My (horde) guild has been past Sartura for a little over a month now (currently working on Emps), but every week this lady is the dread of my raiders. We always wipe a few times every week on the battleguard, and try as we might to alter our approach, this fight is not farmable for us. Despite a number of different plans, the fight always seems random and out-of-control, similar to when old Vael's random BA could hit tanks. I suspect our strategy is to blame since our raiders do fine and perform consistently on Prophet, Trio, Fankriss, and even Huhuran.


Here's what works best for us, although best is a relative term: The raid spreads out through the room, with a group assigned to each area, with two healers per group. Each group stays loosely scattered but within range of their healers, and attacks any add that gets near it. Everyone is advised to simply run away from Sartura, and she is otherwise ignored until the adds are dead. We avoid damage from the adds by spreading out to minimize cleave targets or healing through it, and we avoid damage from Sartura by running away. Once the adds are gone, we don't have much trouble, but the problem is that we just can't keep 40 people alive with any consistency; on our good attempts we have 30-35 alive, but sometimes its more like 25. The reason people die is Sartura: sometimes she will just latch on to a player, fly to them and beat them mercilessly without changing targets. On our successful attempts, we are able to avoid her enough to keep the raid alive; sometimes she has other plans.

We have tried a number of alternate strategies with less success. Specifically:
Containment of Sartura vs letting her loose.
We tried all warriors on Sartura, and we also tried all warlocks dotting Sartura. In both cases, she would occasionally just get loose and destroy people, or cause so much damage to the containment group that they would all die. Is this a fault of the players trying to contain her, or is she designed not to be contained? The reason containment broke down for us: We just couldn't hold her consistently while we got the adds. It would work "most of the time" but sometimes she would just fly away and kill everyone, or kill the containment group, especially the healers in that group. We've had more success letting her run free and just moving away from her, as the ubiquitous internet strategy advises.


Containment of the adds vs letting them loose.
We tried having shaman and hunters teams try to hold adds in a specific area. This works with moderate success, but similar to Sartura, if one ever got loose, the attempt went south. So, we just let them fly around also, stunning them when convenient, but not as a tenet of our success.

Focus fire vs "attack whats close"
We tried directing our dps to try to bring one down first, but this results in a lot of players concentrated one part of the room, which would spell disaster if sartura or another add got over there. So we instead just use the whole room, and have people attack whichever add is closest.




Each week, we go through the same cycle: We try our "proven" (ha) strategy that worked for us last week of spreading out and killing whats close. We usually fail once or twice at this, then spend a couple attempts on a variation of our strategy, which nets either the same or worse results. So, we go back to our original strategy, and after two or three more tries, we get her down, sigh, and continue through the instance. This fight doesn't seem that hard, but it just seems out of control. We feel like we've tried so many different techniques and spent tons and tons of time using alternative strategies in the hope of finding something that works better for us. Is there something glaringly obvious that we are missing, or should I just tell my raiders to L2P? Some guiding wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

You mentioned stunning the adds.

There is a little cave to the back right of her cave. Use it. Collect epix.

We still haven't even killed Fankriss yet (~6 hours a week in AQ40) but Sartura takes us about 2 attempts each week. Mostly because we have about 20 new people per week. Gogo AQ40 attendance!

I have a feeling of Deja Vu

Here we are http://forums.elitistjerks.com/index.php?s...6088&hl=sartura

I think kaubel is suggesting you stun satura.. but i could be reading to much into his italics....

We usually divide the raid group in half. Groups 1 - 4 are the "tanking" groups with a warrior in each one, and groups 5-8 are the damage groups. When we run in, all the tanking groups bear to the right and all the damage groups bear to the left. Groups 1 and 2 try to pull Sartura to the back right corner of the room. Group 3 tanks an add against the right wall, and so does group 4. A hunter from one of the damage groups pulls the last add over to the otherside of the room.



