[25] Sartharion +3. How to deal with the adds?

[Vladogor]

Global Thermal Sapper Charge

I deal with all the trash by myself. /use when the whelps spawn. EZ mode.

[Petrus]

I am totally going to try that next time we're on Sarth. Sounds like the instant damage of thunderclap once every five minutes, but I only need it once...

[Theistica]

Block value, and rating, owns as the add tank in this encounter, if you can get block capped, you'll take little to no damage from the adds, as long as you can keep them all in front of you.

This is incorrect as far as I can tell. The Lava Blazes melee for fire damage, which means their damage is not mitigated by blocking or armor. They can be dodged and parried, but not blocked, except for a few flukes I can't explain. Look at the breakdown of their attacks in this parse for verification: http://wowwebstats.com/zrwuxarppbhk5?a=Gxf1300077b3001623 Almost none of their damage was blocked.

Now expand the Dmg Out column for the whelps, whose damage can be blocked. There's a clear difference. http://wowwebstats.com/zrwuxarppbhk5?a=Gxf1300079ee001bdf Considering the whelps are only up for a fraction of the time, I've completely regeared myself based on tanking the Lava Blazes. I recommend gearing for avoidance on this fight. Do not feel guilty about tossing all your block away, because it's only useful on the whelps, so you have every reason to stack avoidance instead of block.

Also, the adds aren't level 83, so you can drop your defense budget a little.

[amh]

Block value, and rating, owns as the add tank in this encounter, if you can get block capped, you'll take little to no damage from the adds, as long as you can keep them all in front of you.

This is incorrect as far as I can tell. The Lava Blazes melee for fire damage, which means their damage is not mitigated by blocking or armor. They can be dodged and parried, but not blocked, except for a few flukes I can't explain.

I fail at reading WWS, but just go try it. You can block elemental damage entirely, ever since the big patch at the end of TBC.

Example: Every now and then we wipe. I´m a quick little dwarf, so I´m one of the first back in the instance. There´s 4-5 elementals hanging about. I solo them, taking no damage.

Edit: I was curious about this as well, since I couldn´t make any sense of our WWS-parses when I was deciding on a gear-set for this. Got a lot of good help by asking in this thread: http://www.failsafedesign.com/maintanka ... hp?t=20273

[amh]

Sorry for the horrible quality, but I didn´t have a screenshot handy. Had to nick it from an already poorly rendered video.



Bit closer:

[majiben]

Indeed elemental melee can be blocked. It can also be resisted with resist gear.

[arilink]

Tonight we alternated the blaze/whelp tactic.

Instead of AoE'ing the whole add-pack after Tenebron had died we switched the second blaze/whelp tank for a 0/32/39 DK (Blood Presence) who was exclusively dedicated to those adds in addition to the pally tank.
=> DPS focused on the drakes at all times.

Even though our overall dps was lower than on the previous kill the fight went quite smoothly.
Tenebrons lifespan: 58" compared to 47" before.
Shadron: 72" compared to 96" before.
Overall Shadron died at 2'31" compared to 2'55".

Add pickup gets a lot easier as the number of blaze adds will always be quite low so as the pally you retain your 'mobility' troughout the fight.

We even lost 1 DPS due to voidblast very early and 2 DPS to post-portal lava wave ownage.
Seriously our DK occasionally was at over ninethousand DPS
... too bad he died to Twilight Torment and got brezzed quite a while later.
Note: An Unholy Blight build would work as well.

[Kelaan]

Global Thermal Sapper Charge

That's very clever. This is perhaps the only reason I might regret being a gnomish engineer. I expect that saronite bombs just don't pack the same punch as just dropping a consecrate... but i may try it.

[Frickit]

I have been on add duty. Pallys are the worst tank for adds, but it is pretty rewarding. I do feel like people are blaming me even though Ive said 50 times that I should be on drakes.

I do it perfectly about 20% of the time then the MT dies or something. The other 80% of the time I lose someone to adds. Fucking sucks. We are getting close but people dont seem to A. want to understand that Im not the best tank for adds...B. cooperate with me to make it easier. Oh well.

[Blar]

Will your guild let you try to handle the drakes Frickit? Paladins are slightly advantaged on Drakes to burst tps off the bat with wings. I have always tanked the drakes and we use two tanks to handle the adds. The DK will cover all the whelps and specifically watch healer aggro, while the prot warrior will cover the area around the dps. It seems to work fairly well for my guild. In addition, the prot warrior can tclap the adds helping out on dmg reduction.

[amh]

Using the DK on whelps is definitely effective. Any class can handle adds, but I´d say warriors and druids are disadvantaged for it.

DK > paladin > warrior > druid when it comes to picking up adds. I know shockwave and tclap is awesome and all, but if they do miss then you´re stuck with a bunch of loose mobs and the only thing you can do is spam-taunt through vigilance. Atleast consecration ticks for a while.

If you´re having issues with collecting the whelps, have a rogue on stand-by with tricks of the trade on you. It´s full of awesome.

We´re using a simple setup:
Bear on Sarth
Warrior on drakes
Myself on adds
DK (frost) kinda does dps until it´s whelp-time, then he rape-tanks the whelps by himself, and goes back to dps once they´re down. He´s pretty awesome as well, so he runs around saving healers and picking up random mobs that I fail to see.

[Frickit]

ya so far they dont want to try two add tanks. they use two drake tanks which i think is a waste. I have done the drakes a few times but no one wants to volunteer for adds so ill do it for now.

i have a rogue helping me out with ttot. and im getting better at picking up whelps. the main issue im having is when theres like 15 blazes up usually after the whelps are done and I end up missing one that gets enraged and eats the healers up. thats an issue i can fix with some practice tho i imagine. (or if anybody would think to say hrm theres a priest getting ate right next to me i wonder where that tank is oh maybe ill get it off her and save the raid....meh maybe i wont.)

the dk and the warrior have both done better than me on adds in the past. our dk is on sarth but i think our druid portal offtank should do it. the dk and a warrior on adds and me on drakes. we woulda won a long time ago i think. but thats not gonna happen.

[amh]

Why on earth would they use two tanks on drakes? The (solo) drake-tank can survive the short period of time with the first two alive if he blows a few cooldowns.

[Frickit]

Why on earth would they use two tanks on drakes? The (solo) drake-tank can survive the short period of time with the first two alive if he blows a few cooldowns.

believe me, the tanking assignments have been nothing short of completely illogical since we started naxx. im just used to it at this point. i even stopped bitching about it.

[Petrus]

Having killed him finally last night, I think I can safely say that I can liken Sarth+3 addtanking to running around like a chicken with your head cut off and your taunts always on cooldown. I'm always taunting to pick things up, and if I can pick something up with just a smack of the shield or my hammer, I'll do it. Hitting things only once or twice is important if there's something you don't have on you yet and can go rushing after it to pick it up.