OS+3 Details

Ok. Enough pictures, its time for details.

Four Tanks
Yakra (Warrior): All Drakes
Jerey & Notforgiven (Paladins): Adds
Strombolli (Druid): Sarth

We did not have a DK tank, so we went for a feral in High Stam / Polar gear. Death to adds was a reoccurring problem, so we went from two different drake tanks to one, and slid that tank to assist on adds.

Eight Healers
Three Resto Shamans (Estia, Ujelang, Nikto)
One Holy Paladin (Katanna)
Two Resto Druids (Alcyone, Aertimus)
Two Holy Priests (Bretta, Gorgon)

Our guild is heavy on Resto Shamans and Druids. We only have one holy paladin, and out of our three healing priests - two were on. While this is normally fine, it put us at only three healers who had tank-saving cooldowns. You'll have to ask Aertimus what all their assignments were (I think we had a priest+paladin on the Sarth tank, a priest+druid on me, druid on add tank 1, shaman on add tank two, and two raid healing shamans).

Thirteen DPS (7 Ranged, 5 Melee)
One Elemental Shaman
Two Balance Druids
Two Warlocks
One Shadow Priest
One Hunter
One Fury Warrior
One Ret Paladin
Two Rogues
One Enhancement Shaman
One Deathknight

We didn't aim for any particular balance. As the night went on, we took out people that were dying to void zones / flame walls, and put in others (though it was just bad luck that we had no mages online). The only thing we had to force, was adding the ret paladin, for Divine Guardian + HoS as another tank saving cooldown (we were a little short working with the three healer CDs + tank CDs).

The Fight
We tanked him facing to the right, about in the middle of the island (as you look from entering OS). The raid went on the otherside of him.

I tanked Drake One where he landed (him facing north), rotating myself slightly into the lava to avoid northern lava waves (along with the dps, so we didn't lose any dps time). Heroism went up after the lava wave that coinsides with his landing passed, and we burned him My priority was getting those five sunders up immediatly. Early on, his death before the second hatching was the goal - but by then end of things, he was between ~200k and dead when the second drake was going active. Add tanks piled them up next to my tank spot after drake one died, and we cleaned things up with some AoE.

Drake two got MD'ed to me. With 30 Yard taunt, though, I could help him along. Tanked him in the same spot, in very much the same manor - focusing far more at this point on keeping up Thunderclap/Demo Shout. He was guaranteed to be up when drake three landed, though.

Getting drake three to my spot was harder, and alot had to do with which lava wave we had at that point - I would usually taunt + heroic throw. When he did make it over to me, I would pop a CD - because twilight torment would start laying into the raid at any moment, and we wouldn't have divine guardian going on the raid until Sarth's first big breath.

This point was the tough one. We had tried lots of different strats, but finally settled on burning drake two before taking portals. I can't even get into all the things that went into that decision. Regardless, we spent many attempts at this point, working on healer cooldown rotations. Love your healers, and be patient with them : this is the hardest part of the fight for them. The upside, is that if the sarth tank dies, you should be able to know 100% who's CD is should have been, and you can work with them. Having everyone in the raid hear exactly what went wrong, and it get worked out on vent, is a big moral boost - you know that your one way of screwing up closer to the kill.

On our kill attempt, drake two went down sometime around the fourth / fifth cooldown. It was the first attempt that he had died when we were not allready in wipe-mode.

That may as well have been the kill. There was no way that the Sarth tank can die to breaths, incommig raid damage is lower, and you can really do it with many people dead (we had one or two dead). DPS went into portals, cleaned up acolytes, DPS'ed drake three when they could. Drake three and acolytes all died in due time, then we chipped away at Sarth's ~10 Million HP. It was painfully long (for knowing that we essentially have finished the fight), and that made the actual kill strangely anticlimatic.

There was still yelling and jumping and screaming of course (I think the quote of the night may have been "Permission to take off headphones?" at 5% and 2%). I have no idea what dropped, other then the Reigns of the Twilight Drake - that was won on a 100 /roll by Soulless.

In the end, we spent about 12 hours in there. Deciding and trying different strategies was a large part of it (going in portals or no?). People of course needed time to get use to mastering unforgiving lava walls and multiple void zones. DPS also improved steadily, as people learned how to minimize movement, and spend less time focus'edly thinking about lava walls - our group in roughly the same gear went from not getting drake one down before second hatching (with heroism) - to killing him when drake two landed - in the same gear, just being able to DPS better/smarter.

It was hard, but satisfying. I strongly, strongly suggest that other guilds start/continue OS+3 with a purpose - forsaking Naxx and Malygos (assuming you have cleared both, and done OS+2 - farming gear won't get you as far as farming raid experience). The feeling of having everything behind you is good - because the only thing ahead of you is T8.