[10] Sartharion with 3 drakes

[knaughty]

Keep in mind that I was replying to someone about their group being restricted to 10-man gear (they don't run 25s).

My point was that a group in nothing but 10-man gear isn't going to have the DPS to survive the breaths of doom, no matter what. They will have long exhausted their cooldowns by the time Shadron would be dead. Since they could not possibly bring enough cooldowns to survive, they'd have to use a different strategy: Precisely timed portal hopping.

Hmm... good point.

I'm just not sure that portal hopping is actually an implement-able strategy. You're going to have en extended period with two drakes up, if you ever get two disciples, BoD will kill the tank. There's the "theory" you could time it so they don't appear at once, but I doubt it can be managed in practice, given you have to delay coming our of twilight realm to miss the walls.

Meanwhile you're extending this hard phase from long-due-to-10-man-gear to zomg-forever due to all the DPS you waste killing disciples and whelps over and over again.

Only option I see is to use a blood-spec DK Sarth tank, using his own CDs for 56/60 seconds, wearing some PvP/crafted frost-resist gear to get his raw stamina high enough. His TPS will be pathetic, but since there's no DPS on Sarth for a long, long time, shouldn't be an issue.

One external CD at 56 seconds gets him to 100% CD uptime for over 2 minutes.

Of course, this just moves the potential failure point to the drake tank. Even in 25-man gear, our drake tanks sometimes die when tanking two drakes.

I'm not saying this is impossible. I bet if you told Nihilum to do it in 10-man gear only, they could. I'm just not sure a "normal" hard-core guild could manage it.

[Seloei]

A proper dk who has just 40k buffed health can survive the fight for as long as needed, with only needing one external cooldown rarely. The kill we had last night ended up with having 2 dps dead when shadron was only at 70% due to them moving to the wrong side when the firewall came (flame breath). It took us nearly 3 minutes to kill shadron and the same for vesperon, we didnt take any portals and had 2.5 healers. So basicly, it was almost like having 4 10 man geared dps, instead of 3 25 man geared ones. Actually... 2 25 man geared dps only, since the shaman was healing the raid...
It IS possible to do it with 10 man gear, if you have a very good DK tank who can take the beating and rotate his cooldowns around. For one save he actually used a fire res pot + seed and it left him at 3k health. The only external CD he got was from the paladin healing him.
Doing it with 10 man gear makes the fight a LOT harder, almost impossible but if you are unable to gather up 25 to clear naxx on a weekly basis then it is something to try.
It's like doing a bear run with just kara gear, no badge loot. It's hard as hell, but doable. Otherwise, it's doing the bear run with t5 gear atm.

Oh, the drake tank takes a hell of a lot of damage if its a dual breath with torment up and quite often it can end him or leave him at 5% even from full health

[Rhiannon]

So we got our progression 25 man kill a couple of weeks ago using a DK tank on Sarth, who has subsequently quit raiding. This wasn't a problem for the second kill with a warrior tank on Sarth, as we had sufficient rdps to get Shadron down by the third breath of doom, so his cooldowns + a guardian spirit, divine guardian and pain suppression were more than sufficient.

But now looking at the 10 man... our tanks consist of me and three warriors really, we don't have a geared druid or deathknight. I was thinking of running 3 tanks, 2 healers, but this will severely limit the number of external CDs available to our sarth tank. If I want to pack in a reasonable number of health buffs the only way I'm going to fit in mark of the wild given my guild roster/attendance is using a druid healer, so I was probably going to go with a holy pala and resto druid as healers, with the possibility of an ele shaman off-healing, or a resto shaman off-dpsing.

How feasible is it to do sarth +3 10 without using a DK, druid or VW on Sarth? Anyone got personal experience they'd like to share?

