Icecrown Deathbringer Saurfang

[Ciderhelm]

You can find a guide to the heroic version of this encounter here!

Welcome back to the Icecrown raid guide, My name is Thegreatme and in this video I will be discussing our strategy for Deathbringer Saurfang, the fourth boss in the Ice crown citadel raid instance.

the Deathbringer Saurfang encounter is a burndown fight that gets progressively harder as the fight goes on. This encounter relies of good execution, and being able to focus your healing and DPS as needed.

One of the most important mechanics of the fight is a buff Saurfang has which is called "blood link. When ever Saurfang, or one of his summoned creatures damages a player it will cause him to gain blood power. For every point of blood power Saurfang has he will grow 1% larger, and do 1% more damage.

Your raid needs to have ranged spread out so they are all at least 12 yards away from each other. This is because of blood nova, which will hit a random player, as well as anyone with in 12 yards of them for 9500 to 10500 damage. for every player hit by Blood nova Deathbringer saurfang will gain two blood power. It is advised that your ranged have a boss mod installed with a proximity detector and that they use it in order to make sure they are always far enough away from each other

Saurfang will also use an ability called Boiling blood, which is a damage over time debuff that does 5000 damage every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. this debuff is usually placed on 4 raid members at a time, but some times it may be applied to more people . Deathbringer Saurfang will gain 1 blood power for each tick of boiling blood.

Deathbringer saurfang also puts a debuff on the tank called rune of blood. this causes Saurfang's melee attacks to also leach 5100 to 6900 health from the target, and heal Saurfang for 5 times the amount leached and lasts 20 seconds. On normal mode the healing it does to saurfang is not large enough to warrant bringing in a second tank over a DPS. in this video my guild did use two tanks but this is because at the time we were unsure of the mechanic, and wanted to have a back up just in case.

When ever deathbringer saurfang hits 100 blood power he will place a debuff on a random raid member called Mark of the fallen champion. this debuff causes all of deathbringers saurfang's melee attacks to hit this target, plus an additonal 5700 to 6300 damage per hit. every time this player is hit deathbringer saurfang will gain 1 blood power. if the player with Mark of the fallen champion dies while under the effect of this debuff it will cause Saurfang to be healed for 5% of hit total health.
Mark has an infinite duration and can not be removed by any abilities , and will persist thru death.

Because mark gives Saurfang blood power it means that the speed at which he gains blood power throughout the fight increases exponentially as time goes on.

One way to help negate some of the damage that saurfang does is to disarm or dismantle him whenever he has around 80 blood power. doing this will reduce tank damage but more importantly it will also reduce the damage anyone with mark will take.

Also because all of the damage in this encounter is physical it is not a bad idea to have your mages buff the raid with amplify magic

approximately every 30 seconds saurfang will spawn 5 blood beasts in a circle around him. each blood beast has approximately 91 thousand health. all blood beasts have a buff that reduces their AoE damage taken by 95% and disease damage taken by 70%. when ever a blood beast successfully lands a melee attack it will cause Saurfang to gain 1 blood power. for this reason the blood beasts are to be kited rather than tanked.

Blood beasts are susceptible to all snares and stuns so ideally you want to have hunters make a path of frost traps so the they can be snared the whole time while being kited. moonkin druids are one one of the best classes to do the kiting because they have typhoon which can be used to push the blood beasts back and essentially reset the kite.

when each pack of blood beasts spawns your moonkin should be channeling hurricane as they spawn so they can get initial agro. hunters should also use misdirect on the moonkin and use multi shot to help get agro on all of the adds. once all of the adds have cleared the melee ranged DPS should all focus down one add at a time. Melee who use an AoE ability in their normal rotation such as fury warriors and paladins need to be aware of the timers for when the next pack of blood beasts are going to spawn and make sure that their AoE doesn't hit the blood beasts when it spawns because it may cause you to get initial agro on them.

