Icecrown Deathbringer Saurfang

[Kaddish]

I was under the impression that the Blood Beasts had a very high resilience to AoE damage so unless everyone is single targeting them down and taking them out in less than 30 seconds, you are going to be giving Saurfang lots of Blood Power

As I have said a few times we don't AoE. There are a few multi-mob spells that still hit hard, such as Hammer of the Righteous but that is the extent that we use multi-target spells. The point to this strat is Even though the bloodbeasts are highly resistant to AoE, melee has to alter their rotation to avoid initial agro. If consecrate and whirlwind type spells are enough to out-threat a kiter even for a second while his spell lands or he acquires targets, then each mob can land one or two hits. In 25 man this almost completely removes the advantage of kiting. As all 5 mobs pounding on the tank will gain no more than 12 - 15 blood power per add phase.

You mention burning the adds down in less than 30 seconds. We kill them in less than 10 seconds. Tanking without focusing down would be a poor decision.

Finally, it is important to note that the amount of blood power that Saurfang gets is irrelevant. Because there are two important things to consider. First off, 99 blood power is the same as 0. The mark of the fallen champion is the important thing to watch and since it casts at 100 blood power no one cares about 99. Secondly, no one cares how fast Saurfang gets blood power, only how fast he gains blood power in relation to how fast his health is declining. By eliminating kiting we dropped from going the full 8 minutes to kill him to going only 5 - 6 minutes. Since we kill him at least 25% faster we can soak a 20% increase in the rate at which Mark of the Fallen Champion is applied and still have a net gain.

Aziel
Dark Crucible
Dragonblight

[Quinafoi]

For 25 man...
Shadowfury is your friend. Shadowfury stun the adds when they spawn, it gives 3 full seconds to pick them up before they start hitting anyone.
Assign at least two ranged DPS to each of 3 adds that spawn to the sides of the tanks or behind them capable of about 10,000 or more DPS between them and at least one has the ability to slow the add or knock it back (Frost Trap, Typhoon, Slow, ect). Each of these adds will die in under 10 seconds, well before they are able to reach their ranged target.
Split melee DPS into two groups both capable of around 20,000 or more DPS for the two adds that spawn behind the boss. Have at least one class with an additional stun to use after the Shadowfury fades (a prot warrior tank with Shockwave works well for this since they will be facing the boss and be able to hit the adds behind him). With 20,000 DPS on each of those two adds, they will die in roughly 5 seconds, if you can spare 2 seconds of stun beyond Shadowfury, they never hit. A second Shadowfury would actually cover it as well.
No one gets hit by adds because stunned adds don't hit. No one has to technically kite because the adds being pulled by ranged are slowed and killed before they reach the ranged DPS.

Conceptually it's the similar to having the tanks try and pick up the adds because your goal is to assign enough DPS to the adds to kill them before Deathbringer Saurfang gains too much blood power. If you kill them faster, they don't hit as much. However instead of having the tanks actually tank them, you can simply have sufficient DPS assigned to each target that it dies before either stuns wear off or it reaches the person at ranged.

Using this method on our first kill we were consistently killing the adds in 10 seconds or less. That's with about 100,000 raid DPS.

[Kaddish]

I just want to clear up a few things about the goal and purpose of the tanking strat. We moved to this strat for one reason only. Our first Saurfang kill we were heavy on healing and had strong tanking but were light on DPS (we hit the enrage timer twice), so we were desperate for a strat that played to our strengths and hid some of our weaknesses. We decided to focus the DPS on the boss as much as possible. We stumbled onto the strat by accident when we lost a key person to DC. Adds started beating on melee and I watched the BP climb. I threw a hammer of the righteous and suddenly I had 3 on me but the bosses Bloodpower gain slowed a LOT. So the next attempt we tried the tank thing and the encounter was a joke.

Tanking the adds is not BETTER than kiting the adds. This is a strat that I suggest you try if kiting is giving you trouble. There are several advantages and disadvantages to this strat.


Advantages:

1. It plays to lower DPS raids with quality tanks
2. Set up time is nearly non-existant we assign a ranged and a melee assist and we engage. We are heading to the next wing within 10 minutes of getting off the boat and quite a bit of that is handing out loot.
3. Makes up for inexperience, if your tanks, and 2 assists know what is going on this will be easy for you.
4. K.I.S.S. - Keep it simple, stupid.

Disadvantages:

1. Since this strat works best letting the first 2 marks die the wrong people getting mark can hurt more.
2. Since the strat lets people die someone is going to die (we usually let 1 or 2 people die).
3. It requires quality tanks, a druid tank with 35% base dodge is not going to avoid too many hits by the bloodbeasts.