The timeline we're used to from 25 man is blowing lust on Tenebron a couple of seconds after he lands, having him dead as Shadron lands, having Shadron to 30% or so when Vesperon lands, having Shadron dead within 30 seconds of Vesperon's landing. My main concern is, with only 5 dps, and wanting to bring certain classes for missing buffs/utility (shadowpriest for fortitude/replenishment, a plate wearer for tanking acolytes) the dps synergy won't be there to get the same kind of kill speed, and without sufficient cooldowns to prop the non-druid/dk/vw tank up, we won't have Shadron fast enough before he eats a full breath.

Alternatively - how feasible is it to go with 2 tanks/2 healers/6 dps? The extra DPS might allow us to match the 25 man timeline, reducing the need for external CDs. I've had some attempts at +2 drakes as the add + drake tank a few weeks ago (before the hours of add tanking practice on our 25 man attempts), and my main issue was moving Tenebron over to the whelp portal whilst allowing my raid to maximise their DPS time on Tenebron without getting breathed on as I swung him around, or without me gibbing a healer with a breath. I think I could probably handle it a bit better now than I did then, plus the raid's better geared which should compensate for the lost DPS time from moving Tenebron around, I guess.

I don't really like the idea of possibly having to eat breaths from Vesperon + Shadron + their melee + x blazes at the same time, but is it doable?

[amh]

How feasible is it to do sarth +3 10 without using a DK, druid or VW on Sarth? Anyone got personal experience they'd like to share?

Worldie´s sticky should get you some input on this. http://www.failsafedesign.com/maintanka ... hp?t=20147

[Rhiannon]

His sticky doesn't have anything on 10 man yet, only 25 man which I've cleared.

[Grizwold]

His sticky doesn't have anything on 10 man yet, only 25 man which I've cleared.

http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/ ... hp?t=19907

I did do it as the maintank, with only 2 cooldowns used, 1 bubblewall, and 1 pain supression. The other 3-4 breaths of doom that hit me were reduced enough by Fire resist + 1 power word shield that it was fine.

[Maswin]

We're hopefully downing this bastard tonight, we had a really good couple of hours on wednesday where we got our furthest yet - actually got to the stage where Tenebron & Shadron were down and we were about to start portal hopping. Sadly it went a bit wrong when I went into the portal...a few lava blazes spawned and destroyed the healer before drake tank could pick them up (think I got a bit excited and went in the portal too early!).

Most of our attempts, because we're largely using 10 man gear, seem to run on a knifes edge - pretty much every worthy attempt Tenebron was dying a second or 2 before he completed the 2nd whelp spawns cast (with a certain wipe if he manages to)...but it definitely feels like tonight could be the night.

After spending around 40 hours in attempting this, it'll feel hella good if we manage it with our gear level (and we all want that damn plagued proto drake before 3.1!).

Still kind of annoys me that a 10 man encounter/achievement is allowed to be attained in 25 man gear, but at least we'll feel good about ourselves if we manage it..

[knaughty]

Wetried it last night with a VW, found it harder than using a real tank. Switched back to bear tank.

It is noticeably harder with the changes to twilight torment and CoH being nerfed.

Possibly portal hopping is the easier tactic now. We're not going to try it - just doing it one more time then dropping it.

[arilink]

I don't really like the idea of possibly having to eat breaths from Vesperon + Shadron + their melee + x blazes at the same time, but is it doable?

Yes, it's perfectly doable.
You might want to have drake target macros however.

[knaughty]

Most of our attempts, because we're largely using 10 man gear, seem to run on a knifes edge - pretty much every worthy attempt Tenebron was dying a second or 2 before he completed the 2nd whelp spawns cast (with a certain wipe if he manages to)...but it definitely feels like tonight could be the night.

You are aware that given you're this good... you could probably clear most of 25-man Naxx with 12-15 people?

Only things that would be out of reach are Thaddius and Four-Horsemen.

[Maswin]

Most of our attempts, because we're largely using 10 man gear, seem to run on a knifes edge - pretty much every worthy attempt Tenebron was dying a second or 2 before he completed the 2nd whelp spawns cast (with a certain wipe if he manages to)...but it definitely feels like tonight could be the night.

You are aware that given you're this good... you could probably clear most of 25-man Naxx with 12-15 people?

