Hey All,

So i am working on Sarth 3 drakes. I am MT on Sarth and was wondering if there was an optimal rotation anyone might have that works well for them. I am spec'd 25/5/41 for optimal survivability. I am not really having a issue with dying to breath, but i am sure there is probably a more optimal rotation. Any help would be appreciated

Cheers!

The way I usually do it is as follows:

Precast Bone Shield more than 1 minute before the pull so that it is available, then I wait for Sarth to eat off my charges. Usually I will follow up with another Bone Shield. If Bone Shield is not available, I use Icebound Fort, if that's not available I use AMS, if that's not available I use AMZ. I prefer to save AMS/AMZ for later when the breaths hit particularly hard.

One thing I would suggest is going a little deeper into frost to pick up Lichborne. I find the most dangerous part of that fight for me can be post-3 drakes when he's meleeing at full capacity. During this phase, I find mark of blood and Lichborne to be very helpful.

Edit: Army of the Dead also if you know you're gonna get 1 shot without it!

Rotation just as salviastria said, just a few additions:

If you got any Trinkets with Dodge/Parry on use, use them in combination with your Bone Shield, so it might lasts longer to get you through an additional breath (I use the JC trinket Monarch Crab, which is excellent for that purpose because it's got the same 1 min CD as Bone Shield). In the dangerous phase with fire damage debuff and occuring Twilight Torment, use Lichborne in combination with Bone Shield to expand its duration.

I'm not quite sure if Army of the Dead is a good idea to use on tauntable bosses, uncontrollable breathes or tail lashes might cause some trouble

Just commenting on this: AotD Ghould do NOT taunt Raid bosses (there's a whole thread about this btw), they might attack/taunt adds though

I used the rotation just like salviastria said.

But it might be better to use AMS prior IBF, due to it absorbs 100% of the breath and not just 50%.
As the breath timer is so random (had breath with cooldowns from 6 to 40 seconds) you may don't even need all CDs.

AotD is a real "oh shit" button, I never needed it.

thanks guys. much appreciated. And happy to say, tonight we downed him!! No haxs either...all legit...no cyclone, no spell steal etc....was pretty epic...

Since mine is slightly different from what's been posted I'll put it up, also I fell its better optimized. I'm completely self sufficient and as far as I can tell I can maintain this rotation indefinitely.

Start the pull with a precasted Bone Shield as every one said, although it doesn't really matter if the CD is up or not at the pull. Use dodge trinket as soon as sartharion starts meleeing and start doing threat like mad, recomended use of ERW here obviously. As soon as Bone Shield fades IBF, since it will be up when you next need it. Then stop using any cooldowns until Sartharion is banished because of the Accolyte of Shadron. From this point on you have to cooldown through every single breath until Shadron dies, or you are very likely to die.

When he is banished you have to save the GCD for your first Bone Shield, while still maintining your blade barrier and if possible IT up. Just Forget about your rotation and focus on that while making sure you won't screw yourself out of the GCD or the Unholy rune making you unable to Bone Shield during the cast. As soon as he casts, use Bone Shield and hit your JC trinket if you have it, if not, save the CD of your other dodge trinkets. When Bone Shield is down AMS is next, so make sure you have enough RP for it, because you should only be doing the ocassional DC/RS as you are hitting Sartharion for crap damage anyway, and you are doing this to remove Twilight Torment faster anyway. AMS during the cast, and IBF the one after AMS. They are both off the GCD so no worries here. Unles he makes 2 breaths very close together IBF fortitude while only hold out for 1 breath even with 4T7 bonus, so keep in mind that in most cases you have to AMZ the next one if Bone Shield is still down or Bone Shield it. In any case save both the GCD and the rune. Also do not precast AMZ or it will dissapear from lava damage shortly after you put it, you have to use it during the cast.

Now if you didn't use AMZ and you Bone Shielded the breath you are back at the start. If you had to use AMZ you are going to use Bone Shield next and you have to blow your dodge trinkets and your Lichborne (if you have it) on that Boneshield so it lasts for the longest possible amount of time, so you don't fall a CD short because your AMZ is down. Next rotation your AMZ will be up in case you are a CD short. So basicaly you just have to repeat the whole thing until Shadron dies at which point you have most likely already won. JC dodge trinket helps because you can use it on every Bone Shield, whether you used AMZ or not.

This rotation, unless you get extremely bad RNG on every possible thing, can be maitained for ever, and just depends on your own abilitys and not some other persons cooldowns. A priest or paladin healing will help a lot because of shields both partially absorbing breaths and making Bone Shield charges expend at a slower rate.

I use boneshield about 10~ seconds prior to third drake landing lichborne/AMZ -> AMS(trinket somewhere when lich is gone) -> Icebound -> boneshield and if i need to on another breath, army and if not, I just use it after all 3 are down. It isn't needed at that point, but why not?

I am curious does the Blood Talent 'Spell Deflection' Work of Sarth's Flame Breath because isn't it a Cone Effect so not technically a Direct Spell? Anyone know?

If you're specced into Spell Deflection, you wouldn't be tanking Sartharion with 3 Drakes. Or tanking at all.

The most concerning thing with tanking on Sarth + 3 is making sure you have a cooldown available for each breath, whether they be your own, or a Priest's - and that you aren't on global cooldown at key points. The only time you need to worry about generating a massive amount of threat is the between engage and the first flame wall, but even in that case you'll have other classes dumping their threat onto you.

We finally got 10 man down on Monday, so I figure I'll throw in my experience, though we have not attempted it post-patch.