Altough this strat plays well for low DPS, high DPS is not a weakness you just decrease the number of marks. In a properly constructed 10 and 25 man raid (after a few weeks of doing this) we are getting 0 and 3 marks respectively.

Again for everyone that has a strat currently working well, this won't help you. For those that can't seem to get it consistantly right, give this a shot.

Here is a youtube link to an attempt a week or two ago:

Aziel
Dark Crucible
Dragonblight

[sefier]

For the past several weeks my guild has been struggling with Sarufang. We have been getting our first mark at about 70% on 25 man. This is extremely earily, and we can not figure out why he is gaining power so fast. Our typical raid make up is as follows.

3 Tanks (2 Warrior, 1 Pally)
2 DK DPS
5 RET Pally
1 Enhance Shamy
2 Mage
2 Hunter
1 Rogue
3 Locks
1 BoomKin
5 Heals.

Highest dps is 9k and lowest is 5.5k. Ideally we would have more ranged but we are lacking geared dps atm. We have considered the tank method but it does not really seem feasable right now to us. Does any one have any suggestions?

[CaptainAwesome]

This is how we do it and we get about 2 marks I guess.

Tanks: 2 on boss at all times
Melee: stay on boss at all times
Ranged: handles blood beasts when they spawn.
Healers: heal

Bloodbeasts never hit anyone in our raids really.

Setup from WMO I'm looking at:
Tanks: Warrior+pala (total: 2)
Healers: tree, disc, holy, shammy, 2xpala (total: 6)
Melee DPS: 2xrogue (one in greens/blues/heirlooms :P), warrior, 3xunholy dk, retadin, enh, cat (total: 9).
Ranged: 2xArc Mage, ele shammy, boomkin, 3 warlocks, hunter (total: 8)

Shammy puts down earthbind (slowingtotam) on spawn, shadowpriests use mindflay is it that slows (we actually didn't have this kill but we usually do), anyone ranged use anything that slows/stuns they have, shadowfury for example. Boomkins root for example as do three-druids if need be.

Now we split ranged up in 2 "camps", left and right, meaning left side of platform and right side of platform (compared to middle since you spread out). On each side we have a designated targeter. I'm usually on left, other mage on right. The ranged on either side have assist macros for either of us (left side assist me, right side the other mage). We always pick the add that spawns the most to either side and back (the furthest away), the other adds are stunned/rooted. The two first adds usually die almost instantly (frontloading huge amounts of dmg), then picking off the remaining three is very easy. The two of us that choose targets we usually start attacking next add when the first is close to dying. We have all adds down in good time before next wave. We improve this every week.

You can of course also use cheese-tactic, get someone to kite them close to ledge then knock them off :P

[Vault]

As a note our guild found a couple things that we found helped alot with add control and handling marks on our server which might be particularly helpful for guilds struggling with dps and getting too many marks on this fight.
1) On 25 Man Use of Divine Intervention couple with battle rezing players or placing soul stones on paladins in advance helped significantly with controlling runic power generated. Typicaly in our alt runs alot of our dps runs between 4500 and 7k which can be a struggle without this stratagie to kill saurfange however with it we generally have no problems downing the boss. Typically we run 3 paladins and and combination of warlocks and druids totaling 3 to prevent problems should one of them be targeted by mark. What this does is it eliminates having to deal with mark for 3 minutes + of the encounter if your raid can do 40% of his health in a mark this is easy to acomplish. Generally we found using ret paladins was the easiest way to do this as well however holy paladins can be used as well though if u have both i would recommend having the holy paladin di first to allow recouvery time before the third mark and 30% health. By Using Divine Intervention you stop saurfang from harming the target effected by divine intervention. Effectively removing them from combat and making it easier on the dps and healers to control the fight.
2) We also found that the best composition was to run 2 tank 5 healers and 18 dps for the fight comprising of 10 ranged and 8 melee however it doesnt really matter but it allows you to devote 2 dps per add to killing the adds. Generally pairing higher dps with lower dps and dps with abilities that compliment each other boomkins with hunters ect. If you dont have that many ranged players you can also have 1-2 druids jsut root 2 adds to compensate and that will control them effectively till the other ranged can help clean up. We found this particularly useful in ten mans having 1 dps just control an add while the other killed them if you cant kill an add with 1 dps then 2 dps and a 3rd to control adds works really well as well. Dk's and druids are generally the best choices to control adds unless u have particularly skilled ranged dps with high output at which point a very skilled ret paladin or rogue can control adds as well. (When Rooting adds do not root them near melee as they will dps anything in melee range).
3) Using shields from a priest also helps alot with controlling the blood power gain on targets reducing the number of ticks that the boss gains to his blood power. These are several things we have found greatly increases the ability to control the fight. Hopefully it helps.

