The dragon you'll be hunting, Sartharion, lives with his three drake buddies in the Obsidian Sanctum below Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight. To get there, just follow the gorge from the north as it goes below the temple. You'll see a summoning stone and one open portal; no idea what the other portals are for, but right now they don't work so don't worry about them. Once your team is assembled outside, step through the portal into the Sanctum.
As soon as you step into the Sanctum, you're going to notice something's a little different about this particular dragon's den: he's right there as you come in. If you wanted to, you could just charge in and fight him right then and there. Note that I said you "could", not that you "should". Maybe once you and your team have had a bit more practice working together, are familiar with what needs to be done, and are sufficiently equipped to survive everything that gets thrown at you, then you can charge in. There's certainly reason to try it that way: better rewards, a dragon mount, and the glory of achieving something only a handful of guilds have been able to pull off. However, assuming that you and your team are new to this place and you're not all decked out in top-of-the-line epic gear, I wouldn't recommend it. There's a reason there's an achievement, better loot, and a mount for just charging in: it's significantly more difficult.If you look around the room, you'll see a drake off to Sartharion's left and right. Those two, along with the third one behind him (I don't believe you can see that guy from the portal) are the reason charging in is more difficult. If you rush in, all three drakes will join in the fight. This means you not only have a very large and angry dragon to deal with and all of his various quirks, but now you've also got three equally annoyed drakes to fight as well. So you've got you tanking the big guy and maybe one drake, your off-tank dealing with the other two drakes and the stuff Sartharion summons, another off-tank of sorts to go into the portals (I'll explain those later on), enough healing to keep up with all of that and the area effect damage in the portals - you can see where this can get very ugly very fast. Assuming that you'd like to start consistently knocking out the dragon and stealing his stuff on a weekly basis and will worry about achievements and extra loot later, let's walk through a "no drakes up" clearing of the Sanctum.
Alright, so we've got three drakes that need to go down before we take on the big guy. They've all got names, but to keep it simple, let's stick with position with respect to where you start in the room: left, right, and back. You'll have to deal with two trash pulls before each drake: a four-pull of dragonkin and a two-pull of dragonoids. The dragonoids are fairly simple "tank and spank" fights for you and your off-tank. The only annoyance is the curse that they do; it gives all attacks against them a chance to heal them, so if you don't have a decurser, it'll take a bit longer than normal. As for the four pull, it's pretty easy to split up between you and your off-tank, but there's a couple of things to bear in mind: 1) crowd-control the caster if you can (Hibernate for example) to cut down on raid damage, and 2) wait to kill the General until you're ready to pick up your CC'd dragons, since once he's down they cannot be CC'd any more. Once these two pulls are done with, it's on to the first drake.
All three drakes have the same basic mechanics as far as the main tank's concerned: they have a breath attack you need to aim away from everyone and they spawn little circles on the ground that you need to stay out of. Where they differ is in the off-tank and damage dealers' priorities. All three drakes will periodically create a portal nearby - everyone except for the main tank and his healer should enter this portal (one healer's all that's really necessary, he doesn't hit that hard). What you find inside the portal will depend on which drake you're fighting. If it's the left or right drakes, then it'll be one guy that the off-tank grabs while everyone else burns him down. If it's the back drake, then it'll be a bunch of whelp eggs. These eggs need to be dealt with quickly, otherwise they'll turn into whelps with a good deal more health and they'll start fighting back. While all of this is going on, everyone inside the portal will be taking some periodic damage, so the faster they finish up in there, the easier it is for your healers. Once everyone's out of the portal (everything's dead or it's timed out), have your off-tank grab any whelps that are left and your raid burn them down first, then switch back to the drake until the next portal opens. Repeat until the drake's dead, then loot your Emblems of Heroism and move on to the next drake.
Once all three drakes are down, you're ready for Sartharion. Gather everyone up near the edge of his little rectangular island to buff up, then charge in and position him. The picture to the right isn't perfect positioning (he moved a little funny and it was more hassle for the raid to move him than to just adjust to it), but it'll give you an idea. Ideally you should be a little past the halfway mark on the island from the portal (between half and two-thirds is about right).Most of this fight is your typical dragon fight: he tail-whips and breathes fire, so only you should be in front of him and no one should be behind him. For the most part, your team will be on his side closest to the entrance. Occasionally he'll summon some fire elementals that your off-tank needs to gather up for your ranged attackers to deal with; melee can help if necessary, but they have a tendency to get in range just as the elementals are dying and that's lost attack time on the dragon. Everything is pretty simple until you start to see the lava on the sides of his island start to churn.
Every now and then Sartharion makes giant waves of lava come up from one side of his island and sweep across to the other side. If you get in front of one of these waves, you get swept into the lava and it hurts a lot. The waves will be coming from one of the larger sides of the rectangle, so from your perspective as main tank, it'll be either right in front of you or right behind you. If you hear the lava start churning but can't see the wave, then it's behind you. The rest of your team should all be staying together and having one person calling out sides for movement, so you can use that as a heads-up as well.
Each of those waves will have breaks in the middle where you can position yourself to not get hit. Aside from the normal incentive of "Lava hot! Lava bad!", there's also an achievement if your group can dodge each wave. Your raid will be moving as a unit to stay out of the lava and keep attacking; your job is not only to dodge the lava, but to do so while keeping the dragon in attack range and from tail-swiping or breathing fire on your team. This sounds a bit difficult, but it's fairly simple on your part.
If the lava wave's coming from behind you, then the gap will be either right behind you (if you're right in the middle) or a little to the left (if you're closer to two-thirds in). Scoot a little to the left if necessary and your raid will collapse on his side to dodge the lava.
If the lava wave's coming from in front, you'll need to move a bit to your right; you'll be able to see how much since it's right in front of you. Here's why you should be a little further in than I was: I didn't have to move at all for the waves behind me, but if you look at this picture of a front wave, I had to move enough to my right that a couple of the slower melee guys got tail-swiped. If everyone's on the ball, it's fine, but better safe than sorry. If you're positioned correctly, then you barely have to move at all and your raid should be in no danger of any stray fire-breaths or tail swipes.Once you've got the hang of moving for the lava waves, it's just a matter of repeating the cycle until the dragon's down and you're looting his stuff. I do want to throw out a word of caution though for main tanks and off-tanks alike, from personal experience. When gathering up the fire elemental adds, your off-tank may get overwhelmed a bit near the end. To save one of your healers or an overzealous attacker, he may use his "everybody hit me!" taunt. This is a fine instinct, except for one tiny little detail: Sartharion is tauntable, including by AoE taunts. This can catch your raid, and your tank, a bit by surprise (I know I certainly wasn't expecting it). Just be ready to taunt him back and try and fix your positioning as fast as possible and you'll be fine.
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