Many of you have been to the raids in which we attempted 25-man Sartharion +3 drakes. Throughout our endeavors we have accomplished to down two drakes but seem to fall apart around the third drake.

I have prepared a strategy and some information that everyone needs to read and understand so that we may make a big leap towards completing this task. Some of the things that are required for this strategy to work may seem iffy and impractical, however, most of you honestly have no clue what is going on in the first place so keep an open mind.

First off I want to explain a few rules for volunteering yourself for this encounter. I say volunteer because that is what it is really...you send messages to Fanboi asking for an invite to do 25-man Sartharion and you usually get an invite to the raid.

1. You must be competent, focused, and ready to pay attention for several hours.
2. You need to bring consumables and flasks.
3. You need to become familiar with the term "tunnel vision" and practice not having it.

The raid is usually composed of :
1. 4 Tanks
2. 5/6 Healers
3. 15 DPS

My strategy is based on the following:
1. Each of the 15 dps must be able to provide the raid with 2.5k dps on a single target lvl 83 mob while mobile. What this means is that you may be able to pull 5k dps standing still for 5 minutes on Patchwerk, but can you dish out that same dps on a target when you constantly have to move from time to time?
2. EVERY person in the raid needs to come to the raid with the most suitable raid spec available. This means you do not show up for pvp or farming. This may irritate some of you because you do not like to be told to spec for pve, however, our Sarth runs as of now have been taken to a new level that requires it in order to accomplish a common goal. Everyone can either prepare for the raid properly with a smile on their face or keep wiping the shit off that Morte left behind when they took a big crap on you.

Introduction:

The strategy is time based in which case I am going to progress all the way from 0 seconds from the start to the time it takes to down the boss with the assumption that no one dies. You may be laughing right now *cough* Sandals *cough* at what I have requested but deal with it and give this serious thought.

Sartharion:

• 7,670,000
• Cleave, fairly weak (35% melee damage). Not likely to one-shot even clothies.
• Tail Whip, minor damage, stuns for 2 seconds.
• Frontal Fire Breath for 12k

Twilight Drakes

• Tenebron
o Has aura: Power of Tenebron: Shadow damage taken increased by 100%
o Tenebron's portal spawns eggs which hatch into whelp adds.
o Lands 30 seconds into the encounter.
• Shadron
o Has aura: Power of Shadron: Fire damage taken increased by 100%.
o Shadron's portal contains a disciple who increases Fire and Shadow damage taken by 50% and makes Sartharion immune to damage.
o Lands 75 seconds into the encounter.
• Vesperon
o Has aura: Power of Vesperon: Maximum health decreased by 25%.
o Vesperon's portal contains a disciple who increases Shadow damage taken by 75% and puts Twilight Torment on the raid, making them damage themselves when attacking.
o Lands 120 seconds into the encounter.
Each twilight drake has 2, 321, 000 HP which I am rounding down to 2,300,000 to keep a good ratio.

There are a few things you need to remember throughout the encounter from start to finish.
1. Lava Walls - Spawn from either the left or right side of the platform that must be avoided. These walls will enrage fire elementals that get hit by this wall as well as destroy someone who gets hit themselves.
BOTTOM LINE: DO NOT GET HIT BY LAVA WALL
2. Fire Elementals - Periodically fire elementals spawn in packs of 2 - 4 that are going to be picked up. A general rule of thumb from personal tanking experience is stay close to the add tank if possible when you are prone to obtaining aggro from these fire elementals when they spawn. It is very frustrating to have a healer standing 50 yards away qq'ing because they have something hitting them. STAND CLOSER TO THE FUCKING TANK.
3. There are different things going on during the encounter and it is forever changing so be ready to adapt to an entirely new situation.

Strategy:

0s - Fanboi begins a series of ready checks while buffing goes on and everyone gets situated. Usually there are 2 ready checks but sometimes there are between 10 and 20.
1s - Sartharion MT (Thane) pulls Sartharion and positions him as usual. Dps at this point is trivial so save your mana, energy, rage, and ammo for later because if you pull aggro between 1s - 30s you are going to get kicked the fuck out of the raid.

30s - Tenebron descends to the staging area and will be picked up immediately by the twilight drake MT (Fanboi). After Fanboi provides you with a large enough threat threshold all 15 dpsers should unload on this drake. There is a gap of 45 seconds between this drake and the next drake that follows.
 Void Zones: At this time fissures will begin spawning periodically on random players. These players must move out of the void zones in order to avoid immediate death.
 Fire Elementals: Directly before the landing of Tenebron and after the first flame wall fire elementals will begin spawning that must be picked up and tanked so please provide your tanks with an easy to access to picking them off you if you tend to have aggro.
 Tenebron will spawn a portal in which case NO ONE IN THE RAID will take. This portal will spawn many welps if left unattended. These welps need to be picked up immediatly by the add tank.

NOTE: There is 45 seconds between the landing of the first drake and second drake in which the first drake should be killed before or at the same time the second drake lands. An average individual dps of 3k would be equal to an average raid dps of 450,000. At 450,000 Rdps it would take 50 seconds to down the first drake and there would be a 5 second overlap between the first and second drake.
75s - Shadron descends to the staging area and will again be picked up by Fanboi. If at any time you see Fanboi moving a twilight drake, stay the fuck away from his head because the fire breath will 1 shot you.
 At this time if the raid has done what it is supposed to do, Tenebron has died and there is a large quantity of adds that have spawned. ALL AOE DPS need to down the adds as quickly as possible. This does not mean one fucking mage standing there aoe, this means ALL AOE capable dpsers kill the adds.
 After adds are down resume dps on Shadron.
 Shadron will also spawn a portal that NO ONE IN THE RAID WILL TAKE.

