I really fail to see how any Blood/Unholy build weighs up favourably against Unholy/Blood for Sart10+3d.

Going by worst-case scenarios, comparing VB+WOTN+3/5 Magic Suppression vs BS+5/5 MS.

In my gear I end up with the following statistics:

Unholy/Blood (http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=111604000000)
Buffed health after Vesperon's aura: 30.7k
Top-end breath: 57k
Top-end breath after Frost presence, 5/5 MS, 2% Meta, Spellshattering, Grace/Lance/Sanc: 41.9k
Breath after Bone Shield: 33.5k
Lack of health: 2.8k

Blood/Unholy 43/0/28 (up to 3/5 MS)
Buffed health after Vesperon's aura: 33.0k (VB on)
Top-end breath: 57k
Top-end breath after Frost presence, 3/5 MS, 2% Meta, Spellshattering, Grace/Lance/Sanc: 43.2k
Breath after WOTN: 36.7k
Lack of health: 3.7k

Unholy/Blood then brings: Imp IT, Toughness, Lichborne, AMZ, Unholy Aura
Blood/Unholy brings: Blood Aura, Mark of Blood, Abo's Might

This seems like an easy choice. I'd also like to argue that mitigating damage (Bone shield) beats buffing healing/health (Vampric Blood), but that's a smaller issue. Then another thing, bone shield uptime will easily outshine VB uptime during the tough Shad+Vesp phase since you pop Lichborne there, and the overall physical damage taken should be much lower with the Unholy/Blood spec.

Am I missing something? To me it seems Unholy/Blood is far superior.

Bone Shield even glyphed can be unavailable depending on avoidance. 6 charges can last a very short time.
Will of the Necropolis is always available.

Could you PM me your Math for your assertions if you have time?

KIlled sarth x 3 last night as blood / unholy. It was amazingly much easier.
The extra hps make the breaths prior to Drake 3 landing survivable without cooldowns.
You still have IBF and AMS which are good
Bloods self healing properties make the healers job a little easier.(rune tap, mark of blood, blood aura, blood worms)
Vamp Blood is only a 1 min CD
Will of the necropolis and Spell deflection also are bonus help.

You still may need cd's from the priests to survive but over all the experience was so much smoother.

Don't forget bone shield alone will not save you from a breath when drake 3 lands anymore, same with AMZ if you have it.

I've seen a few folks state that blood should not be tanking this, however we use a DK that is blood spec specifically for this fight. We spent 3 hours yesterday so far working on the encounter and almost had it down. 3rd drake was at 16%. We don't have any issues whatsoever with the breath. Between the added stam from blood, vampiric blood 30 seconds with glyph, will of the necropolis providing 15% reduction to every single breath without having to use a cooldown, 15% magic mitigation from frost presence now, 45 second cooldown ams, spell deflection, icebound fortitude, and aotd as a backup (which thus far he stated he never had to use), that's plenty of mitigation from the breaths. I'm not sure exactly what he's spec'd as the armory is down atm, but his name is Fatuous on Sisters of Elune if you want to look him up after maint.

This sounds to me like touchy-feely more so than theorycrafting. The Unholy spec doesn't require cooldowns either before Vesperon lands, as you can see from the numbers I linked, however it will take less damage during that entire period as well.

IBF/AMS are irrelevant, Unholy has those of course, same for rune tap. Blood warms, blood aura, mark of blood, all wont save you from a breath, and don't outweigh Imp IT, Toughness, AMZ

BS is on a 1min CD, Unholy has spell deflection, and WOTN is included in my previous post. My point is, unholy takes less damage overall from breaths and especially melee, and less burst damage from breaths.

The extra hps will save you from the point drake 3 is active but before he lands. Those can hit for around 32k.

I'm 47/8/16 so I still have Imp IT and toughness.

You get Magic supression which will lower breath dmg.
AMZ stacked with BS may save you, so effectively only every 2 mins will be be of use for breaths.
You trade 4% raid healing (if the party are in 45 yards) for 15% movement speed. Again less strain on healers possibly over all.
Will of Necropolis saved me a few times too. stack that 15% with 15% from frost presence.
Pure numbers IBF and AMS are the only 2 we have that guarantee self survival. (vamp blood stacked with trinket also gives enough hps to live). So it really comes down to getting coordinated with healers for the extra breaths, and what spec you feel most comfortable in.

As unholy we didnt kill him, blood /unholy spec we did. You are right I cant put this down to any science of numbers. Only feed back from the healers and the raid as a whole. They all agreed healing me was easier this spec. Then again it could have come down to just getting keyed in with the mitigation rotations.

I refer you to our last 3D attempt of the night before we decided to do 2D due to end of raid time.

WWS Breakdown of Sarth Dmg

I'm tanking with Tanking build

Having blood to WotN reduced all incoming dmg from the breaths substanstially, the added benefit of Spell deflection and the various self heals make this build much more stable and less reliant on "lucky" breaks between breaths that unholy must now rely on. The nerf to AMZ and BS are just not enough to keep any one alive during the "super" breath phase. Raw mitigation to spell will keep you alive.