As other have said, pre-cast bone shield a minute or so before the pull. After it fades, refresh it one time, assuming there is still > 1 minute until the 3rd drake lands. If you are appropriately geared, you should not need any CDs up until the 3rd drake lands, though it can get pretty close at times. As soon as the third drake lands, I pop BS and JC dodge trinket, and stop attacking completely (add tank keeps up frost fever) besides refreshing blade barrier when I can. Make sure you aren't auto-attacking. When he starts casting a breath, I hit rune strike to clear the twilight torment debuff, and then refresh blade barrier. From then on, I go BS->AMS->IBF->repeat. If he breaths too often, or you get unlucky with bone shield, AMZ is available, as well as AotD in an emergency.

As I said, this was all done pre-patch, so relying on solely bone shield might not work anymore. Also, I have heard rumors that you cannot clear the twilight torment debuff anymore, so not sure how to deal with that.

Edit: About spell deflection, everything I've heard says that it is bugged with its relation with AMS. i.e. if spell deflection procs, it will override AMS, thus taking 15% less instead of 100% less damage.

With the current issues on this, would it still be best to tank in Unholy for AMZ and Bone Shield, or is it better to pursue a different such as Frost for the more passive resist?

We're currently planning on attempting 3 drakes tonight, and as I'll be speccing for MTing this, any help is most appreciated.

We unluckily started having me tank yesterday instead of before the nerfs to bone shield, and I decided to give the new blood talents a try and they seem to work very well. Granted, we didn't down 3 drake (on 10 man) as we had problems with other mechanics of the fight , but I never had a problems with cooldowns being up and the healers were very happy over the change from a feral druid tanking it. Just to clarify, we were making it past the Vesp portal on most occasions, but the feral druid would die either to drake breaths or being stupid.

Basically, I just rotated between ice bound fort, anti magic shell, pain suppression (priest is disc), and if needed Vampiric blood + fire potion. It seems spell deflection is working properly with anti magic shell, and it may even stack with anti magic shell as I did notice one complete absorb during the fight (more testing will have to go into this).

Spec: 50/14/7

Unholy's benefit is obviously AMZ as it would take the place of Vampiric blood in the rotation I mentioned before (VB is basically making me a feral druid, the exception being that I naturally take less spell dmg). Still I think I am going to maintain this spec until our drake tank works out the bugs in his movement. And I am betting this tree can be refined as far as talent choices. I tried to grab as much as I good to help myself and the raid, but I am positive there are things I can switch around especially because this isn't a threat fight (IE why really grab heart strike?)

Can a blood spec tank this?

Kehoe, one thing you should change for sure about your spec - 2/5 Black Ice is strictly better than 2/2 Glacier Rot. It gives 12% extra damage to Icy Touch AND Frost Fever, whereas 2/2 GR only gives 10% to Icy Touch.

If one were to go whole-hog with it, and ignore threat entirely for raid buffs and survivability, perhaps this would be the logical endpoint (points in Killing machine could be moved). WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Death Knight -> Talent Calculator

Very nice, I did not see being able to get that. Since the fight has me alone on Sarth for a long period of time, threat should not be an issue so that might be a nice option to lower the dmg I take even lower.

Just wanted to let you guys know, downed 3 drake tonight with the spec huntcaudata mentioned. Thanks for the help. Also, this is proof a blood DK can tank it (with help from a disc priest). In fact, the only part I came close to dying in was the enrage because I panicked, used IBF toward the end when I should have used AMS, but I used lichborne + Vampiric Blood + dodge trinket in place of it.

I dont understand there.
Before patch with boneshield we had: 40% + 5% (from frost presence) + 5% (from AMS talents) = 50% reduction
Now, we got: 20% + 15% + 5% = 40%

So ok we lost 10% but it's still a big reduction.

Did I miss something? Maybe there are not stacking like this?

Can't remove torment anymore. Prepatch you could remove torment, so breaths were low anyway. Now with forced torment, you end up having to use 2 cooldowns at once to survive the full breaths. AMZ is off GCD though I believe, so dropping BS/AMZ before you get hit is actually easy now.

Chemicals - is it possible to consolidate this into a 'DK Sarth + 3 Drakes Tanking and Strategy' thread to cover OT as well as MT? I've got several questions i'd like to ask other DK's who have played in an OT role (as it is usually my primary function on the encounter) and I feel like i would get a lot more specifics in terms of class functionality outside of the general Sarth/3D thread since this discussion covers multiple talent trees.

I can confirm blood can tank this fairly well at the moment. You can survive the entire fight with 0 cooldowns except for when both +100% fire and torment are up. When they are up, IBF is good enough, but vampiric blood is not. So AMS followed by IBF followed by a couple guardian spirits and the 100% fire should be gone by the end of that.

Edit: I'd like to add, without WotN other periods of the fight would be extremely dangerous(like +100% fire, and the +50% buff, or when shadron is dead but you still have torment), if not impossible to survive with no cooldowns up.

I was thinking of using a build like 25/5/41 to tank Sarth with now that spell deflection works.
I was wondering what some of you tanks that have tanked Sarth before thought of this to try and avoid as much magic dmg as possible and maximize hps.

I was using this build today 7/23/41 when we tried Sarth 3D for the first time because I thought spell deflection was still bugged and it seemed to work okay, never died to "Big Breaths" once I figured out when to use cd's but came close a couple times.

What unholy builds are people using now that patch has hit and you can't remove the debuff from yourself? Anyone have any more tanking tips now that the fight has changed some?