Attempting the Impossible.

We had a weird OS10 run. The initial plan was to run OS10+2, We had 2 tanks, 3 DPS, 3 healers and needed 1 more tank and 1 more DPS. So we hit LFG, and I noticed a Rogue that I had run with before. He's a great mutilate rogue, and would be useful to help dispel the enraged fire elementals. So we brought him in and were only pining for a tank. We spend about 15 minutes trying to find a tank that's well geared enough, when one tank and one healer, who apparently share the same power grid, lose power and go offline. The rogue at this point, and I swear he was waiting for this exact scenario, mentions that he has a tank, a resto shaman, and a warlock who are willing to come if we upgrade to three drakes. Something went horribly wrong with our decision making process, and we agreed to it. We agreed to pug OS10+3, the hardest encounter in the game... I blame sunspots for this. Such an audacious plan. It has been said, "Fortune Favors the Bold". So fortune must have smiled upon the sheer gall it took to attempt this... right...?



Wrong. We wiped probably 15 times. It was painful. We were essentially trying to piece together a working strategy out of heresy and duct tape. The big issue is the debuffs the drakes cause, it's disheartening for a tank to go from 38k health raid buffed to 26.3k. We eventually decided to have the 'lock, who was a jewelcrafter, use his voidwalker to tank Sartharion, with me picking up the adds, and the better geared prot pally tanking the drakes. The first wipe was almost immediate, the drake tank took the Tenenbron to the far west side of the island, when the flame wave came, he moved to avoid it, and the drake breathed on the rest of the raid in the safe spot. Instagibed. We adjusted positioning, however, the warlock wasn't very confident in his ability to move the VW, and the drake tank just instinctively took the drakes to where he took them on his guild's two drake attempt. The result was having Sarth on the far east side of the island, and the drakes on the far west side of the island. The adds funneled towards the healers, and there was too much ground to cover in between the healers to be able to pick them up before they killed the healers. People groused, and the rogue, who took over as raid leader decided to have the more experienced tank from his guild tank the adds, while I took the drakes. The other paladin ran into the same problems, and was a lot more vocal about it then I was. So we moved Sarth closer to the middle of the island.

This created a new problem. As soon as Sarth got MDed onto the VW, he angled, and tail swiped the rest of the raid. So we adjusted the positioning some more, and we finally found a winner, one with the drakes on the north side, and sarth on the south side, staggered so that the DPS could avoid the tail swipe, and the healers were funneling the adds to the same spot. This is where the failures of the DPS began to become apparent. We never actually got Tenenbron down. We came close on one attempt, which I personally found endlessly entertaining. The DPS had remembered their rotations, and were actually putting out enough DPS to kill Tenenbron before Vesperon landed, so I'd only have to tank two drakes at a time, and with the reduced distance, the other pally's shadow resist aura was reaching me, so I could survive the breaths. But as Shadron landed, I went to pick him up, and started attacking him to establish aggro. Apparently all but one DPSer was just using an assist macro to pick their targets, so they all shift off Tenenbron, who's at 15% health, and start attacking Shadron. This led to having both drakes still alive when Vesperon landed. Tenenbron was at around 13% and Shadron was around 75%. Vesperon landed, and all three drakes breathed on me. I was simply erased. Once I was down, the drakes went and ate the healers, and then the DPS. This is why macros can never replace a functioning brain.

After that wipe, the rogue gave up his nightfall aspirations, and suggested we switch it to a 2 drake kill. The warlock and Shaman dropped group immediately, leaving us with 2 tanks, 4 DPS, and 2 healers. Rather than open the pug of worms again, I suggested we do Less is More. We spent so long wiping on 3 drakes, that when we took our 8 man group to go kill Shadron, the trash respawned. So we cleared the trash again, killed the drakes, and engaged in a lengthy battle with Sartharion. We downed Sarth in one go, and walked off with an achievement, just not the one we wanted.