Sartharion + Drakes Feedback Thread!

We will kill Sartharion with 3 drakes up one day. Here's the place to discuss what went wrong and your ideas.

The fire walls shouldn't have been a problem but we still had DPS; admittedly only Yaz getting caught in them at the end.

The timing of the drake joining the fight, the fire wall and the 3 fire elementals is a problem. The elementals need to be burned down as they have an enrage. Unfortunately this leaves the portal open and the add on the other side; which I assume is the cause of the DoT?

Other than that all round gear improvements would be a start as well.

"If these adds are hit by the lava waves they will enrage to deal 400% more damage, so ~800 becomes 4k, modified by Shadron's aura. Adds should be moved out of the path of the Lava Strikes. DPS will have to drop these as priority after they spawn and are picked up by the OT." - wowwiki on Sartharion

This might make all the difference!

That is the answer then because there was a definite drop in the number of people we had alive at that point. Hopefully we'll be able to sort that out next try.

My piece of the notes, gathering the adds on Sartharion was pretty painful, they can spawn in groups of 1-4 and spreading out... Meaning worst case scenario I have to run around and catch four mobs since I don't have such an amount of ranged aggro moves. Big heals landing after they spawn also sometimes meant I need a real taunt instead of SW or TC to get their attention and that's on a cooldown. There was seemingly less adds with 0 drakes up, but that might be subjective. Regardless, people need to cope with at least a few seconds of the adds pounding, there's no way I can grab them all in a blink after they spread - which is very fast and often since I didn't find any reasonable explanation as to when they spawn exactly. Snare the adds in any way you can and escape if you're getting too much damage, I'm trying me best to get to you

The damage done by the drake we left up ( I think Vesperon ) was heavy and constant, I took melee 6k + Breath 6k + DoT 2.5k ticks, which means I need a lot of attention from healers. I'll get better at securing myself from waves when I pick the bastard up, but on every landing I was fast in a situation where my shield wall and frenzied regen were up to save my skin. He sometimes throws me around so staying in one place is not possible, the best place for me would be near Sartharions tail but the bugger lands on the wrong side of the battle. I'm not 100% sure if anyone got breathed on by Vesperon as I was moving him, it didn't seem like it. I'll try to find a good place for him but because of the knockback I can't just point him towards the lava or I'll be deep in there shortly.

All the things together, it's fairly clear we can't think that we have a lot of time to spare when the drake is active, he needs to die post-haste. I didn't have visibility as to why the DPS was dying, so after that gets sorted, if I could request a bit more healing attention to me so I'll have less trouble surviving and have more time to position the drake and dodge flames.

From what I've discovered so far:

- We need 3 tanks: A Sartharion tank, a Drake tank, and an add tank. The OT can't be expected to handle adds plus a drake.

- We do NOT go through the portal. We just wait and let the adds come to us, and tank 3 picks the adds.

- We can't think about trying 2 Drakes until we can almost kill the first one in 30 seconds. You don't want 2 drakes up at the same time for long.

- Nobody knows how many Lava Blazes spawn per wave. It seems to be random.

- It is suggested all healers stand in the same place, to help the add tank.

- One idea said just ignore the fire walls and focus on DPS. I don't know if we could survive this, but it would certainly simplify the fight.

I'm pretty sure the firewall DoT's for quite a bit. Combine that DoT with the 2 drakes, lava adds and portal add, then I think it may be too much to ask for now.

I'm not sure if I noticed the lava waves dotting, it's the magma tornados that circle in the lava pool that cause damage when you stand too close to them along the edges. The lava wave does some damage on the pass, but it's so seldom that it might be soakable if we are able to nuke the fiery adds that get buffed by the wave. Sound ideas all around, will be good to see the next time when it won't be the first time we try it =)

To retract my previous statement, it seems that the lava waves do indeed DoT you. Also I believe it was Tenebron which we tried leaving up last time which lead to a +100% shadow damage taken, and made my hair become slightly charred on the left side. Tankspot conversation suggests that Shadron and Vesperon are good choices to leave up first.

Tenebron: +100% shadow damage taken, which means troubles for the Drake tank. Tenebron doesn't have an acolyte add, but rather hatches roughly 6 whelps which will then proceed to own your raid. If you prepare for spike damage on the offtank along with knockbacks and a third tank is available to collect the whelps, Tenebron does seem like a straightforward choice to keep up. Still Shadron could be more easymode for us if we pump advent's health and concentrate on spamhealing him through the massively buffed damage. Tenebron is the first to land into the fight.