Thank you for watching this movie. As always feel free to ask questions, or add suggestions either in the comments section on youtube, or in the thread dedicated to this guide on the tankspot.com. Also tankspot donors can download all of these movies directly from our servers. click the second link in the movie information box to learn more.

Welcome back to the Icecrown Citadel raid guide. I'm Lore and I'll be showing you the 10-Man Normal version of the Deathbringer Saurfang encounter.

Deathbringer Saurfang has a unique energy system called Blood Power, which is visible on his unit frame in place of a mana bar. He gains 1% damage dealt for every 1 Blood Power he gains, and once he reaches 100, he uses a very powerful debuff called Mark of the Fallen Champion which I'll describe in more detail later. He gains 1 Blood Power every time one of his various abilities or one of his summoned Blood Beast pets deals damage. Thus, the key to the fight lies in controlling the amount of Blood Power he gains as much as possible.

Notice how we have our raid spread out here. Our two healers are standing on either side of the walkway where the teleporter is located, and our ranged DPS is spread out in about 10 yard increments to the sides from there. This accomplishes two things. First, Saurfang has a targetted ability called Blood Nova which causes an AOE splash around a random raid member. By staying spread out, we can avoid having anyone be hit by the damage from this ability, thereby keeping Saurfang from gaining Blood Power from it.

Secondly, with the healers positioned in a central location, the Blood Beasts should be drawn down the middle of the room when they spawn. From there, the ranged DPS will burn them down, while our melee stays on the boss. Blood Beasts are vulnerable to just about all slows, stuns, roots, and knockbacks, so we have a Hunter dropping a Frost Trap to slow them down and an Elemental Shaman using Thunderstorm if they happen to get too close. Of course, there are many other ways to deal with this depending on your group composition. Keep in mind however that if the Blood Beasts successfully reach anyone and hit them, Saurfang gains Blood Power, so it's best to avoid having melee DPS on them and they should absolutely not be tanked. Furthermore, tanks and melee DPS will need to be careful to avoid using multi-target abilities when the Blood Beasts first spawn to avoid catching initial aggro.

Another ability you'll need to be aware of is Boiling Blood. This is a damage over time effect placed on a random raid member that deals a significant but perfectly healable amount of physical damage every 3 seconds for 24 seconds. More important than the damage it deals is the amount of Blood Power it gives. Each tick will give Saurfang 1 Blood Power, for a total of 8 Blood Power per use. This can and should be removed with immunity effects like Divine Shield or Ice Block, though he casts it frequently enough that he will be gaining Blood Power from it fairly consistently. If the rest of his abilities are being dealt with properly, however, this should be the vast majority of the Blood Power he gains over the course of the fight.

The last ability you'll need to watch out for to limit his Blood Power gain is a debuff he places on the tank called Rune of Blood. This causes his melee attacks to proc an extra 6000 or so damage on that tank, and heal him for 5 times that amount. This counts as an ability dealing damage, so he gains 1 Blood Power per melee swing while he's hitting a tank with Rune of Blood active. There are two ways to deal with this ability. It's possible to use one tank, offsetting the healing by having another DPS in the party, and simply dealing with the extra Blood Power he gains. However, this can be risky, and isn't likely to work later on when the encounter's Heroic Mode becomes available. It's much safer to have two tanks taunting off of each other when Saurfang applies the debuff.

By this point in the fight, Saurfang will most likely have collected a large amount of Blood Power and will be hitting fairly hard because of it. Remember that he deals 1% more damage for every Blood Power, so your tank healer will need to be aware of this increased damage.

As I mentioned earlier, once Saurfang reaches 100 Blood Power, he casts a debuff called Mark of the Fallen Champion. This consumes all of his Blood Power, setting him back to 0 and causing him to lose the damage buff, but also makes every one of his melee attacks also deal around 5000 damage to the marked raid member. Not only does this count as dealing damage with an ability, thereby rewarding him with additional Blood Power, it also lasts for the rest of the fight, and cannot be removed by immunity effects. Even if the marked player dies and is resurrected, they will still be marked for the duration of the encounter. Furthermore, if the player does die, Saurfang immediately heals for 5% of his total health. It will simply have to be healed through. In the 10 man version, it's usually possible to limit him to only casting this once or twice even with relatively low DPS, but keep in mind that for each active mark, he will be gaining Blood Power much more rapidly, and thus be able to cast another one sooner. This is why it's so important to limit the amount of Blood Power he gains, as the extra damage will quickly overwhelm your healers if he is allowed to cast it too many times.

