Sartharion + 3: Tank-perspective guide

[Vanifae]

This fight is a bitch, I am doing the add tanking we have a druid main tanking Sartharion.

[Rasmfrackn]

Thanks for the guide... alas, when it comes to stacking stamina, go JC or go home.

I'm curious how the 10-man ends up being more gear demanding, but I'll keep reading threads. That top-end breath damage is what I'm fixated on right now.

-- Also, it looks like a 50 resist flask for a total of 180 FR is just above the breakpoint of guaranteeing 20% partial resists. That seems more valuable than ~490 hps from the stoneblood flask, right? It's probably something like 3k off the top-end of the worst-case breath of doom, from what I can tell.

-- I translated your sandbox over to chardev for my own sake:
http://www.chardev.org/?template=131614
I only got it to 42.5k after buffs... what am I missing? And it's still 0.4% crittable... maybe a little more tradeoff from hps to uncrit would be safe due to the 180 FR cutoff?

[Panzerdin]

It's more valuable.

[Andris]

I'm curious how the 10-man ends up being more gear demanding, but I'll keep reading threads. That top-end breath damage is what I'm fixated on right now.

-- Also, it looks like a 50 resist flask for a total of 180 FR is just above the breakpoint of guaranteeing 20% partial resists. That seems more valuable than ~490 hps from the stoneblood flask, right? It's probably something like 3k off the top-end of the worst-case breath of doom, from what I can tell.

10-man ends up being more demanding in general because you're probably bringing 3 tanks, so you may end up with 40%-50% of the raid as DPS, rather than 60%+. Now, I suspect that if you've got a solid-gold-stars raid, you can probably do it in 10-man gear, but it presents both social problems (pick your best 4 dps, and tell the to wait?) and logistical problems. (Still need to burn Tenebron/Shadron down, but


From my experience tanking adds through about 3 weeks of attempts, Pursuit of Justice is worth about 3% mitigation in this fight by letting you outrun the adds. HotR is also very handy for building threat with the chaining effect - you can build threat on your existing adds while tagging new ones. My general ability priority for picking up adds this last week was:(our first kill, I ended up dying from twilight torment after Vesperon was down ':oops:' )

HotR (if in range)
ShoR
*Hand of Reckoning
Avenger's Shield (can cause enraged blazes due to the slow)
*Righteous Defense (used this a lot in some phases, especially on healers)
Consecrate mostly to hold aggro

The * indicates an attack with a 360-degree range, which is handy if you have 5 mobs and don't want to turn around.

I've found that our mages always end up freezing some or all of the whelps when it's time to AoE, (go improved blizzard + frostbite) so I've stopped moving at all during that phase, because a rooted mob will hit someone in range rather than staring at you. Otherwise, kiting is a very reasonable solution to reducing damage. (see above)

Other things we learned:

* If you kill Tenebron after the emote for laying eggs, but before the eggs hatch, the extra whelps will spawn, with zero aggro on anyone. If you're AoEing adds during that time, they'll probably kill a dpser before anyone can react.
* If you get caught in a flame wave, you take extra fire damage -- if you're tanking blazes, this is super-bad. You can bubble to get through the wave if you have to, but you will be tanking enraged blazes after that, which hit a lot harder.

A couple questions:

* Can you block the lava blaze damage, even though it's elemental?
* Can you use DS + taunt to get a 100% reduction on one breath?

For 25-mans, you can get a couple extra cooldowns potentially by swapping tanks if you have two tanks on adds. On the other hand, if this isn't communicated well, you can end up with a roasted tank or roasted raid.

[Cearn]

http://www.warcrafter.net/sandbox/127686

Missing 40 stam enchant on bracers, and since i can't find 18 stam enchant on gloves i added a prismatic socket with 18 stam gem.[...]

Why not use both? Socket and Enchantment? Or was that patched and I just got relic socket+enchant?

[amh]

* Can you block the lava blaze damage, even though it's elemental?

Yes, since that huge patch at the end of TBC. Hence the passive block-cap gearing method. Wouldn´t make sense to build such a block-heavy set just to tank whelps for 9 seconds, would it? ;)

19:54'40.938 Lava Blaze #7 melee swing hits Kieras for 372 Fire. (1600 Blocked)
19:54'40.953 Lava Blaze #6 melee swing hits Kieras for 288 Fire. (216 Resisted)
19:54'41.328 Lava Blaze #4 melee swing hits Kieras for 156 Fire. (1600 Blocked)
19:54'41.344 Lava Blaze #3 melee swing hits Kieras for 564 Fire. (1600 Blocked)
19:54'42.266 Lava Blaze #9 melee swing hits Kieras for 210 Fire. (206 Resisted)

[Worldie]

-- I translated your sandbox over to chardev for my own sake:
http://www.chardev.org/?template=131614
I only got it to 42.5k after buffs... what am I missing? And it's still 0.4% crittable... maybe a little more tradeoff from hps to uncrit would be safe due to the 180 FR cutoff?

The 0.4% crit IS intended. I discussed about it with my healers and we agreed we can take the risk. I actually personally experienced a crit right after a breath of doom, i ninja LoHd and survived. Ardent Defender won once more.

Chardev aint loading for me so i'm not sure... have you counted stoneblood flask + 40 stam food, and included imp CS in the buffs?

http://www.warcrafter.net/sandbox/127686

Missing 40 stam enchant on bracers, and since i can't find 18 stam enchant on gloves i added a prismatic socket with 18 stam gem.[...]