Shadron: +100% fire damage taken so we need advent-ish health pool on the main tank to survive flame breaths. This is the spot where people talk of 50k health pools if Vesperon is also up providing a 75% health debuff to your raid. Shadron's add makes Sartharion become invulnerable until it is killed AND increases fire and shadow damage dealt by him by 75%. That makes +175% fire damage, captain! The main effect of Shadron then is to cause huge spike damage on the Sartharion MT. Shadron lands about midway into the fight.

Vesperon: 75% maximum health debuff for all. As long as Vesperon is alive everyone's health will be lowered 25%. So it roughly multiplies all incoming damage by 33% ( since 25% of 100% is one third or 33% of 75% ). The real kick of Vesperon is his add, which gives everyone a debuff which triggers when you deal damage and deals about 2000 points of shadow damage AND increases fire and shadow damage taken by 75%. The debuff is removed when it triggers on you but is reapplied by the Vesperon add each tick. The main effect of Vesperon then is to cause a uniform increase in damage taken throughout the raid. Vesperon lands late in the fight.

We left Vesperon up (Drake on the left as you enter), not Tenebron so your hair loss was caused by something else!

I see there's a little more info on the fire elemental adds on Wowwiki, saying that they spawn 2-4 each time and confirming the 400% damage boost when they hit the lava wall. It also says the many more adds spawn when the boss is at 10%, which explains why we lost healers towards the end.

Sartharion can be taunted too, unusually, so I'll have to be careful with my pally taunt.

Then I guess what killed everyone was the twilight torment proccing on all DPS, but now everyone can read from above what that debuff does. If we feel comfortable about single target healing maybe we should start with leaving Shadron up

I am iffy about Shadron, because I think it means we'll get one-shotted by the fire elementals (and not so much Sartharion himself)! They're still running wild among the raid, especially towards the end.

However I'm up for trying!

Yeah, if they aren't equally difficult, it might be a good idea to start with the difficult Drakes and add the easy one last.

Will make it a bit of a brick-wall at first, but once we get past the first and second drakes, the third should be easier than the reverse

Considering we almost did this last night there's not much to say. I was very impressed we managed to kill the drake. All we had left to do was a straightforward Sartharion kill after that, but alas we had too many martyred Murlocs by that point.

It is a very difficult and unforgiving fight. We can't afford to let a single person die. As soon as one person dies the damage to the Drake slows to a virtual halt and unless it dies fast we're screwed.

I felt slightly disappointed by Topanca's and Kayte's damage output last night. Can you help me understand that?

I'm speaking to Itz too because this is a gear-check boss for sure.

I think we can do it next week, which would make even more awesome. I don't even know if it's been done as 10 people yet on ER, but it must've been. That said, it's still possible to get the server first for Sartharion + 3 drakes as a 10-man - the hardest challenge currently in the game - but one step at a time!

PS) Yaz – you better have a good reason for not showing up when signed! Though thanks to Kayte for stepping into the fray.

Cardinal wrote:

I felt slightly disappointed by Topanca's and Kayte's damage output last night. Can you help me understand that?

Not sure tbh here; I have no excuses for the Malygos fight, but Sarth+1 isn't very mage friendly (my primary nuke is frostfire bolt, which is a 2.7s cast). I'm keeping living bomb/scorch debuff up as much as possible and fireblasting on cooldown. I'll work on it, though. Maybe I should just use scorch here and rely on instant pyros (elemental is still a relatively new build for me). I could definitely use some more +hit gear too (+9.5% at present). I'll also add that I was pretty beat by the end of the raid last night, and my focus was going (viz getting toasted by flame tsunamis). Blame my employer

I tend not to have the meters up for new encounters as I find them somewhat distracting. I'll use them for the next attempt, however.

Tanking was very good on Sartharion1D. Very tricky fight for 10-mans, as you effectively need 3 tanks and 3 healers, leaving only 4 to do DPS after the drake lands. The drake dies slowly because he takes considerable less damage while his assistant is up in the twilight world, I think - so add to reduced DPS the fact he's tougher than normal.