Just kill the adds one at a time, followed by Sartura. If everyone stays spread out, people do their part in keeping the mobs stunned, and healers do a good job staying alive while keeping the tanks up, then everything should go well. You just have to make sure there is a clear separation between the damage groups and the tanking groups, otherwise Sartura and adds tend to ride a train of people into the damage groups. Usually we take down the first 2 adds and have the third one at about 50% hp before the damage dealers need to worry about running away from Sartura.

This may or may not work for you, but I'm sure at least a few of the ideas will help.

Well thanks for the help. It sounds like from what I'm hearing, containing Sartura is the way to go. I guess the performance or composition of our containment groups was to blame for our failure since we abandonned it after a number of unsucessful attempts.

We'll shoot to keep her in the back-right cave, with 2 warriors, 2 druids, a hunter, a rogue, and some priests.

yeah, contain sartura and keep your DPS mobile. you won't be able to kill the adds fast enough if everyone splits up and stays in assigned areas. concentrated DPS on each add with reduce the long term damage they do, even if you take a bit more damage per whirlwind.

I find the pull to be crucial, personally. Have your Sartura crew run in mounted to catch her when she is at the far side of the cave, and then have people peel the adds back towards the tunnel you came from, with good separation between them. Then work from there. In my experience the initial split makes or breaks most Sartura fights. Get a ton of space between Sartura and the adds, and odds are you can pretty safely keep her away from them, between taunts and stuns.

This is exactly what I was going to say. When you charge into the room and pull, the 4 mobs are in a huge clump--the most dangerous possible configuaration. If overzealous people charge and start trying to do stuff to them immediately, all kinds of death can happen. If you can get your raid spread out through the room, they will spread out naturally (with a bit of help from people trying to initially poull them apart) and you can start safely. It's just a specific example of the general plan you have to get ingrained on your raiders--when mobs are clumped, you have to stop directly engaging them, get away from them and get them apart, and then resume safely.
(This all from the perspective of someone who's killed her a few times, but for whom it's still pretty sketchy).

Also, make sure there's no confusion as to when you're pulling. If half your raid moves in even a few seconds earlier, the clump of people waiting around in the mouth of the room are sitting ducks.

ZOMG HAMOSHIN STRATS!!!

WHERES BOWDY NOW???

/kidding

/massive inside joke

/aplogize to all

Yeah, I have always felt the pull is critical as well. We've had good success during our isolation/containment attempts with a mage iceblock near the back cave, followed by hunters pulling their pre-targets.


Since it seems that the missing piece for us is sartura containment, I'll be working with my raiders to isolate and fix the problems we had keeping sartura in one place. Obviously, the rhythm between WW/non-WW and the appropriate actions available to counter each are important, so I wonder if we could discuss more detail about how her threat selection works. As a lock, I'm familiar with it only through her reaction to my dots, and what my warriors tell me. My impression is that she has a normal threat table, but she clears aggro completely periodically, every 5-10 seconds (perhaps aligned with a WW) Then she selects a new target through RSTS and gives them a certain about of base hate, which other people can then overcome through normal actions. Is this assessment on target? My warriors tell me that she is highly resistant to taunt during a WW but not immune. Can anyone confirm this behavior, with the real question being: is it reasonable to expect a warrior to be able to keep aggro on Sartura during a whirlwind? or is it solely the responsibility of a class like a hunter/shaman to distracting shot or earthshock to corral her in the right direction during the WW? Regarding warlock dots, we've had limited success in the past using warlocks to load her with dots, but sometimes this backfires if she runs all the way to the lock without changing targets (or getting picked up by someone else) and murders him.

In the end, all of our efforts to contain her, either with hunters, shamans, warriors, or whoever, really haven't met with much success, which is why we've had to rely on a "just let her go" strategy which has revealed itself as an inferior plan. I'm convinced that spending the time to revisit a containment strategy will benefit us in the long run, but I'm just worried about overcoming the challenges that plagued us in the past with containment. Hopefully a better understanding on her threat behavior will help.

Think about pulling with an ice mage. The mage mounts up and runs in as they reach the farthest part of their path. He dismounts and ice blocks. Sartura and the guards ignore the 39 other people swarming around them while they beat on the ice blocked mage. Pull Sartura to the back, pull the adds to the front. It's so much easier.