Ultimately, with a good understanding of the fight's mechanics and strategy, Deathbringer Saurfang is simply a matter of execution. If everyone's doing what they're supposed to, he can be defeated somewhat easily. If not, well, things can go sour pretty quickly. If you'd like more information on this or any other encounter, including the 25-man version, just check the Project Marmot forums at Tankspot.com. If you're watching this on YouTube, just follow the link in the movie details. Thanks for watching, and good luck!

[Casz]

Wuhu... can't wait to kill this guy on 10m

[Tibbs]

I assume donor download is coming soon....?

[Ciderhelm]

Donor download is up! We'll try to get the script included this afternoon!

[Tahriel]

Haven't read the information or watched the video above since we already finished the encounter before checking on here for these videos but just some information for 10 man;

1. Only 2 adds spawn in the 10 man version, these can be taken care of with 2 ranged dps. No special abilities required to hold them in place, but a hunters frost trap and sometimes a DK's chains of ice can be helpful.

2. The adds don't really pose much of a threat on 10man, my main tank kept taking aggro on one of the adds as they spawned meaning it was attacking him for a while, this caused us zero issues. (I cant even remember Saurfang getting to 100% of his energy bar once!).

3. We used 2 healers, one of which being a Disc Priest so the shields probably helped, the other being a Druid healer. As i was the Disc priest i can say that the fight is VERY easily 2 healed, it's better to have the extra DPS.

4. Boss died very quickly, we one shot it, but it felt more like a tank and spank, just like how all 10 man content is i suppose, until hardmodes are released.

/Tahriel

[Synicaal]

My guild downed the first 3 in this raid with only a few mess ups most coming on Lady Deathwhisper. We attempted Saurfang I want to say 4-5 times last night. We were blowing though it until we hit around 30% and he does his second mark of the fallen. At this point heals start falling off and we lose ppl. Just a bit more on what we were doing on this fight.
Raid Make up
2- Tanks (both pallys)
5- Dps (2 physical,3caster)
3- Healz (Priest,Druid,Pally)
When adds spawned we had out hunter kite one while we killed it. Othe add we had Druid rooting it as we killed it. Adds were not an issue. However like I said before after the first Mark our pally healer simple beaconed the person with it and it was fine. But by the time he did his second Mark he was around 30% and thats where we keep failing. Any suggestions.

[Thegreatme]

after mark is applied watch saurfangs blood power, once it hits ~85 blow a defensive CD on the person with mark (GS, PS, BoP if it works (I haven't personally tested it but I don't see why it wouldn't),etc.) do this on everyone that has mark every time he gets high in BP, you may need to make a CD rotation so you don't accidentally overlap them. the player with mark them selves should use one of their personal defensive CD's when he gets close to marking another player as well.

[Mr.Winkle]

My guild downed the first 3 in this raid with only a few mess ups most coming on Lady Deathwhisper. We attempted Saurfang I want to say 4-5 times last night. We were blowing though it until we hit around 30% and he does his second mark of the fallen. At this point heals start falling off and we lose ppl. Just a bit more on what we were doing on this fight.
Raid Make up
2- Tanks (both pallys)
5- Dps (2 physical,3caster)
3- Healz (Priest,Druid,Pally)
When adds spawned we had out hunter kite one while we killed it. Othe add we had Druid rooting it as we killed it. Adds were not an issue. However like I said before after the first Mark our pally healer simple beaconed the person with it and it was fine. But by the time he did his second Mark he was around 30% and thats where we keep failing. Any suggestions.

