I am still using 3 pieces of my FR gear for stam (chest, belt, boots); and with Shout I am sitting at just shy of 52k HP; but due to the 3 piece change, I lose a lot of mitigation, as well as a lot of threat.


Does anybody have any suggestions for threat-optimization on this fight? The concern with my guild (because I am undergeared compared to our old druid MT who is now MIA), is that I won't have enough threat to hold it once they down the 3 drakes. We did this just the other night and I was sitting at ~500k threat or so (if my memory serves me right), when they had the warrior taunt it off of me.

Other than gear, is there anything I can do to improve my threat? Am I able to swap some gems out in my current gear to increase my mitigation+threat?(Not for just 3d, but in general).

Thanks!

Just switch with the drake tank (sartharion is tauntable). This is a good idea not only because of threat issues, but also because that tank should have a lot more avoidance.

I guess the whole point is I'd rather not switch out if not needed, as it is really one of the only fights I am used for.

He means switch tanks after the drakes are down. You shouldn't be concerned at all about threat as the fight is essentially over by the time threat on Sartharion matters. Just have the drake tank taunt him off you after the drakes die.

Our experience was that it was preferable to taunt him after the drakes were down, regardless of threat: My sarth-set gives up a decent bit of avoidance and armor as well, in exchange for the added stam. Once he has Twilight Revenge stacked to 3, Sarth is hitting like a truck. Our drake-tank in his normal set was much better equipped to take that punishment.

7.6m health boss (Sartharion) divided by 15 DPSers is roughly 500k damage per player. Then there's built-in threat reduction, and they have to go 10%-30% over your threat to pull aggro, and you end up where there's no way in hell anyone is pulling aggro off of you unless they taunt.

This isn't difficult math. There shouldn't be any threat issues at all.

Hell, there shouldn't be any bosses where threat is significant to this point, except possibly Malygos on 6-minute attempts.

In my Sarth set, with MotW, i have 42200 hp, 29% dodge, 31k armor and 212 fire resistance. What you described is normal tank set, and i see no reason to taunt off you since your threat and avoidance are roughly the same as any other tank (you still miss some gear, my stats in normal set are a bit higher). But I dont understand why you'd maintank Sartharion is such set?

Some guilds do things differently, and some guilds wanted reassurance more than anything.

I MT our Sarth (if you even define tanking Sarth as MT), and after all drakes are down, and all portals are gone, the Drake tank will taunt off me and I will immediately taunt off him. This prevents the case of a wipe due to bad avoidance string in addition to healer movement during the easy aspect of the fight (you probably need both cases to happen to die to sarth after all drakes are dead), and it (death after drakes are dead) has never happened to us.

Sorry I posted my normal stats >.<

in my polar gear, selfbuffed I am sitting at:

33089 armor
35.48% dodge
39.9k hp

I can switch out a few pieces of gear and get even higher (not needed w. our raid composition):
I can get up to:
32899 armor
32.95% dodge
42.2k hp

We also swap out our Sarth tank for drake tank once all the drakes (and acolytes) are down, wearing polar and FR gear doesnt do much for physical mitigation/avoidance. You get the added bonus of having fire resist for tanking the lava blazes too - if they enrage they can hit pretty hard - although I suppose once the 3 drakes are down the fight is fairly trivial.

We only bother tank swapping on 10 man, for 25 man its way too easy to heal 1 tank with 6-7 healers to warrant a swap.

Having the drake tank taunt off you also lets you innervate and battle rez people, but for a little extra comfort on the home stretch. We then have me go afk on the side of sarth opposite the raid so that if the drake tank does get gibbed somehow, sarth turns away from the raid and breaths me.

We have finally managed to get him/her (?) down in 25, and 10 both. I should say, that 10 man S3D is WAAAAYYYYY harder.

Anyway, as I am not even nearly high end geared, I had to resort to some tricks. I would like to share some of those with you.

