World of Warcraft: Dragons Raid Guide

If alive, Vesperon will land at the 2 minute mark. His aura, the Power of Vesperon, reduces everyone's maximum health by 25 per cent and, like Shadron, he will open a twilight portal where an Acolyte of Vesperon will channel a spell called Twlight Torment, which affects everyone. Twilight Torment makes an already difficult DPS race that little bit tougher as it increases shadow and fire damage taken by 75 per cent, and causes damage to a player whenever they deal damage themselves. By now, Sartharion's flame breaths are reaching one-shot territory, even on a well-geared tank, while dual shadowflame breaths on the drake tank are likely to cause a few scares too.

Naturally, while all of this craziness is going on, the raid still has to deal with other things as well, such as Lava Waves, Lava Strikes, Lava Blazes, and Lava Trucks. Okay, maybe not Lava Trucks. Finally, for each drake that is killed, Sartharion's damage will increase by 25 per cent, so by the time you finally get around to tackling him, your tank is going to be taking some pretty heavy hits.

Three's a crowd

Sartharion alone or with a single drake is fairly forgiving in terms of raid composition. If attempting with two or all three drakes up, a reasonably balanced raid for the encounter will look something like this:

• Sartharion tank: this guy is going to need a massive amount of health and mitigation, and be ready to blow whatever cooldowns are available to survive the insane damage of the flame breaths.
• Twilight Drake tank: this benighted soul has arguably has the toughest job of all, having to dodge void zones and tsunamis while tanking and moving two drakes at a time for the crucial part of the fight.
• Lava Blaze & Twilight Whelps tank: ideally someone tough who can put out enough damage to kill most of the Blazes on their own. They'll need to be aware of Lava Waves and keep the Lava Blazes away from them.
• A damage dealer who can tank in a pinch: a feral Druid, DPS Warrior, retribution Paladin or Death Knight - basically someone to enter the portals and keep the Acolytes from annihilating non-plate-wearing DPS and healers.
• Two dedicated healers, and a third specced for damage but able to switch to help raid healing after Tenebron is down, such as an elemental Shaman or a balance Druid.
• Three damage-dealers of your choice, ideally with strong area-of-effect capabilities and geared well enough to put out at least 3400 damage per second on a single target.

Scared yet? Well, no one ever said it was going to be easy.

Have your Sartharion tank make the pull, and take him to the south-east corner of the island, at the buffing spot. This allows the tank to move easily between Lava Waves, while keeping the rest of the island nice and open for everyone to cope with the upcoming chaos. Damage at this point is unimportant as Sartharion isn't a concern until all the drakes are dead, so just leave them to it and get the drake tank, healer and DPS over to the west of the island for Tenebron's arrival.

Just before or after she lands will be the first of many Lava Wave tsunamis. The tank should grab her and move her down to the south-west/southern part of the island while DPS go all-out off the bat - if someone gets aggro, taunt it right back and pray she doesn't breathe on anyone while it's going on, but it's imperative that as little DPS time as possible is lost, as she must die before the second wave of whelps hatch without fail, so holding back isn't really an option. While all this goes on, your blaze/whelp tank will be running around gathering strays and wearing them down as best they can. Unfortunately, the number of Lava Blazes that spawn is completely random, so it's possible your blaze tank may get overwhelmed, but they'll just have to deal as best they can and try and hold out until Tenebron dies - your DPS can't really spare the time before then.

Depending on your DPS, Shadron will fly in and land when Tenebron's between the 50 and 25 per cent mark. The drake tank must pick him up, but focus on keeping maximum threat on Tenebron, who will hopefully be close to death but probably also close to turning on the DPS. If she dies before hatching a second wave of whelps, the tank should drag Shadron around the island to the north position while the raid AOEs down the whelps and Lava Blazes in the middle before turning attention to Shadron. If you have it, now is a good time to use Bloodlust or Heroism.

45 seconds after Shadron lands, Vesperon will land at the north point of the island and quickly open a portal, causing Twilight Torment to be applied to everyone. This is the make-or-break point, as the amount of raid damage will be taking a terrible toll on your healers' mana, and the Sartharion tank will be close to running out of options to mitigate the flame breaths. The DPS/healer should switch to full-time raid-topping at this point, as the DPS will come close to killing themselves in their efforts to kill Shadron. If Shadron dies, quickly pick off any Lava Blazes, then all DPS plus the hybrid healer should enter the portal to take down the Acolytes, beginning with Shadron's. Beware when the second Acolyte is close to death, as once dead, everyone inside the portal will be dumped back outside - so if there's a tsunami on the way, there's going to be trouble.