Only things that would be out of reach are Thaddius and Four-Horsemen.

Why thanks for the compliment (or was that sarcasm?!). Our attempts went really really well so its definitely getting closer; we got Vesperon to 50% but our healers went oom whilst the rest of us were in the portal, so the other tanks died. Next time we'll be tank swapping so the bear can innervate and i'll be keeping LoH ready for some extra mana for someone. It's like Sarth let us get that close and then just laughed as he threw RNG at us for the rest of the evening....Wednesday it dies!

[Avengeance]

Finally nailed 10+3 tonight.. surprisingly we 1 shotted it tonight, while we wipe 2-3 hrs in other nights.
Setup was:
Prot Pala MT (used 50 res flask + FR aura)
Prot War (drake tank)
Prot War (adds tank)
Holy Pala (healing drake + add tank)
Holy Priest (healing MT)
Ele sham
Mage
Mage
Aff lock
Surv hunter

We dont aoe whelps until we killed shadron to burn him faster, we blew BL when tenebron was on 30% to avoid tank tanking double drakes. After shadron dies, raid aoes adds, then add tank + dpsers takes portal to clean everything inside with ele sham offhealing. We then burn vesperon and ignore further portals (when Twilgiht torment is up, ele sham switch to assist healing). When Vesp dies, take final portal, clean up and win.

The reason I MTed was, i'm best geared + I have fire res aura all the time, since the holy pala wasnt MT healing.

[Nick7]

We finally got him too!

After 2 days of proper tries, and 5 hours he went down.

Set up was not 'perfect' but was decent enough, 3 tanks, 3 healers, 4 DPS:
2x resto shaman
1x holy pala
2x DK tank (adds/MT)
1x prot pala (drake tank - me)
1x ele shaman
1x boomkin
1x shadowpriest
1x hunter

In first tries I was on adds, and DK on drake tanking, however it turned out he sometimes had aggro issues on start, so we switched roles - which did turn out to make fight easier (he also managed to have better control of adds).
Tactic was to burn Tenebron down with BL, kill whelps, burn Shadron down. When 2nd drake was down, go into portal, kill acolytes, go out and finish off Vesperon. Go into portal to finish his disciple, and smooth sailing after that to finish off Sartharion.

Some may argue that 3 tanks/ 3 healers might be over the top - but this is also about surviving and having control over fight. With 3 healers it makes it much easier to not go into portals and just burn drakes down.
If I were to choose better setup, I would replace one DK tank with warrior and one resto shammy with druid or disc priest.

[Maswin]

I hate you damn 25 man geared players!!

We got Vesperon down tonight (we had a few decent attempts at portal hopping) but as we came out the portal, there were enraged lava blazes everywhere, 2 healers going oom etc etc, was so painful! We could taste that damn bearded dragons death, but he wouldn't f'ing let us kill him.

I think it will be another week til our next attempt (some people going away) so I hope and am sure he will die then.

It's so depressing that if all 10 of us were full 25 geared how easy it would be, but the satisfaction we'll get from killing him.....!

I also hate the RNG of lava blazes, some times before whelps spawned there were none, others I had between 7-10 with more spawning as the whelps did...i think i need to go lie down...

[Ashmadai]

So I think my guild is ready to try to put this down again now that we've cleared everything except Sarth+3 on 10 and 25. Could somebody lay me out a quick step by step of the order the stuff goes down, or at least tell me if this looks right:

Kill Tenebron
Kill Shadron
AoE whelps
Kill Shadron disciple
Kill Vesperon
Kill Vesperon disciple
Kill Sartharion

?

If it matters, the setup will be

DK tank on Sarth
Prot Pally(me) on Drakes/adds

Holy Pally
Disc Priest
Resto druid/shaman(one or the other)

Blood DK
SV Hunter
FFB Mage
Combat Rogue
Shadow Priest

All DPS are capable of 4k+ even with only 10 man buffs so they should be okay, and the healers are all good. My only worry is with me picking up all adds plus drakes, but I think we should be alright.