Why not use both? Socket and Enchantment? Or was that patched and I just got relic socket+enchant?

I was referring just to the web page, it doesn't have the 18 stam enchant so i added the prism socket to compensate. Bare in mind i'm not BS

* Can you use DS + taunt to get a 100% reduction on one breath?

You can, but you will have used DP already so you'd have forbearance.

[Lowgrus]

When I pick up vesperson I just throw a shield at him and hope it doesn't miss. If we have a hunter in 25 man I get a MD as well. For 10 man I find it much safer to just have them both over on the side where you tanked shadron/tenebron because it makes sure your always in range of beacon of light.

Also I'm just used to having it over there so it makes it easier to see flame walls. Or at least react to them.

I dont like being on whelps i swear consecrate is so broken, either that or i have no timing but every time I tanked whelps the fights would either be like okay lets hope I can get consecrate to tick this time.

10 man is hardest thing I've done in game so far. 25 man is a joke.

[Seloei]

Oh err... did you consider a Mighty Fire Protection Potion as a "minor" save as well? guaranteed at least 4.2k absorb up to 6k. It's not much, but it can help you once if you don't get a second minor saver and it just costs 2 crystallized water per.
Indeed, 25 man is a joke compared to the 10 man... gogo farm nightmare seeds to help you survive BoD for the +20% absorbs once all the other cd's are gone -.-

[Lowgrus]

Oh err... did you consider a Mighty Fire Protection Potion as a "minor" save as well? guaranteed at least 4.2k absorb up to 6k. It's not much, but it can help you once if you don't get a second minor saver and it just costs 2 crystallized water per.
Indeed, 25 man is a joke compared to the 10 man... gogo farm nightmare seeds to help you survive BoD for the +20% absorbs once all the other cd's are gone -.-

can you chain those during the encounter?
if so I'd use them on lava spawns to.

[Avengeance]

like any other potion: 1 per combat.

[Sifbubble]

Hi, came across this thread and figured my 3 drakes vid would be relevant.

I've been add tanking sarth + 3 drakes adds for 8-9 weeks now and made a vid a few weeks back.

Video=> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3ezUR_rP7A&fmt=22

Not sure if this'll help or not, but I thought i might as well put it up anyway.\

I did accidentally taunt sarth (MT taunted an add milliseconds before me), it was quickly re-taunted and no one was hurt.

(excuse the poor ui i have recently completely changed it.)

[Toranabanana]

I've been trying to do this on 10 man sarth, unfortunately we haven't had a reliable 3rd tank to so I've had to tank the drake as well as the whelps...

My healer is a shaman and he kinda plants himself in the safe spot and spams chain heal a lot (I tell him to move to my consecrate but he says he finds it hard to do so...) - After not doing so I've just taken to Hand of Protection him just as the whelps starts to charge over to him. I used this for the first set of whelps. Just checking if this is a good idea?

our group is kinda heavy on the melee and I don't really want to move around too much if i don't have to, just want them to kill Tenebron before I get another wave of whelps...

[Belzebina]

Allo!

Changed 1586 bv and 26.28% without buffs to 1791 and 31.15% with an avoidance of 76.65 without HS.

Ready for another match with sarth whelps+lava blaze.

It's "fun" running all the time getting all mobs on you, tauntint, AS, HoReckoning... stress stress!

Bye bye

[Kethion]

My guild put off doing the 10 man for a long time, but we finally started attempts last week, and got it down on this Tuesday. Figured I might as well post the video I made of the kill, our group setup, and my ability use methodology.

Video HERE as a stream, but I recommend downloading (750-ish Megs) so you can actually see what is going on (I zoom out to the max). I solo tank adds for the drake portion of the fight for both 10 and 25 man, so that's the perspective you'll be seeing. I make a few mistakes in this (namely eating a void zone and not being as adept as usual with facing my targets at all times). I guess it's also noteworthy that you'll see a lot of camera panning and character repositioning in the video.

Gearing: Stack block rating, block value, and aim for the highest possible avoidance + block %. I generally have 80% ish block + avoidance, 30k unbuffed health, and 1620 BV.

Generally I use my abilities as such:
HotR and ShoR: I use HotR when I have little to no adds on me and the target(s) are reasonably close. ShoR I only really use when everything is under control or when Judgement and HotR are on cooldown.
Judgement (I use light): Interchangeable with HotR (Judgement is preferable for libram uptime, but I got into the habit of using HotR for melee range adds).
Hand of Reckoning: The main ability I use to pickup adds. If there is an add up and not on me, odds are this will be on cooldown if it isn't already.
Righteous Defense: I actually don't use this as much in 10 man (though quite a bit on 25 man). I use grid and a mouseover macro to pick up adds when I see someone has aggro.
Avenger's Shield: Two purposes here. I use it to either supplement a taunt, or to get adds when both taunts are on CD.
Consecration: I usually use this when I am stationary and trying to control a decent sized group of adds. For the whelps I position it half on the spawn location and half outwards towards the healer who is most likely to have aggro (usually a paladin with RF up).

Setup used for our first kill:
We did a 3T/2H/5D setup with me on adds, a warrior on drakes, and a druid on Sartharion. Healers were a Disc Priest and Holy paladin. For the DPS we had 2 fire mages, an Unholy DK, an elemental shaman, and a shadow priest. We actually didn't have bloodlust available on the kill until two drakes were already dead, but ideally bloodlust is used when the second drake lands.