Sartharion the Onyx Guardian, the 10 (and 25) man encounter underneath Wyrmrest Accord, has two ways to the encounter.

The easy way to do it is to kill the 3 minibosses in the zone before you encounter him. This trivializes the encounter.

The hard way is to kill all of the trash, but leave the minibosses up. This causes the minibosses to become part of the encounter when you engage Sartharion. This makes the fight significantly more challenging, has scripted events, and other such goodies.

Basically, it goes from making the fight an absolute pushover to something very, very challenging, well worthy of being done by the 'hardcore'.

We started learning it yesterday, came back today, and killed the 10 man version this way. Bonus loot dropped!

We're going to try the 25 man when we can manage a raid for it.

http://img45.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sarth10manhardmodekg6.jpg

Went in with Vis Maior helping fill out the raid, and just did the 25 man version of this as well, all 3 drakes up upon engage, etc. It's not nearly as well-tuned or hard as the 10 man one. Had a dev there watching so they're already aware and are going to be retuning it appropriately.

http://img212.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sarth25hardbetayd7.jpg

Bad ass dude, I'm happy to see "heroic" modes in raids, spices things up

Any Screens of the Mount?
(btw i hope 100% drop for the harder version)

Unfortunately, the mount is bugged, and as soon as you "learn" it (they way mounts work in WoTLK), it doesn't go into your "pet/mount" tab. So yeah, no mount yet, can't see it

When it's fixed, we'll take pictures though, if it gets fixed anytime soon

Hmm, wouldn't surprise me if alot of the guilds did the easier version even if loot is somewhat better int eh hardcore version.

I have the feeling that heroic 10-man Sartharion will become the WotLK "ZA bear farm" due to that drake. 

We used 3 tanks, Xav, Rekk, and Devium

This isn't really true. Here's my post form the Beta R&D forums about the fight:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9679804773&sid=2000

10 Man Sartharion, all drakes up on engage ("hard mode"), average gear level of the raid is full sunwell + lots of extra Naxx10 and 25 loot. Main tank fully Naxx25 tier-piece geared, others in 2-3 pieces each.

We just downed the hard mode version of this fight. You know what we're talking about, obviously, but for the rest of the people: IF you leave all 3 of the miniboss drakes up, the encounter completely changes, new scripted events happen, etc etc. Anyway, we killed it, and got bonus loot - http://img45.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sarth10manhardmodekg6.jpg is the picture.

As for feedback on this version of the fight:

It's an absolute blast, VERY fun. The first few times we did it we were getting demolished as we were overwhelmed so quick. Once we added control though and got used to the fight, it became easier. Then as we thought we had the fight in the bag, we learned we missed an entire part of the fight. Wiping us a bunch more. Very rewarding once we got it, we had some mistakes in our kill, too, and barely killed him in time.

A few changes I think need to happen:

When in the twilight realm, you should not be able to eat cleaves from Sartharion. Yes, you can avoid it by moving Sartharion around, but it just seems awkward.

Sartharion himself should get another buff once all three drakes are killed, so he hits harder. Yes, his damage isn't too high right now because you potentially have to tank 2 other drakes plus him at the same time (briefly), which makes the damage insane. But once all 3 are dead, it's so little damage on the tank.

Everything else seemed to be tuned perfectly, very impressive overall.

Combat Log Parse will be up soon from the attempts+kill today.

Here's the raw log file, not of just the kill though, but attempts today. This will be in a stasis (like wws) parse shortly.

Stasis parse from our attempts/kill today: http://premtest.x10hosting.com/

http://files.filefront.com/WoWCombatLogSartharionzip/;11782371;/fileinfo.html

Btw, the bonus tank cloak was ilvl 200 only - instead of 213. I'm sure it was meant to be ilvl 213 like the bonus priest helm was.