour in total in a night of raiding due to waiting for bloodlust to get back up.
Try 26 is the start of our kill, and the 27th attempt picks up from beginning to DPS Vesperon it seems. Any idea what could be causing that or if there is a fix (other than merging w/ another player - working on that one)? Only possibility I can think of is that it split when I popped down a portal :/
As to what worked for us, it was a Deathknight MT, Prot Warr on Drakes, and a tag team of a ProtWarr/Feral Druid on elementals and whelps - having two tanks on that role really helped in minimizing the pushback problems we were having in controlling the encounter during those crucial '2 drake' moments (we saved our Heroism for Shadrons landing for hasted AoE and healing and Maximum DPS on the most dangerous drake) and overall just made everything feel more repeatable.
Now to try for 10 man.
What's the AoE demand like for 10 man Sarth? I'm looking to stack for Physical DPS, will 1 hunter + a DPS warrior and ret Pally be enough? Or are we better off bringing an unsynergized caster (probably a mage) to get the adds down faster?
We started working on the 10 man version of Sarth3D tonight. I was curious as to what sort of DPS benchmarks we should be aiming for here as far as what's reasonable for a kill. Is it similar to the 25 man version, or are you generally going to be a bit behind on the 10 man? We ran 3 tanks/3 healers tonight and it felt like our DPS was nowhere near where it needed to be.
I monitored the time between 2 breaths over a night trying S+3 (25 Version) and plotted this:
Sample Size 199, I cutted out the time after wipes (between tries)
Min 00:00:06,625
Max 00:00:32,719
Avg 00:00:14,233
We were using PW:S to lower all breaths before Vesperons Acolyte spawns, and -Damge CD after that. Wiped all evening to individuals failures (Flame Tsunami, Void Zones..)
But: with a time period between two breath shorter than 15s the Weaken Soul debuff from PW:S does not run out. So you might consider having an alternative (Fire pot, Barkskin, etc)
I know that any melee damage will remove the Twilight Torment debuff, but it just doesn't seem to be working. I sit there, auto-attack off and wait for breath to start casting. In that 1.5 second window I queue maul and throw up Mangle but I still seem to be getting 1 shotted.
Am I just not getting my melees off in time? Should I have barkskin/survival instincts up (This will risk the loss of a GCD and thus loss of a chance at getting rid of Twilight Torment)?
Well as you said if you use a barkskin/survival instinct while he casts flame breath you will be unable to remove the debuff (due to GCD)
You just need to stop autoattacking and using any ability as soon as you see twilight torment on yourself. When he starts casting, hit mangle+maul as soon as possible. Leaving it to last seconds results with death due to latency.
So, finally got 3 drakes down tonight, and I'm going to review my WWS, and notice some really wierd splitting behavior:
You do not get combat messages 'up top' while inside the shifted realm. This is the same issue /combatlog had with Kalecgos.
Originally Posted by Vashanka
We started working on the 10 man version of Sarth3D tonight. I was curious as to what sort of DPS benchmarks we should be aiming for here as far as what's reasonable for a kill. Is it similar to the 25 man version, or are you generally going to be a bit behind on the 10 man? We ran 3 tanks/3 healers tonight and it felt like our DPS was nowhere near where it needed to be.
There's really two ways to approach the 10-man version. The first is to maximize the number of DPS classes (with a 2:2, or possibly 2:3/3:2 tanks and healers if you have amazing dps) which brings it closer to the 25-man version in execution. The second is to go 3:3 and plan around surviving every single Vesp Discipled breath for ~2 minutes and dealing with 2 waves of whelps (though you can get 1 wave from time to time). You need either a DK MT on Sarth with a very well planned cooldown rotation, or chucking Torment for every single breath, or a druid stacking enough stamina to take it in the face with PW:S. (though your healers will probably have heart attacks)
Personally I'm in the chucking Torment camp with a 3:3 setup, but quite a few people wouldn't recommend this since it does hinge a bit on server stability.
Regarding AOE: A DK tank can more or less kill the adds himself, possibly only requiring a bit of help to finish off the first set of whelps if/when the second set spawns.
I know that any melee damage will remove the Twilight Torment debuff, but it just doesn't seem to be working. I sit there, auto-attack off and wait for breath to start casting. In that 1.5 second window I queue maul and throw up Mangle but I still seem to be getting 1 shotted.
I had to turn off autoattacks and specifically had a macro set up (/tar sartharion /cast lacerate /cast maul) to deal with this. I think I did it about 75% of the time. For that stage you've really got to monitor his cast bar as closely as possible, make sure you know whether you've got the debuff and do it very, very quickly. Even then, it isn't 100% reliable.
We downed the 10man version today, after about 4-5 flasktimers. It took some doing, testing some different setups etc. until it really went well. On the kill we had a protpala on sartharion, protwarrior on drakes and a unholy dk in dpsgear. 2x afflocks, spriest, enhanceshaman, holypala, restoshaman and a discpriest. The synergy of this group worked out really well for us with alot of aoe and pretty decent sustained dps, and of course the pain suppression is quite handy for minimizing breath damage once Shadron lands and you get the ads spawning in portals.
Our death knight just dropped down D&D right before the whelps spawned and went frost presence to keep them on him until Tenebron was getting very low or until the death knight would have too many debuffs (which was rarely the case as we had 2x divine hymn) which is when the protwarrior would do an aoetaunt.
The blazes were kept to a minimum by having our two afflocks and me (spriest) throwing some dots asap after they were spawned. Once Tenebron died we let the death knight take care of all the blazes himself as he could tank and kill them without problems in his dpsgear.
Regarding the really high breaths you can get after Shadron and Vesperon have landed, due to the mobs in the portals plus the debuff from the dragons themselves we kept a Hand of Sacrifice/Pain Supression/Divine Protection rotation plus our tank was stopping autoattack and doing a yellow on breathcasts.
When Tenebron was down we just kept nuking Shadron and Vesperon until they were dead, then went down the portal to kill the remaining ads. We found this to be the best way for us after some testing of different approaches. The damage from the aura gets really rough at times - which is why I'm glad we were blessed with three awesome healers.
Now both dragons were dead, we killed the ads down under and just did slow and steady dps focusing on not surfing on lava or finding out what happens if you stand in void zones.
This was by far the most interesting encounter yet in WOTLK as it actually required some effort to accomplish
instead of just zerging. I will probably have a report tomorrow of our dps/healing if anyone would be interested in that.
In my opinion it is not possible to reliable dodge twilight torment.
Even if you remove it during the cast there is a chance that it will be reapplied to you before the cast is over. The following situation happened several times to me while tanking Sarth:
That is a 400ms time window between removing twilight torment and it being reapplied. I watched my buff display and twilight torment indeed disappeared from the list when meleeing the boss only to be reapplied a fraction of a second later.
If someone has any information whether the reapplication pulse follows a certain pattern like "every three seconds" I would like to know, otherwise I suggest using priest or paladin or tank cooldowns for the Shadron/Vesperon overlap.
01/10/09, 9:45 PM
Similar Threads
