Sartharion 10 Man

Last night, after completing a couple dailies, I was asked to go to the 10-man version of Obsisian Sanctum. After completing the 25-man version just two days prior, I said sure, it can't be that hard could it?

So in we go, we easily clear the three drakes and our tank seems surprised at that fact. I guess he underestimated our awesomeness. There were three of us atop the DPS charts (both in overall damage and sustained DPS) - me, a rogue, and a shaman. Over the whole night we fought for the top spot and in the end, all three of us ended up with about 2,000 DPS on the night. Not too shabbby. I ended up atop the damage meters due to the fact that I didn't have to worry about Sartharion's fireballs or his cleave or his tail swipe as ranged, so the rogue dropped off a bit due to deaths.

But back to the fight. Since only two of us had seen the fight before, we had 8 people new to the instance and a couple of people picking up their first badges of Heroism. So the first couple tries were learning experiences - getting people to see the waves, know the gaps, focus DPS on the fire elementals, etc. That's fine, I can deal with those wipes.

However, it was the next 3-4 wipes that bothered me. We had people focusing DPS on Sartharion instead of the fire elementals, we had people getting caught up in the waves, even though they were all being called out on vent, and we had people getting cleaved or tail swiped even though it's really easy to avoid (yes, as a mage I was forced to stand within melee range and a couple of times had to mitigate my threat due to the 110% grab aggro percentage instead of 130%).

But eventually, we figured him out and had a couple of wipes just due to bad luck - bad positioning of the fire elementals during a wave, or a loose fire elemental hitting the tank during a fireball/cleave. And we just couldn't get him down even though we figured the fight out. Our healer told us we had on chance left before she had to call it a night. And we wiped. But, it was a quick wipe and we convinced her to stay around for one more shot and we got him. Finally! We finally took him down.

And wouldn't you know, he drops just one item I need in the 10-man version, the Gloves of the Lost Vanquisher. The first rogue rolls an 83. Drats! I roll...and 86! Yes, I've finally won a piece of T7. Oh wait...another rogue...95. FRICK! So there I sit with three badges, a 20g repair bill, and 10 achievement points, but no new gloves. I guess it's ok since the rogue that won them was not the rogue at 2000 DPS, but rather around 1300-1400 DPS. So she probably could use them the most. Just a frustrating end to a night where I had to constantly remind a few people to DPS adds instead of the dragon, watch out for the waves, and even helped our tank find the correct way to pivot the dragon during different waves.

In the end, I'm happy we got him down and I'm hoping to make this trip weekly, so I'll have more shots at the gloves. And now that we've done him once, future attempts shouldn't be so ugly. And what did I learn? The 10 man is much harder than the 25-man. We breezed through the 25 man with no deaths, quick pulling, and some great players. Even with some not-so-great players in a 25 man, you can down Sartharion without issues. With just 10 players on your team, if one person screws up, there's no room for error. You'll probably wipe. Lose a healer in the 10 man, you're done. Lose one in 25 man, who cares? The rest pick up the slack. So I'm definitely happy we got the 10 man version of Sartharion down and I'm looking forward to future attempts.

If only I had remembered to open my Oracles egg after the raid. It slipped my mind, I was done playing after the raid, and I logged off. Now, my egg is 12 hours overdue, and I've lost all this time that another egg could have been hatching. Drats again!