1. The pull. In 25's this is a no issue, as you usually get a hunter missdirect you, but in 10's we had no hunter. As my hit rating was a whooping 52, some wipes were caused by overeager dps leaning on the dragon while i see "Miss, Miss, Dodge". Result, raid dies in a flaming torrent. Convince your dps not the hit the dragon after pulling. But don't worry, if they are not listening: the second time they pull aggro, and wipe the raid, will convince them anyways .
2. Without the twilight torment debuff you are more than capable of handling a fire elemtal, or two. The issue comes up mainly in 10's - at least for us - when my healer gets aggro from a newborn elemental. Now, the load on the drake and add tanks is pretty high as it is, so you can lessen it by taunting, and killing those buggers off. But under no circumstances let the enrage. They will get loads of bonus HP, and will deal a lot more dmg. This can be managed pretty easily though.
3. I had the Power Auras add-on set up to show me when the Twilight Torment debuff is active. Use any add-on you like, but be aware, that this is the single most important thing to know. If you are like me, and have to use some cooldowns to survive the big breaths - beyond the obvious finger corssing ofc - then you definitely would not want to waste any of those precious life saving cooldowns. Again, this is mostly relevant in 10s, where I did not had any priest, or paladin ready to save my hairy bear ass. Why is this so important, you may ask. It is not unusual for the dragon to breath before the debuff gets applied. So, the third drake arrives, Sart is taking a deep breath, and you still don't have to use a CD, because you know the debuff is not applied yet.
4. Have the drake tank taunt Sarth off you after the last drake is dead. The dragon really hits like a truck at this point, and again mainly with 10 man raid the load could be very well too much for the healers already overtaxed by healing through the twilight torment, and the endless add waves. You can then bless them with an Innervate - oh boy, have you seen a gratefull shaman - and by tanking the fire elementals spawning. They are a joke for you anyways, beeing in FR gear, and such.

Thats it. Please forgive my rumbling, and I seriously hope someone will find this useful.

So to summarize (sorry i'm a warrior who is researching this for possible feral sarth tank for 25mans)

1. use full frost set fully stam gemmed.
2. 317 FR from :

FR head enchant
FR cloak enchant
FR bracer enchant
FR totem from shaman (or paly aura)

3. about 49k hp buffed
4. minimum hp after 25% debuff ??????

Rotation for breaths :-

-SI for the first breath and then if SI still up take the other breath too
-Once SI wears off useBarkskin and Fire pot (make macro)
-Pain suppression for next breath

Would this be accurate?

Don't use cooldowns till twilight torment comes up. Chart of what FR and sta you need. I highly recommend going for 340 FR as it comes with a very small loss of stamina and a big gain in mitigation. How you get 340 varies with what professions you are. What cooldowns you need depends on your hp from that chart. Obviously you can just add the strength of a FR potion or of SI/Barkskin to your hp. Oh, and make sure you're not hitting one cooldown as soon as another one ends, wait till he's actually casting the breath. That greatly increases the odds of getting 2 breaths with one cooldown. If you can keep 4t7, it makes it a lot more likely to catch 2 breaths with barkskin up.

Even with fire res flask, you only reach 285 FR with that set. But it is enough.

With that fire res I would recommend 54k hp buffed before the pull (you can often survive full breaths without cooldowns, provided you get quick heals after). Also, if your healer gets separated from you and you take a 30k breath, 7.5k swing, 7.5k swing you look pretty dead to me. (While it is possible to heal him alone, I'd recommend 2 healers on the tank)

For that SI, time a glyphed frenzied regeneration near the end. You get some big hits on you and healing up 40~60k takes a bit of time (especially in 10-man with only 1 healer on you).
I find BS alone is enough in 25-man. I prefer using an indestructible potion when the 3rd drake lands (helps the healer more provided you can survive without the fire pot).

All stats needed depend on raid setup and skill. Lower DPS means you have to survive more heavy hits. If your DPS is up for it, a warrior can maintank sarth-25 (kill 2nd drake before vesperon's acolyte spawns AND sarth breaths; this can sometimes take a much longer time than normal).

--

@Jerikho
You can also use BigWigs. It gives a loud ding and screen flash when the acolyte spawns.

Do people use Fire res because their DPS is slow? I can imagine if the fight lasted a lot longer fire res could come out on top but I don't really see the use of it for say 4-5 or less "killer" breaths.

It means I can tank it without a single external cooldown, so theres no requirements to ensure we've got the cooldowns in the group (especially in 10 man). The only thing you really give up for FR is stamina (compared to the full stamina builds (bracer enchant, flask, stamina patches, tiny amount of avoidance on head enchant)), and you have more effective health against the flame breaths that you were stacking stamina for in the first place.

