Sunwell Trash Farming

Tanked this twice over the weekend, and learnt quite a lot because the RL was just "Tank, do your thing!" which was a little tough since I had never set foot into Sunwell before. This is a long guide for something so simple but someone may want to run one or get thrown in and may want to know what to expect.

Raid needs:
- 1 Tank (around t5 level, could maybe get away with less if your healers rock)
- 5-7 healers (depends how good they are)
- 6 mages (or as many as you can get, fill out rest with warlocks, don't try it with less than 4 sheepers, any mage who can sheep will do - but beware of mages with no spell hit who can't mash sheep fast, and warlocks who aren't used to using fear to cc (it ran across 2 rooms, not my fault! <--bad warlock)
- Fill up rest with high dps or extra healers, some people only fill up to 20 so everyone gets more loot, the really leet do 15, I went with a 20 one day and a 25 the other.

What you do:
First kill the Big Robot - you tank him on the stairs facing him away from the raid. Raid groups by party numbers in a row below the stairs. Something like this:

doorway
top stair - you - top stair
stair - big ass robot facing you - stair
-------------melee------------------
-grp1--grp2-------grp3--grp4--------

Strat:
The big robot does chain lightning so you want several small groups of people to avoid it bouncing around. Need to stack exactly on each other. Put a symbol on one person per grp and tell rest to stand on them, plus a symbol for melee. Assign 2-3 raid healers, tell rest to heal tank who will be taking 5-7k blows. It's ok for random people to die here except for the tank, thats kinda normal, tell healers that. This is the hardest part of sunwell trash. Start a timer when he goes down (or chug a flask), you have 2 hrs to farm before he comes back.

Next part:
Now you see 2 groups of trash with 7 mobs each in them. We always kill the one to the right, then kill everything in the left one except the Dragonhawk, run out, let it reset and run back in. Give each of the mages (or warlocks) a symbol and raid assist, tell them to mark up their sheep target as soon as they are ready. Tank marks their target with a skull. If you have a hunter then hunter mds skull to tank, everything else is cc and killed one at a time.

More detail for first pull (right group):
Pull them back into the first room to avoid fear/cc accidents. Tell ppl to not cc until they are away from the second group, plus healers to heal tank a lot to start.

Here are the possible trash mobs:
*Vindicator - marked with skull, killed him first each time, he cleaves but is disarmable
*Slayer - hunter-type mob, can be disarmed, scattershots sometimes, I always killed it second
*Cabalist - caster, sheep rather than fear, can't be interrupted, just casts on tank so easy
*Arch mage - caster, can be interrupted but no cast times so it's based on luck, iceblocks then ports around then heads back at tank, annoying!
*Dawn priest - caster, does nasty aoe but can be interrupted
*Dusk priest - this nasty guy fears so tremor totems, stance dance, he also slows
*Dragonhawk - can be slept, mob left so entire pull respawns, doesn't drop loot

And I almost forgot the imps!
Random Imps - soloable, but need to be killed, stop dps on tank target, kill them, resume dps on tank target. They don't need to be tanked.

I listed the mobs above in the order I broke cc and killed them, but you can just break nearest, or fears if you want. I think it's quicker to kill the easy ones first, then annoying arch mages, then the priest that aoes last so low people can just move away and start heading out for reset in case it isn't interrupted. I was lucky enough to never have a dusk priest in the left group, but would have done him last if there was one.

Things that help:
- Having cc mark their targets so you know they are ready - one afk cc and it could be a wipe
- CC'ers whose targets are dead cc anything running around loose, sheepers take over from warlocks, it's faster to grab next target if its not being feared.
- Install Big Brother addon and type: /bb settings polyoutput raid (it's a toggle) - one multishotting hunter will make you wipe all day. You need to know who is constantly breaking cc and remove them else this is just an exercise in futility.
- Would also help to have some way for healers to show they are ready, not sure how though. We wiped a few times because tank and cc marked up, but healers were slow. Maybe they have to say in raid chat or /yell this healer rdy! or something.
- Everyone should be on vent
- You want as little afk'ing as possible, people should be able to go 2 hrs without a break

Speed is key:
You want to get in as many runs in 2 hrs as possible so put a symbol on yourself and wait so you are the last person to hop out, then when people see your symbol they can hop back in. Get everyone to mount up when they get in, ride to places, mark target/yell then pull. Taunt then move onto next target when current tank target is low, disarm too if vindicator/slayer, so you don't drag a cleaving mob behind you as you run to next target (not that I did that!).

Loot:
Master loot unless you're all guildies - sunwell trash runs are famous for ninja looting problems. A sunmote sells for 1k+. We did rolls for main spec/maxed profession right away on bop items, rolling for boe items at end of the 2 hrs (you don't stay for whole 2 hrs, you don't get any boe items, works great). Roll on sunmotes first, max one per person, then gems, max one per person, none if you got a sunmote. Make sure everyone knows the loot rules when you start, including what you will do with Marks of Illidari. I think loot threshold should be set to blues (for mining pattern) and people just loot all greens including marks. I was a bit annoyed that all the marks of illidari and greens were claimed by a guild in my second run when there were at least 50% puggers, and they didn't state this in advance.

What to wear:
For big robot - avoidance, best gear you have
For rest of trash - max threat set if you have one, else just best tank gear. All adds are tauntable.

Raid ID:
Just doing trash doesn't save you, but if there is someone from a sunwell guild then you will be saved to their ID. Just let people know - chances are sunwell guilds make their own trash raids, but you don't want to save someone planning on raiding sunwell with their guild to someone elses run.