And Sartura is the queen of taunt resists. We killed her on the 2nd attempt this Saturday, in those 2 attempts I recorded 17 taunt resists. We stick 3 warriors on her, staggered in a straight line towards the main raid. Once she breaks off, she has to run straight through atleast 2 other warriors. As the adds die, we add more warriors to the line until it's just Sartura and we stick her in the middle, Shazzrah style.

A Warrior cannot hold agro on her for long, but he can do a ghetto taunt rotation. Taunt -> Challenging Shout -> Taunt -> Mocking Blow -> Taunt. It's a really nice trick, especially for the pull and the initial positioning.

We used to have some issues with Sartura the first couple of weeks, but like Gurg says, basically refining the pull is the main thing. You can lose 10 people on incoming if they don't clearly understand what they should be doing on incoming. On the other hand, once you have everything worked out you can go through the whole fight only losing ~5 people.

I have to agree with everyone else that the initial pull is crucial.

I didn't see any indications if you are horde or alliance (sorry if I missed this). if you have the fortune of being alliance, you can try our pulling strategy, which has worked quite well as we've one-shotted Sartura for many, many weeks now.

Have everyone mount up and choose a sacrificial paladin. When Sartura makes her good, long pass from the left side of the cave back and to the right, everyone runs to the left, staying close to the wall. The paladin swoops around and everyone follows 30-40 yards behind. The paladin gets aggro, bubbles, and hits Sartura with Hammer of Justice. While she's stunned, the offtanks and pulling buddies can pull each add to a different segment of the room. Meanwhile, everyone follows their tank assignments and spreads the hell out.

edit: looks like you're horde and I cannot read. Sorry this doesn't help, but I'll leave it up in case it helps someone else.

Hmm, we've never concentrated that much on the pull. We have the damage groups line up on the left side of the entrance and the tanking groups lined up on the right side of the entrance while Sartura & Friends fly clockwise around the room. When she gets to a good position, the people of the tanking groups run in while hugging the left wall, and shortly afterwards the damage groups run in.

Warriors charge the mob they are tanking and drag it into position, and a hunter shoots one mob to pull it to the damage dealers. I can see how the pull is pretty important though: every now and then if something fucks up on the pull then it usually means a wipe.

You don't really need an ice block mage, you have your 2-3 Sartura warriors mounted with healers shortly behind hug the RHS and get to the back of the cave to coincide with the pathing of the pack as they hit the back wall. One warrior picks Sartura out of the bunch and (with their back to the wall, unless they like getting thrown around) gets her set as the adds are peeled. I usually hit her with a conc blow or something to give time for the peeling to happen. In the meantime the other 2 warriors can get in position to keep her at that end of the cave -- works fine as long as they know what they are doing. After that, the fight is pretty trivial as long as people don't just stand there and get killed.

There's so many ways to do this. We don't do it in any of the ways mentioned here.

We split the raid into 4 balanced dps/healing/tanking groups, and each group goes to a set position. Group 1 and 3 NW, Group 2 and 4 NE, etc. Each group just grabs the closest add and kills it. Warriors grab Sartura everytime she comes close and tries to keep her there for as long as possible. Adds tend to die at the same time, and then the fight goes into Shazzrah-mode.

from my experience, using rogues to distract-split the pull makes it more manageable, and helps to mitigate the chances of it going poorly.

Speaking of charging into the room mounted--make sure nobody's running addons which will cause them to play through the whole fight with a Carrot or something on.

in WW mode she RSTS, the hit you take from her is a big de-agro so she will hopefully just hit you once and then go to the next target. When she's not in WW mode you stun and dps her. so yea, we put two warriors that taunt her in ww mode in the middle and hope noone else stands close to them. 3 warriors means even more cleaves but what ever works for you.

I seem to find that no matter how far away I am, she will eventually aggro on me and hunt me down until I'm dead, but that may be due to the fact that every time she is selecting new targets, my DoT's are still ticking on her.

I'm going to farm up a personal stock of limited invulnerability potions and hope she stops whirlwinding before the 6 seconds are up.