I think it was a good choice of drake to leave up as the increased damage was predictable to handle. So looking forward to trying him again next week! (copied from my mixed post on Malygos)

My original character was a mage so I'll offer some insight for that which still applies. In ze armory I spy 5.5% from gear and 3% from talents, meaning you're missing 8% of spells which though can account for more than that percentage of output on a given fight, overall it shouldn't be of higher effect. If you suffer a lot of pushback while casting, you see a definite degradation in DPS, and all the time you spend not casting is detrimental to your DPS. Melee has things slightly easier since they don't have to sit still while doing damage, this may also show. On malygos, catching sparks and getting buffed is vital.

If you're getting pushback that you can't avoid by talents or requesting a paladin aura(not sure if that even exists anymore), use the fastest spells available. If you need to move, save instants for while you move to keep that hurt coming. Priests have DoTs as main damage source so movement for them shouldn't be a biggie. Best way I ever found to increase my DPS as a mage was to be absolutely relentless and keep as much time casting as possible

Mm, I think I'm in my 'farm' (i.e. +crit) gear in the armory - I swap in another +140 hit or so for raids. But you're right Enth, slow casting/interruptible stuff isn't much use with a drake up (being dead doesn't help either!). I think running around scorching/blasting is the way to go here.

[quote="Cardinal"]
I felt slightly disappointed by Topanca's and Kayte's damage output last night. Can you help me understand that?
quote]

2k DPS average for a Shadow Priest in blue gear is pretty fucking awesome tbh. (which is what the average was for Malygos, Sarth it droped to 1.6) I died a hell of a lot on Sath also. I was tired, poked myself in the eye and very very dishearted by certain aspects of the raid. After spending an hour there with the same mistakes being made I have to admit I went into "Fuck it mode". I know everyone is expected to continue and be happy joy joy even if things are going wrong but its fine if the issue is being addressed and not masked. Which last night that was clearly the case. I was assured its not going to be looked into so ill not say anymore than that.

You'll never be able to understand this untill you role a Shadow priest, but its probably the hardest dps class to play well. It requires 100% full attention and moving, even a few yards, destroys your rotation and costs around 150DPS on average. Malygos and Sath are prime example of anti shadow priest fights. They require a lot of movement and even more concentration so dps drops. Top only has 2 instant damage spells (Mindflay which is channeled, so moving cancells it) and Shadow Word death which deals damage to myself aswell as the target, not so feasble a spell during fights that we don't know so well. Marv did an execellent job as always at keeping hots on me. I spent most of Sarth keeping VT up for mana as I couldn't do much more than 1.4k - 1.5k dps due to the movement aspect and generally taking damage constantly during the fight. When I did try and do heavy DPS I miss timed the walls of flame and died <3

Top can average 2k DPS on fights with more than 1 target or longer fights with ease with her current gear. If I can convince the "owner" of Top to raid more than she originally planned the character can easily do 3k DPS with some upgrades. But at the moment she has enough on her plate so learning the PVE aspect of the game and even playing the game is second place as I am sure you will understand.

On Malygos I was 3rd part of the time and 4th for the rest of the encounter which is damn good with Topanca's gear. Remember she hasnt been to every raid possible (Not of anyone's fault but her own)

Apologies for the wall of text, but I am getting kinda bored of being asked "Why don't you do X DPS like other class's?" (Not from WMD, but from people in general)

D

Edit - Enth Concentration aura does still exist, I use it often as I tend to spec out of the talents for it recently

Also, to add, Top is missing a shit load of hit I just realised, i've never really gone through her gear properly. Seems replacing my neck last night was a bad idea lost me 1.2% hit. Another thing to work on.

D

Derky wrote:I was assured its not going to be looked into so ill not say anymore than that.

Is the word "not" a typo there? If intentional, can you fill me in on what you mean?

Explanation understood on Shadow Priest DPS.

EDIT: This applies to all, but if you think we're failing on a boss for a certain reason, bring it up in raid so we can discuss the problem. What you might assume is being masked may in fact just have gone unnoticed or I might be too busy doing other things to address it there and then.

(Copied from that topic which is apparently about a different dragon)

Sartharion + 1 Drake seems to rely on the majority of people being alive and is quite a step up difficulty wise in comparison to the dragon on its own. We made pretty solid progress for the first few attempts; lack of concentration and tiredness made us luck out on a few of the others.

Tanking: Was good, position was good, and once Taq realised how much defence he needed it all seemed to go well enough. I failed epicly on the last attempt before the no drakes try by following an Elemental Taq was kiting and ended up in the middle of a flame wall.