As you can see from the breakdown of the dmg Sarth is doing to me, swings are actually causing more damage than his breaths. And him having missed over 60% of the swings and cleaves you can see how little dmg he is actually doing. This is all mostly unaided with external cooldowns. On super breath phase ams, VB, lichborne and the crab trinket provide enough protection to get the 2nd and 3rd down before the adds start owning the raid. In case of back to back breaths I asked for a guardian spirit just to be safe.

We couldnt down 3D this week due to tanks dying to obscene amount of adds. Unlucky lava strikes and other minor stuff. We are hoping of taking his head off with his buddies next reset.

To anyone who is adamant about blood not being able to MT 3D sarth I humbly request you give it a shot. With the proper gear this is by far the safest build I've tried.

Edit: Btw this is 10 man 3D, we have 25 man on farm.

The thing is a regular blood spec (not this crazy 43/0/28) can tank sarth better than a regular 10/8/53 unholy.

Your assumption is a miraculous 100% uptime bone armor vs vampiric blood not used. The fact remains that during the danger zone both specs need to do the same thing, with unholy having a 1 breath advantage with AMZ.

During the lesser danger zones(pre-twightlight torment, and 100% fire gone but both acoyltes still up) breaths WILL have a chance to one shot unholy if bone armor is not up(I've been hit over 30k with WotN taking 15% off), where as WotN eliminates that chance without the use of vampiric blood. You can not guarentee that bone armor will be up both those times, AND that it will be up during the every buff on sarth peroid.

I would trade needing 1 extra external cooldown in the danger zone for superior surviability the rest of the fight, and the ability to be the same spec I use the rest of the week.


I do not know why people say that unholy can survive anytime other than twighlight torment without cooldowns, that is complete nonsense. As said before you can get hit over 30k after resists with 15% taken off, if he hits in the high end of the breath range (high end being alot more than the low end) unholy WILL die.

We got our first 25 man kill last night with me tanking Sarth as an unholy/blood spec, and unless I am extremely lucky, every breath before torment came up that I didnt have cooldowns for I survived with at least 1500 hp. So saying unholy can't live every one without cooldowns is wrong. I could even regem and get the trinket from AN to live with another 1500 hp or so.

You see, there lies the flaw of the spec. Its wrong to assume that everyone is saying that you cant survive a breath. The point is that you are at 1500hp, what if he decides to cleave, hit or your healers delay from a wave incoming. The advantage of blood is that if you are that low, you can take proactive measures to raise your own hp making the fight alot more smoother. And yes Unfortunately this fight still relies on RGN, ie: cooldown of his breath, voidzones, lava strikes, all events that you cannot control, thus makin this another RGN fight.

With your spec and after the debuff in HP what is your current HP, and if you dont mind avoidance. thanks

I'm going off of memory here because I can not log on right now, but I had around 32k hp after the debuff, about 30% dodge and 20% parry before blade barrier. But I never had to worry about getting hit after the breath because I had two dedicated healers getting off a cast and instant cast right after every breath.

Yeah, 25 vs 10 is a completely different ball game. Having the 2 healers dedicated on you would make things easier. If you do try 10 man I would be very thankful to see your results with unholy. I'm quite fond of unholy but for now blood seems to be my weapon of choice.

Random Ghoul digivolving ftw! No, I havent had that happen, but the talent seems to be bugged for sure. On death I'm not turning to ghoul if I die to extreme overkill. Its quite annoying as my repair bills are getting high

The increase in STR and STAM boost from SoD are hard to pass. But if more report this happening it may be worth considering dropping them.

First of all, I'm talking about min-max theorycrafting Sart10+3D, so don't bring a 10/8/53 unholy spec to the table in your comparisons, because that's never even close to an ideal tanking spec for this specific encounter.

I didn't assume 100% uptime of BS at all, please actually read the numbers I posted before you reply. I compared the 2 lowest-mitigation examples, blood having VB up, vs unholy having BS up. Not taking any points in magic supression makes the comparison even more in favor for unholy, 5% off breaths is great.

Superior survivability in the rest of the fight for blood is also incorrect, I'm willing to give you BS uptime not being 30 secs on average, but it's always over 20s with good gear. Your claim that unholy needs BS up in the non-Vesp+Shad phase is also incorrect, the breath after fixed mitigation hits for top-end 24k on the 31k buffed health I listed, WOTN is not needed to survive breaths. Even then, with good CD management you can catch nearly all breaths in a CD before Torment as well.

The only argument remaining is that you don't want to respec for Sartharion, well I'm giving you that one, but that's not an argument in the discussion about an optimal spec for this encounter.

I really think blood/unholy is suffering from FOTM-syndrome. I'd love to try it on Sartharion if I could find even 1 thing it has over unholy/blood on this encounter.