Measuring the speed via number of breaths is misleading because they are quite random. You have 20 secs SI, 12 sec barkskin. Are you killing Shadron within lets say 40 seconds after Torment comes in? If yes then you dont need FR (i guess, not sure if Barkskin alone is enough with MotW and FR aura). If not, then you rely on external cooldowns. Or you rely on luck.

We are not that fast, on our attempts i usually take 1-3 breaths without any cooldown available, so i use FR set (345 fr, 39k hp during fight).

oO i can go afk after the drakes are down for i have so much threat on sarth, no one comes near me.
doenst matter which gear i took. tanked him in FR-Gear and in Sta-Gear.
The only time u cant make threat on him is when an Shadron-add is alife.

Yes u can use FR du save ur life
It is a bit easier i would say if you have low DPS especially for the healers. He doesnt hit that hard on meele attacks.

I think you are blending the "common wisdom" for 10- and 25-man a little bit. I've not used my full FR on 25-man, because (as a non-LW) it represents a significant loss of mitigation and avoidance over my normal gear, which (as I discovered over the past month) really does add up to a lot of incoming damage. I can't make the 25-man "no external cooldown" 58k health/340 FR anyway. (Remember the effective health needed is substantially bigger on 25). I just use the helm and cloak enchants, aura, and and a magic resistance flask (Chromatic Wonder for 25-mans).

In 25-man, I call for Pain Suppression on the first breath, since it offers substantial damage reduction rather than merely more health to heal; and Hand of Sacrifice on the second. I then use SI and Frenzied Regeneration for the third and fourth breaths, and barksin and a fire pot are reserved for a fifth if we get there, or for an emergency where I'm not fully topped off. Generally if things are going alright we will kill Shadron by the third breath, so the rest after that is just to help the healers catch up on healing.

I use an entirely different gear set and cooldown rotation on 10-man because the dynamics are so different and (for us anyways) the drakes are up much longer. I use exactly 340 FR (cape and helm enchants; level 70 FR chest and pants; Flask of Lesser Resistance; totem or pally aura) and roughly 49K HP buffed, or 51k-ish when I have Commanding Shout or Blood Pact. For me, 10-man is much more about offsetting my incoming damage while Vesperon and his Acolytes are alive, rather than merely surviving breaths.

In 10-man, I use barkskin on the first breath, fire pot on the second, and SI on the third and fourth. Using Barkskin first means you will usually have it again by the 6th breath since the cooldown is short. I use a healthstone immediately after any breath that is not mostly resisted. Frenzied Regen is usually paired with SI, but not if I get two good resists. I only ask for a cooldown from my healer (usually a holy pally or disc priest) when multiple Vesperon acolytes are up, around the 5th breath; that way, the damage reduction applies to my physical damage taken as well when that starts to be a big concern. (That's also when I use the dodge effect on my Monarch Crab, to make it easier for my healer to catch up). Then barkskin is back up again, and perhaps a nightmare seed sometime after that if the drakes are really dragging. By the time I am out of emergency buttons Vesperon is typically dead and the DK tank takes Sarth off me.

It was honestly more of a concern on the raid leaders part; as my gear isn't quite where the old MT's was.

For both 10 and 25man I am NOT using FR, I am using a Polar set (puts me to ~51k hp raid buffed on 10 man, and about 36% dodge w.o procs).

I usually get about 350k or so threat by the time the 2nd drake is down, so I don't see a concern with it, but appearently the raid leader did.

Is there any way that I can really assure that there wouldn't be a problem? I don't see any issues with how much threat I was pulling in my polar set, they had simply stated "we don't want to take any risks" (we wiped for a good hour as we had 3 totally new tanks to the fight).

I'm still not quite sure why you don't want the drake tank to take Sarth after the drakes are dead; for me, the opportunity to help on adds, DPS, BR, IV, etc.--and the break from the monotony of calling lava waves, moving left, moving back--is preferable. Anyway, if you have a 350,000 threat lead when the DPS starts DPSing, and (I'm making this number up) Sartharion lives for two minutes after the DPS is on the boss, that means your DPS would have to be doing nearly three thousand more threat per second than you for them to catch up by the end of the fight. I'd say that's impossible.

Edit: Here's a formula you can give your raid leader. They catch up to you when
DPS TPS = MT TPS + ((MT threat lead when DPS begins)/(length of fight after DPS begins))