DPS: Once we sorted out who was attacking what it all seemed to go well enough, although the Drake only has 1.1M health he does take a while to go down with all the DPS on different assignments but I definitely think we can do it.

Healing: Healing was generally good although there seemed to be always see a healer get hit by a flame wall at some point during in each of the attempts which makes it difficult for the tanks and DPS to carry on when there's three seperate encounters going on at once. However practice makes perfect and I think we're on our way there.

Hmm. Perhaps we should send through one DPS to take down the twilight add in the portal then?

I'm not sure how much it hits but it has relatively low health. I'm sure a self-healing class could deal with it, I'd probably have little difficulty with my wolves out.

Lord knows I accidentally clicked on the portal enough times.

Cardinal wrote:

Derky wrote:I was assured its not going to be looked into so ill not say anymore than that.

Is the word "not" a typo there? If intentional, can you fill me in on what you mean?

Explanation understood on Shadow Priest DPS.

EDIT: This applies to all, but if you think we're failing on a boss for a certain reason, bring it up in raid so we can discuss the problem. What you might assume is being masked may in fact just have gone unnoticed or I might be too busy doing other things to address it there and then.

Typo....

D

Not a lot of time.... so will be a rushed reply... >_>

The tank-gear upgrades I got were kind of a gamble, as I knew I'd be *losing* defense.
Thankfully, the 3 +16 def rating gems I slotted made up for the loss, and I now reach 539 def in combat... I'm hoping I've broken the barrier to start being able to wear (further) naxx gear upgrades, but only time will tell.
Anyway, the tank upgrades were mostly in all other stats, avoidance, mitigation, stamina.

Well, the adds tanking wasn't *that* bad for me, the main problem being, of course, that as a DK I have a limited number of icy touches and death coils I can use in a row, which really started to hurt when we got 4+ adds in short time.
I'm still a bit curious if I couldn't practically solo them in DPS gear, but then again, that would be very risky, as as soon as an add gets hit by a wave, I'd be dead. (Yeah, they really, really hurt)

Don't follow me on waves! way too many times have I spaced out hunting adds as a wave crashes down on me - which isn't as big of a deal for me as I just pop Anti-Magic Shell...
I'd like to complain about some people's handling of the waves, but seeing as I'm no pro at it myself, I'll be quiet

Derky wrote:
2k DPS average for a Shadow Priest in blue gear is pretty fucking awesome tbh. Also, to add, Top is missing a shit load of hit I just realised, i've never really gone through her gear properly. Seems replacing my neck last night was a bad idea lost me 1.2% hit. Another thing to work on.

D

I checked around a little, found a SPriest doing 3.3k 25-man DPS overall had about 5% more hit than Top, 5% more crit and 9% more haste. Most of the damage came from Mind Flay which then glues you down to the ground channeling, though it does suffer less from pushback by just increasing mana usage. DoTs not critting I guess the hit and haste are places, quickly I peered a JC ring you could order from Marveen to raise your hit and gem it for more hit as an easy start. It's all good as long as there's some direction to go to make things better

Enthesilea wrote:

Derky wrote:
2k DPS average for a Shadow Priest in blue gear is pretty fucking awesome tbh. Also, to add, Top is missing a shit load of hit I just realised, i've never really gone through her gear properly. Seems replacing my neck last night was a bad idea lost me 1.2% hit. Another thing to work on.

D

I checked around a little, found a SPriest doing 3.3k 25-man DPS overall had about 5% more hit than Top, 5% more crit and 9% more haste. Most of the damage came from Mind Flay which then glues you down to the ground channeling, though it does suffer less from pushback by just increasing mana usage. DoTs not critting I guess the hit and haste are places, quickly I peered a JC ring you could order from Marveen to raise your hit and gem it for more hit as an easy start. It's all good as long as there's some direction to go to make things better

Yeah I seen the same things a few times before. 25 man DPS is also a lot easier as we don't need to VT and VE (+ dots constantly) as the raid buffs make up for it. 10 man VT and VE are the most useful thing we can do. Mindflay is sick damage with a decent crit and haste but that comes with gear and experience. Ill take a look at the ring, Top is a JC also so she can probably make herself after doing some dailies. Its a real shame the trinkets are so cack though.

Thanks for the note about the ring!

D