NOTE: At this time Thane is taking very large hits from the accumulation of debuffs that have increased the fire damage being taken by the flame breaths equal to around 45k.

120s - Vesperon descends to the staging area. At this time both Shadron and Vesperon will be up and hitting Fanboi fairly hard. Thane is getting hit extremely hard as well with 150% increased fire damage +melee attacks from Sartharion. The timing here is crucial.
 As soon as Vesperon spawns his first acolyte within his portal the raid will start suffering from Twilight Torment. Vesperon needs to be taken down as soon as possible during this resulting in a single drake, Vesperon, to still be alive and 1 portal up.
 At the same time Vesperon spawns his first acolyte a new tanking rotation will go in effect and it is very crucial that everyone is on top of their game because this is the do or die part of the fight. In order to avoid Thane getting 1 shot by the fire breaths we will begin rotating mitigation cooldowns with several people in the raid and it will require extreme perfection and flawless execution. If a single person fucks up in the rotation the result will be Thane's death and quite possibly the entire raid following.

FIRE BREATH SUPPRESSION:
1. Magic Shield - Absorbs 100% of the fire breath
2. 2nd DK tank taunt + Magic Shield
3. Anti-Magic Zone + Hand of Sacrifice from Pally (A).
4. Guardian Spirit.
5. 2nd DK tank taunt + Anti-Magic Zone + Icebound Fortitude

The fire breaths can occur every 12 seconds but may only occur every 30 seconds. This is a 60 second rotation. If for any reason we need to extend the cd durations farther into the fight it would look like this following the first rotation.
6. Magic Shield
7. 2nd DK tank taunt + Magic Shield
8. Warrior tank taunt + Sheild Wall

Beyond extending farther than 92 seconds into the fight where Vesperon is active is trivial since we do not have any more cooldowns to incorporate into the rotation due to the duration of the abilities that are used and the people that are allotted for this event.

 To add to the confusion while the 3rd drake is up the raid will be taking the portals that Vesperon spawns. It is imparitive that the raid members who are not associated with healing Fanboi, Thane, or Beatbox , get into the portal and kill the add inside there tanked by Palanoxe as quickly as possible to remove the Twilight Torment debuff on the raid.

NOTE: As of right now we should be seeing Shadron dying as soon as Vesperon spawns his first portal. Ideally we want to see the first portal to be taken as soon as Shadron is down to kill the acolye within it. Ultimately we have 92 seconds to kill both Vesperon and his acolytes inside the portals before Thane dies.

3:54s - All drakes should be down. At this time we basically have a long fight ahead of us and Thane will require sufficient heals until the fight is over. Adds will continue to spawn and need to be picked up. It is a good idea to stay relatively grouped up at this time so tanks have an easier time picking up elementals and dps can quickly switch over to kill them when needed.
6:54s - Sartharion should be dead with an average raid dps of 45k (3k individual). Adds should be finished off so we can collect our loot.
8:00s - Thane rolls a 100 on the mount, gg, do it again next week.

Conclusion:
I know many people are not pumping out 3k dps on a stationary fight much less a mobile one. I also know that 15% of the people who attend our raids have a 40% chance to eat a flame wall and 20% of you have a 98% chance to eat a fissure. We need to clean things up a lot. If you are one of the dps that is sitting at 2k dps or lower and have the gear that allows you to pump out ridiculous dps you need to seek help. Get advice from the people creaming your ass on every boss in naxx 25, get advice online from forums, test shit out. DO NOT sit there satisfied that you pull shitty dps in epic gear. If you have problems with PC performance restricting your ability to raid in this type of environment then please sit out or purchase a better performance machine that will allow you to perform well.
Ulduar is just around the corner and we need to step up our quality when it comes to raiding. If we wish to continue raiding only two days a week and stay on top of things then the quality needs to be there every time we do something. The faster we clear content the faster we can get onto bigger and better things like PvP all week and taking turns shitting all over the topless female jewelcrafting dranie that sits in front of Eventide.

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"In raids, the reality is that most of a player's contribution comes from how well that player plays that character, regardless of the class."

~Kalgan, Blizzard Lead Developer

Good summary. I just want to quickly say that where I find we deviate mostly from Thane's ideal downing is between the 1st and 2nd drakes. The AOE on adds has to happen FAST. I've only been around for two attempts mind you, but what I see is that we are barely killing all the adds before the 3rd drake lands. We need EVERYONE to be dpsing those adds so we don't have to worry about them anymore.

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Do you know the Mustardman?

For people involved in fire breath suppression the following macro will allow you to target the MT of your choice and cast the spell or ability of your choice on that target without loosing your current target.

/target Thane
/cast Hand of Sacrifice
/targetlasttarget

is an example for a paladin casting hand of sacrifice on me while not loosing the current target they have.

/target <Player Name>
/cast <Spell Name>
/targetlasttarget

is the format. There are macros that are a lot easier to use and more professional, however, this macro is very easy to use and easy to understand. You see that you will target the player you have named, you will cast the helpful spell on them, and then you will re-target your previous target that you had selected prior to using the macro with one press of the button.

For those of you who need a quick way to remove buffs in a raid that you do not want such as Thane removing Hand of Sacrifice right after fire breath to avoid channeling extra physical damage to the pally who used hand of sacrifice, this macro will work great.

/cancelaura Hand of Sacrifice

the format is:

/cancelaura <buff name>

The transition from drake 2 to drake 3 is kinda were we need work. But we can do this!

And WTB zip program for fanboi.

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Nail Bitter! WTF! It won't be better Cupcake?

This fight is simple. I need to run it with you to see what is going wrong. I've done this successfully twice out of 5 attempts.

Excuse me for trying to help.. Noted. And it won't happen again.