This fight is clearly a DPS race. I would suggest going for 2 healers and 1 tank and just nuke the crap out of him.

[Vaelia]

Did this on our alts in 10-man Monday after the raid. Gear wasn't incredible so we had a few wipes while we experimented. We had two tanks, two ranged, and three healers at the beginning. I was on my hunter and these are the things we tried and how we got to a kill:

1. Shadow priest and I kited adds around and killed them. Problem: it's easy to run out of space and contribute to BP gains if you're too close to another player, and the two ranged spent the majority of their time dealing with adds.
2. We had melee stun one of the adds every time and then the entire raid blew it up. Resto shaman frostshocked the second add out of the melee and then the spriest and I kited/killed it. Ranged usually had 20 seconds or so to dps the boss before the next adds spawned. However, this fell apart towards the end as too many marks went out. As soon as someone died to mark it was over.
3. We had one of the healers switch to dps and continued the add handling mentioned in 2. This lead to a very clean kill with the boss only casting one mark before he died.

Note, we went back last night on our mains and did roughly the same strategy except I solo tanked the encounter. As a result the boss gained BP a lot faster and got off a second mark close to the time he was dying. Obviously it wasn't an issue since he died, but for less geared groups I would recommend having your third healer go dps but keep your second tank and swap on debuff.

[mav1234]

Can we get any confirmation about disarm being hotfixed? One of our rogues tried it last night and for some reason we weren't sure if it worked.

[Vaelia]

It did not work in 10-man last night.

[Bihn]

Blood Beasts seemed to be spawning on a strict 40 second timer during our attempts.

[Ion]

Blood Beasts seemed to be spawning on a strict 40 second timer during our attempts.

I'd second that...presumably the various mods (DBM/BW) will update with a timer on that (if they haven't already...I honestly didn't notice).

[Thegreatme]

Blood Beasts seemed to be spawning on a strict 40 second timer during our attempts.

Looking back at my video it appears you may be right, I honestly was going off of the DXE timer which seemed pretty close, but the first two waves of adds spawned at 40sec, and ~82sec. I think the ability is on a cooldown of 40 rather than a strict timer because I have noticed him delay using it because he was casting another ability.

[Bihn]

I think the ability is on a cooldown of 40 rather than a strict timer because I have noticed him delay using it because he was casting another ability.

That would make sense.

I was using the /stopwatch feature for the few attempts we had on Tuesday before our raid was over, so I wasn't looking too too closely at the exact second the Beast would appear, just calling it out as incoming at ~35 seconds since the last one. Unfortunately our soft reset made the NPC's despawn and we couldn't do anything last night with the updated mods, so we couldn't get a better grasp on the timers.

[Vaelia]

I used DBM and it was right on the money with add spawns during both Lady Deathwhisper and Deathbringer Saurfang.

[Sphinxie]

I watched your video for some inspiration on the tacs for this fight. One thing my guild changed compared to your tactics, is with the kiting of bloodbeasts. Put simple we made a path of frost traps and earth bind totems from the boss towards Muradin. At the end of it we had a holy paladin with righteous fury up, this meant that his threat from healing was enough to keep the adds running throug the entire path of snares. We combined it with MD from our hunters, and a moonking plus a firemage to knock back adds when they got close. It gave us a very nice control on the adds.

[Shimoakki]

Just curious, but would you mind giving me a list of your addons? I'm sorry if you have listed them before. Thanks.

[Thegreatme]

Just curious, but would you mind giving me a list of your addons? I'm sorry if you have listed them before. Thanks.

I have a very out dated addons movie on my youtube channel, but nothing that is fully up to date. I plan on making a thread on the UI compilation boards with a list of all my addons as well as a link to download it once I am done with this semester (meaning after next week some time).

[Wars]

TGM thanks for the guide, we wiped on him a bunch last night. We just couldn't get him down fast enough or keep people spread.

How many healers did you run? We had 6 heals, 2 tanks and 17 dps, yet we only got him to about 15% the closest try.

Also, what font do you use for msbt?