[Rizilliant]

We were on Saurgand last nigth (mini patch day; Feb 2) and he seemed to be gaining blood power at an alarming rate....Normally we get him down to 30%, maybe 35% before he lands his 1st "Mark of the Fallen".. This particular evening however, we were getting our 3RD by 40% at best....We made a good half dozen atempts with the same outcome,give or take...We had the same group makup as usual:

Pally & Warr Tanks...
3 range on beasts...Hunter, Lock, Moonkin...
Then our remaining dps on saurfang..(Enhance Shaman, Shad Priest, Mage) addind to a beast if absolutely neccessary!
2 heals...Priest & Druid...

I guess what I'm getting at,is to ask if anyone else seemed to be having this issues lastnight as well? We did hear some chatter in ICC Gen. chat of similar complications...Any merrit to a possible Buff up to this fight? Or were we just hacks?!

[Predakhan]

It looks like he is casting boiling blood on melee now so people are going to have to be aware and have a safe spot to run to until it is finished. I am guessing the encounter was supposed to work like this originally as the achievement seemed really easy.

[Quinafoi]

It looks like he is casting boiling blood on melee now so people are going to have to be aware and have a safe spot to run to until it is finished. I am guessing the encounter was supposed to work like this originally as the achievement seemed really easy.

Blood Nova is the mechanic which prefers ranged targets.
Boiling Blood could always be cast on melee.

[Rizilliant]

So you are saying prior to yesterday, Blood Nova or Boiling Blood was prefferring Ranged targets, and is now also targetting melee?
Yes i think this could be the problem...even though we only run 1, sometimes 2 melee dps...standing next to our tanks that'd make 4 to for splash,....Ok all, Tyvm!

[Quinafoi]

I'm not claiming to know the reason behind the major increase in blood power gains. I've only done it on 10 man so far since the patch. I can confirm that he is gaining blood power faster. We still one shot the fight however we had two marks this week, we haven't had two marks since the first week in ICC. Something is functioning different than it was before.

I did not know there were issues prior to doing the fight, we one shot it like always but did notice the difference. If I had known there was issues I would have done a video capture to see if I can see mechanics more clearly as to functionality change. I can't confirm if Blood Nova is hitting melee or not when it shouldn't because first of all everyone keeps saying Boiling Blood (the wrong ability) which is the damage over time debuff, not the area of affect ability.

There are a lot of reports of the encounter being more difficult. Something did change yes. But right now there seems to be a great deal of people guessing as to what changed rather than looking at logs and looking at videos for evidence of the changes.

I don't know what changed. I haven't seen the logs or video evidence. So I won't make any claims as to what changed other than to correct people when they state information incorrectly of how the mechanics functioned before.

Also on the issue of Blood Nova. It's always possible that a hunter move in closer to lay a trap and gets too close to the melee. Or a caster in the melee is standing too far back from the boss and became an eligible target. You need video to see who he is actually targeting with each cast (litterally, he targets the person, they also turn red). So melee being hit by the mechanic may be the result of people being out of position at the wrong time.

[phaze]

Daelo:

We did make some changes to the fight to make the "Just let people with Marks die" strategy not something you want to do, but it was not our intention to make the fight drastically more difficult. We're currently looking over his abilities to see what's happening.

[Akrestus]

Paladin heals here, I wanted to know if it's possible for a Disc priest or a holy priest and a Holy paladin to heal it (Akrestus - Grizzly hills) (Noir - Grizzly hills) are our healers.
What our problem is i believe was the tank using AoE, but maybe we neevr burned down the adds fast enough.
I was thinking to try 3 heals and get the extra mega uber DPS.

[Quinafoi]

Paladin heals here, I wanted to know if it's possible for a Disc priest or a holy priest and a Holy paladin to heal it (Akrestus - Grizzly hills) (Noir - Grizzly hills) are our healers.
What our problem is i believe was the tank using AoE, but maybe we neevr burned down the adds fast enough.
I was thinking to try 3 heals and get the extra mega uber DPS.

Theoretical absolute minimum DPS required to do Saurfang on 10 man is around 22,500 (provided absolutely no heals). Most raids which kill him are doing around 30,000 or higher. This isn't a huge healing burden until marks start piling up. A lot of raids do it with 2 healers though currently there are issues with the encounter that are unresolved. So yes it is quite possible to two heal the encounter. With those two healers perhaps, gear wise you're probably fine, so its just a matter of skill. It would be better if the priest were discipline for this fight in particular.

[Sigge]

The "let them die" startegy is now pointless as Saurfang don't get RP from the Marked players anymore. He will however gain health (and I think 5% more now) if someone dies from the mark.
He is now gaining Runic Power at a much faster rate than before. Also reports says that he might be a bit bugged regarding Shieled players absobing the dmg and still gaining RP .