Lets examine that, 20s out ouf every minute = 1/3 of the time of 20% reduction, compared to a 100% uptime of WoTN of any hit that will take you below 35% health. You are assuming that the only source of dmg is His breath. Other things can kill you, ie: cleave, voidzone, fire wall, melee hit, a random enraged flame spawn. And don't say all this factors are irrelevant and that the tank should move out of wall/zones and that the add tanks need to be picking up the spawns, and that if you hit with the lava strike you're just not paying attention. They do happen, I've had occasions when I had to dance out of a void, resist a breath and get back into position to avoid a wall while getting hit by a melee hit and a lava strike.

If you're not willing to experiment with the build you cant really say which is worst or best. I've tanked with both specs and post patch, blood is far more stable on any phase than unholy.

I would like to see your WWS or Wowmeter data for your 10man take down post patch with you tanking unholy to compare what kind of dmg I'm taking in blood to your unholy build. Thanks.

That 20s uptime is definitely not the average though, I've had uptimes over a minute on yesterday's Sart night, BS scales wonderfully with avoidance, especially with 6 bones now! I'm definitely not ignoring the other sources of damage, but let's be realistic, do you ever wipe because you get cleaved? Even then, I don't actually think an unholy/blood spec takes more damage from other sources either.

I also strongly agree you need to "try out" a spec, I believe in numbers, and you made a good point, WWS would be interesting to see. I'm not fixed on my opinion, I'd love to be proven wrong, I already killed Sart10+3d with my spec, if there's a spec out there that works even better, yay for us all

WWS of my incoming damage on our last kill (949,821 dmg over 9m27s)

Am definitely not saying I'm playing optimal yet, especially after Vesperon died I may have been a bit lazy with cooldowns :P But it should surely give some idea.

Thanks for the meters. And yeah, after those intense 4+ mins I think we all get a bit lax at the end. Kinda hard not to relax a bit at that point.

This is really not contributing to the discussion, there's nothing in blood that makes you mitigate more damage than an unholy/blood build, please stick to facts and at least read the discussion so far.

Would like to see some proper WWS comparisons anyways, but it's going to be tricky to analyze, with the mechanics of VB and BS being quite different.

For starters the lowest-mitigation example is neither spec having anything up, calling BS up the lowest-mitigation example implies 100% BS uptime.

No torment max breath is a hell of a lot higher than 24k.

Which translates to

That is an unholy tank death even with a decent resist, and 3% from BoSanc/Vigilance. I've done the fight as unholy, I know that there is almost always one or two breaths that will hit you with 0 cooldowns up, being unholy is throwing the dice until you can get over 32000ish health after the debuff.

While the ability to use a normal spec might not be relevant to you, for all of us that have this easy encounter on farm mode, unholy seems to be the consensus worst tank spec for physical encounters(almost every other fight) and threat at the moment. For those who are having problems with tank deaths, by all means go one of these specs that only works for Sartharion.

I don't see how people are saying there is nothing in blood better when blood has WotN which is passive, and Unholy has 5% magic mit. Even if you assume the unholy spec has VotW, 15% > 5%. Boneshield has very little to do with this discussion unless you can guarantee it is the worst mitigation you every have, which is just not possible(It is likely boneshield+ams+ibf covers the breaths, but not guaranteed).

Well we got our first Sarth + 3d 10 man kill yesterday evening.
And i used this specc http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=111604000000

As people have mentioned before, this specc is basicly only viable for tanking sartharion due to threat issues.

My rotation for the breaths was as follows:

AMS
IBF
AMZ+BS
Guardian spirit
AMS
IBS
And so on.

The healer never had problems healing me in the fight and i also used lichborne + JC trinket to keep boneshield up as much as possible when i had used it, accually we came to a breathe where only BS was up and it didnt oneshot me, that being with Vesperon landing.

This specc imo was really awsome and my dedicated healer really loved it. Next week im gonna try out blood and see if i can tank him as easely this time around.

Just a quick question, do you think blood with all the passive spell dmg migitation can survive with out CD on breaths? Anyone who has experience from that? Cause i counted it up to 37% (FP15% + 15%wotn +4 rune sb + 3% vigi)passive spell dmg reduction and basicly it should be enough for the 10 man version or am i completely wrong here?

For the 10 man you can live without anything until vesperons disciple comes out since the breath does less damage than 25 man. But a note on your spec, drop Blood Caked Blade, it can be parried which is a pretty bad thing in general but even more so on this fight where you need to be topped off a lot.

The advantage of blood in my opinion, is that when there is not all drake, you dont have to rely on your cd to survive breath.
And for the harder part, both need help and unholy have only one more cd every 2 min (BS + AMZ).

The problem with your comparison is that you consider that Bone shield is always up, and it's not possible. WOTN however is always up (unless you arent hit for more than 65% of your damage but then it's not a problem).