OK, there is a ton of information, and I have just spent about 2 hours reading 10 pages of posts (luckily servers are down for maintenance so this is helping eat time away ). What i have gathered so far is:
1. The "twilight Dance" no longer works
2. It is 100% mixed reviews on which is better, pure Stam gear, Frost Resist or fire resist.

with that said, and not trying to re-address everything that has been so intricately discussed over the past 3 months, if you are in a group such as my 25-man, which of the set-ups would benifit us if we only have ONE Priest, and ONE Pally (using these values, because they are worst-case scenario for a raid night).

I ask, because I am full T7.5 and we are getting ready to run a full 25-man naxx clear tonight for ME only, to attempt to gather another set of gear for sarth only. I would like to know what out of there (which I can figure out on my own) would be a benifit for Sart3D. Another T7.5 set Gem'd for stam only, or the Frost resist with minimal other Tier pieces( to allow other guildies the chance at some T7.5 they may be missing)?

Thanks ahead of time, you guys really make it easy for dumb-asses like myself to sound like I really know all the details during raid strat discussions in the guild BTW!!!

We run a 3/2/5 group.
Feral on sarth in full stam gear with only a fire resistance totem.
Warrior on drakes.
DK on adds.
Healers vary from week to week but we've done it with most combinations, with Hpriest/Rdruid being the strongest by far.
We always have a Spriest for replenishment/add control and an elemental shaman for heroism and tossing chain heals during times of high raid damage. We pop heroism after the first wave and burn tenebron down, and do not take any portals until shadron is dead as well. With this method the Sarth tank takes only one critical breath, and only needs to rely only on Survival instincts + barkskin + fire resistance pot to survive.
I can't really stress enough mow much it helps having the elemental shaman. High dps and heroism ensures that the tank only has to take one breath, and chain heal helps enormously after the critical period while the two healers are stressed, and when healing down below in the portal.
Also having a paladin outside in g3 buffing kings helps substantially as well. Hope any of this helps!

The only piece of my standard tanking gear I adjusted was swapping my T7.5 helm enchant to +25FR.

- Gloves/Shoulders: stock tanking gear
- Back: +20FR and a 24stam gem in an old Gale-Proof Cloak
- Legs/Boots: level70 crafted FR gear (+70FR total) with 24stam gems
- Bracers: Bindings of the Tunneler (+60FR)
- Chest/belt: Polar pieces

I'd also advise against the effulgent meta, which would only result in another ~5FR.

Toss on a +50 resist flask and pally aura to hit 355FR. Since our first kill I've lucked out on a lvl77 'of fire protection' ring (+30FR) which let me swap my helm glyph back, but tanking with the FR glyph for other content is hardly an issue.

I advocate using this type of setup partially because it reduces healer HPS requirements, but also because it removes the need to take additional gear from guildies.

We just got 3D10 last week on our third night of serious attempts using 3 tanks (Druid on Sarth, DK on Adds, Warrior on drakes), 2 healers, 1 hybrid Boomin/Resto druid, and 4 DPS.

On our first couple of nights I had 340 FR getting me above the 30% resist threshold - easily able to survive the biggest breaths, but susceptible to being 1 or 2 shot afterward. The data seemed to agree - about 40% of our failed attempts were as a result of my dying to melee hits immediately after the biggest breaths. This was definitely a gear issue, but also a healing one (we'd had a load of attempts with a pally, shaman, and non-druid off-healer - no HoTs make this fight very, very difficult).

It struck me that a better strategy would be to get the minimum FR needed for 20% resists and then focus on HP and avoidance to reduce the risk of the melee hit deaths. With just a lesser flask of resistance (+50), the cloak and helm enchants, and a paladin aura you get to 225 which is good enough to guaranteed 20% resists. Then I just wore my regular tanking gear with the 4 pieces of craftable frost resist stuff, and a titanium earthguard ring. Without Fort, but with most other raid buffs I was around 51K HP - slightly lower than the number needed to survive the largest breath without cooldowns. My avoidance was only about 5% less than my normal gear (compared to a >10% loss when trying to get to the next resist bracket).

4 or 5 tries in this gear = dead dragon. It just "felt" more stable, and there were definitely fewer "oh no, it looks like I'll die" moments. And the 2 or 3 HoTs from the hybrid healer/DPS really helped with the 2-3 seconds immediately after a big breath while the pally was casting a huge heal.

Has anyone tried this yet with a hybrid fulfilling 2 roles?

We tried this for the first time 2 nights ago with this setup and it was a nightmare to get Tenebron down in time due to DPS requirements.

This is the new proposed raid setup and we're doing this way to stack as much as possible caster power available.

Now I'm full time enhancement but I've managed to accrue a ridiculously good restoration set. Something I saw back in the day of Zul'Aman speed runs was a shaman speccing into full elemental for totem of wrath but wear a full restoration outfit. This way, I can help with DPSing Tenebron down at first (ace SP in resto gear), then switch completely to healing when Shadron comes in.

Has anyone tried this method or saw it being done? I'd really love to hear feedback on if this is viable or not.

For reference:
Unholy DK with 30K After Debuff from Vesperon
Unholy DK for Whelp/Elementals using Unholy Blight to keep diseases up
Druid for Drakes

P.S: Please do advise if this isn't the best place to post this. It's just such a great discussion with a lot of good feedback from all classes

[e] Removed part about the build. No hand holding!

Our 10man 3D kill depended on having our Elemental Shaman assist on raid healing when we were on Vesperon and healing in the portals solo. That way, both our primary healers could focus on the drake tank and myself. By the way, you might also want to look at Sartharion and Company (3 Drakes) - Discussion.

@Calleriel: Another solution is to switch who's tanking what after Shadron dies and the fire breaths are less scary, since Sarth is tauntable. (This probably only works in a 3-tank setup.) One could also do a switch once all the drakes are dead in a 2-tank setup.

Once our drakes were dead we did transition Sarth to our warrior to take advantage of his better mitigation, allowing me to Innervate, etc. and finish the fight as a cat.

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.

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.