This is now a heal marked players fight.

[phaze]

Update from Daelo:

We've just deployed a hotfix that reduces Saurfang's blood power gain from ability damage back to 3.2.2 values. There was also a minor visual range issue with Blood Nova that was fixed.

[Rennadrel]

For 25 man...
Shadowfury is your friend. Shadowfury stun the adds when they spawn, it gives 3 full seconds to pick them up before they start hitting anyone.
Assign at least two ranged DPS to each of 3 adds that spawn to the sides of the tanks or behind them capable of about 10,000 or more DPS between them and at least one has the ability to slow the add or knock it back (Frost Trap, Typhoon, Slow, ect). Each of these adds will die in under 10 seconds, well before they are able to reach their ranged target.
Split melee DPS into two groups both capable of around 20,000 or more DPS for the two adds that spawn behind the boss. Have at least one class with an additional stun to use after the Shadowfury fades (a prot warrior tank with Shockwave works well for this since they will be facing the boss and be able to hit the adds behind him). With 20,000 DPS on each of those two adds, they will die in roughly 5 seconds, if you can spare 2 seconds of stun beyond Shadowfury, they never hit. A second Shadowfury would actually cover it as well.
No one gets hit by adds because stunned adds don't hit. No one has to technically kite because the adds being pulled by ranged are slowed and killed before they reach the ranged DPS.

Conceptually it's the similar to having the tanks try and pick up the adds because your goal is to assign enough DPS to the adds to kill them before Deathbringer Saurfang gains too much blood power. If you kill them faster, they don't hit as much. However instead of having the tanks actually tank them, you can simply have sufficient DPS assigned to each target that it dies before either stuns wear off or it reaches the person at ranged.

Using this method on our first kill we were consistently killing the adds in 10 seconds or less. That's with about 100,000 raid DPS.

Interesting concept that I will see whether or not it will work with my guild. We have a couple of excellent mages who can do some massive single target damage (7-8k) and putting them within melee range also gives us a chance to really burn the adds down faster. Raid DPS is usually pretty good, there isn't anyone pulling less than 4k in 25 man as far as I have seen, several up in the 6k range, the average is close to 5k.

[Quinafoi]

If you use a very high DPS ranged in the melee group, whichever target you assign them too should actually be assigned to either a higher threat generating target or a hunter with distracting shot to pull it out of melee. Putting ranged in with the melee is simply to minimize the number of valid Blood Nova targets. If you only need 10 ranged targets in 25 man, you don't need 15 people standing at range. Some healers can be ranged, some healers can be in melee. Some ranged DPS can be ranged, some ranged DPS can be in melee. If the mage is your higher DPS/threat generating, they should stand at ranged while the other DPS assigned to the target could stand in melee.

Two adds are killed by melee DPS, the other three are pulled out of the group by ranged DPS, having about 2 people per target (10K+ DPS). You can have one in the melee however that can't be the one who has aggro because the add is still supposed to be pulled out, you are just planning on killing it before it ever reaches its target instead of kiting it.

[phaze]

Daelo comments on absorption effects and some other changes:

Absorbs such as Power Word: Shield no longer prevent Blood Power from being gained when damage is dealt by Saurfang. Casting Power Word: Shield is not a bad thing to do as the ability will absorb the damage dealt. This was an intentional 3.3.2 change. We also removed the ability to knockback the Blood Beasts off the platform and the removed of Blood Power gain from Mark of the Fallen Champion damage. We unfortunately missed getting these changes into the patch notes.

[pertyspell]

first off good job to every out there thats down him on 10 an 25...now to my real point
my guild(immortal faction-drenden) has a habit of single healing saurfang on 10 man...yeah i know it sounds like a pain to do for any healer but its not as long as their a class that can do decent raid heals.
now the main reason we do this is cause more often then not our top dps people aren't able to come when we do it for we have to improvise some where.
now for the best way to single heal him on 10 man-first off always make sure your raids got their range check on to help drop the amount of energy he generates. the second part is to make sure your healer is around the center of your raid an with in healing range of al raid members so they can still be healed.
now i know alot of this may sound hard an for an inexperience or lower geared heal it will be very extremely hard. the main trick for the healer is to be spaming raid heals when more then 2 or 3 people are taking damage the reason for this is cause of the amount of time it may take to single heal a single person back up...now i have seen our main tanks go down in the time it takes to single heal a person up so your raid heals are a better bet.
now if your guild is gonna try this technique make sure who ever is healing it has a high mp5 number or a bunch of ways of getting mana back cause single healing it is very mana intensive
yes i know alot of this sounded like rambling but if you can get the main parts of what i was trying to say then good luck if you wish to have your guild try single healing him on 10